A Film in the Making

Thank you for your interest in "The Schoolhouse."  We're very excited to share our film  project with you.

I completed the first draft of the screenplay in 1998.  After unsuccessful attempts to sell the story to US producers, I sent the script to the prominent Filipino filmmaker Peque Gallaga (Oro, Plata, Mata, 1982) who was looking for a story about a tragic incident known as the Balangiga Massacre. Mr. Gallaga liked the script and signed on as the film's director.

The story of "The Schoolhouse" is based on true events that were largely ignored by both Filipino and American historians.  The film is set in 1901 during the United States' occupation of the Philippines and will depict the struggles of three individuals caught in the Balangiga Massacre and its aftermath.

To date, the project has been awarded PhP250,000 by the Philippine National Commission for Culture and the Arts and has received pledges from private individuals to bring the film to pre production.  Due to the protracted depressed US economy, grants and funds have been difficult to find.  

We are reaching out to you to spread the word on the grassroots level by telling your friends and family to log in to our websites:

schoolhousethemovie.blogspot.com
schoolhousethemovie.multiply.com

A small contribution of $20 or more will help us take the next steps in this journey. Please click Donate on this site to make your contribution. Your valuable support is essential in bringing the compelling story of "The Schoolhouse" to full realization. It will also encourage the next generation of Filipinos and Americans to appreciate their rich and complex historical link.

If you need further information, please contact us at:

schoolhousethemovie@yahoo.com

Maraming Salamat!
Beatrice R. Homann

The Schoolhouse - Writer's Statement

BACKGROUND:

“The Schoolhouse” has its beginnings in 1986 when I read a copy of a speech presented by the late Jaime Ongpin to the Rotary Club of the Philippines. Ongpin was at the time, president of the Benguet Mining Corporation and a highly respected member of the business community. If the speech was delivered at a different time and did not invoke a sitting president, it would have been a conventional articulation of ideas among a group of peers. But Ongpin spoke in 1984, when the public sentiment against Ferdinand Marcos was coming to a head. The political atmosphere in the country had already transformed from scattered student demonstrations to an anti-Marcos movement that encompassed the elite, the middle class, the intelligentsia and the press. Ongpin's voice representing the business community therefore gave the ultimate credence and weight to the public outcry that eventually sealed Marcos' fate.

In his speech Ongpin enumerated political realities and then offered specific ideas for economic and intellectual liberation. He challenged his own peers to stop the habit of granting social acceptance to anyone who has money and power, regardless of how they were obtained, in exchange for the trappings of respectability. He challenged them to openly show their collective disapproval for those who have abused their political power and in the process deprived every other Filipino of his equitable share of economic progress and his inalienable rights to equal justice and genuine freedom. In essence, Ongpin threw the gauntlet to his listeners to overhaul the Filipino’s deep-rooted social value of blind acquiescence to patronage.

The speech prompted me to re-examine my social and cultural origins. I began research work on tenant farming system in the Philippines and discovered how the system became the embodiment of human exploitation. Historical facts show that the tenant farmer's economic dependence on his landowner was not just a way of life but a legacy that was handed down from generation to generation.

In 1992, I took extended education classes in screenwriting at the San Francisco State University and drafted an outline treatment for a film script about a landowner who is brought down by his own protégé. 

But a friend encouraged me to delve further back into history and read about an even more stunning story of usurpation: the largely unknown period called the Philippine American War. 

There I stumbled into events that were more dramatic and compelling. Compelling because of our unwavering alliance with and admiration for the democratic principles of the United States. It remains a paradox that our continuing struggle for self-identity not only emanates from our relationship with the powerful in our society or from the 350 years of virulent Spanish rule but is compounded further by a distant American occupation that intentionally denied us of our rightful claim to self-government.

The schoolhouse in the film is both the literal and figurative representation of colonialism through education. But it is also about a child’s yearning for a parent’s love and understanding and a parent’s inability to show how that love can be reciprocated. Politically, the film is not meant to put blame on America’s past and present policies nor to recycle anti-war sentiments in the public consciousness but to shed one light on the arrogance of power and another light on the humanity of ordinary individuals who do best in their struggle against it.

SYNOPSIS:
John Clarke an anti-war idealist brims with confidence as he bids his family goodbye at the dock in San Francisco. He is off to the Philippines as a schoolteacher, a decision that earns him his army general father’s skepticism and disguised contempt. While John sails westward, Luisa Prajedes a high-born Manilena and her eleven-year-old son Martin leave Manila to flee violence and chaos as the city falls to the Americans. Luisa’s marriage has collapsed, and her elderly uncle packs them off to the safety of their ancestral home in the province of Samar.
 
John expects to be stationed in Manila but is diverted to the last remaining teaching post in Guiuan, Samar. His goodwill is strained by the cultural remnants of Spanish rule: a schoolhouse in abject ruin, a forbidding class system and a brooding and archaic brand of Catholicism. 

When John encounters Luisa she is desperate but proud and independent, fighting to save her deteriorating house and where he eventually agrees to rent a room. Despite his good intentions, John fatally misunderstands his new home and inadvertently embroils the young boy Martin in a native uprising in a nearby town called Balangiga.

In a surprise attack born from the culmination of betrayal and repression by the American colonizers, villagers disguised as women, wait for the signal of church bells, then overpower and commit atrocities against a company of American soldiers. In angry retribution, an army general gives an order to kill every native above ten years of age and to turn the province of Samar into a howling wilderness. The tragic conclusion brings John back to the United States as a witness in a Senate investigation on military affairs.

FUNDRAISING & PRE-PRODUCTION:

The prolific and award-winning Filipino film director, Peque Gallaga has signed on to be the film's director. We have submitted full proposals to grant-giving organizations in the Philippines such as the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and in San Francisco, the Global Film Initiative. To date, the Schoolhouse project has been awarded by the NCCA with the amount of Php 250,000 (USD 5,434.00) and have received $40,000 in individual pledges. We estimate the film's production cost to reach P10 M (USD 230,000). 

We are also drafting proposals to the Hubert Bals Foundation in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, the World Cinema Fund in Berlin, Germany and the Asian Cinema Fund in Pusan, Korea.

Upon completion, we hope to enter "The Schoolhouse" in international film festivals and obtain distribution for theater runs in Manila, the United States and eventual screenings in Philippine schools. Post-production efforts will include marketing through television, newspaper and the Internet.

Through our websites, http://schoolhousethemovie.blogspot.com and http://schoolhousethemovie.multiply.com, we hope your valuable comments will help begin an important dialogue about this unknown period in our history and help promote the "Schoolhouse" film project. 

As with previous historical movies like "Jose Rizal" and "Oro Plata Mata", “The Schoolhouse” also hopes to contribute to the Filipinos' deep appreciation of their rich and complex history.