By Rex Catubig

 

I GREW up in the movies. And the post of Herencia del Filipinas of a vintage movie house purportedly in Dagupan, awakened a montage of dormant fleeting memories of the silver screen.

As a boy in the barrio, the blaring announcement by a roving caravan of a movie showing, excited me no end. I would eat dinner early so I could rush to the “basketbolan”. There, I would join the whole village squat on the ground to wait with bated breath for the feature film to be projected on a makeshift screen. It did not matter that it was usually an old movie. We sat enrapt at the flickering black and white images and were transported to another world.

I recall a movie house in Dagupan that bears a resemblance to the Herencia picture. It was a box-type structure that had thatched roof and “sawali” walls. Inside, one sat on benches with wood slats for seats and back. It was located near the corner of Torres Bugallon and Arellano, where Funeraria Quiogue is now.

My father worked a few meters away, at the Dagupan Lumber, where he used to take me along. That was probably how I got there.

It was called Cine Rosario and I distinctly remember that I watched the movie “Sawa sa Lumang Simboryo” there. The image of a large python in a church belfry from which the movie derived its title struck and bore an indelible mark on my mind. It froze like a fossil in the crevices of my memory.

That fed my passion for movies. My love for the image on the screen was born almost at the same time as my infatuation with the printed word on a page. And they would journey on, side by side, conjuring intriguing, captivating, wondrous mise en scénes that transformed the banal into divine and held life up close.

The movie that best captures my cinematic devotion is Cinema Paradiso. It is the quintessential homage to the magic of movies. It is a filmic serenade to life as it unfolds frame by frame, twenty-four frames per second, and creates a vivid yet evanescent panoramic view of the vastness of life.

Going to the movies is like going to school. The cinema is in itself a schoolhouse, albeit a darkened one. One is led to the process of learning without the presence of a teacher. The movie itself becomes the teacher and the lesson. Once starstruck, you are transformed and become the better version of yourself that you got to know in the movies.

Cross-fade to the friend who lived the movies.

He was a street smart who would walk the breadth and length of the city sidewalks hawking lottery tickets. The movie houses along downtown, where he would sneak in to rest his puny legs from the strain of endless walking, became his school of hard knocks. In the dimmed room, he would sit in awe of a reality that happens only in his dreams. And though he couldn’t understand the language spoken on the screen, by heart, he intuited the meaning of what was said.

At the movies, he was taught the valuable lessons of life, and learned that though his feet were earthbound, his mind was free to roam and soar.

It takes twenty-four frames.

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