In just a short film you could already connect it with a lot of things such as realities in life through the use of symbols and representations. Tayà by Adi Bontuyan is a film about Junjun, a 12 year old boy, who is a new resident in his new found home. Unaware about the condition of his residence, he learns how to play the different traditional games through his new set of friends.
Personally, I am a big fan of our local games so I was intrigued about the video and so I watched and played the video several times. Ok, going back. What’s so good about this film was that our games and happenings in life have a lot in common. Let’s take the game Bangsak for example. As stated in the video, the word “bang” represents the sound of a gunshot and the word “sak” is derived from the word saksak or knife stab. While the children were explaining the rules of the game to Junjun, there were scenes of a police officer looking for a thief and they run around in circles waiting for an opportunity to knockout or defeat each other down. Just like in real life, thieves hide and police chase.
Target on the other hand is another representation of our issues here in our country. Target is a game to see who’s the best at aiming cans, wood or anything that can be knocked down. Whenever there are misunderstandings between the people and the government, the police takes care and prevents citizens from doing any unnecessary actions. However, since we Filipinos are sometimes stubborn, we fight with all our might by throwing rocks, aiming at the police for blocking the way and such thus resulting to injuries.
As Junjun and his friends were playing, the demolition team interrupts them. A series of flashbacks of their games such as Langit Lupa, Mataya-taya, Tagu-Taguan, Patintero, Agawan Base as their houses were all being demolished. Watching and knowing that these things happen in real life made me reflect on my decisions – that I should never, ever resort to violence. Due to the happenings in our country such as extra-judicial killings, it seemed to me that we are playing a matter of life and death.
A year later, Junjun and his friends continued to play their games with the destroyed houses as their playground. Life goes on but the traces and marks of the past can never be erased.
Adi Bontuyan has a unique way to relay his works to his viewers. Even I was amazed by how he was able to connect our traditional games in our real life.
You can check out the video here: https://www.viddsee.com/video/taya/an2oc
About the author:
Camille Eguiron loves to watch short films and other videos to get rid of stress.
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