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Aguilar, Charmaine C. MC0832
Dolor, Quennie Faye Noreen M. CINEMA 102

TRUE FICTIONS, WOMEN’S NARRATIVES and HISTORICAL DRAMA
Bliss Cua Lim

* A true story is a story to which a particular audience attributes truth. * A fictionalized true story is interesting precisely because it mobalizes generic expectations across this fictional divide. * The truth has been “fictionalized” for dramatic purposes, hat the vharacters in the narrative for example, are not nonactors but film stars. * The first half of 1990 saw deviant Filipino women. Women with AIDS, OCW, and accused murderer and victims of gruesom sex crimes become particularly visible in film genres that claimed to faithfully recount their life stories. * Fatima Buen belongs to a cycle of true stories centered on women’s lives that emerged in popular Philippine Cinema. * The history of censorship battles in the Philippines suggests that both public and the authorities are well aware of political valence of historical reenactments. * It is widely recognized that true to life story can become a means of preffering a political interested account of history as history itself. * The notion of trauma alerts us to the duality of injury: it is both a wound to the body, the moment of the blow, and it’s internalized reception. * Trauma is the state, psycholohical behavior that results from such a hurt. * The violence endured by the individual, once it has been made public, becomes a collective social experience. * The loved ones who survuces the injured person though accorded no legal recognition as victims aslso partakes the “ burdens of victimization.” * A film based on true to life story implkicitly postulates the life story as somehow authentic, whereas the truth, the story of any life is in crucial sense of textual conception constrained by narrative expectations like linearity and causality to produce experience as meaningful. * Despite the affinities to the OCW docudrama and massacre film, Fatima Buen does not represent its protagonist as innocent of the indignities Fatima must endure. * It is important to realize that Fatima Buen is not disconnected list of trauma but a socially meaningful narrative appropriation. * To percieve a story is to percieve a transformations within the overall pattern, aided by the reader’s assessment of the probabilities of what might lie ahead and how the significance of the story ‘s events might finally cohere. * Family Buen, a film which purports to ralistically testify to historical violence, also works therapeutically to blur the outline of it’s offensiveness, weakening the force of it’s intolerabilityby exorcising horrific events within a narrative of reassurance.

1. What Theory was used? How did the author incorporated the theory in the discussion?
The Theory used in our article is the Feminism Film Theory that aims to provide equal material rights for women. Women are always defined as sex objects, Overseas Filipino or Contract Workers, slaves and are poor victims of sexual violence. They are always the weak ones and men are always superior to them. They become victims of mistaken social knowledge from the strength of their own experience. The theory believed that woman would become full citizen in a transformed order, fair entry to the professions and to higher education that would put down the obstacles to a calm and equal existence created by male-dominated institutions and practices. They aim for attention, gender equality and justice.
The article focused on the movie, Fatima Buen Story which states the different reasons why the Feminist Film Theory was used. This is a massacre film based on true to life story of Filipino Overseas Contract Workers. The controversies of her life was mentioned, the suffering and the pain that she encountered, she was used and tortured by others.
It is clearly stated in the movie that Fatima’s story is related by her mother. The theory gives importance to maternal relationships and they believe that women as mothers, produce daughters with mothering capacities and the desire to become a mother. Mothers increasingly give their daughters a quality of caring filled with identification between mothers and daughters. Fatima went to Japan to work on a restaurant.There were signs that she was abused in her work but the film made it look like she was the offender to blame and that she deserves to be punished. This is to realize the audience’s wrong interpretation on Fatima. She was treated badly and yet she turned out to be the antagonist of the film.
Fatima got married and has become a mother of two sons. They had an illegal business, her husband left her and she was sent to prison. She flirted and made out with a prison guard named Oscar and Batman, a lesbian cellmate. Lesbianism is shown in this part of the movie and it is said that different sexuality are accepted and supported in feminism. 2. Was it able to provide a deeper understanding and appreciation of cinema? In what way?
Yes. The article contains wide and detailed information on what needs to be understood. It showed us the truth that majority of true to life stories are not exactly interpreted or imitated when putting it to film. There are moments wherein what really happened in the story is being “fictionalized” or replaced by more dramatic, catchy and exciting scenes for it to be more interesting and to add intensity on the film. The article proved that entertainment is not the only objective of making a film. In constructing a story or concept, you have to go through different processes of researching for when the film is done, the audience would be able to understand the flow of the story.
It is said in the article that Filipino film makers like to do films be reenacting a series of events in a true to life story of a criminalized woman like the Vizconde Massacre because Filipinos are willing to pay and watch these painful historyA certain film affects not only the people related to it but also the persons that was touched by it. Even if what happens in the movie did not happen to you ever, because you are deeply affected, it could be stored in your memory and you would feel like these situations would happen to you also.
The article provides unknown information about film that made us open minded in understanding and learning these facts for it could be very helpful. The article does not necessarily break the privacy of film making. All the facts were stated coherently it gives us wider knowledge about what really happens behind and in front of the camera. The author brilliantly interpreted the film, The Fatima Buen Story. It is a true to life story but if you look deeper, you would see a different side and meaning of the film 3. What needs to be improved? Suggest ways on how to improve it.
The article is so detailed that the author tend to repeat the same topic and message. It is long that at some parts of the article, we got bored. The stories need to be broad for the readers to gain knowledge about it. Familiar horrors has limited information in it. We didn’t get it that much. I think it needs more elaboration.
The words used were so old and deep that upon reading the article, you have this feeling that you really need to have your dictionary with you or else, you’d go crazy thinking what the author really means. I really suggest to use simpler terms for us to quickly understan the article.