There aren’t too many Filipino college seniors who can say that their thesis films have been accepted into the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in France—the same Cannes Film Festival frequented by the Jolie-Pitt clan and includes luminaries like Marlon Brando, Sophia Loren and Meryl Streep among its list of awardees. Yet it’s one such honor that communication senior Lyka Gonzalez, along with her thesis partner Yumi Catabijan, can claim for herself: Their short film, Agos: The Manila Dream, has earned a spot at the Cannes Court Métrage Short Film Corner.
Her website boasts of her travel pictures, photo essays, portraits, videos and short films. With photographs so true to life and a co-directed film so deeply moving and well-produced, it is safe to say that Gonzalez, a photographer, director, visual journalist and Loyola Schools Award for the Arts (LSAA) for Photography recipient, is gifted when it comes to the camera. A skilled visual artist in her own right, Gonzalez’s spirit of creativity and passion is set to inspire people beyond the Ateneo and across the globe as well.
A welcome accident
“I hated it!” Gonzales says of her first experience with a camera. “I was not interested,” she says guiltily before throwing her head back in laughter.
For someone who has received so much praise and recognition for her work with a camera, her start was a lot less enthusiastic than most would imagine. “My brother had a band back in high school [and] I was in grade school then,” she recalls, rolling her eyes and smiling. “My dad was their band manager, so I was forced into recording their gigs.”
High school came and her job as designated videographer stuck: “I was also assigned by my groupmates often to do the videos, the projects.” When asked if she ever took any photography lessons, she scrunches her nose and proudly adds, “[I’m] self-taught all the way.” Gonzalez admits that reading manuals and manipulating technical settings was never her forte. “I’m more instinctive when I shoot [and] very experiential, and that’s how I was able to learn the process,” she explains.
For her, there was no one moment where she sat down and told herself she wanted to pursue photography, or later even, filmmaking and photojournalism. “In college, I just realized, ‘Hey, I like this. I can make stories out of my pictures, not just take mere photos or document stuff,’” she adds.
While she spent much of her time shooting things or people and experimenting with cameras, eventually, the camera became part and parcel of who she was. “It just stuck to me. I think I was able to find an intimate relationship with a camera,” she says before pausing and dropping her head down in thought. She lifts her hands and fiddles with them as though grappling for the right words to say next. “It just became a part of me,” she says letting out a huge sigh. “It was inseparable. It’s an extension of me. [It’s] something I cannot separate from myself and that’s something I cannot deny in my life.”
The journey
It was in the Ateneo where Gonzalez met artists who were just as passionate as her, like Kara Chung (BS CTM ‘14), communications technology management senior Miguel Santiago, psychology senior Jonas Tamayo and the late Miko Ancheta, Gonzalez’s partner. These friends started photography and videography company 11:11 Productions with her. “It became a playground for us—shooting events, shooting people, portraits, documentation,” she recalls. “It definitely harnessed our skills and our relations with one another.”
This year, which she considers as a major turning point, saw a shift in her photography: From professional projects, she began to become more engaged in personal ones. For instance, she was able to travel to places like Zambales and Sagada and to converse with the people she created photo essays of. Photojournalism, in particular, is also something she became passionate about when she took pictures of farmers rallying about the coco levy fund scam. “Photography can be so much more,” she muses. “It can be a way of life, not just as a source of living, but as a means of making sense of this world and being connected with one another.”
Her philosophy on film and photography is to keep herself open to whatever is. More than just the colors or the angles, what gives her photographs depth is the presence of a story. “I allow myself to be present to the person before me, to nature, to whatever is going on around me,” Gonzalez explains. “My art is something I experience. It involves a willingness to be vulnerable, and I guess that makes it real.”
The moviemaker’s dream
Of all her projects this past year, Agos just might be Gonzalez’s crowning achievement. Agos was conceptualized during the height of the MRT price hike protests. “People were saying that they should add more cars for the trains, they should fix the MRT system, but then we have maximized all our resources in Manila, our land, our energy,” she shares. “The problem is, there is just too many people here. So, this density in Manila became the thrust of our thesis.”
Tackling problems like overpopulation and sustainability certainly posed a challenge, and not just for the students. “I remember thinking that this girl is brilliant and I hope she doesn’t become my advisee because I was so scared I will be unable to create the stage for her to shine,” says Ayo Supangco, their thesis adviser and an instructor at the Communication Department. He adds that he “worked with them to devise an unorthodox, but efficient, way of approaching thesis so they can focus on creating their film while being able to do the document.”
Filming Agos was fun for Gonzalez, especially since she got to work alongside some of her most talented friends, including Jake Jereza (BS CTM ‘14), Bardo Wu (BFA ID ‘12), Jorel Lising (AB COM ‘14) and applied physics senior Miguel Feria. For Gonzalez, working with them was a dream. “Everyone’s busy but then we were able to make things work. It was as though we were just playing around on set, but there were also serious times to everything balanced out,” she explains in a mix of English and Filipino.
All of her hard work paid off in the end; coincidentally, the day she found out that she had won the LSAA was also the same day she received the email from Cannes. “That midnight, I was already crying because I mean, Cannes is a dream come true,” Gonzalez exclaims. “Then, in the afternoon, Sir Ayo messages me over Facebook, saying ‘Oh, congratulations [on the LSAA], by the way.’ It was overwhelming! I was just crying all day, tears of joy.”
Her post-graduation plan is to publish her photos in journals or photobooks and to continue collaborating on films and telling stories with her friends. In the long term, she hopes to engage people. “I’m struggling with the fact that we’re all so dependent on the digital world and we’re losing the physicality of experience; that’s something I want to bring back.”
“It’s not everyday you meet students that inspire you to become better. She’s one of those,” shares Supangco. The authenticity and depth of what she can capture is only but a glimpse of the beauty in life she sees. Looking through her lens, people can experience what she has gone through and that, in itself, is a work of art.
