Revisiting ‘Kamada’

JACLYN Jose and FrancisM

The artist who called himself FrancisM would’ve been 47 last October 4. Just in time for his birth month, Raymond Red’s “Kamada” will be shown again at the Cultural Center of the Philippines at 2 p.m. on October 8.

The late rap musician-actor-TV host starred in the film, which also featured Jaclyn Jose and Bembol Roco.

“Kamada” is about a musician (FrancisM) who rents a room in a boarding house to work on his songs, but is caught instead in “a web of forbidden love, deceit and a complex crime.”

The special screening is mounted by the Society of Filipino Archivists for Film (Sofia), with the help of Filmex and GMA 7 president Gilberto “Jimmy” Duavit Jr.

“Kamada,” Red recalled, was produced under the GMA Telesine program. “Jimmy wanted a different kind of feature film for TV.”

For starters, Red insisted on shooting with 16mm film format on a single camera.

“Being a cinematographer, I wanted to experience shooting a full-length feature for television that emulates the quality of cinema texture prevalent in foreign TV productions,” he explained.

He was also persistent on casting FrancisM, whom he met while shooting TV commercials and music videos.

He asserted that “Francis had always wanted to act in a more serious film. He was ecstatic about playing Julian, the musician.”

The shoot took “five sleepless nights,” Red recalled. “The actors contributed a lot via guided improvisation. We wanted to create cinema and were not conscious of things like TV commercial gaps, cliffhangers or other such formulas employed in the medium.”

Post-production was just as challenging as the shoot, he related. “We had to use old-school linear analog tape-to-tape editing which was very tedious.”

“Kamada” was first shown on GMA 7 in 1997.

Distinctions

It won various honors at the Asian Television and KBP awards. “It was also invited to festivals in Tokyo, Busan and Hong Kong,” Red said. (Jose won best supporting actress at the Asian TV awards held in Singapore.)

In 2005, Red remastered “Kamada” on MiniDV. He also convinced FrancisM to agree to shoot an additional opening scene for the remastered film. (Four years later FrancisM died of complications from leukemia.)

“The rare footage is now included in the new version of ‘Kamada,’” Red said.

His big dream is to truly remaster his old works by “rescanning the original film negatives,” the way it is done in Hollywood, he said.

Red said that he felt “honored” that Sofia is now revisiting “Kamada.”

“I fully support their invaluable efforts… to make the public aware of the significance of film restoration, preservation and archiving,” he said.

Red is also grateful to the Film Development Council of the Philippines and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts for championing “the restoration and digital remastering” of his early films.

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