The Ritual

Part documentary, part experimental, Ang Ritwal is a portrait of Manila exploring the unique blend of urban lore, folk spirituality and basketball fandom in the city’s slums.

Manila has a complex past, with centuries of Spanish colonialism followed by a period of American dominance. Waves of foreign influence have shaped a city who’s identity is deeply amalgamated, yet entirely its own. One particular American import — basketball — has become a national obsession, and its place in Filipino life is almost sacred. Makeshift basketball hoops stand at every street corner and images of NBA icons compete for space on walls with images of Catholic saints, a hallmark of the country’s Spanish legacy.

I was first struck by this juxtaposition in one of the municipal cemeteries which also happens to be home to hundreds of families. During an economic boom in the 1970s when many migrants moved to the city from the countryside, a housing shortage forced many new arrivals to squat the mausoleums. The community that grew from this informal settlement remains there to this day. Like in any other Filipino neighbourhood, there are improvised basketball courts between the tombs where local youths play. The Philippines is a very religious society, but the border between the world of the living and the dead is particularly porous here. Popular culture and ancestral traditions are all jumbled, and as I sat to watch a game in those unlikely surroundings I was fascinated by the casual synchronicity of it all.

Not far from there is the Taguig tenement; a former multi-storey car park which was converted into social housing to tackle the overpopulation crisis. The inner courtyard is now one of Manila’s most legendary basketball courts, and a huge source of pride for the local residents. The narrow walkways towering above the perimeter become spectator terraces during games and the verticality of the tenement gives one the feeling of standing in a brutalist cathedral.

I spent a few days exploring these locations, taking photos and collecting mementos which formed the basis of the shrine collages in the film. The idea for Ang Ritwal was still hazy, but I knew I wanted to use basketball as my window into the city’s enigmatic character. I also knew it wouldn’t be a conventional documentary, but a sort of modern apologue. When I returned a few months later, I cast two local ballers, Jefferson and Patrick, and drew a film outline from conversations recorded with them and their friends. The narration that bookends the film is loosely based on a ghost story I was told by a group of boys from the cemetery. The resulting film was shot over five days; some of it staged, but much of it captured on-the-fly.

Ang Ritwal follows Jefferson and Patrick over the course of a single day, immersing us in the local streetball scene as they ruminate on neighbourhood pride. But it is against the backdrop of Undas (the All Souls’ celebration when Filipinos visit their ancestral graves), that the film’s themes come into focus. Ang Ritwal is about the power of communal rituals — sacred or profane — and the role they play in creating a sense of identity for those on society’s fringes. Told in three parts to reflect the stages of a rite or a ceremony, this film is my attempt to convey what I witnessed on that basketball court in the cemetery.