The Making of a Documentary and a Feature Film
on Filipino Americans
By Isabel Enriquez Kenny
Related OOV book feature: Dancing the Shrimp

UNDER BLACK:

The SOUND of manual typewriter keys striking paper on metal.

FADE IN:

CLOSE ON typewriter paper with the words: "He stands on the ship's prow watching the steel gray water..."

The keys STRIKE the LETTERS in rapid succession: "...break away..."

The typewriter carriage shifts down to a new line. The typing continues: "...to clear a path for his passage."

SUPERIMPOSE:

EXT. MANILA BAY. AN OCEAN-GOING VESSEL - DAY

SUPER TITLE: "MANILA BAY, 1930"

The lanky silhouette of a FILIPINO MAN, early twenties, standing stiffly on the bow of a large passenger boat leaving the harbor and heading out to sea. He holds on to the rail—a look of wonderment in his eyes.

SUPERIMPOSITION - CONTINUOUS

The typewriter carriage moves to the next line. The keys form the words: "He reassures himself..."

The carriage shifts down: "He's convinced he's doing the right thing. To break free from the claws of poverty... that was his life in the Philippines ."

The carriage moves down once more. "What man leaves everything behind?"

The keys are struck with great force: "WHAT MAD PURSUIT? WHAT STRUGGLE TO ESCAPE???"

INT. A BEDROOM - DAY

SUPER TITLE: "SEATTLE, 1973"

CARLO MONTENEGRO, 22, stops typing - his broodingly handsome features evincing disappointment and disgust as he goes over what he has written. He rips the paper off the typewriter, crumpling it into a ball, and flings it on the growing pile of missed shots next to a garbage can.

...the shape of the documentary began to emerge–a mosaic of stories told by these Filipino-Americans about growing up in New Orleans during the depression and "shrimping" in Manila Village...

What you see above is Page One for a screenplay on the Alaskeros, Filipino-Americans who worked in the salmon canneries in Alaska . For a feature film, a script is the first step of the filmmaking process, which is not the case for a documentary. In this essay I shall discuss the similarities and the differences between these two formats using my experience in producing Dancing the Shrimp, an hour-long documentary on Filipino-Americans in Louisiana and writing the aforementioned screenplay entitled Till.the Salmon Sing.

The idea for Dancing the Shrimp came about when Len Casper, an English professor at Boston College and his wife, Linda Ty-Casper, a Filipina historical novelist, found out that I was moving to Louisiana with my family. They encouraged me to get in touch with Marina Espina, a librarian at the University of New Orleans, who had written a book about the first Filipinos who came to Louisiana as early as the 1760s. And so I did.

Marina immediately set up meetings with the Burtanog sisters and their cousin Ben Martinez, fifth-generation descendants of a Filipino seaman named Felipe Madrigal who married an Irish woman and settled in New Orleans in the early 1800s and Isabel Gedoria-Welch whose father came to the United States in 1910. From these encounters, the shape of the documentary began to emerge–a mosaic of stories told by these Filipino-Americans about growing up in New Orleans during the depression and "shrimping" in Manila Village, a once thriving community established in the 1890s by Quentin de la Cruz which was destroyed by the 1965 storm, Betsy.

The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities' funding requirements helped to determine the scope of the documentary. Rather than focusing solely on the historical aspect, the director and I wanted to address the present as well as the past, so we decided to look at the acculturation of Filipino-Americans into mainstream Louisiana society. Consequently, the storyline expanded to include the stories of those who came after the Immigration Act was repealed in 1965.

Filmmaking, whether fiction or nonfiction, involves three production phases:

— Preproduction, which generally includes research, selection of a theme, premise, cast of characters and in the case of documentaries, a treatment and for fiction films, a script;
— Production, or the live-action shoot; and
— Post-production, or editing picture and sound.

For Dancing the Shrimp, the question posed at the beginning of the documentary and which was answered at the end was "Will these Filipino Americans be able to hang on to their Filipino heritage?"

Like Dancing the Shrimp, Till.the Salmon Sing also began with research although the idea came to me in a more serendipitous way. As I was cutting across a row of bookshelves in the Beverly Hills Public Library on my way to the check-out counter, a book fell off the shelf. I picked it up and was immediately intrigued by the title: Asian American Dreams by Helen Zia.

I scanned the chapter on the Alaskeros and looked into the lawsuits filed by nonwhite cannery workers (most of whom were Filipino Americans) against the cannery companies for discrimination in housing, messing and job promotion. I discovered that these cases were historically significant because they were the first class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of migrant workers; one of the lawsuits went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

As part of the research, I contacted two former cannery workers—a Filipino-American and a Caucasian American—who were in Alaska in the seventies (when Till.the Salmon Sing begins) to earn money for college. I also got in touch with the lawyer who represented the cannery workers. He was very supportive of my project and sent me the transcript of the Supreme Court hearing. As I reviewed the materials I had gathered, I began to imagine the characters that would bring the story to life. I also pictured some of the scenes and their locations: the Alaskan cannery; Seattle, where the cannery workers lived during the off-season; and Washington, D.C.

Initially, I had thought of the Alaskeros ' story as a documentary, but while doing the research I ran into a number of obstacles; for instance, the availability of the cannery workers, some of whom were already in their sixties and seventies when the lawsuits were filed in 1974. The other problem was funding—I am a California resident with a story set in Alaska. Eventually, I decided that the best way for me to tell the migrant workers' story would be through a docudrama: a film inspired by a true story with fictional characters except for elected public officials, such as Senators Edward Kennedy and John Danforth.

In both Dancing the Shrimp and Till.the Salmon Sing, I found it helpful to think of a theme, which would keep the thread of the story taut from beginning to end. For the documentary, it was acculturation. For the feature film, I worked around the themes of struggle, duty and sacrifice with the salmon—struggling upstream to do its 'natural duty' and sacrificing its life to spawn a new generation—as metaphor and visual motif. Posing what screenwriting gurus call the Big Question is another way to keep the storyline from digressing into distracting alleyways. For Dancing the Shrimp, the question posed at the beginning of the documentary and which was answered at the end was "Will these Filipino Americans be able to hang on to their Filipino heritage?" In Till.the Salmon Sing, the Big Question is "Will the protagonist be able to write truthfully and empathetically about his father's experience as a migrant worker?" In addition to the Theme and the Big Question, I was also guided by a Premise, usually a flat statement that is brought to life by the story and the filmmaker's viewpoint. For Till.the Salmon Sing, I was inspired by a remark by C.G. Jung and the title of a Gauguin painting: Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? and came up with-To know who we are and where we are going we have to know where we came from; otherwise what is unconscious returns as fate.

From here on, the process diverges into different paths. In Dancing the Shrimp, we conducted preliminary interviews with the potential cast of characters. At the same time, we asked them for visuals: photographs and other documents that we could use. We surveyed the neighborhood where they grew up, including the cemetery where their ancestors are buried. Then we wrote and submitted the treatment and other grant requirements to the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and the Louisiana Council of the Arts for funding. So where is the script? You cannot "script" a "true documentary," which is more than informational—an exploration of human behavior that sheds light on the human condition. The beauty and challenge of making a "true documentary" is to do your homework thoroughly and once the camera is rolling to hope that the Muse of Serendipity visits the location and casts her magical dust on your production.

In the case of Till.the Salmon Sing, I began the research in April of 2004. It is now March of 2007 and I am working on what I hope will be the final rewrite before I launch it to the next phase, which is marketing the screenplay. Hence, the story of the journey of Till.the Salmon Sing from script to screen will have to come under the heading "To Be Continued." Please STAY TUNED.

You can follow the SALMON'S journey on www.magiclanternfilms.com. A donation of US$50.00 towards the production of Till.the Salmon Sing entitles you to a free DVD copy of Dancing the Shrimp.

© Isabel Enriquez Kenny

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