Tomorrow I'm going to start making a movie

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I am going to wake up tomorrow and I am going to start to make a movie.

The film starts in Spain, in Sanlúcar de Barrameda at the mouth of the River Guadalquivir. It tells the story of a 64 year old man who follows the route of Ferdinand Magellen, the Portuguese explorer, in an attempt to travel around the world. Magellan set off from Sanlúcar in 1519 and made it as far as the Philippines where he was killed by the Cebuano king Lapu Lapu in 1521. The hero, in our film, sets off to The Philippines to find a different story. His father had left his mother when he was one year old, married a Filipino woman and never returned to see his son again. Sixty years later our hero, let’s call him Mike, travels to the Philippines to find the story of his father.

Here is a promo I made of the film a few years ago.

In order to explains this better I probably need to tell you a bit more of my story

The beginning of a story

I was born Michael Hadland Kent on the 10th April 1949 at Whittington Hospital, Highgate in London. I have a feeling that my father was forced to marry my mother because a year later he had left for Malaysia to join the police force and I only remember seeing him once after that. My parents divorced and my father married again and had children, so I have some step brothers and/or sisters somewhere in the world.

I was mostly brought up by my grandparents because my mother worked. I think she found it difficult as a single mother in the 1950’s. I went away to school and although not particularly academic I was very keen on sport and drama. I was a leading light in the drama society and knew that as soon as I could I wanted to be an actor.

I left school after my ‘A’ levels and went to work in a theatre in Harrogate. What an amazing time that was - I was involved in the theatre - I was mainly making the tea, sweeping the stage and doing the odd bit of maintenance – but I loved it. Soon I made my way up in the company and after a year I was getting small walk on parts, then a few lines and then slowly started to get bigger parts.

I joined a theatre company in the north of England and began directing a little. As soon as started work as a director I realised that acting was not for me – From then on I was going to be a director. My mother had remarried by now and I had taken on the name of my stepfather – I am sure I saw it as some kind of punishment towards my real father. My step father already had a son from a previous marriage called Michael so I decided to call myself Alan. My professional name as a theatre director became Alan Lyddiard.

I spent the next 40 odd years of my life as a theatre director. It was a great life and I had an amazing time doing the job that I loved. My first directing jobs were working in Scotland and from there I just followed the work all over the country. Soon I was running companies as an Artistic Director and from 1993 until 2005 I ran a company called Northern Stage Ensemble. We made productions in our theatre in Newcastle and then toured them all over the country. We played in London many times. Then we started getting tours to other countries and collaborating with theatre-makers from all over the world.

My work has been seen in New York, Barcelona, Paris, Copenhagen, Jerusalem, Singapore and many other cities across the world. But running a theatre company is a bit like being a football manager and in 2005 I left Northern Stage hoping to develop a film career.

From 2005 to 2008 I studied filmmaking and started writing scripts and making short films. By 2010 I had raised enough money to start making my first feature film. Everything was ready to go. I decided that I would film a promo first on location in the Philippines where some of the film was set. I had worked for a time at a film school there and had written the script during my time there.

I travelled with some of the crew and organised the Filipino end through a producer I knew based in Cebu, the city where we were going to film.We arrived in Cebu in October 2010 and starting filming.

Then a terrible tragedy happened.

I wrote an article about it in UK Newspaper, The Guardian (Published November 4th 2010) from the Philippines, days after the terrible event occurred

From the film “Going Somewhere”

Here is an except from the article

“Yesterday evening I was in the St Francis funeral home in Cebu, in the Philippines, listening to Mass from Father Sipat, the local priest. In the coffin in front of me lay Kirk Abella, a man whom I had known for less than two weeks, and who was killed while helping me make a feature film.

I first came to the Philippines in 2006 to teach and study at the International Academy of Film and Television on Mactan Island. I settled in fast and started meeting people and making films. I wanted to try to reflect the lives of the Filipino people in an honest and authentic way, by listening to their stories and making documentary-style films that were about them and those little moments in their lives that somehow become significant.

Over the next three years I made three short films and started writing a feature-length film, Going Somewhere. Everything depicted in it was true. During the filming of my first short documentary film, Jeepney, one of the people in it, was shot by vigilante killers as he and his wife were selling batchoy, a kind of pork soup, outside their house. Dante de la Torre had been in prison for four years for stealing a bag from a car. He had just been released but somebody still thought he had a price to pay for his crimes, and he was shot dead.

At the time I was told that there were many shootings in Cebu. I read in the press that there had been approximately 200 such killings during 2005. Some people accused the police of being involved. Others told me that it was a way of life. “People do bad things. It is justice,” they said.

When I was writing ‘Going Somewhere’ I wanted to include these scenes. I felt I was somehow exposing something.

But then, unbelievably, last Saturday, the actor playing the vigilante hitman in the film was shot by a barangay tanod (a local watchman), who thought he was apprehending a genuine killer.

Edgardo Cuizon, 51, is now facing charges of homicide and a violation of the election-time gun ban before the Cebu city prosecutors’ office.

I feel completely shaken by what has happened. I thought we had acted with care and looked at all the safety issues. Working with a local producer, we had involved the police in the planning of the filming and they were in attendance the whole time, directing traffic and dealing with crowd control. We had a full crew and had employed extras from the local community. The filming attracted a crowd of onlookers who were enjoying the spectacle.

We had been filming for over an hour when the incident happened. How the tanod could misinterpret the scene is beyond belief. Why would he shoot somebody, in the back, without any question? Maybe I am naive. Maybe I should have done it all in a safer environment. But I was trying to show the realities of life in downtown Cebu. The area known as Colon is the oldest Spanish area in the Philippines. My film tells the story of a Spanish man searching for his personal history in the place that Ferdinand Magellan first discovered for the King of Spain, during his circumnavigation of the globe.

Colon has become a melting pot of extraordinary people living together in very difficult conditions. The area is rife with drug dealing and prostitution. It seemed the right place to tell my story.

For now, I feel remorse for playing in the backyard of other people’s lives in order to make my small film. In the case of Kirk Abella, I want to do what is right, now. The surge of support I have had from all corners of the world makes me feel optimistic that I should continue to tell stories about the people who interest me. In times of tragedy, it seems that the Filipino people come together in an extremely powerful way. Families are comforting families and people are supporting those who have suffered loss in a profound yet simple way, in the spirit of bayanihan, a word for “helping each other, looking after each other”.

Senior Superintendent Melvin Buenafe, chief of the Cebu city police, said the incident was an isolated case and that the city remains safe for those who want to shoot a film here. Will I return to finish my film? Can I put anything right? The jury is still out.”

The effect of Kirk Abella death was devastating. I went though a very bad depression and lost work and came very close to bankruptcy. I continued to work a little but I did not have the heart for it any more. However gradually things got better and I started to rebuild my life. I moved to Spain and started to settle into a new life. As the days passed, the sunshine entered my body and helped me find peace again in my heart. I was slowly able to forgive myself for the tragedy.

The Future

I changed my name back to Mike Kent. I started to find new ways to earn money, new ways to live again and slowly, slowly started to get my confidence back.

I started 2013 on a very positive note I left UK and moved everything to Spain and set up my home there. I started to learn new things and everyday positive feelings re-emerged.

Day by day I was healing myself.

I am now committed to working online as a writer – I have travelled all over the world during my life and I have learnt many skills from the world of theatre. I am now able to share those skills and experiences with people. I want to continue to travel and I want to help others who have been along similar paths.

Recently I’ve been working with people who have experienced homelessness and people with drink and alcohol addictions. I have been humbled by seeing their process of recovery, their resilience, and by supporting them, I have learnt so much about myself. I believe my story can help others to overcome tragedy and depression and I want to help where I can. And I want to go back to making my movie.

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Recent Comments

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cool!

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