Philippine Independent Film Festival tackles LGBTQ issues

The Philippine Independent Film Festival, an allied festival of EIGASAI since 2016, had a screening and panel discussion on issues surrounding LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer), minorities, and the importance of inclusion at Cinematheque Centre Manila last August 5.

The event is in collaboration with a project of the Japan Foundation Asia Center: EYES for Embracing Diversity, geared towards practitioners, researchers, and educators in the Southeast Asian regions and Japan who have been striving to create a diverse and inclusive society. This is co-organized by the Philippine LGBT Chamber of Commerce (PLCC), and the Film Development Council of the Philippines.

The film "Of Love & Law" was screened during the Philippine film festival. It won Best Film Award at 30th Tokyo International Film Festival’s Independent Japanese Cinema category.

"Of Love & Law" tells the hidden stories of people who are silenced and made invisible by Japanese society and its laws; fighting for justice and love. What does it mean to be a minority, to have a family and what it takes to be yourself in our increasingly polarized world?

This documentary is about contemporary Japanese society through the lives of people in challenging circumstances including LGBT individuals and those left out of Japan's family registry system.

Director Toda Hikaru, who has worked for many years in the US and Europe, depicts the lives of an openly gay couple who are lawyers. Kazu and Fumi are an openly gay couple who run a law office together in downtown Osaka.

They met 15 years ago, and are inseparable in work at in their private lives, but their relationship is not recognized by the law. They both dream of being parents. One day, they find themselves caring for a boy with no place to go.

Hikaru says: "I met the lawyers 5 years ago and I immediately fell in love with how honest and vulnerable they were, how they embraced each other’s faults and imperfections and accepted each other. Their individual weaknesses were what made them strong together;

"As I got to know them better, I wanted to find out how they survived society like Japan. Japan is a conformist society with strict social codes governed by traditional and conservative values. You are taught from a young age not to question authority and to blend in more than to stand out. To respect the others but never to respect yourself. Individuals are valued only when they belong to a collective – a family, a community and society. To be an individual is not a right but a privilege in Japan;

"This is the opposite set of values to what I was taught growing up in Holland where the individual is expected to speak their mind and have an opinion different to others. Living in diversity, communication was key to bridge the gap between people’s difference. Yet in Japan, diversity is foreign, silence is revered and there is a sense of pride in understanding each other without the need for communication;

"There is no outward opposition to who you are as long as you follow the rules and ‘read the air’ as the Japanese saying goes. The air tends to be thick with expectations and obligations. The silence is power and highly charged. Discrimination is nuanced and never personal for the majority who has become the mechanism to keep each other in check. But alienation is real and very personal for those who kill their breath for the fear of breaking the silence;

"To me, the lawyers and the people who come to them for help represent the voices for change. They are risk takers who decided to face the consequences for breaking their silence. The consequences all have legal implications. The law in Japan is both something that people rely on to protect their rights as well as representing the very values that they are challenging. The lawyers believe in the law as a vehicle for change but are also frustrated with the outdated and often contradictory legal system that doesn’t take into account the lives of the people they represent;

"As an outsider coming into Japan, I feel the deep responsibility to communicate the realities that silences the people challenging it. I believe the themes in the film are universal – people fighting to be who they are, seeking for acceptance and for love. Love for each other but perhaps more importantly for themselves – something the lawyers embody in their search for a family of their own. I am compelled to tell the story that they represent - of strength that comes from accepting others as well as our own differences and weaknesses."