OFW 'stumbles' on filmmaking, now has over 100 awards

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — They say people in the film industry sometimes get ideas about the scripts they write and scenes they direct from past episodes of their lives.
 
Take it from Francis Gacer, who, from living in a "home along the riles" (rail tracks) that didn’t have its own toilet, became a student activist leading a campus boycott, before finally joining the diaspora because his father, a drummer at a show band, was murdered and no one was there to support his siblings. 

Setting was Angeles City’s nightlife in Pampanga, in what could easily be a variation from the late Lino Brocka’s 1975 Famas award-winning “Manila, sa Kuko ng Liwanag.”

“Every film that I have written and directed has always a pinch of the life that I had. Names, places, production designs, dialogues and titles are all but a diluted reflection of my past life,” Gacer, 47, told GMA News Online.

“Filmmaking for me is an art, and art is the immigration of nature and life,” he added.

While working at a big retail company in the UAE as graphic designer, Gacer thought he’d try filmmaking. “I stumbled upon the art and fell in love with it. With arts and music in my blood, coupled with my extensive experience in theater, filmmaking principles were not new to me,” he said.

“(Through filmmaking), I am able to enter the backdoor of people’s imagination –  that is a very effective way to tell stories. Visual in motion and great sound integration are the wonder twins of a film masterpiece,” Gacer added.

Gacer eventually formed Kikoman Films on July 2, 2019, and participated in various competitions. Five years later, the outfit has bragging rights to more than 100 awards, including Best Narrative Short Film at the Cannes Arts Fest and a string of others from film awards held in Seattle, Washington, USA; Moscow, Russia; India; Turkey; Philippines; the Czeck Republic; Sweden; Lithuania; Singapore; England; Hungary; and Canada, among others.

“One of my most cherished award is the Gawad Pinoy Award 2023 (Excellence Award in Filmmaking). It really cemented my place in UAE as a filmmaker,” Gacer said.

Kikoman Film’s  YouTube channel is youtube.com/@kikoman4729.

Dean’s lister

Gacer’s academic past can be likened to the late Lualhati Bautista’s “Dekada ‘70” paperback. A dean’s lister taking up a course in secondary education with a history major at Holy Angel University, he became a political activist leading students to a campus-wide boycott, beaten at police dispersals and eventually kicked out of school. He went full time with the political movement because “there were no universities in Pampanga that wanted to take me in,” he said.

Gacer came from a lower-class family. “Life then was not easy as we lived in a slum area. We did not even have our own toilet to use. From a shanty, our family moved to a house by the side of a railway, and as time went by, we were able to afford renting an apartment,” he said. 

Gacer’s father died of 31 stab wounds in 1996, a turning point that compelled him, who was 19 at the time, to work abroad and provide support for his two siblings. His mother, a night club cashier who had been between jobs, was in the Philippines when the murder happened, and was on a vacation from Saudi Arabia where she was working as a domestic helper.

Gacer worked in Bahrain from 1997 to 2000 as a fastfood staff and eventually store manager while doing part time as editorial cartoonist at the Daily Tribune. He then moved to Saudi Arabia as company artist at a supermarket before arriving in Dubai in 2002 where he has since been employed as a graphic designer at a big retail company. 

Looking back, Gacer said: “With all the things that have happened in my past, I discovered that life has made me a storyteller. From the slums to filmmaker, I never knew all along, destiny has enrolled me in the university of life. Every semester were pages of scripts being compiled for my future use, to enlighten people and to uplift the Filipino cultural identity.” —KBK, GMA Integrated News