ROBBY TANTINGCO

Center for Kapampangan Studies (CKS) director Robby Tantingco is a man who has always marched to the beat of his own drum. “That's been my story in life. When I see everybody doing the same thing, I’ll do it differently. That's what I am. Otherwise you just disappear into the nameless, faceless crowd. You always want to leave your mark—I mean, we only have one life to live.” 

This mindset has led to his making bold decisions to “make life extraordinary” and in the process build a legacy that would outlive him. 

“To me, bold decisions are what change the rules of the game, meaning you blaze your own trail, you shift the paradigm, you create new ways of doing things.” 

CHANGING THE GAME 

One of the most ambitious projects he did with CKS is doing a full-length film production after a string of short films. The center co-produced director Brillante Mendoza’s indie film Manoro (The Teacher), a film about an Aeta girl in Sapangbato who teaches her tribe’s elders how to write in preparation for the 2004 presidential elections. The movie won Best Picture in the Digital Lokal division of the 2006 Cinemanila International Film Festival and won the CinemAvvenire Award at the 24th Torino International Film Festival in Italy. 

“Then we said, why don't we make our own film? So, we produced our first one called Ari: My Life With A King.” 

The film cost P1.5 million when indie movies cost from P5 to P10 million in 2015. Directed by Carlo Enciso Catu and written by Robby himself, the movie is about a Kapampangan high school student learning about his native language when he is assigned to find a Kapampangan poet. His search leads him to a remote village where he meets Conrado, king of poets, and a group of other old poets. 

Ari: My Life With A King was nominated for 16 awards and won six here and abroad. Robby won Best Screenplay at the 38th Gawad Urian, and Jake Abella for Best Music. Robby also won Best Screenplay at the 41st Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF New Wave) and Best Story at the FAMAS. The film took the Best World Film at the Harlem International Film Festival where it was first screened; Best Debut Director for Carlo Enciso Catu at the 1st All Lights India International Film Festival and 8th International Filmmaker Festival of World Cinema; and its lead actor Francisco Guinto won Best Actor at the MMFF. 

“We were up against General Luna in many of the awards that year,” says Robby. “The challenge for us was really to show the beauty of the Kapampangan language and culture.” 

One cannot talk about Kapampangan heritage without talking about its cuisine. Even there, language plays a big role. “Kapampangans love to cook and they love to talk about food all the time: they talk about food while they're preparing it, they talk about it while eating, and they continue talking about food long after the tables have been cleared.” 

The challenge for us was really to show the beauty of the Kapampangan language and culture. 

The center has produced books and mounted conferences about Kapampangan cuisine. “Our intention is really to tell the world how beautiful Kapampangan culture and history is. I am grateful to be in a position to help preserve these.” 

He pauses and says, “It gives me great pleasure and satisfaction to be able to tell the story of the Kapampangans to the world.” 

FALLING IN LOVE WITH LANGUAGE  

Tantingco has a unique view on how to make young Kapampangans speak their own language: make them fall in love with their culture first. “You cannot force young people, for example, to learn the Kapampangan language—you have to make them fall in love with the culture first, its uniqueness and richness. Then they will want to speak the language as well.” 

The cultural worker, author, award-winning screenplay writer, and administrator at Holy Angel University says that for many years before the center was founded in 2002, there already was a noticeable and concerning decline in public interest in Kapampangan language and history. 

“At the time, Manila was really flexing its muscle, the national government was promoting nationalism. Then of course there was the problem of migration—Kapampangans were leaving Pampanga and non-Kapampangans were coming to Pampanga—resulting in the further decline of the language,” he says. 

It’s not surprising that language plays a big part in Robby and the center’s strategy to preserve Kapampangan culture. His formal training was in English literature, which was what he taught at Holy Angel University when he started. Language, he says, is not just for Buwan ng Wika or for cultural programs in schools. “For language to continue being relevant, it should be spoken in government, in schools, in everyday life.” 

For Kapampangans, the center produced Indung Ibatan magazine using colloquial, conversational Kapampangan. “We wanted more people, especially the younger set, to understand the language, to get to know it and fall in love with it.” 

But even in the early 2000s fewer people were reading, so the center produced CDs to preserve traditional music for Kapampangans to hear their language in this beautiful medium. But Robby wasn’t done yet. The center went into other mass media such as radio programs and cable TV shows. Then they mounted stage plays and created apps.  

The apps the center created were Pinatubo Museum AR, which is augmented reality for visitors of the museum; Manansala SOTC, which is also augmented reality that brings exhibit pictures to life; and KulitanApps, which teaches reading and writing the traditional Kapampangan script.  

It wasn’t enough for the Kapampangan culture and history to be promoted to its people. It deserved to be known to the world too. Robby continues, “Our research journals and books are in English because we are telling the story of the Kapampangan people to the world, not just to ourselves.” 

Robby authored the book Pinatubo: The Volcano in our Backyard (2011), a book about the mythology surrounding the volcano and the eruption that “reconfigured the region's landscape, altered the lives of thousand, and dictated the course of events.” 

Robby’s passion for language was ignited when he was a young student at St. Louis University in Baguio. He fell in love with literature and Shakespeare; he even directed a production of West Side Story, the modern, musical retelling of the Bard’s Romeo and Juliet.  

I did my homework, I went around Pampanga to get acquainted with its people and unique festivals. I fell in love with Pampanga all over again. 

After Baguio, he moved to Angeles City to teach. It was in 2002 that he was tasked to head the Center for Kapampangan Studies (CKS). “I wasn’t prepared for that job because I wasn’t very interested in Kapampangan culture at the time. Then I did my homework, I went around Pampanga to get acquainted with its people and unique festivals. I fell in love with Pampanga all over again,” he say. 

In this day of social media influencing what people read, watch and pay attention to, he says it’s both easier and harder to put his message across. “It’s easier because there are more channels to propagate our messaging but also harder because of the intensification of the campaign for national language and national history at the expense of regional cultures. You hardly watch movies that are written and spoken in regional languages. We are exposed to all cultures now—and I bet a lot of young people know more about Korean culture, for example, than their own.” 

It's about time Kapampangans heed Tantingco’s message—and help spread it around the world. 

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