Halika 3.0

Lou Diamond Phillips and Rob Schneider, Hollywood stars whose mothers are Filipinas, have agreed to join the cast of Wrinkles, the movie to be produced by Syndicate, Inc. and some US-based Pinoys.

As earlier mentioned, Rosa Rosal, Cesar Montano, Jericho Rosales, Tommy Abuel, Robert Arevalo, Armida Siguion Reyna, Mila Ocampo, Alicia Alonzo, Angel Aquino, Gina Pareño, Liza Lorena and Eddie Garcia have now their working visa. They’ll enplane for Los Angeles on January 3, for early 2005 filming.

Latest addition to the stars: Tia Carerre who also has Filipino roots. In fact, two years ago, she came as an honoree in the Cinemanila filmfest. [source]

EUFEMIA ‘Minnie’ Solomon Crouse may not be as well known as Oscar-winning documentary maker Michael Moore but in the Philippines she is just as much a crusader as her American counterpart.

Two years after her award-winning documentary “The Case of Wilkie Duran Monte: Toxic Chemical Victim” first screened, Crouse is still fighting for the rights of ordinary people.

“Wilkie’s death was a tragedy that should never have happened,” she says.

“And it reflects the total disregard some of these companies have for human life.”

Crouse’s film tells the story of Wilkie, who worked for a mining company on the picturesque island of Siquijor in the central Philippines.

When a machine he was working on broke down Wilkie’s foreman ordered him to syphon off a mix of chemical waste, an act which exposed him to the deadly toxins which the documentary says eventually killed him. He was just 44 years old.

In just 18 minutes Crouse’s film covers the last two harrowing years of Wilkie’s life and the environmental rape of Siquijor by local mining company Goodyield/Lazi Bay Resources, a joint venture with Green Island Cement of Hong Kong.

Discovered by the Spanish 300 years ago and originally named Isla del Fuego (Fire Island) because of the fireflies which made it glow at night, Siquijor is the smallest of four provinces that form the central Visayas region.

But residents claim that what was once an idyllic island has been destroyed by the mine’s operations.

Local environmentalist Cielo Lumacad said the mining company had violated environmental laws and built roads into the limestone quarry through property it did not own.

The company was forced to halt its mining on the island after Crouse discovered it did not have a mining permit.

Crouse’s documentary has been celebrated in the Philippines where it won the Best Documentary award at the 2002 CineManila International Film Festival. At the Brussels International Film Festival the same year it won the Committed Film Championing a Cause category.

For 57-year-old Crouse, what began as a documentary on one man’s plight has become a personal crusade to protect the island’s fragile ecosystem.

Her campaign has not been without pain and sorrow.

Not only did she watch Wilkie endure his slow, agonising death, she has been the target of abuse and anonymous threats. Her home on the island was destroyed by a mysterious fire.

She has fought three libel actions against the company, winning one and having the other two thrown out of court.

Crouse said the company’s total disregard for Wilkie and his plight appalled her and prompted her to make the movie.

“To the company Wilkie represented nothing. He was just a pair of hands. Nothing more,” she told AFP in an interview in Manila where she was preparing her case to have the mining operations on the island terminated for good.

Wilkie Duran Monte died on June 10, 2001 from what doctors described as septicemia.

“They didn’t go into details. In fact at one stage they thought he might have had leprosy. There was no real attempt to find the cause of his illness.”

But Crouse was not always destined to be campaigning filmmaker. A divorce and a car accident in the US in 1988 changed her life.

Having spent most of her adult life in America, where she worked on the NASA space programme and at one time in the physics and astronomy department of the University of Maryland, she found herself having to rebuild her life again.

The car accident saw her hospitalised for months with a smashed hip. Doctors also found that she was suffering from a rare disease called “avascular necrosis” or “bone death”.

Such a diagnosis would have destroyed most people. But despite having to get around with the use of a metal walker she volunteered herself to be part of a research programme at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore on bone joints.

Before returning to the Philippines in the early 1990s she enrolled in a television and film production course in San Diego where she produced her first film called “Women in Travel” which focused on ecotourism in the Philippines.

“Wilkie was my first real documentary,” she said.

“Having moved to Siquijor I first heard about Wilkie from his wife who begged me to try and help him. Seeing the state he was in moved me.

“Wilkie was not an educated man. He was a good man who worked hard to feed, clothe and educate his three children.

“Wilkie did not have to die. But the casual way the company treated him disgusted me. The point I guess I was making with the film was that Wilkie was a human being.

“I know some people have questioned the sincerity of my motives. I know that once you embark on a fight like this, people will take pot shots at you.

“That doesn’t worry me. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinions. But it detracts from the issues that affect us all … our quality of life and the destruction of our environment.” [source]