Movie review – ‘The Learning’. In the quest for improving the family situation, Filipinos go abroad to work and send the much needed dollars to sustain their family – a problem their own govern­ment is not going to resolve nor is trying to resolve. Ironically, the goal of helping the family is breaking them up instead. The documentary film ‘The Learning’ from the award-winning filmmaker Filipi­na-American, Ramona Diaz did not really reveal anything new in terms of the social impact and the cost on families from over­seas migration. The pathos of migration and its effect on families has also been the subject of documentaries and plays in Canada espe­cially the plight of live-in caregivers. ‘Brown Women’, ‘Blond Babies’, ‘Modern Heroes, Modern Slaves’, ‘When Strangers Re-unite’ and ‘Nanay’ all exposed the effects of mi­gration on families. ‘The Learning’ follows four Filipina teachers who were recruited in the Philip­pines to teach in the inner-city schools of the city of Baltimore, Maryland. While ad­mittedly the work of teachers in the U.S. are probably better than domestic workers in Canada or Hongkong, the film illustrates the same basic social problems faced by family separation. It also reinforces the argument that the immigration policy that requires this sepa­ration plays havoc to the social fabric of families left behind. No amount of financial help can substitute for the care and love that a child needs in growing up. Studies have shown that the absence of the mother could be the most disruptive in the life of the children.

‘The Learning’ explores the over-arch­ing dilemma of a mother trying to find a balance between nurturing and earning, between the economic need versus the emotional need. The increasing trend in the feminization of migration, which reverses the previous decades when Filipino men and husbands worked abroad in the Middle East, has compounded the problems of family dy­namics.

In the end, this film as with others like it that explores the OFW’s is a testament to the courage and resiliency of these women. It is indeed humbling to acknowledge them not in the same patronizing and ex­ploitative way of calling them ‘Bagong Bay­ani’ but truly as exemplary human beings deserving of our respect and admiration.

Science teacher Dorothea Godinez, the eldest of the four teachers featured in the film, exhibited a ‘toughness’ that helped her survive the reality of an inner city Amer­ican classroom. Though she finished her first year without losing her life or limb, the emotional tool showed in her lament that in “27 years of teaching, I have never been so frustrated and angry...”

Rhea Espedido faced the difficult situa­tion of a husband in jail but returned a year later to confront the challenge and “move on” with her life trying to live completely in the present and “not to worry about the future”.
All four are now back in Baltimore ex­cept Angel Alim-Flores who is now married and lives in Philadelphia with her husband. Diaz shot the documentary two years ago, but this summer, in nearby Prince George’s County, foreign-born teachers got caught up in a dispute between the schools and the Department of Labor. Hundreds of foreign-born teachers will have to leave the U.S. by the end of the year. And as unem­ployment and budget pressures have risen, foreign recruiting has stalled in schools across the country.

Ramona Diaz is a Filipino-American filmmaker whose credits include “Spir­its Rising,” a feature documentary about women’s role in the 1986 People Power revolution in the Philippines. The film won a Student Academy Award, the Ida Lupino Directors Guild of America Award, a Gold­en Gate Award from the San Francisco International Film Festival, a Certificate of Merit from the public television stations in the United States and Australia. Ramona’s    documentary “Imelda,” about the former first lady of the Philippines, won the Ex­cellence in Cinematography Award for Documentary at the 2004 Sun-dance Film Festival and the ABC News Videosource Award from the IDA. The film was released theatri­cally in the United States and the Philippines, screened in more than 50 film festivals internationally and broadcast on PBS’ Independent Lens in 2005.

Ramona lives with her husband, Rajiv Rimal, and daughter in Bal­timore. She is a graduate of Em­erson College, Boston, and holds a master’s degree in communica­tions from Stanford University. She says In The Learning, she wanted to look at power from an­other vantage point.

“ I conceived of this film as a sort of “reverse angle” response to both Imelda Marcos and the fe­male insurgents who took part in overthrowing the Marcos govern­ment. Whereas Imelda Marcos was charming and ruthless in her pur­suit of power, the Filipino teachers in this film are women cornered by economic circumstances. Where­as the women of the People Power uprising empowered themselves within the context of a movement to secure the future of the Philip­pines, the teachers are a sort of study in acting in isolation, as they are entirely on their own in trying to secure brighter futures for their children.”

The Vancouver screening at the Tinseltown cinema was part of the Vancouver Asian Film Festical se­ries and was co-sponsored by Mi­grante-BC, a local advocacy group for migrant’s rights.

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