The Legacy of Film from the First Igorot Filmmaker
By: Art Tibaldo
Spooling the film reels on the player.
Sometime in 2002, Johnny Muller+ gave me a set of 16mm films and a movie projector which I believe can be a historical memento or legacy of Baguio City if its contents can be shown to the people and places where the footages were taken. The 16mm films were shot mostly from late 1
930s accordingly by Laney (Lan-i) Muller, the Igorot mother of Johnny who married the American mine prospector John Muller. She was perhaps the only filmmaker of Baguio in those years.
Since we still had a cable TV program on SkyCable at that time called This Is Baguio TV Show, I was given permission by Mr. Muller to show a digitized copy of the films to the public and I featured it in several episodes of old Baguio Circa 1937-39. The show presented black and white moving images of Kennon Road, Burnham Park, Landing of a plane at Loakan Airfield, Halsema Highway, Manila, and more. A western clip from the family entertainment archive is also unintentionally looped in the spool of copied film.
https://m.facebook.com/watch/?extid=MSG-UNK-UNK-UNK-AN_GK0T-GK1C&mibextid=qC1gEa&v=546982029483043&paipv=0&eav=AfbYhbYYbEwT5d4ycKgY2fWhp6JaE9vE7A5hpu9jU8LaA_H30lCygSqMdxF2P_yPKvg&wtsid=rdr_01Rhz7GZy8omR6MwQ&_rdr
This is a digitized and unedited copy from the late 1930s 16mm film shot by the Mullers of Baguio with permission to show to the public by Johnny Muller+. It shows old Baguio Circa 1937-39 and images of Kennon Road, Burnham Park and a parade, the landing of a plane at Loakan Airfield, Halsema Highway, Manila, and more. A western clip from the family entertainment archive is also unintentionally looped in the spool of copied film.
Today, the historic old #MullersMansion has been sold and redesigned from its colonial architecture to a modernized structure called the Heritage Mansion that now houses restaurants like Starbucks. The old projector and films were also retrieved by one of the daughters of Johnny and what remains with me is the digital copy recorded in 2002 that only conforms to VCD quality as I only used analog VHS camcorder then digitized it using a computer video card.
These footages are evidence to a lifestyle that was of the past. These are the legacy of the first Igorot filmmaker who fancied her camera at the time, Laney Muller.
#ArtibalChronicles #ganitokamisabaguio #laneymuller #mullermansion
