In Memoriam: Apak sa Damo

Picture taken from Gin's Multiply; aptly captioned "umapak sa damo."

.
ONCE upon a time, fresh off the success of a freshman class play, three young creative writing students started a production company with the intention of being the next big thing in campus filmmaking.

The group called themselves Apak sa Damo—a name with an openly profound explanation to cover up the real, rather shallow reason behind its conception.

Apak started production on their first film project entitled “Ate,” but certain conflicts seized shooting. Production was restarted months later, but things fell through again.

Apak finally got its act together to finish filming a documentary about the 20th anniversary of the People Power Revolution for an on-campus competition, but post-production disasters resulted in their missing the deadline—Valentine’s Day 2006—for submission of the competition.

That was the last straw. The group unofficially split up and vowed to never work together under the cursed Apak banner again.

She went on to student government, and after leaving creative writing for information design, eventually found work in design for a magazine.

He went on to make strides on his own as an aspiring writer, with a few published works, a couple of recognitions, and a new gig with an independent publication.

The other continues to write while taking on secondary work and studies in design and rekindling his longtime love for climbing and the outdoors.

Situations that have seen these three work together again have come and passed rather successfully; more opportunities of the like are inevitable.

Despite the short-lived nightmare that was Apak sa Damo, the three remain good, supportive friends and colleagues, which seems to make more sense to them than working as professional partners.