What ‘Under a Piaya Moon’ director learned from Peque Gallaga

Filming “Under a Piaya Moon,” which features its protagonist joining a pastry cooking contest, felt so tedious for its filmmaker, Kurt Soberano, because his team had to come up with “200 raw piayas and 500 cooked ones, with different variations and styles, and in different plating.”

“Under the Piaya Moon” is set in the 1980s in Bacolod City. Stephen (Jeff Moses) aspires to continue the family legacy by winning an intercity pastry competition with the help of his feuding grandfather Poldo (Joel Torre) and grandmother Fina (Chart Ferrer-Motus).

The film, one of six recipients of a P2.5-million cash grant from the organizers of the 1st CinePanalo Film Festival, won the best picture award.

“Shooting a film about food is very technical, and since I don’t know how to cook, I wanted to make sure every detail was correct—like how to make a napoleones or a piaya. It’s challenging, in a way, because 80 percent of the film has food in it,” Kurt told Inquirer Entertainment in a recent interview.

“For me, it’s not just simply about presenting food. You need the food to look beautiful at the same time. And since it’s a competition, and, let’s say, there are 16 contestants, we have to prepare 16 different types of napoleones and 16 different piayas,” he explained.

Kurt agreed to several adjustments on the script as a form of compromise. “Originally, there were supposed to be 24 contestants. The production design team suggested that we do 16 instead. It’s a contest with an elimination round. From 16, it is cut to 10, then to five. Finally, the champion will be picked from only three contestants. For each round, we feature different delicacies and eliminate contestants.”

Main inspiration

Kurt said it didn’t help that he only had three months to shoot the film. “It usually takes about six months, more or less, to do a full-length. This was really made for CinePanalo, which carried a theme that’s about family, and about winning. We started writing this around September. We submitted it in October, got notified in November, and [received the grant] in December,” he pointed out.

The script was by Vicente Garcia Groyon. “The main inspiration for the whole thing is my grandmother, who is a really good cook. In order to make it a bit more universal in a Negrense setting, I implemented traditional Negrense delicacies toward the end of the film,” he added.

Kurt was also emphatic about the use of the Hiligaynon language, “because one of my former teachers, Peque Gallaga, taught us that if you’re talking about the province of Negros, everything has to be about the province, even the language. I also think, especially now, the world is more interested in seeing what else is out there. I’m bringing ‘Under a Piaya Moon’ to the whole country, with an open heart, hoping that the audience would appreciate, not only our culture, but also our language.”

Completing the cast for Kurt was easy, except for the lead character, Stephen. “I already had in mind Joel and Chart to play the grandparents, as well as Pau Dimaranan to play Joy (Stephen’s girlfriend). But I had a hard time picking the right Stephen,” he said. “At first, I was nervous while the cast was reading the script because, while Jeff is from our province, he is from San Carlos City and does not speak Hiligaynon. I’m glad that he studied his role, so during the shoot, [his Bisaya accent] went all the way out,” Kurt recalled.

Acting-wise, Kurt confessed that Jeff still needed some “fine-tuning because he is a talent of GMA 7, and all the other actors are from here and basically have the same acting method. Eventually, he understood the type of acting that we required. Jeff is so easy to work with. He will become successful in the future as long as he maintains the discipline that he has right now,” he declared.

Big name

Jeff eventually won best actor, tied with Carlitos Siguion-Reyna for “Pushcart Tales.” Joel, on the other hand, bagged the best supporting actor trophy.

“Joel, of course, is a big name in our province. When I started working with him, I was astounded. I really didn’t imagine that he was that good. There was a scene where he was tasting leche flan, and when he opened his eyes, tears fell. I said, ‘Wow! He can do that?’ I was really surprised at how delicious the leche flan looked because of Joel’s performance. He’s amazing.”

Meanwhile, Kurt, whose debut film was the 2022 Cinemalaya finalist “Golden Bells,” said he would start writing again. “For ‘Under a Piaya Moon,’ I’m still going to polish it a bit more because given the deadline, I wasn’t able to clean it up as much as I wanted to,” he said.

Kurt also said that he would use the lessons he learned from working under the late Peque Gallaga. When the iconic Negrense filmmaker passed away in 2020, Kurt paid tribute to him in the short film “Sa Balay ni Papang,” which features snippets of Peque’s “Oro Plata Mata.”

“When he was still alive, he was very punctual and very strict. Those are among the things I’d like to maintain,” Kurt pointed out. “I also noticed that in all of Direk Peque’s productions, everyone treated everyone like family. You didn’t feel tired because you were all having fun doing what you were doing.”

Kurt admitted that Peque’s passing bore down on those who studied under him. “But we just continued in our own way. Direk Peque was a unifying force. He was the one who united all of us. Right now, we’re still united in a way,” he observed.

Does Kurt think he could be the next Peque Gallaga? “I still have a long way to go. Hopefully, I will make him proud,” he declared. INQ