Jessica Sison
In film school, Jessica Sison decided to rebel against the stereotypes placed on Asian-American females by making a parody of Hong Kong action films as well as an homage to Jean-Luc Godard. That film, "Newton's Law", was chosen as the closing film of SF State University's Film Finals Festival and has gone on to screen at the Film Arts Festival, UC Berkeley's Alternative Requirements Festival, and the national tour of the Women Make Movies Film Festival.
After graduation, she spent three years of post-production work in film, television, and corporate projects before focusing her editing talent on documentaries.
Her documentary work has screened in film festivals all over the world, and her broadcast work has shown on PBS, the Oxygen Channel, the WB, ImaginAsian, and The Filipino Channel.
"Kuna Ni Nanang" is her documentary directorial debut. Jessica is passionate about documentaries and continues to edit for other producers and directors. Her next documentary is about her family's unusual participation in the Bataan Death March during WWII.
Elena Bautista
Elena was born on April 19, 1907, in Moncada, Tarlac, Philippines. She is the eldest daughter of the late Macario Adsuara (of Spanish Ancestry) and Francisca Pascua. She married the late Felix Rodriguez Bautista, and their marriage lasted until his death 53 years later.
In 2007, she celebrated her 100th birthday. The party was attended by over 200 friends and relatives from the Philippines and from around the US. Eight of her eleven children are still alive, and she has ten grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
Elena is the grandmother of Jessica Sison, director of "Kuna Ni Nanang (My Mother Said)".
Director's Statement
"Ever since I was a little kid, my grandmother would tell me stories about her life in the Philippines. There were stories about her youth, her siblings, her boyfriends, how she learned to swim, how she narrowly escaped being killed by Japanese soldiers during WWII, and even ghost stories.
"I never thought of recording or documenting them until 2002, when I turned on the television and Francis Ford Coppola's "Peggy Sue Got Married" was playing. It was the scene where Peggy Sue finds herself at her grandmother's house and says, "Grandma, I haven"t seen you in 20 years. I missed you!" (For those of you who haven"t seen the film, Peggy Sue"s grandmother is already dead; but since Peggy Sue has gone back in time, she can see her again.)
"That scene jolted me. It made me realize that my grandmother wasn"t going to be around forever and that she had so many interesting stories that would be lost if no one recorded them. So for the past six years, I have been filming her.
"My goal with the film is to encourage people to not take the ones they love for granted. When I heard that my grandmother had absolutely no souvenirs of her mother, it broke my heart. It seems unfathomable to not have a souvenir of someone we love.
"But even in this era when everything is documented, and even cell phones have cameras, this scenario is still plausible.
"I recently talked to a woman who also didn"t have any souvenirs of her late mother because she lost everything in the Oakland Fire of 1991.
"I've also talked to people who have seen the film, and it made them want to run out and film grandma that day. I highly encourage anyone to do this. They don"t even need to make something for public consumption. They should go ahead and make that souvenir that they can perhaps share with their own grandchildren someday."
