Kent and Wonder discuss the documentary And So It Begins using the untimed birth chart of one of the major protagonists of the film, Nobel Peace Prize winning journalist, Maria Ressa. Emerging themes include what it takes to risk your life as a journalist to uncover systemic corruption as well as the tenacity and presence of mind required to explain quite complicated events to people coherently. Astrologically we relate this to a Mars Neptune conjunction as well as Mercury in Virgo co-present with the 1960’s Uranus Pluto conjunction. We also make note that Maria Ressa received a Nobel Prize during her second Saturn Return.
Distribution: Streaming on PBS by May 12, 2025
Director: Ramona S. Diaz
Run Time: 100 minutes
Astrological Data: Maria Ressa, 2 October, 1963, Rodden Rating: X, Source: Wikipedia
Music Credit: spacedust by airtone
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.479] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye. Wonder Bright: And I'm Wonder Bright. Kent Bye: And welcome to the Story All the Way Down podcast, where we're breaking down the archetypal dynamics of stories. This season, we're focusing on 36 documentaries from Sundance 2024. Today's episode, we're going to be breaking down a film called And So It Begins, which is a part of the Sundance premieres this year. It was by Ramona S. Diaz, and it's the 7th of 7th in a section that we're calling The Power of the Collective, Movements and Friendships. So, Wonder, I wonder if you'd be willing to read through the synopsis for And So It Begins.
[00:00:47.190] Wonder Bright: Amidst the traditional pomp and circumstance of Filipino elections, a quirky people's movement rises to defend the nation against deepening threats to truth and democracy. In a collective act of joy as a form of resistance, hope flickers against the backdrop of increasing autocracy. With the end of Rodrigo Duterte's presidency and his attacks on democratic institutions like free independent press, some Filipinos hoped for a new beginning. In contrast, others yearned for even more autocracy and a return to an era before the people-power revolution and the restoration of democracy just a generation before. In this companion piece to A Thousand Cuts, which helped introduce the world to online news site Rappler and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, director Ramona Diaz returns to Sundance with a film that takes you inside the fight for democracy in the modern media age. As elections threaten to be simulacrums of democratic processes, And So It Begins chronicles what the defenders of democracy in the Philippines have experienced, and is a haunting depiction of what is at stake in elections around the world. And that synopsis is brought to us by Sundance programmer Sudeep Sharma.
[00:02:05.293] Kent Bye: Yeah, so this is a piece that is said both in the synopsis and in the introduction to the film that is meant to be a companion piece to A Thousand Cuts, which we just both watched just now. But when we first watched this film, we hadn't seen that film that I think actually adds a lot of additional context to the journey from thriving democracy into one that is really a brittle democracy in the Philippines, where more and more totalitarian rulers, starting with Rodrigo Duterte, but then moving into the following leadership that comes into power, in And So It Begins. It really is a lot of attacks on not only the democratic institutions of journalism, but also a bit of a revisionist history in order to use the power of social media to add alternative versions of what has happened in the past and to really sway people. On the one hand, this film feels like it's showing the grassroots campaign of the main protagonist of this film, which is Leni Robredo, who, in a weird thing that's an artifact of the Philippine political system, is that she was actually a vice president of the opposition party, even though the main party of Duterte, she was in opposition to the main party in power of Duterte. So she was sort of outcast and exiled from the cabinet and didn't have much power in her previous position, but is running for the president in this election. And she's got a huge amount of support as she goes through what is described in the synopsis as the pomp and circumstance of the Philippines elections, where it actually has a lot of spectacle, a lot of entertainment quality to the campaigning process. So we track that and follow that throughout the course of the film, but yet there's this other undercurrent that's happening that is not always shown explicitly in this film, but I think is actually covered in much greater detail in the previous film of A Thousand Cuts that shows this kind of alternative information network that is developing, that has been able to build the groundwork for some of these more populist and totalitarian, authoritarian candidates to come into power. And yeah, the other main character I'd say is Maria Ressa, who is the Nobel Prize winning journalist, who is a little bit more in exile in this film. We see her a lot in New York City, whereas in A Thousand Cuts, we see her a lot in the Philippines. And then she's arrested a number of times in the previous film. And then she does come back eventually at some point, in And So It Begins. But it seems to be that she's still under the threat of trying to resolve all of these charges that have been brought against her that she's fighting. So even though she's a Nobel Prize winning journalist, she's still under attack for this independent news organization called Rappler that is trying to be one of the last vestiges of a functioning democracy there in the Philippines. So yeah, lots of really complicated, nuanced dimensions of this film, but those were some of my initial takes on it.
[00:05:04.480] Wonder Bright: Yeah, there are ways in which I feel completely unqualified to speak about the details of this film because it was all new to me. And I had never heard of Leni Robredo or Maria Ressa. And so both films were a huge education for me. And it's a testament to Ramona Diaz's filmmaking that she is able to tell a story that is compelling and moving and inspirational, although at times harrowing, despite the myriad of details, not only despite the myriad of details and the dense context that's necessary in order to tell the story, but because of the nuance and context that she's able to add. And of course one of the main reasons she's able to add that context and sustain our interest in it is because she's using in both films to follow this incredible journalist, this intrepid reporter, Maria Ressa. And so it's really through Maria that we understand the larger context that is being broken down. And Maria is everything that, you know, I mean, growing up in the United States in the 70s and 80s, the whole aura of the intrepid reporter and the importance of journalism and the freedom of the press was really, really strong. You know, obviously on the heels of the Watergate scandal. And so, you know, just growing up, you knew the names of Woodward and Bernstein. And it was just sort of an assumed thing that of course, Superman's, like, alter ego is as a journalist. Of course, Spidey is also a photojournalist, you know, because those are really valorous, noble, endeavors. And so to be 54 years of age and having grown up with that and to see how journalism is treated nowadays, you know, journalism is reduced to bloggers and quote “fake news". There's something deeply compelling about watching films which are centered on journalists, and Maria Ressa just completely validates my faith in journalism as an endeavor, as a necessity, and the freedom of the press as something that any democracy needs to claim for its own. So one of the miraculous things that Diaz is able to break down in both of these films is what's at stake for democracy around the world. Because Ressa is really able to articulate the ways in which democracy in her own country is under threat, but how that actually is a function of democracies overall being under threat. And she's able to really articulate in A Thousand Cuts, especially how social media is used in order to accomplish those goals. But Diaz continues on with that theme when it comes to And So It Begins, because one of the themes throughout the film is to follow the social media campaigns and their efficacy behind the scenes of the election. And so you're watching which stories spread and how they spread. And Diaz manages to make this very comprehensive document of the times, an incredibly compelling, at times uplifting, at times completely disturbing and chaotic, but cohesive story. And I highly recommend it.
[00:09:00.347] Kent Bye: Yeah, when I think about some of the primary contextual domains that are being covered here, one is that it's the 10th house of government, the authorities, and how there's the institutions of government that journalists who are usually in, say, the 3rd house of communication, but also the 9th house of different aspects of philosophy and the truth. A lot of journalists are trying to uphold the truth in different ways. But also the 3rd house of communications because we're actually following kind of 11th house dimension of the campaign trail of these candidates who are going out and they're going to different campaign events. And then there's this other subtext of all the information that's being transmitted on the technological sphere and the social media. And one of the things that happens over the course of watching this film is that you see Leni Robredo go around to these different campaign events and give speeches, and she has a huge amount of people who are coming out to support her. And yet, there's an undercurrent that I feel like this film doesn't cover as much. It's more of an afterthought in terms of investigating and demonstrating the whole other discussion that's happening online. There's a bit of a disconnect in almost an alternative world that's being created of people that are buying into this other dimension of these alternative histories that are being put forth. When I just watched A Thousand Cuts with you just now, I think that film starts to dive into this polarization between these different media ecosystems that isn't as much investigated in this film, but it's made clear by the end that there's this whole other information pathway that they start to elaborate throughout the course of the film specifically that one of the bigger candidates that ends up winning the election, Bongbong Marcos, also known as BBM, he is the son of a former dictator within the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos who was in rule for over 20 years from like 1965 to 1986 and actually had instigated martial law starting on September 21st, 1972. He announced it on September 23rd, 1972 that the whole country would be under martial law. So there was all this authoritarian rule that had come from this family of Marcos. And so they started to talk about a little bit how there's this long reaching revisionist history campaign to talk about how this period of martial law was actually a great boon and a great benefit to the country. For anybody that lived through it, they might have a different experience, but for people who are younger, they're getting a sense of this history from all these alternative channels, from, like, they talked about instructions for writing and to learn how to write. And as they're learning how to write, they're kind of repeating these propaganda phrases saying how great of a leader Fernando Marcos was. So Bongbong ends up at the end winning by a significant margin and that there's also all these other social media dimensions that are happening in this. And there's one interview that's really revealing, which is that Leni Robredo sits down with Maria Ressa of Rappler and confronts her and says, look, you know, there's all these attacks that were being made against you. And Leni was conceding the fact that they probably should have addressed a lot of those attacks a lot sooner because they just let them stand. And so there's a lot of ways that the fake news and the attacks, if you let them stand and don't rebut them, then they can do their damage. And it feels like there's a certain part of, so, despite all of the grassroots efforts that Leni was able to do, at the end of the day, there's all these other tactics and the larger impulse of the populist resurgence in the country seemed to really respond to Duterte's strong authoritarian approaches where he would, in the name of the war on drugs, killed like 27,000 to 30,000 people in a way that are just these extrajudicial killings that Rappler did a big job of covering. So it's a film that you're really watching kind of slip into more of these authoritarian ways and a democracy that's slowly crumbling. So yeah, it's very much a cautionary tale as I start to reflect and watch it.
[00:13:06.727] Wonder Bright: I think A Thousand Cuts was much more of a cautionary tale than And So It Begins, primarily because A Thousand Cuts really does deconstruct how this dominant system of power is becoming dominant more and more by the day. And if we'd been covering that film in this season, I would have placed it under the second section that we did, which was deconstructing dominant power systems. But this film, for me, spoke to an 11th house collective movement because the main thrust of the film is about the ways in which people organize and come together despite this authoritarian threat of the autocracy coming in. So it operates partly as inspiration, but also potentially as instruction, strategy. How do you create this? Now, of course, one of the things that you can't just strategize is having leaders and journalists as powerful as Leni and Maria are in order to carry through these goals and these aspirations. But the films taken together really do paint a picture ultimately of indefatigable hope in the face of overwhelming threat. And it would be impossible not to take some hope from it. But on the other hand, I don't know that I personally possess the kind of fortitude that Leni and Maria do and perpetuate. They're both incredibly stubborn and resilient and dedicated to their cause in a way that is extraordinary.
[00:15:04.833] Kent Bye: Yeah, there's certainly a lot of themes of Saturn-Pluto that I think is the broader context of this film. So we talked about the 11th house and the movements and the other houses that I mentioned, but I just wanted to read this section that I've read before. But I think it's very apt because it sets the context of what's happening in the Philippines. And the Saturn-Pluto conjunction was really in the 15-degree orbs of influence between January 2018 and December 2021. That said, there's certainly even before those periods that all of this was happening within the country. It's sometimes difficult to just pin everything on this one archetype, but I do actually think that given the timeframe of a thousand cuts, even though this film was shot afterwards, I think there's still remnants of the energies between these two planets. Richard Tarnas in Cosmos and Psyche says that “Saturn-Pluto cycle coincided with especially challenging historical periods marked by a pervasive quality of intense contraction, eras of international crisis and conflict, empowerment of reactionary forces and totalitarian impulses, organized violence and oppression, all sometimes marked by lasting traumatic effects. An atmosphere of gravity and tension tended to accompany these three to four year periods as did a widespread sense of epochal closure, the end of an era, the end of innocence, the destruction of an earlier mode of life that in retrospect may seem to have been marked by widespread indulgence, decadence, naivete, denial, and inflation”. When I read that after having just watched A Thousand Cuts, I feel like A Thousand Cuts is really embodying all the different dynamics of that Saturn-Pluto. We see a lot of events that are happening during that time period that are still echoing and rippling out throughout the context of what's happening in the Philippines. I still feel the after effects of that. I'd love to hear some of your thoughts of what you think are some of the primary significations of this film.
[00:17:04.446] Wonder Bright: I mean, to me, it's harder to pinpoint this to Saturn Pluto, although obviously the rise of autocratic rule clearly seems to be that. And yet as a recurring theme, the thing that continues is this familial dynasty from the Marcos family who were ousted in 1986 as a result of the people power revolution. which, you know, even in the United States, we were hearing tales about this because of Imelda Marcus's infamous treasure trove of shoes. She had hundreds of thousands of pairs of shoes and this family profited in the most monstrous of ways off of this autocratic despotic rule over their government. And then somehow Ronald Reagan managed to get them to leave the country, move to Hawaii, where they just sort of lived safely in exile while this democracy went underway in the Philippines. And Maria Ressa in A Thousand Cuts talks about how it was that resurgence of democracy that, like, the creation of this new democracy, not only in the Philippines, but around the world that inspired her as a young woman. She's born in 1963. So in 1986, as she came of age and became a journalist, this is where she felt called to come and witness and to give testimony to the things that she was seeing around the world. And so it's particularly galling to then have the son of Ferdinand Marcos, the son of Imelda Marcos, who we see in And So It Begins talking about her son. She's on the stage talking about, “and now we rise again”. We're, you know, basically going to “make the Philippines great again”, essentially. But as someone who grew up watching scenes of this family's horrendous offenses against humankind, to see them coming into power again, in a way that so closely mirrors what's happening in our own country with Donald Trump and, you know, his potential dynasty with his daughter, Ivanka, it's really chilling, frankly. So, you know, obviously this is like power and control, so Saturn-Pluto, but 1986 is between the Saturn-Pluto conjunction and then a Saturn-Neptune conjunction in 89. And what's interesting about that Saturn-Neptune conjunction in 89 in terms of our protagonists is that Maria Ressa has Saturn and Neptune square almost exactly, and Mars is conjunct her Neptune. Mars and Saturn are also square and they're in fixed signs, which in astrological language illustrates the fixity of her sense of purpose and how welded she is to her determination to do the thing that she's here to do. Mars and Saturn, when they're together, these are the two so-called malefics, but Saturn in Aquarius is very, very strong. It has a lot of autonomy to understand structures, understand rules, and to work within them, but to also use them to point out the rules for the greater good. Whereas Mars in Scorpio also has a lot of power because it rules Scorpio. So Mars and Scorpio conjunct Neptune, all of a sudden we have this signature of somebody who has this raw energy around fighting for what they believe in. And then when you square it with the Saturn, you know, you're going to get Maria Ressa basically. Like now I'm like very curious to know about other people born in October of 1963 because she's just a force to be reckoned with. And she's dogged. She's so, so dogged. But in 89, Saturn and Neptune would have been conjoined in Capricorn. We don't have a birth time for her. So it's possible that aspects someplace in her chart, but we don't know. But what we can say is that that is a moment where these two planetary signatures in her own chart are square, but then they come together. So, this is a part of her early adulthood of forming her understanding of how things work. And one of the things that's so fascinating about what she's able to do is her ability to clearly delineate what is for most of us, myself included, a very confusing field of technology and how we are being manipulated in the media age, and media and manipulation are both things that Neptune has a lot of say over astrologically. So her ability to actually ferret out what is true and what isn't true really is illustrated by that square in her chart. Yeah, like I said, it is oftentimes harrowing what she is breaking down for us, but it is also - I'm just so grateful to have somebody who's able to speak into that experience with a strong amount of logic and reason and grounding us in fact.
[00:22:33.058] Kent Bye: Yeah, and Maria Ressa being born in 1963, there was a pretty significant outer planet transit of Uranus conjunct Pluto that was happening from 1960 to 1972. And so it's within five degrees Virgo of Uranus and Pluto. Tarnas goes into details for how there's a lot of liberation movements that are happening for gay rights, women's rights, civil rights, environmental justice, all these movements of trying to bring about more equality and justice for all. And so I can really see that Uranian liberatory spirit that Maria Ressa is representing here to really stand up and fight despite the fact that she's being threatened by going to jail, despite the fact that she's getting arrested and could spend the rest of her life in jail. She's still willing to stand up and face those consequences in both movies that she's willing to kind of stand in that face and be really quite fearless. And so, yeah, she's a huge inspiration and we actually get a chance to see her receive the phone call learning that she had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. So yeah, that was quite a moment for her that really validated the work that she's been doing. I think she said that this is the first time that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given to a journalist, I think maybe forever. Because so many of the journalists are at the front line of fighting for reporting on what's actually happening across these autocracies that they're really on the front lines of trying to inform the larger world as to what's happening and their lives are being put into peril. And so for her to be recognized for all those sacrifices with that Nobel Peace Prize was also really fitting to see the scope and scale of what she's fighting against.
[00:24:15.723] Wonder Bright: Yeah, well, and also, in terms of that Uranus-Pluto conjunction, it's also notable that Ressa was born a few days after Mercury went direct in Virgo. And Mercury does really well in Virgo. It's both exalted and in its own rulership, which is the only planet that has that double dignity in any sign. And Mercury has it in Virgo. So her ability to actually identify and deconstruct and analyze things is at a hyper-efficient level with that. And I would also suggest that given that she also has that Uranus-Pluto conjunction in Virgo, we don't know how those signatures show up in the rest of her chart because we don't have a time birth for her. She really is articulating the best of that Uranus-Pluto conjunction in Virgo in terms of her ability to speak to these social constructs and these revolutions that are happening in the era of her birth and that continue to happen in the world today around us. And then the other thing I would just say is that in 2021, Maria Ressa goes through her second Saturn return. So it's under that astrological signature that she actually receives that Nobel Peace Prize. And it's a very interesting thing because she is being recognized for this work that she's doing and the importance of journalism in the pursuit of peace. And at the same time, she's not only getting threats of jail time in her country, but her president is actually saying that he will kill journalists, that they shouldn't feel so safe, that they're untouchable. He says these things. It's horrifying. But I have a feeling that we're not that far away from it in our own country. These films are, both of these films, A Thousand Cuts and And So It Begins, are really important films for people to see because Diaz is really able to break down the threats that democracy faces around the world, not just in the Philippines. This is not a film about the Philippines. It takes place in the Philippines, but this is a film about democracy and what it's going to take in order for us to overcome the threats to our democracies today.
[00:26:49.889] Kent Bye: Great. So when you think about a film like And So It Begins in the context of some sort of remedial measure, then who would you prescribe this film to?
[00:26:59.631] Wonder Bright: I don't know that there's an astrological signature for democracy. I would prescribe this film for anyone who cares about democracy.
[00:27:10.429] Kent Bye: Well, as I think about this film and what I want to bear witness to, I feel like Maria Ressa is such a compelling contextualizer of everything that's happening in both of these films, A Thousand Cuts and And So It Begins. In A Thousand Cuts, she talks about how she made the choice to move back to the Philippines from where she grew up in the United States because she wanted to help chronicle all the resurgence of democratic movements. And yet she still is compelled to go back to this country and chronicle the disintegration of democratic institutions. And Leni Robredo also is at the forefront of leading these movements, but I feel like a lot of the film is her giving these campaign speeches and building up the movement. But I feel like the real deep context that I got from these films was coming from all the journalists from The Rappler and the journalistic insights that were coming from folks like Maria Ressa, who were helping to give a lot of that deeper context to everything that we were seeing on the screen. And so for that, I feel like her work was really vital and really captured in both of these films in a way that merits bearing witness to.
[00:28:20.319] Wonder Bright: And I would like to bear witness to the indomitable optimism of both Leni Robredo and Maria Ressa. This is the thing that powers both of these women. Leni Robredo becomes a politician after her husband, who was holding office, died, and she then went after his post and won it. And then she just kept going. She said after he died, she lost her fear of death because she just suddenly understood that it comes for you when it comes. And that emboldened her to seek candidacy and to continue seeking it. And one of the most powerful moments in And So It Begins For Me is her speech to her supporters. I can't remember if it's on election night or if it was on an event afterwards. I feel like it was election night, but she states clearly to her supporters, whether we win or not, this is the beginning of a democracy. This movement, everything that we've created to get here today, this is the beginning. and that they must stick to it. And that kind of optimism and that clarity and that insight and that capacity to bring people together is what has this be an 11th house film. And it's the very kind of energy that we need to be thinking of as we move forward into increasingly troubled times. And Maria Ressa in the Q&A said this wonderful thing that I'm going to butcher because I don't remember how she said it exactly. But she was talking about the ways in which insults and aggression spread online and in social media. And she speaks quite strongly to that in A Thousand Cuts, but in the Q&A for And So It Begins, she makes the remark that inspiration spreads as fast as anger. And I want to hold on to that. I know that it spreads as fast as anger for myself. And I have increasingly cut myself off from social media and a lot of times from news sources, which is not so great necessarily. But I really want to stay in the realm where I continue to believe that change can occur and that truth shall prevail. And both of these films left me with that experience, left me with the feeling that that was possible, that democracy is yet possible. And that's what I want to bear witness to.
[00:31:08.905] Kent Bye: Yeah, it was a really amazing Q&A, both beforehand to get a bit of contextualization, but also afterwards to be able to hear more updates as to what has been happening and how these films are really companion films of A Thousand Cuts and And So It Begins. And before the film had began, Ramona Diaz had said that this film is also about fighting ghosts in a way, because it's about revisionism and this revisionist history that's happening, that connects these aspects of disinformation and how that's really detrimental to democracy in the Philippines and also around the world. And so she really sees this film as a cautionary tale for democracies around the world. And so in that spirit, I think it's vital for everybody who lives in a democracy to bear witness to some of these deeper patterns of what's happening there, to be able to identify as they start to come around the world, and how these social media platforms sometimes become these amplifiers of disinformation in a way that these news organizations can find it difficult to fight. Because Maria Ressa does say that fake news can spread up to seven times faster than actual journalism that they're covering, and that's based upon both their own experience but also other studies from around the world that have been looking at this. So yeah, it's a really vital topic that I think digs into a lot of the core aspects of what it means to be a human in this day and age and both this confluence of politics and media. Yeah, that's all that we have for today, and I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Story All the Way Down podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider signing up for the newsletter at storyallthewaydown.com. Thanks for listening. Wonder Bright: Thank you.
