Vivamax has just unwittingly sprung a surprise on us (or maybe just on me). Two of its almost new directors have impressive backgrounds as filmmakers. They are seasoned in their crafts and in the industry: Roe Pajemna and Ray Gibraltar.

Pajemna directs Balinsasayaw, which began streaming on 17 May. Gibraltar helms Serbidoras, which streams starting 28 May.

The former started directing music videos for Viva in 2015. Some of those music videos were for crossover classical singer Lara Maigue and teen stars Yassi Pressman and Andre Paras in a duet, which also featured child actor Alonso Muhlach. Pajemna also directed music videos for the Nadine Lustre-James Reid loveteam (which became real for many years and included a live-in for a few years).

Nicole Homillo, the alternate star of the musical version of the romantic film One More Chance now being staged by the Philippine Educational Theater Association, is also among those Viva Records artists for whom Pajemna helmed a music video. He was directing music videos as late as 2021, including one for reel- and real-life lovers Kim Molina and Jerald Napoles.

Music videos are classified as short films, though they typically don’t last longer than five minutes. After those music videos, Pajemna got assigned as creative researcher for a long string of Viva movies and TV series. By 2019, he was promoted as assistant director of full-length feature films and TV series. 

Vivamax streaming  was launched only in 2021 by the Del Rosario family that owns and operates the conglomerate that was initially called Viva Entertainment but eventually renamed Viva Communications, Inc. headed by patriarch Vic del Rosario Jr. whose entertainment entrepreneurship career began when he founded Vicor Records in 1996. He used to be a band player, along with cousin Orly Ilacad, Vicor co-founder who eventually put up his own OctoArts Records.

By 2023, Pajemna began to be assigned to direct films for Vivamax, though it’s only this 2024 the bulk of these movies began to be streamed. In late 2023, the company streamed his Punit na Langit about two female cousins in a distant village seduced and preyed on by the debauched workers of a perya (temporary carnival fairs put up during town fiestas) on the village’s outskirts. One of the two women is a mute who became one after her parents died in an accident. The other cousin is a seamstress.