Sunday, July 07, 2024

9:00 AM | Eddie Romero: A Life

Today, July 7, is the 100th birth anniversary of Dumaguete filmmaker and National Artist for Cinema and Broadcast Arts Eddie Romero. In celebration of this milestone, Dumaguete City has geared up for a series of events—including lectures and film screenings, and by the afternoon of Sunday, also an unveiling of his bust at the Old Presidencia grounds and an exhibit of his memorabilia. The commemoration is sponsored by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, together with the Dumaguete City Tourism Office, Silliman University Culture and Arts Council, Robert and Metta Silliman University Library, Foundation University, Society of Filipino Archivists for Film, FPJ Archives, ABS-CBN Sagip Pelikula, and the National Museum of the Philippines–Dumaguete.



Edgar Sinco Romero, better known as the filmmaker Eddie Romero, was born on 7 July 1924 in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental. He was the only child born to José E. Romero, a congressman, Secretary of Education, and the first Philippine Ambassador to the Court of St. James in the United Kingdom, to his first wife Pilar Guzman Sinco, a school teacher, who died in childbirth in 1927. His father would later have seven other children with his second wife Elisa Zuñiga Villanueva. Romero grew up in a family that valued education, public service, and cultural enrichment, and in a city which provided a rich cultural environment that would deeply influence Romero’s artistic vision. Romero’s early education at the Dumaguete Elementary School and at Silliman University High School proved to be formative. Silliman University, known for fostering intellectual and artistic growth, was where Romero first encountered the diverse cultural influences that would shape his worldview. The vibrant academic and cultural community of Dumaguete, with its emphasis on literature, arts, and progressive ideas, left an indelible mark on the young Romero.

He began writing stories as early as seven or eight years old, and published his first short story at the age of twelve. One of his better-known short stories, “Oh, Johnny, Oh,” published in the 25 May 1940 issue of the Philippines Free Press, when he was only sixteen years old, revealed a young man reveling under the grit and thrill of film noir—and helped garner attention to his storytelling abilities by the film director Gerardo de Leon, who would also become National Artist for Cinema.

In his adult years, Romero’s life experiences instilled in him a profound understanding of conflict, resilience, and the human condition—themes that would later permeate his films, from the golden age of Philippine cinema in the 1940s and 1950s, to the Hollywood B-movie heydays in the 1960s and 1970s, and to the second golden age of Philippine cinema in the 1970s and 1980s.

According to IMDB, he directed 65 titles, wrote 49, and produced 23. His career spanned more than six decades, leaving an indelible mark on the Philippine and international cinema. His first foray into filmmaking was a script he wrote for the film Ang Maestra, directed by Gerardo de Leon in 1941. Anecdotally, he wrote the screenplay in English—considering his upbringing and education at Silliman University in Dumaguete—with the production translating his text to Tagalog.

After World War II, he helmed his first film, Ang Kamay ng Diyos in 1947, and soon emerged as a versatile filmmaker, adept at both commercial and critically acclaimed productions, and was particularly known for directing films starring the popular tandem of Pancho Magalona and Tita Duran, including Always: Kay Ganda Mo and Sa Piling Mo, both released in 1949.

That same year, his father was appointed as the first Philippine Ambassador to the Court of St. James in the United Kingdom by President Elpidio Quirino, and the young Eddie took the opportunity to join his family in London, apparently abandoning what was already a fast-rising career as a film director. In his recollections, he would consider these years as his “lost years,” when he grappled existentially with the possibility of pursuing further a career in the movie industry. But he also used these years in London to educate himself in world cinema, making acquaintances with such directors as David Lean, Karel Reisz, and Roberto Rossellini, and becoming familiar with the work of Yasujiro Ozu, whose film techniques he admired.

After he returned to the Philippines in 1951, Romero went on to direct films for Sampaguita and Lebran. He began directing mainstream films once more, including several adaptations of popular komiks such as Barbaro (1952) and El Indio (1953). He helmed two more Pancho Magalona and Tita Duran films, Kasintahan sa Pangarap (1951) and Ang Ating Pag-ibig (1953), and then directed the first Filipino movie to win an award at the Asian Film Festival, Ang Asawa Kong Americana (1953). He also produced and directed Buhay Alamang (1952), which he adapted from a stage play by his mentor Gerardo de Leon.

By the end of the 1950s, he would enter his second chapter as a filmmaker. He set his eyes on international productions, sensing seismic changes in the local film industry that would see most of its major studios closing shop by the 1960s. He began directing B-movies, mostly action fares and World War II extravaganzas, for Hollywood. This includes Day of the Trumpet (1957), Man on the Run (1958), Terror is a Man (1959), Raiders of Leyte Gulf (1962), Lost Battalion (1961), The Walls of Hell (1964, co-directed with Gerardo de Leon), and Manila: Open City (1968).

Romero would later venture to the more profitable horror genre, starting in 1964 with Moro Witch Doctor, and continued with Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1968), Beast of Blood (1970), Beast of the Yellow Night (1971), The Twilight People (1972), and Savage Sisters (1974). He produced many of these for his own outfit, Hemisphere Pictures, including the “Blood Island” series, which he would later describe as “the worst things I ever did.” Some of these films were made in collaboration with Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, which was known for its commercially successful run of Hollywood B-movies. Romero’s Black Mama, White Mama (1973), a blaxtaploitation/women-in-chains film starring Pam Grier, has since become a cult classic favorite. He also worked with Jack Nicholson, who starred in the films Flight to Fury and Back Door to Hell, both of which he produced in 1964.

His 1966 film The Passionate Strangers, produced by the American actor Michael Parsons and co-written with fellow Sillimanians Cesar Jalandoni Amigo and Reuben Canoy, was Romero’s first film to use Negros Oriental as a backdrop. The film noir-tinged drama, about murder and labor unrest in a small Filipino town with an American-owned factory at the center of it all, uses Dumaguete and nearby towns as significant settings for the story. This experience would lead him to film the entirety of his pre-colonial epic fantasy Kamakalawa in Negros Oriental in 1981.

Kamakalawa would come after a string of critically-acclaimed films he made starting in the mid-1970s, when he transitioned once more from his focus on international productions to a new focus on Filipino stories, challenged by the cinematic fare that directors such as Lino Brocka and Ishmael Bernal were bringing to the world stage. He was also increasingly conscious of his legacy as a Filipino filmmaker, and thus made an effort to return to artier fare. He began this pivotal period by writing and directing Ganito Kami Noon...Paano Kayo Ngayon? (1976), following a young man confronted with the idea of being a Filipino, an epic that remains one of his most celebrated works. The film, set against the backdrop of the Philippine Revolution against Spain, showcased Romero’s ability to blend historical context with personal stories and national yearnings, earning him the prestigious FAMAS Award for Best Director.

While he would direct two more films for the B-market in Hollywood, and famously was part of the production of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now in 1980, this part in his filmmaking career allowed him to pursue more serious and artistic fares, including such personal films as Sinong Kapiling? Sinong Kasiping? (1977), Banta ng Kahapon (1977), and Hari sa Hari, Lahi sa Lahi (1987). But many critics consider his crowning achievement to be Aguila (1980), an epic that traverses several generations of a Filipino family through several socio-political upheavals in the country, and starring the legendary Fernando Poe Jr. In the later years of his career, Romero turned to television and gave the world the critically-acclaimed adaptation of Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere, a major television series that aired in 1993.

Romero’s immense contributions to Philippine cinema and broadcast arts have been recognized by many award-giving bodies, including the Luna Awards of the Film Academy of the Philippines (FAP), the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS), Gawad Urian, the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), the Catholic Mass Media Awards (CMMA), among several others.

In 2003, Eddie Romero was conferred the award of the Order of National Artists, the highest national recognition given to Filipino individuals who have made significant contributions to the development of Philippine arts. This accolade was a fitting tribute to a career marked by innovation, dedication, and an unwavering commitment to storytelling. Romero’s films are characterized by their rich narratives, complex characters, and a profound understanding of the human condition. Throughout his career, Romero remained a visionary, constantly evolving and adapting to the changing cinematic landscape.

He married Carolina Gonzalez of Pangasinan in 1948. He had three children: Jose “Joey" Romero IV, Ancel Edgar, and Leo John. Joey Romero would later follow in his father’s footsteps, becoming a noted filmmaker in his own right.

His passing on 28 May 2013, at the age of 88, marked the end of an era in Philippine cinema, but his legacy continues to inspire. Romero was not just a filmmaker but a storyteller of unparalleled depth, whose life and work remain a testament not only to the entertainment industry but also to the rich cultural heritage of the Philippines. [With contribution from F. Jordan Carnice]

Labels: art and culture, dumaguete, film, people, philippine cinema

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Tuesday, June 25, 2024

9:48 PM | 'Ladlad': 30 Years of Unfurling the Cape and Paving the Way

Finally, it’s out! My essay on the 30-year legacy of Ladlad, the pathbreaking anthology of Philippine gay writing by J. Neil C. Garcia and Danton Remoto, now out on Spot.ph. An excerpt:


In 1994, I was nineteen, a twink lost in the world the way only someone who came of age in the 1990s could be. I had no idea I was a twink—that was queer nomenclature I would only come to know in my worldly thirties and the world had evolved enough to have specific names for what used to be an identity no one talked about in polite circles. I had no idea either what to make of the surging tempests I had inside of me as I braved the hormones of adolescence and took in, without a map, the hazy landscape of desire you could not deny a young man at the beginning of his prime.

This was three years before Ellen DeGeneres famously came out on American television via her eponymous sitcom and unleashed a cultural touchstone for what Oscar Wilde used to describe, a hundred years before, as “the love that [dared] not speak its name.” [Actually, it was his lover Lord Alfred Douglas who penned this line in a poem, but the phrase was used in Wilde’s gross indecency trial which would decisively blanket in silence all manner of things gay, until cracks appeared in 1969 because of the Stonewall Riot.] This was four years before Will & Grace would grace our television screens and pave the way for mainstream acceptance of characters who just happened not to be heterosexual. In the Philippines, the show was carried by Studio 23, a UHF channel that largely escaped conservative notice simply because it was a smaller station and catered to a niche audience.

In the Philippines, at least in popular culture, to be gay was defined largely by the movies—and for about 50 years since Nemesio E. Caravana toyed ever so lightly with the notion of queer attraction in Kaaway ng Babae (1948), to be gay for the Filipino was to live out a phase awaiting eventual heterosexual conversion, such as in Tony Cayado’s Kaming Mga Talyada (1962). Or to wallow in guilt and ennui (and camp), such as in Danny Zialcita’s suite of queerness in Si Malakas, Si Maganda, at Si Mahinhin (1980), Mahinhin vs. Mahinhin (1981), T-Bird at Ako (1982), and Lalakwe (1985). Or to identify with Dolphy’s definitive caricature of the sissy in Jack and Jill (1954), which would generate decades-long copycats in many movies starring Roderick Paulate, Joey de Leon, and Herbert Bautista. In 1994, Paulate famously played twins separated at birth in Maryo J. de los Reyes’ Bala at Lipstick, where one twin is a tough guy and the other an enterprising shrill running a beauty parlor.

The year also saw Mel Chionglo release Midnight Dancers, a spiritual sequel to Lino Brocka’s Macho Dancer (1988), which also largely defined the Filipino gay experience as one that is seen largely through the eyes of (an often straight) male stripper. The early 1990s were not a good time to find complex gay representation in Filipino pop culture.

I was a budding cineaste then and definitely heard of Chionglo’s film—which came to me in bootleg VHS through God knows what source. (Perhaps a neighborhood video store?) I must have played that movie a hundred times on the family VCR, always discreetly and in the dark cloak of night—hoping my Born Again mother would not rouse from her sleep and catch me.

It was with the same delicious trepidation that I would come across a copy of the first Ladlad, which described itself in its subtitle, and in such an arrestingly forward manner, as an “anthology of Philippine gay writing.” There was no mistaking it for anything other than what it declared itself to be. The simplicity of that admission would create such an upheaval that thirty years later it would be difficult to ignore the fact that for many gay people in the Philippines, the publication of this book could very well be our own version of the brick thrown at Stonewall Inn.


Read the rest at the link. Happy Pride, everyone!

Labels: books, film, life, memories, philippine cinema, philippine culture, philippine literature, queer, writers, writing

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Monday, June 17, 2024

4:36 PM | Piaya, Napoleones, Atbp.

The plan was to go back home to Dumaguete today, but I extended my stay in Bacolod just to be able to watch Kurt Soberano’s Under a Piaya Moon on the big screen. [Vince Groyon wrote the screenplay.] This was such a joy to watch, and you really have to be Negrense to revel in this film in a deeper level. I’m glad I caught this in Bacolod, a most appropriate place to watch this film, and I’m glad I extended my stay here, because I’m sure I won’t be able to watch it anywhere else. When oh when will Dumaguete filmmaking take on stories like this? I’m kinda growing tired of the macho slapstick that seems to define Dumaguete film.

Labels: film, food, negros, philippine cinema

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Tuesday, December 26, 2023

12:09 AM | The Time Traveling Serial Killer

There is a point somewhere in the fuzzy third act of Mallari where a character named Agnes confronts one of the Piolos [there are four] in this movie, where she tells him: “I knew you before as a doctor. Now you’re telling me you’re a fortuneteller.” I felt her confusion so hard. Because this movie is exactly like that: it does not know what it wants to be.

Because what is this? A movie about a historical serial killer? A movie about a crusading documentarian during the American colonial period? A movie about a lovelorn doctor? A movie about aswangs or manananggals? A movie about American military propaganda against the Huks? A movie about rural beliefs? A movie about social justice? A movie about the servant class eating the rich [or at least the sinful]? A movie about proto-TikTokers? [See Felicity’s final filmed confession.]

A movie about ... time travel?

When the time travel element was introduced, that was when I finally decided to just suspend all my longing for this movie to make sense, and just surrender to the horrendous absurdity of it all.

Fact was, I was so ready to do that already the first instant Mallari wanted to underline its horror elements [mostly through cheap jump scares] by announcing them with screeching music that bludgeons the viewer to pay attention and be scared. [Screeching music. A ghost!] But it doesn’t help that they mostly announce ghouls who just stand there — and do absolutely nothing of consequence. The movie does this ad infinitum that by the time we reach the 999th jump scare, you’re just ... numb with boredom.

Which is sad, because the story of Fr. Severino Mallari — the 18th century Filipino priest who is marked in our history as the country’s first recorded serial killer — is already so rich with narrative possibilities. Just following that story, even if the filmmakers have to embellish it to make up for the lack of concrete historical data, would have sufficed. But screenwriter Enrico Santos, perhaps fearful that he didn't have enough material to constitute a screenplay, opted to fictionalize by making this a story about a curse transcending generations, threading it all with the very hoary device of ... time travel. That’s what you call a choice.

A lot of the narrative elements of the film was certainly a CHOICE: killing off Mylene Dizon in the first few moments was a choice [hello, Drew Barrymore in Scream!], and then bringing in her cowering boy to the last few minutes to round off this story with an arrest was a choice; a priest spouting off “woke knowingness” and then the film proceeding to demonstrate the “kill the gays” trope was a choice; having exactly three paintings of distant ancestors hanging in an old house as shorthand for character introductions was a choice [the other ancestors don’t matter to this family?]; Elisse Joson’s acting as a bitchy Felicity was a choice; the predictability of JC Santos’ character arc from the moment he encounters Didi was a choice; the lack of serial killing was a choice; the humanizing of the serial killer was a choice; demonizing St. Bartholomew [and then making a post-script to deny this] was a choice; Piolo’s bad wig and fake beard were a choice; having characters do mouthful expository dumps as dialogue at crucial moments of high drama [to explain away gnarly narratives] was a choice — but that one with Gloria Diaz explaining the existence of a time-traveling descendant with a knife to her throat was icing on the cake; the fact that there’s only one kind of moon — a full moon always bathed in red — was a choice.

I was so excited to watch this film, and purposefully made it the first MMFF entry I would watch for 2023. I left the theater wondering what could have been if the screenplay was better. Sayang.

Labels: philippine cinema

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Tuesday, June 06, 2023

11:41 PM | The Sissies in Dolphy's Wake

I’m finally able to watch [a very bad copy of] Mars S. Torres’ Jack and Jill [1954], the first significantly queer Filipino film, which catapulted Dolphy to stardom playing sissy roles, but when viewed through the contemporary lens unfortunately suffers by centering heterosexuality as the sneering norm, and by being the epitome of the retrograde sexual politics common at the time. I’m currently studying how this depiction of Gorio/Glory paved the way to the sissy superstardom of Herbert Bautista [briefly, in the 1980s remake of Jack and Jill], Joey de Leon [Barbi!], and Roderick Paulate [Petrang Kabayo!], all of them straight men who made their showbiz fortunes by tackling stereotypical sissy roles; and finally, Vice Ganda, who, whether you like her or not, actually reversed that trend of straight male comedians doing drag by being an actual gay actor doing gay roles.

It also strikes me that the OG Jack and Jill was the proto-Parasite: two poor siblings, a tomboy and a gay man, get into the employ and graces of a well-off family, the first by pretending to be a cis male chauffeur, and the second by pretending to be a cis female ripe for adoption. Crazy movie.

Labels: film, philippine cinema, Pride, queer, sissy

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Thursday, September 22, 2022

9:00 AM | A Remembrance of a Dumaguete Filmmaker

Last September 22, we celebrated the 98th birth anniversary of a Dumaguete filmmaker who was acclaimed and well-awarded in his prime, and produced many great works that contributed considerably to Philippine cinema—but is sadly mostly forgotten now. Two weeks ago, a restoration of one of the films he scripted, the classic The Moises Padilla Story, was screened by the Film Development Council of the Philippines in Trinoma, Quezon City, which was part of the celebration of the Philippine Film Industry Month—and the organizers forgot to invite his family.

I am going to devote this space in remembrance of him.



In 28 August 1974, when Cesar Jalandoni Amigo received the Outstanding Sillimanian Award for Scriptwriting and TV/Film Production, he was riding a crest of recognition for a body work that, starting in 1949, had been consistently impressive, and straddled two creative worlds—that of literature and of cinema. His citation for that award begins: “[His] world is the world of film, some of them fiction, but in that world, Mr. Amigo is real. His contribution to the art and profession of filmmaking in the Philippines has been substantial and for this he has been amply awarded.”

Labels: directors, dumaguete, film, philippine cinema, philippine culture, philippine literature, silliman, writers

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Thursday, September 02, 2021

3:52 PM | Bingeing Sharon Cuneta

I’ve been bingeing Sharon Cuneta’s slate of early 1980s movies, all the way from Dear Heart [1981] and through Bituing Walang Ningning [1985]. Because I realized I’ve never really “seen” them, and I want to see if I can do a video essay on them, using Rolando Tolentino’s framework of her as the iconic “eternal virgin.” I came of age in the 1990s, but I grew up in the 1980s, so I never really got to know these films well beyond the cursory viewing. [I realized, for example, that I’ve never really seen Bituing Walang Ningning in its entirety, and I’ve only seen snippets of it, particularly the famous “You're nothing but a second rate, trying hard copycat” scene.] It’s difficult to have a complete grasp of your own film culture when most of these titles were inaccessible for so long, or if accessible, could only be seen in grainy, faded copies — which forfeits deeper appreciation. Only now, with current efforts at restoration, can they really be properly assessed and processed, at least to a greater degree.

The films are entertaining as far as mass appeal goes, and really lay bare 1980s mores — but my God, I cannot with the toxic masculinity!

The worse offender has got to be Gabby Concepcion’s Lito Salazar in Dapat Ka Bang Mahalin? (1984), a spoiled, philandering, exasperating brat of a man who is suddenly given an unearned redemption twist in the last ten minutes of the film, with Sharon’s Myrna Sanchez just willingly taking him back just because he fathered her children. My favorite remains Miguel Rodriguez’s Bullet Crisologo in To Love Again (1983), whose just easy-going and self-assured, minus the toxic masculinity we usually find in Danny Zialcita’s movies. Christopher De Leon’s Nico Escobar in Bituing Walang Ningning is nice enough, but why can’t his manhood abide with a successful woman? It’s the same problem that plagues Gabby Concepcion’s Arnold Zaragoza in Sa Hirap at Ginhawa (1984), whose manly pride mandates complete and subservient financial dependence of his new wife, come what may — although as a film, it coheres: probably the best in the Gabby and Sharon tandem of the 1980s. And my God, Eddie Rodriguez’s emasculated Roman Estrella in Bukas Luluhod ang mga Tala (1984) is something else.

Also, crime as a plot device in these films [a kidnapping, a murder, an attempted rape, a drug bust, etc.] is such a stretch — but I wonder what that says about the social condition of the 1980s it reflects?

Labels: actors, film, life, philippine cinema

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Thursday, August 12, 2021

4:32 PM | A Sandy Andolong Appreciation Post

Every time I love a film from the Second Golden Age of Philippine Cinema [roughly the 1970s to the early 1980s], Sandy Andolong seems to be in it. I love her. Her beautiful face perfectly encapsulates the era. And her acting has always been superb and well-modulated, although she remains underrated compared to her peers of that era, which include Charo Santos, Nora Aunor, Rio Locsin, Amy Austria, Vilma Santos, Hilda Koronel, Laurice Guillen, Alma Moreno, Gina Alajar, Lorna Tolentino, and Cheri Gil. She’s exceptional in Moral and Oro Plata Mata, and a scene stealer in almost everything else she was in [even her cameo in Bad Bananas sa Puting Tabing].

This is why I’m grateful for the current spate of restoring our film heritage, which we were on the verge of losing forever — thanks mostly to ABS-CBN Film Restoration and the efforts of Mike de Leon and other bodies. Now we can truly appreciate the lushness of our cinematic storytelling [and the faces of our movie stars] which for so long remained in the shadows of faded print, mold-eaten copies, and low fidelity bootleg. [That this government endangered that effort by shutting down ABS-CBN is one of biggest crimes against our cultural patrimony.]

Labels: actors, film, philippine cinema, restoration

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Wednesday, August 11, 2021

9:52 PM | COVID Porn

With Lockdown [2021], Joel Lamangan continues his streak of godawful cinema with such retrograde sensibilities. He recycles his penchant for sex work stories captured with the pornographic zeal he always mistakes for art film aesthetics, and gives the carcass a new COVID mask. It's only a pretense at social relevance because Lamangan has nothing new to say. [Does not even know that in pandemic times, there is such a thing as onlyfans.]

Labels: coronavirus, film, philippine cinema, queer, review

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Sunday, May 30, 2021

9:42 AM | Barkada, Circa 1950s

Currently watching Lou Salvador Sr.’s Barkada [1958] on Mike de Leon’s Casa Grande Vimeo page. A gritty precursor to Maryo J. de los Reyes’ Bagets [1984], it’s clearly a take-off from Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause [1955] with a dash of film noir and Dickens and a slew of Pinoy melodrama. I’ve been trying to define what attracts me to these old Filipino films on this site, besides being a cinephile and in spite of their bad fidelity. And then it struck me: it’s nostalgic throwback to my childhood in a Silliman Avenue neighborhood where I spent many afternoons watching RPN 9 classic Filipino cinema outside the window of my friend Ted-Ted’s mother’s house. We had no TV, so that was I got my entertainment as a very young boy in the late 80s.



[Also: Lou Salvador Jr. is so easy on the eyes.]

Labels: film, life, memories, philippine cinema

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Saturday, September 19, 2020

11:07 PM | Rudy Concepcion and the Charm of Our Surviving Pre-War Films

Currently watching all five of the only pre-War Filipino films that survived the ravages of World War II, all of them available online. Even with the unsubtle theatrical acting and ornate line-readings by some of the leads, these films are a hoot with a charm of their own [I love the music!] -- and provide a glimpse into a lost world. I'm definitely crushing on Rudy Concepcion who starred in two of those surviving films, both directed by Octavio Silos: Tunay na Ina (a 1939 melodrama with the most questionable moral choices done in the name of "hiya") and Pakiusap (a 1940 love story). He died in 1940 from peptic ulcer. His frequent co-star Rosario Moreno, on the other hand, died in 1945 when a Japanese bomb hit her Sampaloc house during the Battle of Manila in World War II.

You can watch these pre-War films at these links:

Zamboanga (Eduardo de Castro, 1937)
Tunay na Ina (Octavio Silos, 1939)
Giliw Ko (Carlos Vander Tolosa, 1939)
Pakiusap (Octavio Silos, 1940)
Ibong Adarna (Vicente Salumbides, 1941)

Labels: film, history, philippine cinema

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Tuesday, July 28, 2020

10:00 AM | The Film Meme No. 94

[94th of 100]. It was my sophomore year at Silliman University High School, and we were just required to watch a film in Town Theater, which was Ðumaguete's seediest movie house. We groaned. What was to like? We looked at all required activities, both co- and extra-curricular, with suspicion, time away from our youthful preoccupations. But we got used to this, being herded around by the school to watch concerts and plays and exhibits, designed "to mold" us into better, culture-appreciating former philistines. "What's the movie?" one of us asked. We were told it was going to be a Tagalog film, an old one from the 1970s. We groaned some more. [Dumaguetnons used to be famous for being virulently anti-Tagalog, preferring our native Binisaya or the English of the American missionaries who used to be fixtures in the town.] But this was in 1990, and we were celebrating the centennial of our province of Negros Oriental. One of the cultural highlights was the festival showcase of the films of an acclaimed Filipino filmmaker whose name did not register to me or to anyone of my classmates at all. "Lino Brocka something." My class settled in the balcony section of the movie theater, which had indeed seen better days, and we were all predictably noisy like all restless high schoolers. We didn't really pay any attention when the program started and the host introduced some guy in glasses, who began to talk to the audience about the film we were about to see, that it was made years and years ago, in 1974, and that some of the imagery may be disturbing. Most of us barely heard anything he said, and barely noticed the lights going down. We only settled down to some sort of quiet when the film began. We were greeted with the flickering purplish close-up shots of a woman in some kind of distress -- and then it dawned on me: the woman on screen was getting ... an abortion? I shot up straight in my chair, perplexed -- were we even allowed to watch this? The shock rushed through me, and now I was paying attention, ignoring the whispered gossip of my friends, shushing even the classmate seated next to me when he attempted small talk. I was hooked, I wanted to watch more of this film -- and the surprise that sprang to my mind was this: I had no idea there were Filipino films like this. The movie unfolded like an invitation, and I was treated to a very compelling story of small town mores: a young man in the cusp of compromised adulthood, his philandering amoral father who used to be the town mayor, his hard-to-get girlfriend who gets sucked into the town's games of privilege, the town's resident mad woman whose plight is the epitome of the town's guilty secrets, a lonely man with leprosy who takes her in, among an assortment of characters who amply demonstrated the title's moral reckoning -- than in the final judgment, everyone is guilty of the worst persuasions of humanity. It is Lino Brocka's startling answer to Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game, and is even more amazing for how it towers over that classic of French cinema by embracing the melodrama of it all. I gather this was Brocka's revenge of sorts, having returned to his Nueva Ecija hometown -- a place he ran away from in the first place to escape its suffocating hypocrisies -- to film this production, movie stars in tow. The revenge must have been so sweet, and it was a double-edged sword: [1] to give the ultimate clapback as the returning success story, and [2] to immortalize his hometown's hypocrisy on film, capturing the faces of the guilty playing themselves. Most of us have the same misgivings about the small places we are from, thus striking a nerve, as it did me. It was an electrifying experience watching this movie at age 15 -- and it proved to be so personally impactful because this became my portal to the best of Philippine cinema. I came away from that theatre transformed: I knew with some inchoate realization that great art makes possible incisive social critique; that I don't mind very much anymore "required" things, because it impells me to see things I might not even be conscious about; that there was so much of Philippine art and culture I knew nothing about because of a tendency to be dismissive with only ignorance as ammunition; and that Lino Brocka -- later on a National Artist for Cinema -- is one of our film geniuses, bold in his social commentary, unflinching from his depictions of our frailties as a people. I would find out later on he would die the next year in a freak accident, in May 1991. A much later realization was this: that bespectacled man during my screening who gave the introduction to the film was Brocka himself. I was in the presence of a legend, and because I was a noisy, know-nothing high schooler, I wasn't even aware life had gifted me with an encounter for a lifetime. What's the film?

For the introduction to this meme, read here.

Labels: film, philippine cinema

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Saturday, July 25, 2020

1:10 AM | The Allure of Gino Antonio

Yes, we have National Artist for Cinema Eddie Romero and acclaimed screenwriter Cesar Amigo for film legends hailing from Dumaguete. But if I were brave enough, I’d do a documentary or a story on 1980s actor Gino Antonio, who's also from here. He fascinates me as representation of a very specific, and vastly unstudied, niche and period in Philippine cinema. Known unfairly as a “hubadero” for a bunch of 1980s “pene” films, he was actually a very capable actor, was even nominated for Best Actor by the Gawad Urian for Takaw Tukso [1986]. His third film, Private Show [1985], directed by Chito Roño and co-starring Jaclyn Jose, is now considered a classic of Pinoy neorealism—which is now so rarely screened. He's retired from showbiz and is a tilapia farmer now in Dumaguete, and I've been dying to interview him—for film studies purposes of course.

Labels: film, philippine cinema

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Thursday, July 23, 2020

10:31 PM | Cultural Work is Important

Choice quote from Lav Diaz from last night’s screening of Chuck Escasa’s Jingle Lang sa Pahina [2012]. This gave me new resolve about cultural work in the midst of the darkness I was wallowing in since the lockdown.

Labels: art and culture, people, philippine cinema, philippine culture, quotes

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Saturday, July 04, 2020

10:00 AM | The Film Meme No. 70

[70th of 100]. In the critical appraisal of the works of Eddie Romero, I'm sure Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon [1976] and Aguila [1980] -- undeniably his best prestige projects at the height of his reputation as filmmaker -- will top the list. And they're truly great films, ambitious in their period settings and commendable for its attempts at diagnosing the national condition: one is a picaresque adventure that tries to define what a "Filipino" is, and the other is a sprawling Dynasty-style melodrama that tries to divine the history of the nation. But I have the softest of spots for this 1968 black-and-white noir, because of three things: [1] its stupendously riveting, [2] it's set in Dumaguete, my hometown, and [3] it is the nexus of Romero's bifurcated sensibilities as filmmaker, and by saying that I mean his mid-career focus on making Philippine-produced B-movies for the American market, and his late career focus on socially relevant films of epic scope. This films seems to be more or less the bridge between these two stages. It starred the American actor and producer Michael Parsons as a businessman who runs a factory in a Visayan town [Dumaguete and Bais in composite], and who finds himself the center of labor unrest as well as a murder. Volora Noland plays his beleaguered wife whose infidelity incites the conflict, and the rest of the movie is populated with strong supporting turns by Vic Diaz's charming snake of a politician, Celia Rodriguez's femme fatale, Mario Montenegro's discomfited loverboy, Butch Aquino's crusading lawyer [yes, the senator and brother of Ninoy], and Jose Dagumboy's town idiot. I rarely see a Filipino filmmaker attempting film noir because the genre is so tied to the darkness of the American soul post-World War II, and so to see a Filipino attempt that actually triumphs is such a joy. The strong screenplay by Cesar Jalandoni Amigo, Ruben Canoy, and Romero -- all of them Silliman writers who were making waves in Philippine literature and cinema in the middle of the 20th century -- certainly helps: the lines of dialogue are crisp, the pacing sure, the tension volatile, the politics very dark. Alas, it exists right now only as third generation video copy [I've uploaded the entire film in my YouTube channel], and it would be a gift if someone comes along to restore it to its stark black-and-white glory. What's the film?

For the introduction to this meme, read here.

Labels: film, philippine cinema

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Thursday, July 02, 2020

10:00 AM | The Film Meme No. 68

[68th of 100]. During my college years in the mid-1990s, I've already heard of this seminal 1982 film by Peque Gallaga, and read about it in film articles written by the likes of Bienvenido Lumbera, Nestor U. Torre, Agustin L. Sotto, and Constantino Tejero. But like most Filipino classics in the wilderness of those years, it existed for me as rumor or as a black-and-white still photograph on newsprint. A high school classmate who chose to matriculate in U.P. Diliman saw a screening on campus, and eagerly wrote to me: "When I saw the film, I thought to myself: 'Ian would really love this.'" Which intrigued me. Later, I happened to mention to my film professor then that I really wanted to see the film, and he ribbed me by saying: "You just want to see Maya Valdez naked." Which confounded me, but that added only to the film's growing mystique, sight unseen. Apparently, the film is very much to my liking, that there are frank sex scenes in it, that there is a painful sequence involving jungle medical surgery, also a brutal scene that ends with a finger being cut, something about Kuh Ledesma's head being blown to smithereens -- and now apparently Ms. Valdez's nudity. It was a kaleidoscope of second-hand knowledge. All that build-up over the years, and then finally one day I came across a third generation video copy of it. Not the best way to see a film I've been dying to see, but beggars couldn't be choosers. At its finish, the film astonished me, happily exceeding expectations. I think this was the first Filipino I'd seen that made such a spectacle of its filmmakers' ambitions -- and I loved it for showing me the meaning of "possibility" in Philippine cinema. I had never seen anything like it: such sure handling of scene, such keen sense of structure [the screenplay was written by Jose Javier Reyes], such pure distillation of directorial vision. From the opening of the film, where we are presented with exquisitely staged tableaus showing the sugar gentry of Negros Island [my island!] to the tune of the Humming Chorus from Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly, we are immediately drawn deep into the history the film is about -- specifically, the plight of landed Negrenses and their servants at the outbreak of World War II and the subsequent occupation of Japanese forces of the island. The party that begins the movie allows us glimpses into the social hierarchy our principals belong to, and the party that ends the movie shows us the diminution of their status as only a world war can foist. In between those bookends, we witness two families and their friends weather the tightening vice of their wartime reality, from the golden perch of privilege [the "oro" of the title], to the relative silvery comforts in survival mode in the jungles ["plata"], down to the dens of death and mayhem ["mata"] that can be the only source of ones' coming of age in a desperate time. And the ambitions of the film! So many of its set pieces -- in particular the nighttime burning of the sugarcane fields that marks the film's painful transition from country to jungle -- are truly awesome for their reach, comparable to the final crowd scene and melee that bursts at the end of Ishmael Bernal's Himala, which came out at the same time, and from the same production company, as this film. It has since been restored, allowing us to see the full glory of its production, a restoration that astounded even its director. What's the film?

For the introduction to this meme, read here.

Labels: film, philippine cinema

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Wednesday, July 01, 2020

10:00 AM | The Film Meme No. 67

[67th of 100]. As far as I know, we will forever be drawn to selecting particular loyalties in a peculiar division of a love story: Are you Team Basha? Or Team Popoy? [On the other hand, the renegades among us will probably claim themselves for Team Trisha. As I do, to be honest. Maja Salvador's character is a saint and still gets the short end of the stick.] As far as pop culture goes, this is a strange development for a love story that actually ends happily; why pit the movie's love interests against each other? The quick answer is that it hit the zeitgeist, and crystallized for many Filipinos the contemporary struggles of staying in a loving relationship while heeding the challenges of the real world as experienced by Filipinos. [By 2019, we were still considering the nuances of these social realities in Hello, Love, Goodbye, essentially the 2007 film's spiritual sequel, sharing the same director and screenwriter.] The story as a kind of "war between the sexes" also allows us to weigh the culpability of each party in the breakup that is the movie's emotional centerpiece: Popoy is too controlling, and takes Basha for granted in the patronising way he mistakes for being a knight in shining armour, but he is also kind and works hard for their dreams; Basha feels stifled, and is blind to the kindness of her man, but she deserves to find her place in the world. Some days I understand where Popoy is coming from, and some days I feel the tight discontent in Basha's inner being. [Most days, I shout at Trisha to stay away because she deserves so much better than being collateral damage in two people's love wars.] But Cathy Garcia-Molina, who's a journey-woman director capable of churning out movies steeped in the ABS-CBN house style, managed to create something that spoke to many Filipinos in a very fundamental way that the only word capable of encompassing the result is "magic." The response from audiences was electric, and continues to be so. The film came out in its year more or less packaged as just one of those romantic dramas from the entertainment factory of Star Cinema -- and I doubt they had an idea the phenomenon the film would engender, breaking through the already strong fan base of its two stars, John Lloyd Cruz and Bea Alonzo, and becoming a hit cutting through demographics and social classes, and then becoming a solid cultural touchstone, and then becoming something even college classes often take up as part of some curriculum or other. It would spawn a novelization, and then a sequel -- but the original has remained untouchable. I've watched the film countless times, and it still remains a solid piece of popular entertainment. It has preserved the magnetic performances of its leads as well as their undeniable chemistry. And it has given us the eternal quotes we've come to glean from the screenplay by Vanessa R. Valdez and Carmi Raymundo: “I hate the things that make you hurt and how I wish I could take them away, if only it could be done, I’d do it for sure.” “Sana ako pa rin...ako na lang...ako na lang ulit.” “Baka kaya tayo iniiwan ng mga taong mahal natin kasi baka merong bagong darating na mas okay. Na mas mamahalin tayo, yung taong hindi tayo sasaktan at paaasahin. Yung nag iisang taong mag tatama ng mali sa buhay natin.” “She had me at my worst. You had me at my best. Pero binaliwala mo ang lahat...and you chose to break my heart.” Bring out the tissues! What's the film?

For the introduction to this meme, read here.

Labels: film, philippine cinema

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Tuesday, June 30, 2020

10:00 AM | The Film Meme No. 66

[66th of 100]. Cinema has several experimenters of time. Maya Deren, for example, who uses time and space to warp everyday objects into new cinematic realities. Or Christopher Nolan, who makes time a narrative trick. Or Andrei Tarkovsky, who prolongs time in scenes of slow long-takes for the sake of meditative immersion. Then there's Lav Diaz, who takes his cue from Tarkovsky, but then stretches the time experiment further by giving us stories that unfold on hours on end, prompting some critics to dub him a "maximalist in terms of time." You can call his films "endurance cinema," but that's reducing his work into a competition with the limits of our bodies, which takes away from the integrity of his cinema. I think he keeps this kind of length for his films, because his stories simply demand that kind of unfolding. His longest so far is Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino [2004] at almost 11 hours, followed by Heremias [2006] at 9 hours, and then Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis [2016] at 8 hours. My first experience with any of his films was the six-hour Siglo ng Pagluluwal [2011], in Dumaguete, in a screening I'd arranged with Diaz himself introducing the film sometime in 2012: we started in the late afternoon with about fifty people in attendance, and wrapped up near midnight, with 23 people left. We considered it a success, and had the requisite photo-op to commemorate the finish! Of course it got me thinking about the pure creative decision he has made in keeping long running-times, a quality of his films that are not without naysayers. But he is completely unbothered by it, once noting this: "What bothers me [instead] is the utter lack of openness or understanding that cinema is a great art and that they mustn’t confine or limit it to the imposed traditions. It bothers me more when some film scholars and critics offer limited understanding of the medium. My films are free. I’ve emancipated my cinema from the conventions. People must realize that the so-called average length that they’ve been accustomed to seeing is just market-imposed and that art is free. There is no cardinal rule." True. [Don't we readily binge Netflix shows?] The second time I watched a Lav Diaz film was this 2013 contemporary classic -- the idea of which actually germinated over beer with producer Moira Lang in Dumaguete the year before: truth to tell, I arranged the screening on the sly, by strict invitation only, because it wasn't out yet in local cinemas although it was beginning to reap awards internationally. What we saw that evening in Oriental Hall left our mouths gaping -- because the film was a powerful reworking of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishing that was as relentless as it was beautiful, we didn't feel the four hours and eleven minutes that demanded our full attention. I was so moved by it that I resolved to screen it for real for the rest of Dumaguete. With the help of Paul Benzi Florendo, we scheduled a one-night only screening at Robinsons Place's Movieworld. And we sold out all the tickets -- even if we warned everyone who bought that this was going to be a four-hour film! Best of all, everyone stayed until the film's crushing, despairing end. I still have no idea how we made that screening happen, but I've ascribed it all to the power of the film itself, which is the best gateway drug to the demanding but satisfying pleasures of Lav Diaz's cinema. What's the film?

For the introduction to this meme, read here.

Labels: film, philippine cinema

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Saturday, June 27, 2020

10:00 AM | The Film Meme No. 63

[63rd of 100]. Marilou Diaz Abaya's 1982 masterpiece feels both of its time and ahead of its time, and I find it odd that it's not as widely celebrated today as it should be, even with the recent restoration undertaken by ABS-CBN in 2017. It is very much a slice of life culled from the last years of the Marcos regime, brave in its depiction of a restive Manila and the growing turbulence of the country. But in its pursuit of a story that heralded the Filipina sans the lie of the Maria Clara stereotype, the film courted controversy, earning a lackluster audience response that might be attributed in part to Himala, which came out at the same time and which probably sucked out most of the oxygen in the room. Bernal's film, starring the incandescent Nora Aunor, demanded to be seen and to be discussed, leaving Diaz-Abaya's film -- which was also written by Himala scribe Ricky Lee -- as the critical bridesmaid. I first saw this film in shadowy third generation video copy during one of those classic Filipino movie marathons Cinema One used to do during the doldrums of Holy Week, and even in its compromised form, something about it felt immediate to me. Perhaps it was because I had never seen a Filipino film before that was so knowingly pre-occupied with its feminist themes. Later, I would learn it was the second in a loose trilogy of movies that Diaz-Abaya churned out in quick succession in the early 1980s, which quickly cemented her reputation as a director willing to take on stories with uncompromising women's themes: there was Brutal [1980], which tells the story of a traumatized woman who has murdered her husband and two of his male friends, soon revealing her sexual humiliation that led to the crime; and there was Karnal [1983], which chronicles the travails of a city-bred wife relocated by her new husband to his deep-country barrio, where she has to contend with the local gossip and the advances of her father-in-law. Between these two landmark movies is Diaz-Abaya's ode to female friendship, tested by social norms and social upheavals, spanning three years of their lives, pre- and post-college graduation. Lorna Tolentino's Joey, Gina Alajar's Kathy, Sandy Andolong's Sylvia, and Anna Marin's Maritess are college classmates, a close-knit barkada with different sensibilities and outlooks, which allowed screenwriter Ricky Lee some leeway in his exploration of the different facets of the Filipino woman of the time. Joey dresses slovenly, does drugs, keeps no permanent address, and sleeps around when she is not busy pursuing the affections of an activist classmate [turned NPA] who clearly has no interest in her. Kathy is an ambitious singer of no discernable talent, who nevertheless sleeps her way to get to the top of a recording career she does not deserve. Sylvia is a lawyer who convinces herself that she is the epitome of freethinking liberalism, but cannot shake off her connection to an ex-husband who is now living in with another man, who happens to be a macho dancer. Maritess is a frustrated poet turned conventional housewife who has been reduced to being a baby-making machine by a husband who insists they live with his mother in their sprawling compound filled with kin and thousands of children. The film works because it tells its interwoven story without having to hold itself to the confines of a conventional narrative structure -- no inciting incidents, no rising action, no climax -- just following the organic unfolding in the lives of our four main characters, each reacting in specific ways to ensuing circumstances, each trying to find either peace or escape from the desperations that define their life decisions. I found the free-floating quality of the film beguiling, like a perfect demonstration of Helene Cixous' l'ecriture feminine. As a study of the Filipino woman in all her moral and societal complexities, this film is a vanguard and must be widely seen, even today. In 2003, Diaz-Abaya attempted a sequel titled Noon at Ngayon, which did not retain any of the original actors save two -- Joey's conflicted mother played in both films by Laurice Guillen, and Sylvia's rival in the affections of her ex-husband, played by Lito Pimentel. In the latter film, we find suitable conclusions to each of these women's dreams, shattered or otherwise; it also finds a resonating theme about reconciling with the past. I actually liked it, but it would have been more powerful with Tolentino, Alajar, Andolong, and Marin reprising their roles. What's the film?

For the introduction to this meme, read here.

Labels: feminism, film, philippine cinema

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Saturday, June 20, 2020

10:00 AM | The Film Meme No. 56

[56th of 100]. The conceit of this sprawling 1980 masterpiece from Ishmael Bernal is that the whole film completely takes place under the shadow of night, hence the title, save for the punctuating sunrise at the end that provides a metaphor of relief and reprieve for its beleaguered characters. In the darkness and bright artificial lights of early 1980s Manila, they constitute the teeming multitudes of the metropolis, the buzzy amorality of their lives foregrounded by the jazzy music of Vanishing Tribe, which overlays the opening titles. We encounter the assorted comings and goings of these denizens: an uptight housewife and mother obsessed with cleaning and who has a secret past [Charito Solis]; her carefree lounge singer of a son who hustles on the side [William Martinez]; his demanding and high-living classmate and girlfriend [Gina Alajar]; a gay fashion designer whose mothering nature allows others to take advantage of him [Bernardo Bernardo]; a tomboy pickpocket and drug dealer constantly on the run from the police [Cherie Gil]; the blind but sassy masseuse she is in love with who dreams of being saved by her Saudi-based beau [Rio Locsin]; a hapless waitress in a restaurant [Lorna Tolentino] too naive to question the amorous attentions of a taxi driver [Orestes Ojeda] who actually keeps another woman [Alma Moreno] at home, a prostitute he thinks works as a nurse. [Mitch Valdez provides a fantastic and comic cameo as a social climbing customer of the fashion designer, commanding her scenes with her potty mouth, and pottier stories. Her scenes are to die for, but all too brief.] What links them are their desperations and deep wells of dishonesty, carefully laying out their individual formula for survival in an uncaring city. Their small but momentous lives intersect in one way or another, giving us a symphony of Manila lives brutalized in small and big ways by the corruption of a Philippines under Marcos. It scandalised Imelda Marcos so much -- at the time she was making a sweeping rebranding of Manila as The City of Man, a place that's boisterous but still beautiful -- that she insisted to the producers they take away the "Manila" in the title, hence the film's retitling in its first run as City After Dark. Bernal works from his usual perch of witty raconteur, observant of the foibles of Filipinos, and depicting them on screen as sharp social commentaries, delving into the dirt without sacrificing his characters' humanity. But not without some of them collapsing into the hopelessness of it all, as exemplified by Bernardo Bernardo's Manay Sharon breaking down near the end and shouting, "Ayoko na! Ayoko na!" Bernal  works his huge cast like how Robert Altman fiddles with his in Nashville and other films, minus the overlapping dialogues, and allowing their interactions to provide a cumulative portrait of the place. It's not a glamorous Manila we see -- and for the longest time, for a non-Manileño like me, the film provided the template with which to imagine my country's capital city as a place filled with curiosity and terror -- but watching it again, I can also see this as Bernal's unlikely love letter to his city. We understand that from the very start when Cherie Gil's Kano, upon beholding the nighttime skyline of Manila from a perch off the bay, is moved to shout: "I love you Manila, kahit ako ka pa man! Bata, matanda, mabaho, pangit, babae, lalaki, bakla, o tomboy! Halika, blow tayo." By the film's midpoint, we are in Luneta where a drunk man [played by Krip Yuson!] unexpectedly but poetically slurs: "There is no city but this city / This is the landscape of your life / Whenever you turn, black / Ruins of your loves come into view / You wish for other harbors and other places / But only an echo of this city / The self-same city / Shimmers in the hearing glass / There is no city but this city..."  Truth to tell, I have never seen this film in pristine print, but I could still behold Bernal's genius in the blotchy, overly dark versions I've seen it in. When will this get a restoration? It deserves to be seen in its intended gritty glory. What's the film?

For the introduction to this meme, read here.

Labels: film, philippine cinema

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