Malay-Language Films by Filipinos

Originally posted on Facebook on March 22, 2025:

The most tiresome and pricey viewing project I’ve set for myself (part of a years-long canon-revaluation project) is also the most rewarding: the Malay-language films made by Philippine directors. The reasons why Sir Run Run Shaw set out to recruit several accomplished local talents ought to be a separate account in itself, starting with how he wound up from Shanghai to Hong Kong to Singapore and then-Malaya. But what really concerns us here is the fact that almost all the films were preserved and are now stored at the Asian Film Archive. When it was still the Singapore Film Archive, it had a YouTube channel, which was how Teddy Co alerted me to their availability.

11011I did manage to save everything that they posted, but only two of them had English subtitles: one by Bert Avellana was noteworthy enough, though the more ambitious effort by his occasional scriptwriter, Rolf Bayer, was for the most part dismissible. An entry by Teodorico Santos, who wrote Sisa and Sawa sa Lumang Simboryo for Gerry de Leon, was accomplished enough and exists in the irony that the rest of the Santos films, all made in the Philippines, are lost.

11011Teddy said to pay special attention to the Ramon Estella entries, so I saved those for last, and he’s right. I’ve got only three more to complete my coverage, and he occasionally surpassed his kabayans, placing most of his work on the level of still-to-be-discovered masterpieces by Pinas film observers. Even more impressive is the fact that he worked superhumanly fast, completing his first entry in much less than a month, and had no trouble with any kind of genre assignment – even if in Pinas he became known for controversies with left-leaning material before he left for overseas work. No wonder Shaw prevailed on him to make more movies after his amazing debut, including a few contributions to the much-coveted pontyanak (horror) franchise.

11011Initially I was planning on scouting for Malay speakers and asking them to translate for me. But then came AI and with it, a proliferation of textual services. I made the early mistake of looking for the least expensive transcription service and got ripped off; the credit company disabled overseas payments but I couldn’t renew my card until I got my visa back from immigration (I’d petitioned for a new status, is why).

11011This time I picked out a service that evaluators recommended, and got rewarded with far better and more comprehensive textual material. Free online translation services abound so I got the files changed (Malay to English), but that introduced a few problems, primarily because our language families tend to be gender-neutral. Fortunately, even with the earlier service, inadequate titling worked out because the languages are similar enough; several Malay words resemble those of our languages. It just slowed down my initial viewing, since I had to constantly refer to the subs to correct them. Posted below’s the copy I made of Estella’s musical comedy Saudagar Minyak Urat, which doesn’t even show up on the Internet Movie Database.

11011The culture of reserve is understandably more pronounced among our neighbors, so Filipinos had the advantage of setting up provocative situations and responses. My fave among the Estellas is the film below, which is creditable enough to match my best memories of the now-lost Manuel Conde movies. The fact that he was also an accomplished painter and musician accounts for a significant part of his abilities, but for sure there’s a whole lot more in his bio to uncover. Make room then for two severely neglected names in our pantheon – Yoyong Fernandez (who has enough available product to convince anyone willing to watch, courtesy of LVN stalwart Mike De Leon) and now the completely overlooked Ramon Estella.

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