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Ámauteurish! is the open-access repository of the collected work of and/or by Joel David, set up and maintained as a single-source personal archival website. It includes out-of-print publications and links to still-available articles, with occasional relevant public-domain material. For a comprehensive list of posts uploaded since 2014 up to the preceding year, also in reverse chronological order, please click here. In case the top-page menu is inaccessible, here are the sections and their features:
♦ Abouts – provides extensive descriptions of the rationale as well as of the author;
♦ Books – contains my out-of-print books and links to published books, as well as edited volumes, chapters in anthologies, and papers in proceedings;
♦ Articles – a landing page that leads to listings of all materials published in journals and all other types of periodicals;
♦ Reviews – contains my commentaries on films as well as occasional books and plays, arranged according to title of production (Auteurs & Authors reorders this same list according to each work’s creator);
♦ Remarks – contains my articles and statements published since 2016, opening with “Mega-Meta: A FilmCrit Folio”;
♦ Extras – would be mostly my non-written output, plus selected ephemera and juvenilia, opening with a “Special Folio on Manila by Night (1980)”; and
♦ Queries – provides a means by which I can be reached, as well as answers to some questions asked here and in other venues.
♦ Not included in the menu but a compilation of several sections above would be this Chronologically Arranged Listing of Publications, with its own accompanying Empiricals page.
First-time readers: This current section serves as the home (or front) page of the blog. Buttons for sharing on Facebook or Twitter, or by email, will appear at the bottom of each page of the browser version, along with copyright and other essential notices. In general, when an entry’s permanent listing in this blog is unspecified, it will be found in its appropriate subcategory in the Extras section.
Researchers: Endnote numbers provide same-page two-way jumps – from any endnote number in the body text to the endnote itself, and from the latter’s numerical indicator back to the endnote’s position in the body text. As a demonstration, kindly click on the endnote number at the end of this paragraph.[1]
December 2025
December 20 – “To Track Down a Rare Film Title” is my account of searching for a copy of Vilgot Sjöman’s Jag Rodnar (I Am Blushing), which he filmed in the Philippines in 1981, for my Canon Decampment project. I failed to secure a copy, but then a detailed storyline helped me decide that not a lot would be missed.
December 12 – I saved a digital file a few years ago of Letter to Jane: An Investigation About a Still, the 1972 Groupe Dziga Vertov entry by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin. Before Artificial Intelligence enabled websites to offer affordable (sometimes free) transcription and translation service, I attempted subtitling it with the English-language voiceover that Godard provided; I was dismayed at the way he raised some of his points, but I focused on the exercise at hand, using an Excel spreadsheet, providing columns for start and end times, and entering the text using standard courier measurement to ensure the text would fit the proper length of the screen. After I was satisfied by the result, I generated a burned-in version … after which the AI innovations arrived. Then I had to attend to various other tasks (a plan to transfer to another overseas university halted at the final minute by the global pandemic, then preparations for retirement) and forgot entirely about the file. Since I was uploading materials to my Internet Archive page, I remembered the file, extracted it from the external drive where I saved it, and uploaded it. Here it is then, for what it’s worth.
December 3 – I processed and saved for my personal reference copies of the films that won top prize in the two editions of the Manila International Film Festival, in an Internet Archive page titled after the event. These titles were 36 Chowringhee Lane (Aparna Sen, 1981) from India, and My Memories of Old Beijing (Wu Yigong, 1983) from China.
November 2025
November 13 – “The Petty Politics of Anonymity” is an elaboration of a point I raised on social media, regarding a “viral” critic’s insistence on anonymity.
October 2025
October 14 – A post on my Facebook page, occasioned by the deprecatory coverage of Phillip Salvador’s appearance at the demonstration considered “legit” (meaning opposed to the return from The Hague of former President Duterte). [Photo from a news service I failed to note, since I wasn’t expecting to draft a commentary when I saved it.]
The Imperfect Filmic Appositeness of Ka Ipé. I had a few queries about what’s happening to Phillip S. I’m flattered people think I might have a direct line of communication with him but the only time we exchanged pleasantries was over 4 decades ago, when he gushed over winning his 1st film award and I was still with the group that handed it out. I’m aware of course that he recently ran for political office on former Pres. Duterte’s endorsement and flopped dismally.
11011He wasn’t the 1st showbiz personality to make wrong political decisions, and he won’t be the last. People with their own reasons might remember that the late Nora Aunor tried to run for governor and lost before she left for her extended US sojourn, and that she also wound up endorsing right-wing candidates upon her return. I guess the sensible response is that her impressive track record as artist overrides such miscalculations, with the implication that Ka Ipé doesn’t have that kind of record to his name ever since Lino Brocka was unable to continue his training and stopped providing him with serious roles because he died.
11011That’s where people are sorely mistaken though. When I looked up the trends I missed because I was away for most of the 1990s, I wasn’t surprised to find that he persisted in film work and that he specialized in the much-maligned action genre. What floored me when I went over those samples was that he continued refining his craft and made sure that his roles were as carefully developed as the most sensible industry star could command. His colleagues may have had more projects or hits, but none of them had as solid a record as he did. Believe it or not, he must be the only Brocka protege who became an even better performer after his association with the director.
11011His last few film projects were no longer action outings – Adolf Alix’s Madilim ang Gabi and Joel Lamangan’s Isa Pang Bahaghari. Again easily dismissible by know-it-alls who’d say that the first one was just a reprise of Bayan Ko and the second was Bona mixed with Palipat-lipat. He was again partnered with the actresses Brocka cast (Gina Alajar and Nora respectively) and he’d lost his action-star physique by then, but where he was adequate at best in the original projects, he proved himself equal to the challenge this time around.
11011If he was even more impressive than he used to be, why wasn’t he getting any recognition? I wouldn’t know how to explain this since I wasn’t around, but the plain fact is that whichever genre dominates automatically gets downgraded during its time, with critics acknowledging the genre’s contributions only after it’s gone; that happened to the sex films, that should happen to the post-Golden Age action films, and that will also happen to the millennial rom-coms when they get superseded by whatever genre proves feasible next.
11011We can keep mocking Ka Ipé for insisting on finding his station in the dreadful world of Pinas politics. Or if you had money to spare, you could try investing in a well-considered project with him. I can guarantee that he’ll excel in only one of those attempts, and it’s not the one where less expert performers than him have found their calling. That’s why I refuse to participate in laughing at his predicament. He might get offered the role of an overseas professor in a film project and get his revenge at me while having fun with the performance, something I should have seen coming.
Friends asking for a useful canon of Phillip Salvador films are in (some) luck, since I might be close to completing my coverage of the late 1990s action films. Here’s what came up, chronologically arranged according to director: Lino Brocka’s Jaguar (1979); Bona (1980); Cain at Abel (1982); Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim (1984); and Orapronobis (1989); Mel Chionglo’s Playgirl (1981); Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s Karnal (1983); Augusto Salvador’s Masahol Pa sa Hayop (1993); Toto Natividad’s Ka Hector (1994); Joey del Rosario’s Kahit Pader Gigibain Ko (1998); and Adolfo Alix Jr.’s Madilim ang Gabi (2017). In addition, one should watch out for Brocka’s Mananayaw (1978), which still has to be recovered; Mike Relon Makiling’s Ako ang Hari (1981), considered lost but one can keep hoping; and an extensive list of titles where various awards bodies nominated his performances, posted on his Internet Movie Database page.
October 8 – I created a page at the Internet Archive but completing it is taking a while. For now, it has the Ramon Estella titles that I was able to transcribe and translate though they will definitely benefit from native speakers’ inspections. The page is titled Malay-Language Films by Filipinos. Will continue uploading all the materials I was able to source from the now-gone YouTube postings of the Singapore Film Archives (now the Asian Film Archives). A few titles by Estella as well as by Eddie Infante are missing, but the large majority has been preserved in quality that ranges from acceptable to excellent – entirely the reverse in the case of our contemporaneous studios, to state the obvious. I might announce the page on the blog’s sidebar once its contents are complete.
August 2025
August 21 – A post I uploaded on my Facebook page, with reference to the picture below.
Fissures in recent Pinas film history: claims can more easily be made when the primary materials are gone. Like Nestor U. Torre’s lighthearted storytelling (never published but reported in Angela Stuart Santiago et al.’s must-read Pro Bernal Anti Bio) that Ishmael Bernal’s first directorial credit was Ah, Ewan! Basta sa Maynila Pa Rin Ako! (1970), which is attributed to its producer Eddie Rodriguez (AKA Luis Enriquez) in publicity materials. This was because Ishma repudiated the project, partly because he was bullied by people in production – again another unpublished claim although I described it in depth on my blog’s corrigenda pages on my Manila by Night monograph.
11011Here’s a trickier detail involving Bernal’s more famous contemporary. Lino Brocka directed Fernando Poe Jr. only once, for Lea Productions’ Santiago! (1970), also because he was allegedly traumatized by FPJ’s treatment; I don’t know if Gino Dormiendo (RIP) ever wrote about it, but the stories were supposedly harrowing. Only proof we have is that they never worked together again despite Santiago’s success, although he agreed to direct Susan Roces for a takeoff on Maruja for FPJ’s production outfit.
11011If you look at Lino’s filmography page at the Internet Movie Database, you’ll find that his earliest non-directing credit was for writing the script for Chaning Carlos’s Arizona Kid – which is proof, as I mentioned elsewhere, that he worked with Chiquito before he directed Dolphy. (AK also featured Mamie van Doren, which makes it a valuable historical document, despite a poorly transferred copy on YouTube; for now we’ve got a fascinating unruly-women trilogy along with Dovie Beams in Maharlika as well as Christine Jorgensen in Kaming mga Talyada, both significant presences in their own right and extensively written about elsewhere.)
11011Then I found this credit again, which I remembered when I first saw a print of The Ravagers in the early 1980s. This could only refer to Lino, unless a movie worker with that name hung around in the mid-’60s long enough to make just one film. Directed by Eddie Romero and produced by his Hemisphere Pictures, Ravagers starred our country’s favorite American B-film actor John Saxon and … FPJ. So there’s your connection, Ravagers to Santiago (to Gumising Ka Maruja), one National Artist working with another. Not to forget that Romero’s a NatArt too, and gurl have I got questions about him, but that should be tackled in a post all its own.
July 2025
July 30 – “Madonna of the Revolution” is the blog version of my review of Arjanmar H. Rebeta’s Lakambini, previously published in The FilAm.
Lovie Poe & Elora Españo as Gregoria de Jesús, searching for the remains of her husband Andrés Bonifacio, in Lakambini. [Screen caps from Pelikulove by Joel David]
July 25 – The latest issue of the Forum for World Literature Studies (vol. 17, no. 2, June 2025) has just come out. An open-access journal indexed in Scopus and the Clarivate Analytics database, it features the papers delivered during the Critical Island Studies colloquium held during the previous winter break in Seoul. My lecture on Philippine film criticism, titled “Predicaments of Prestige: Negotiations and Symbolic Violence in Philippine Cultural Film Practice” (click for a PDF extraction), is included.
July 18 – From files provided by James de la Rosa, Pelikula Atbp.’s indefatigable collector, I was able to process a PDF of the January 1982 issue of Entertainment Times: RP Showbiz’s Trade Paper. A joint publication of the Movie Workers Welfare Fund and the Philippine Motion Pictures Producers Association, the issue focused on the then-ongoing Manila International Film Festival.
June 2025
June 18 – “A Measure of Devotion” is the blog version of my review of Adolfo Alix Jr.’s Faney, previously published in The FilAm.
June 14 – A review of Adolfo Alix Jr.’s latest, titled Faney, about a fan of Nora Aunor (played by Laurice Guillen) who responds to news about her death, in The FilAm.
May 2025
May 22 – Lino Brocka died on this date over three decades ago but I was too busy preparing for foreign graduate studies to pay close attention. He was also deep into his avoidance of local media so I could only correspond via my reviews and his intermediaries’ occasional messages. I could still discourse productively on his works, since I grew up and learned from watching them, but writing on what he meant was something best left to people who either knew him intensively or pondered his significance closely. Among the latter, the one that stands out was published a few years ago, so I’d prefer to name it here as a commemoration: Epoy Deyto’s “The Many Deaths of Lino Brocka,” from his Missing Codec blog.
May 3 – “A Missing Installation in the Philippine Pantheon: Gregorio ‘Yoyong’ Fernandez (1904–1973)” is the finalized journal version of a preprint I originally uploaded on this blog. It came out on pages 24-35 in the 2024 issue of Pelikula: A Journal of Philippine Cinema and Moving Image. To read a PDF extract of only the article, click here.
April 2025
April 20 – “Nora Aunor’s Multiple Resuscitations” is the blog version of the obituary I wrote on Nora Aunor, originally published in The FilAm. What follows is the Facebook text I used to introduce the posting.
The blog version of the tribute to Nora Aunor…. Some matters that might be useful to clarify, but you don’t have to read through, considering how the Aunor socnet stream has been running nonstop since she died last Wednesday:
110111 – I don’t really count myself as “Noranian.” I just prefer to tackle significant pop-culture practitioners and artefacts. My observation of her record as performing artist and pop-culture phenomenon led me to conclude that her ability was exceptional, with most of her film record at least being finally available; to watch her onstage was to marvel even more, but we can’t fault people who were not born or not around when those events occurred. This is like my deciding to write on Ishma Bernal’s Manila by Night: maybe there are actual Manila-by-Nightans, but in my case, I just selected the local title that could bear the weight of a deep and complex analysis, so I became an appreciator of the film but not necessarily a “fan.”
11011I have friends who are avowed Noranians so it’s not fair to them if I claim to be the same thing. Which brings us to 2 – the critic’s function is to assess achievements and uphold them, but also to be clear-eyed enough to see any possible weaknesses and mention them if necessary. That’s how I managed my evaluation of Ishma’s film, because in the end the work (or person) will appear more impressive, yet more approachable, that way. What I know of Bernal, and of Nora, is that they would have preferred it just that way as well.
110113 – If you happen to have an idol of your own and think that anyone who doesn’t slobber helplessly over her or him is automatically an enemy who needs to be destroyed, I’ll just say that someone has a problem and it’s not me and other people who have real critical projects to attend to. I’ll also say that if your idol doesn’t see you as a liability, you’ll both be destined for oblivion no matter how many prizes you might succeed in acquiring.
110114 – Maybe a few things about Guy that make it easy for me to relate to her. First is her focus on productivity – you’ll see testimonies from her confidants on how she kept wanting to plan projects, even if she was already too physically weak to pull off any of them. Maybe it was her way of dreaming while awake, but what a way of spending your end of days, something I might never be able to do. And those who witnessed her being cavalier about the money she earned – she was all that and more even with the game that critics (especially organized ones) impose on artists, where they’re supposed to measure their worth according to how many awards they’ve accumulated.
11011Despite her displays of appreciation, you could sense that she didn’t care as much for these as for her record of outstanding performances. (Thought experiment: imagine if one body, say the MMFF or FAMAS, withdrew all the trophies they gave her – she’ll show signs of hurt because that’s the press-approved response but do you think that will actually destroy her?) That incites some confidence in the prize-bashing activities that I’ve come to enjoy. I’m just humbled because I found my theoretical justification only recently while I knew she already had the measure of what awards mean long ago.
11011Another thought exercise: let her pick between some film project where she twiddles her thumbs but winds up sweeping all available acting trophies; or an update of her Himala experience, where she’s able to grow in her craft while executing another all-time-great reading of her role but again losing all the awards competitions because of some critical vendetta. If you think she’ll settle for the awards sweep, then I don’t think you really know her. That’s also why I won’t call myself Noranian. I don’t think she’ll be satisfied with thinking she earned a record number of prizes, or box-office receipts, or even followers; but tell her she’s had an outstanding record of performances worth writing on and on about – you would have seen how that makes her day.
The Nora Aunor star at the Eastwood City Walk of Fame. [Megaworld Lifestyle Malls Facebook page]
March 2025
March 22 – Text of a post I made on Facebook, by way of updating friends on a book-writing project:
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.
Kindly click on the link to open the video post:
https://archive.org/details/1959-saudagar-minyak-urat-love-crazy_202510
January 2025
January 7 – The day-long Critical Island Studies Colloquium in Seoul successfully concluded at the Kim Dae-Jung Presidential Library and Museum (part of Yonsei University). The Can Asians Critique? Theory, Criticism, Creolization proceedings volume contained the draft of my article titled “Predicaments of Prestige: Negotiations and Symbolic Violence in Philippine Critical Film Practice” on pages 40-57. I did say “draft” because it will be slated for finalized publication in the forthcoming issue of a still-to-be-announced journal.
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