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Nuuk

Additional Language: Greenlandic
Year of Release: 2019
Director: Veronica Velasco [as Veronica B. Velasco]
Screenwriters: Aileen Alcampado, Veronica Velasco, Jinky Laurel
From a story by Erwin Blanco & Aileen Alcampado
Producers: Viva Films, OctoArts Films, Mavx Productions

Cast: Aga Muhlach, Alice Dixson, Ujarneq Fleischer, Elaine Yu, Amisuna Berthelsen, Ane Marie Ottosen, Cherisa Chy Dupitas, Maja Thomsen, Giard Paul Dupitas, Kim Kimsen, Jennifer Baquit, Ann Cortez, Stephen Bonotan, Jemina Sørensen, Mikkel R. Sørensen, Geraldine Lontac Lastein, Kevin Dalugdug, Tom Lynge, Ike Giroy, Bertha Lynge, Tuperna Kristiansen, Silvia Olsen, Angel Calmiag Teran, Junie Ducay, Jovanie Ducay, Harold Ducay, Marlouis Ducay, Hugh Ducay, Henrik de Leon, Jason Jensen, Mario Castillo, Irwin Lee Dupitas, Jesper Øraker, Nukakkuluk Kreutzmann

Elaisa Svendsen, a recently widowed overseas Filipina, needs Prozac for her insomnia, but the pharmacist refuses her request unless she can get a renewed prescription from her still-vacationing doctor. Mark Alvarez, a fellow Filipino whom she doesn’t know, overhears her predicament and offers her some of the tablets he just purchased. He asks for her number in case he might get into trouble for violating the law. When she gets home, she takes too many pills and dials her phone for help. She wakes up next morning to find Mark attending to her, saying she dialed his number and he had to break her window to be able to get to her. She tells him about her situation, including her problem with her rebellious son Karl: she identified his girlfriend using a rival girl’s name and the depressive woman, consumed with jealousy, wrangled with Karl and killed herself. Karl arrives during Mark’s later visit but runs away that night after quarreling with Elaisa, just as Mark’s driving away and almost hits him. The two of them have a conversation about their difficulty coping with Greenland culture and Karl admits that he prefers to stay in the Philippines, which he’d visited once with his parents. Mark tells him and, later, Elaisa that he thinks it’s a great idea, since she plans to set up a business in the home country. Right before boarding the plane for their trip, Karl discovers that he forgot his passport and has to retrieve it at home. Elaisa tells him to take a later flight but he tells her a blizzard began and flights have been canceled. Elaisa though encounters a few more surprises when she arrives in Pinas.

Greenland has assumed increasing significance since the relase of Nuuk, titled after the country’s capital city. Under the second presidency of Donald Trump, it has become an object of colonial contention between the continentally co-located US and European leaders responding in support of Denmark, its postcolonial administrator in a still-evolving conflicted relationship. More relevant to the Philippine condition are two matters: first, overseas Filipino workers constitute the biggest number of foreign residents in Greenland, poetically apposite for a population with a history of both European and American occupations; and second, another local film, also woman-directed and set in the margins of Western Europe, came out the same year by the same producer. Sigrid Andrea Bernardo’s UnTrue, set in the Republic of Georgia, would stand tall on its own terms and would therefore be an unfair basis for comparison. Nevertheless, certain similarities between it and Nuuk, as well as with other celebrated works from 2022 where the OFW presence looms later in the narratives, Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness and Lorcan Finnegan’s Nocebo, raise cautionary issues recognizable to any outsider who ventures to reside in cold countries: any excitement or romanticism will eventually be subsumed under issues of sustenance, if not survival. As in UnTrue, these get formulated in terms of heterosexual gender conflicts, linked to incidents in the home country. Nuuk distinguishes itself by turning on the tragedy of a pursuit of retribution that overrides any possibility of remorse on the part of the wrongdoer, although the more unexplored aspect of the narrative lies in the cause of conflict between the protagonists—their offsprings’ thorough immersion in a culture (signified by their fluency in the local language) that their parents are too alienated from handling, and therefore understandably helpless in intermediating. Nuuk justifies the treatment it presents in order to provide a handle for the audience in figuring out, along with the parents, what their children are undergoing. A forthcoming wave in the OFW saga would be works where second-generation Filipinos in foreign places narrate their own stories, on their own terms, already evident in a limited number of hyphenated works (mostly Fil-Am) but insufficiently global enough to acknowledge the presence of fellow nationals in every part of the world.

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1—Bayaw

English Title: Brothers in Law
Year of Release: 2009
Director & Screenwriter: Monti Parungao [as Monti Puno Parungao]
From a story by Danio Caw
Producer: Climax Films

Cast: Danilo Vergara, Janvier Daily, Andrew Miguel, Kaye Alipio, Tina Agregado, Daniel Magbanua Jr., Noel Cabuhat, Cleo Muparanum, Jun Austria, Danilo Arayde Jr., Benedict Flores, Manny Pahaub, Rizaldi “Saysay” Rodriguez, Rolly Fundales, Hazel, Dhang Macapagal, Monti Parungao, Don Marion Mariring, Sany Chua, Onin Lara, Johnrex Espinosa, Alvin Agoncillo, Jeff Almazan

Danilo Vergara is taken out of his jail cell to be interviewed by a police investigator. He narrated how he had difficulty making ends meet as an entry-level police officer, forced to engage in petty corruption but finally targeted in a buy-bust operation. His brother-in-law Rhenan Jacinto is a neighborhood layabout, betting on spider combats and earning playing money by selling himself to queer onlookers. Danilo’s wife gets increasingly antagonistic with her hubby and brother, since she has to act as sole earner from nightclub work. When Danilo gets fed up with her insults, the couple quarrel over his gun—which accidentally discharges and kills her. He and Rhenan flee to a distant town where they use up the money they brought to stay in a motel and snatch valuables from unsuspecting pedestrians. Eric, another sidewalk denizen, makes their acquaintance and offers the use of a small room where he squats. Whenever Danilo feels stressed and needs to find relief, he makes use of Rhenan, with Eric becoming an additional option. Eric though seeks to split the alliance between the fugitives, which Rhenan is too naïve to notice but which Danilo readily realizes.

2—The Escort

Year of Release: 2011
Director: Monti Parungao [as Monti Puno Parungao]
Screenwriter: Lex Bonife
From a story by Lance D. Collins
Producers: Lexuality Entertainment & Treemount Pictures

Cast: Miko Pasamonte, Danniel Derramyo, Jommel Idulan, Bryal Legaspi, Katleen Borbon, Franklin Jundak, Dennis Diwa, Lance D. Collins, Bien Rivera, Edward Sanggalang, Hart Thiel Pascual, Joseph Daoang, Alan Dimaano, Clifford Coloma, R.J. Naguit

Karlo barely earns enough to cover his rent and has to contend with prospective clients who renege on their appointments. At the bar where he makes himself available to johns on the prowl, Yuri introduces himself and confesses an attraction to him. Karlo takes him home for a night together, where Yuri also narrates how he has to live with a congenital ailment. Karlo agrees to a second meetup, a rarity for him, and has to blow off a lucrative date with an eager client. He discovers that his other sources have avoided him, pressured by the client angered by his turnaround. When Yuri also seems to have canceled him, he tries to determine his new pal’s whereabouts and encounters unwelcome news.

During the decidedly transitional period, roughly the first decade of the current millennium, when video production was low-end enough to enable mall screenings without threatening celluloid releases, the resulting niche was immediately occupied by soft-core gay-male material, inasmuch as it attracted the kind of audience who could use darkened spaces as an opportunity to cruise for prospective partners. Monti Parungao was one of the names associated with the trend, although his output was less prolific than most. Typical of the spell in Pinas “queer” cinema, the releases were short and traded on romantic tales intended for distracted consumption. Bayaw and The Escort complement each other for being two-hander quest narratives premised on the aspirations of underprivileged individuals. The fugitives in Bayaw define their interactions as situational occurrences—i.e., they make use of available warm bodies to satisfy their carnal needs, and only arrive at a realization of an emotional attachment ironically when imprisonment stops them from fleeing further. In The Escorts, an older hustler is surprised to realize how the love he dispenses is precisely what he had been depriving himself of, awakened to this reality by a younger practitioner who happens to admire him. The epiphany occurs early enough, so the story should conclude when it happens, were it not for the intrusion of complications induced by the characters’ destitution. Film critic Jojo Devera points out in his review how hope and despair collide in the characters’ crossroads, where they “coexist in a contemporary world of excess and absurdity normalized amidst the chaos of it all, while dismantling social boundaries” (“Everybody Hustles,” Sari-Saring Sineng Pinoy, November 2024). Parungao’s presentations deliver on the promise of significance and poignancy in a much-abused and unfairly derided subgenre.

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Greatest Performance [unfinished]

Year of Intended Release: 1989
Director & Screenwriter: Nora Aunor [as Guy]
Producer: NCV Films

Cast: Nora Aunor, Tirso Cruz III; Julio Diaz; Kristoffer Ian de Leon; Fe de los Reyes; Rez Cortez; Lara Melissa de Leon, Jet Montelibano, Butch Elizalde, German Moreno, Michael de Mesa, Tony Carreon, Miguel Tanciangco, Bella Flores, Nonoy Zuñiga, Bobby Taylo

Laura’s body is carried out of an auditorium where a young unnamed fan remembers wanders backstage to dwell on his memory of her. Laura’s life unfolds as her success as a singer enables a lifestyle of decadence and dissipation, which people in her social orbit exploit. She lives with Cholo, a violence-prone musician who turns to drugs out of frustration from his lack of success in managing her career. Her propensity to get stoned by herself results in a traumatic incident where a gang of men invite her to their table and drug her in order to gang-rape her; she attempts to gun them down afterward but gives up and intensifies her addictive behavior. After her attempt to stage a concert at a small-time fashion venue results in her band members brawling with unruly audience members, she pleads with an amorous producer. But when the latter attempts to sexually assault her, Cholo shows up and shoots him dead. With Cholo in jail and a sheriff confiscates her band’s musical instruments because of their inability to cover their bank loan, she binges out on liquor and drugs, with Briccio picking her up and taking her to a rehab clinic. Briccio convinces her to stage an anniversary concert as her way of announcing her intention to turn over a new leaf, but Cholo escapes from jail and hooks up with her, inciting Briccio’s psychotic condition.

Possibly the most irregular entry in this entire canon listing, Greatest Performance underwent the exceptional journey of embodying Nora Aunor’s ultimate auteurist aspiration: she was producer, director, writer, lead actor, and singer. Exasperated by the creative pressures weighing on the project, she encountered rejection from the Metro Manila Film Festival, which had always been receptive to her proposals in the past and even after this case. Having already spent around ₱3 million, a significant fortune that time, she decided to scrap the entire undertaking—easier to accomplish because of the celluloid nature of the footage. Film critic-archivist Jojo Devera, one of her confidants, managed to secure a low-end video transfer, which she also wished to destroy when she learned of its existence. With her demise in 2025, the film may now be counted as public-domain material, with the implicit acknowledgment that Aunor did not wish for its persistence.[1] As it is, the transferred copy still requires sound effects, some dubbing and trimming, editorial transitions, and closing credits (a clear signal not just of its provisional nature but also of Aunor’s well-known timidity is her director-writer credit, which uses her nickname Guy). Nevertheless it tracks a Todesroman (a coming-of-death story, as opposed to the coming-of-age Bildungsroman) in a performing artist’s life, using a fictionalization of experiences that she acknowledged as part of her personal history in a series of interviews that she granted upon her return in 2011 from her extended US sabbatical. In fact her store of first-person narratives was capable of yielding far more material, but the undeniable intertext that GP could serve as corrective was an earlier MMFF project that purported to depict the life of a successful singer, but which proceeded from the preposterously hoary, not to mention sexist, perspective that a female pop-culture figure’s success is less worthy than the life of a male doctoral candidate. GP does not reject the moralistic premise, a decision that potentially weakens its ideological position, but it does show an insider’s intimate familiarity with the extremes and dangers that a dissipated star’s life could sink to, and configures the men in the central character’s life as destructive forces. Moreover, it furnishes the singular element that Aunor insisted on acknowledging, even toward the end of her existence: the support of her fans. In GP only one admirer (played by her biological child) interacts with the singer’s life, but the fan’s loyalty, helplessness, and insistence on being present during her career peaks speaks volumes about the high regard Aunor placed on her followers. GP might yet reemerge as a closer-to-finalized sample, especially with forthcoming developments in artifical-intelligence solutions, but even in its present damaged condition, its embodiment of the Noranian predicament will prove rewarding to any appreciator of Philippine film stardom. Almost needless to add, astute directorial judgments are literally evident in her setups and cutting points, with even the most minor performers carefully coached for the roles they assume. The dialogues are borderline-hackneyed, but then nearly her entire performance is either reactive or silent—an acknowledgment of the strength that her directors admired: hard to believe, considering Aunor’s track record, but the film’s “greatest performance” title is fully earned. If the MMFF authorities had an inkling of the historical document that they so casually dismissed, they would have realized that all the later accolades they granted Aunor could never compensate for the near-loss suffered by GP.

Note

[1] For a special issue of Kritika Kultura devoted to Philippine film stardom, for which I was preparing an article on Nora Aunor, I learned about the existence of Jojo Devera’s video copy of Greatest Performance and asked permission from Aunor, via Ricky Lee, to conduct a close reading of the material, with the assurance that the resultant study would be strictly academic; she granted her permission. (The KK article is titled “Firmament Occupation: The Philippine Star System” and appeared in the August 2015 issue, pages 248–84, with DOI:10.13185/1656-152×1653.) A few years later, Devera organized an informal group comprising critics and tech experts to request, via video conferencing, that she allow the completion of the film, even without her participation. Here she drew the line and made it clear that as far as she was concerned, she was over the project and that she did not wish any further work to be done on it. With Aunor’s death in March 2025, Devera has been overlooking possibilities for readying GP for public consumption, with the support of Adolfo Alix Jr., who directed her last few film projects.

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Baboy Halas: Wailings in the Forest

English Translation of Primary Title: Wild Boar
Language: Matigsalug
Year of Release: 2016
Director: Bagane Fiola
Screenwriters: Bagane Fiola, Bem Di Lera, Janna Moya
From a story by Bagane Fiola
Producers: QCinema International Film Festival, Origane Films, CoolLab Studios

Cast: Omeles Laglagan, Ailyn Laglagan, Vangelyn Panihao, Jhea Mae Laglagan, Danilo Casig, Sadam Dagsil, Rolly Panihao, Henyo Panihao, Ernesto Capal, Daniel Adang, Daniel Naran, Elvie Magwana, Imelda Lascuña, Jasmen Flores, Jessa Jaime, Lita Lantong, Merlie Lantong, Sheryl Arendain, Daniel Dagsil, Araiz Panihao, April Laglagan, Beah Maguana, Emily Dagsil, Felepe Lantong, Felix Laglagan, Janeth Lantong, John Philip Laglagan, Julius Laglagan, Lita Casig, Lolita Lantong, Mad Laglagan, Marcelino Singkianon, Mercy Laglagan, Nena Singkianon, Nenita Gordo, Nueme Panihao, Pepe Laglagan, Renato Lumin, Ruben Lantong, Taisan Panihao

[Note: spoilers provided] Despite the supplication of his datu (tribal chieftain) to their god Manama, Mampog has difficulty catching a wild boar, which his family relies on for their supply of meat. Du, another tribe member, convinces a woman from another tribe to live with him, in defiance of her commitment to another man. Her angered husband attacks Du and succeeds in killing him, resulting in a pangayaw or tribal war. In order to wage for peace, the man who killed Du agrees to provide Du’s tribespeople with five horses, although he pleads that two pieces of metal treasures be substituted for the fifth. The aggrieved tribe’s datu accepts the offer and the tribe members celebrate their husay or restoration of order. Meanwhile, Mampog takes leave of his two wives in order to hunt but, after performing a ritual in a cave, finds instead a fantastically white-colored wild sow. He brings it home but refuses to slaughter it. At night, he sees the sow in the form of a white diwata or nymph and follows it through the forest, then loses track of it. He kills a group of young drinkers and leaps into the river by a waterfall; when he surfaces, he finds several wailing nymphs surrounding him. Next day, one of his wives searches for him, bringing her hunting weapon. She asks the drinkers where he went and they answer. When she nears the falls, she finds a black boar and aims her arrow at it.

In ethnographic cinema, feature films on indigenous societies made by well-intentioned practitioners are always in danger of succumbing to the artist’s bias, with the subjects subjugated to the filmmaker’s vision. One such approach intended to minimize this problem, Jean Rouch’s cinéma vérité, proved useful enough to be appropriated as one of the new devices in the toolbox of the French New Wave. An even more subject-responsive method, described as the “filmmaker-initiated mode of intercultural filmmaking” by Katrina Ross A. Tan in her article titled “Lumad Image-Making in Baboy Halas (2016) through Intercultural Filmmaking” (published in Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance), suffuses the entrancing execution of Baboy Halas. As such, the film also requires more advanced prep than usual—one reason why its synopsis here is extensive, to the point of including plot twists, though any possible matriarchal influence is no longer apparent. Bagane Fiola’s purpose is entirely laudable: to create a work whose primary audience would be the Matigsalug audience, witnessing themselves and hearing their language in film for the first time. As such, the film-viewing experience would place the rest of the global audience in a quandary, since the film eschews the use of a narrator and, admittedly admirably, deploys sophisticated storytelling devices. The film’s several incidents, premised on the parallel narratives of two tribesmen, are filled with nuances, implications, and interrelations, drawn from Fiola’s constant consultation with the datu and other members of the tribe, and explicated satisfactorily in Tan’s article. The rewards of responsible readiness provide extra benefits for the outside appreciator, as befits the best samples of ethnofiction: Who hasn’t wondered, for example, whether overfamiliar scenes of seduction, elopement, and bloody revenge in Westernized movies can incite the same level of suspense alongside amusement when played out by indigenous actors (who’ll incidentally always stand out by their physical beauty and graceful movements in lush forests, where the sounds of nature provide a unique kind of accompaniment)? Will the enchantment of forces that refuse to conform to our rational understanding prove as terrifying to these people as they undoubtedly would to us? The answers lie in securing a copy of Baboy Halas and stepping into a world that even an ordinary Philippine audience would find enthralling.

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Ang Huling Cha-Cha ni Anita (Anita’s Last Cha-Cha)

Alternate Title: Ang Huling Cha-Cha ni Anita
Year of Release: 2013
Director & Screenwriter: Sigrid Andrea Bernardo [as Sigrid Andrea P. Bernardo]
Producers: Ekweytormc, Pixeleyes Multimedia, Quiapost Productions

Cast: Angel Aquino, Therese Malvar, Jay Bordon, Lenlen Frial, Solomon Mark de Guzman, Marcus Madrigal, Lui Manansala, Gigi Columna, Star Orjaliza, Sarah Pagcaliwagan, Rhea Medina, Leo Salazar, Jim Bergado, Sang Pascual, Fudge de Leon, Marjorie Lorico, Joel Ian Pagcaliwagan, Yano Escueta

As a military officer, Anita makes sure her cadets observe strict discipline, but when one of them admits that she’s distracted because she fell for an enlisted man, Anita smiles inwardly and recalls the time when she was still a child hanging out with her chums Carmen and Goying. The two playact the rituals of courtship and flirtation expected of normal children, but Anita’s attention is focused on a new arrival, the grownup Pilar. All the townspeople ostracize Pilar and she accepts their judgment, but Anita eventually realizes that this stemmed from an earlier time when Pilar was not just an abortionist but also a homewrecker. Anita realizes that her early stirrings of desire are for Pilar, and the latter similarly welcomes her as another outcast because of her masculine comportment and choice of clothes. When the past that Pilar left behind catches up with her, Anita realizes that Pilar will have no one else to look after her, just as Pilar also finds ways to nurture Anita in her own way. The looming feast-day celebration of Santa Clara imposes religion-induced conservative values on the townsfolk but also, inasmuch as their icon is famed for fertility, an awareness of the necessity for sexual fulfillment.

Same-sex desire had been around in Philippine cinema since the sexual-libertarian period of the early 1970s (actually 1969, with the first male kiss in Armando Garces’s Eric). It took lesbianism, however, over a decade, in the 1990s, before non-negative imaging could begin. The emergence of low-budget digital production in the present millennium also once more neglected the women’s option, since queer male audiences could use soft-core film presentations as an opportunity for cruising in film theaters, a too-risky activity for women. Hence the serendipitous emergence of Ang Huling Cha-Cha ni Anita was more than just an instance of “better late than never”—which, in the wiser formulation of Geoffrey Chaucer, was originally expressed as “better than never is late”: local so-called queer films, replicating premillennial US practice, were essentially gay-male rom-com stories with lots of skin, with departures from middle-class romances comprising the exceptions that proved the rule. AHCCA triumphed partly by proffering some of the charms that inhered in Aureus Solito’s Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, 2005), with its cross-gender-identified innocent awakening to the insurmountable summons of same-sex attraction. True to her 21st-century habitation, Anita, like Maxie before her, finds nothing anomalous about her baby-butch crush on a near-perfect specimen who just arrived in her community, although their immediate family members, for different reasons, find cause for worry in their respective objects of desire. AHCCA proceeds from a more conservative context because of its religiously inflected rural setting, but then Anita and her beau ideal manage to spend intimate though chaste moments together, a near-impossible situation in Maxie’s slum residence. The framing device, where Anita’s childhood is recollected by her older self, is dispensable for the most part, and fortunately the storytelling aptly makes light use of it, to set the mood of humor in the beginning and nostalgia in the end.

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Lorna

Additional Language: Hiligaynon
Year of Release: 2014
Director & Screenwriter: Sigrid Andrea Bernardo [as Sigrid Andrea P. Bernardo]
Producer: Creative Programs

Cast: Shamaine Buencamino, Maria Isabel Lopez, Raquel Villavicencio, Lav Diaz, Felix Roco, Jim Paredes, Juan Rodrigo, Angel Aquino, Miguel Faustmann, Karl Medina, Alex Medina, Lui Manansala, Mackie Galvez, Lem Lorca, Lilit Reyes, Mao Mao, Nesta, Chinky V. Tan, Jona Ballaran, Sarah Pagcaliwagan, Ethel Fernandez, Lexter Capilia, Nicole Benzon, Moisel Apon, Rinald Derosario, Ronald Oliveros, Mayumi Gonzales

Single mother Lorna hangs out and contrasts with her high-school batchmates Miriam and Elvie. While all three were badly treated by their spouses, Miriam uses her hubby’s money to splurge on herself and treat her friends, while Elvie devotes her time and resources to the welfare of her descendants. Lorna admits that her ex-partner never reciprocated the love she had for him, and when she meets the younger woman he decided to marry, she treats her with civility. Their son Ardie, a band player, also deals with a turbulent love life; but while preparing for a reunion on the occasion of Miriam’s birthday, the friends discover that their campus heartthrob, a musician now named Rocky, is Ardie’s social-network acquaintance. Lorna and Rocky almost became a number way back when. Since she was really ghosted by a long-distance prospect, Lorna finds herself vulnerable to Rocky’s courtship. The two of them talk about their past apart from each other and discover that they have more in common now than they used to as HS classmates.

Sigrid Andrea Bernardo announced that her next major film, after Ang Huling Cha-Cha ni Anita (Anita’s Last Cha-Cha, 2013), was going to be a tribute to her mother, although her first choice for the title role, Nora Aunor, was unavailable when production began. One can see how Aunor could have introduced elements that would have elevated Lorna beyond the romantic comedies that she had mastered for most of her film career, but Bernardo had enough perspicacity to recognize where theater veteran Shamaine Buencamino could upgrade the viewing experience in her own way. She situates a teen-movie staple, a scene where female friends turn giggly over the presence of an ideal male catch, after the narrative midpoint, and makes us instantly realize how the accumulation of years makes the experience far more rewarding because of how the participants earned the right to indulge in silly pleasures. In line with her lead actor’s career specialization, she devices theatrical situations to highlight the turning points at this period in Lorna’s story, and not surprisingly Buencamino holds court in these scenes without any perceptive exertion. Bernardo by this point was already staking her claim as chronicler of the overlooked and/or downgraded members in contemporary Philippine womanhood, but part of the challenge in evaluating her auteuristic output is in recognizing how she appropriates stylistic approaches that serve the purpose of making her material palatable to mass viewers.

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UnTrue

Year of Release: 2019
Director & Screenwriter: Sigrid Andrea Bernardo [as Sigrid Andrea P. Bernardo]
Producers: Viva Films & The IdeaFirst Co.

Cast: Cristine Reyes, Xian Lim, Rhen Escaño, Peewee O’Hara, George Lasha, Tengiz Javakhidze, Lera Chikvaidze, Giorgi Makharadze, Luminita Gamboa, Anita Haines, Pouna Khalili, Par Maghzi, Andy Knots, Magkee Khiabani, Edison Maghzi, Sophiko Khachidze, Misho Maisuradze, Ramin Ghonghadze, Shota Ghonghadze, Beso Kirikashvili, Irakli Uchaneish, Giorgi Khelashvili, Givi Poti Abesadze, Givi Bauradze, Nodar Kartsivadze, Giorgi Kartsivadze, Karlo Alavidze

A badly battered Mara tells a Georgian police officer that her husband is missing. Asked to tell her story, she narrates how, on his way to meet his Georgian vineyard business partner at the latter’s restaurant, Joachim bumped into her and one of his bottles fell and broke. As it turns out, Mara was the new waitress and Joachim befriended her as a fellow compatriot. Their relationship moved quickly, seemingly borne along by Joachim’s impulsive decisions—to move to an isolated residence, for example, and get married. He also had outbursts of rage over minor matters, and swerved while driving because he thought he’d run over a girl. After several attempts by Mara to get him to see a psychiatrist, Joachim presents his version of events to the specialist, going over the same incidents that Mara narrated but this time on the premise that Mara dominated their relationship. The couple’s conflicted relationship is rooted in incidents in their home country, when Joachim was a schoolteacher who conducted an ill-advised affair with one of his students, which resulted in a social-media sex scandal.

Sigrid Andrea Bernardo’s development as filmmaker is apparently premised on a nonnegotiable premise shared by a few though fortunately increasing number of millennium-era directors: that only those regarded as society’s Others deserve to be positioned front and center in her stories. From that point onward, she set for herself challenges that departed further from personal (and even geographic) experience, although it would be safer for us to take the admonition of the Greek playwright’s character, that nothing human is alien to any other human. UnTrue stands out not just in her body of work or even among Philippine women filmmakers, but as a global text that closely inspects the dynamics of trauma, pain, and the pleasure that has the potential to accompany exceptional cases of our experience of these sensations. Bernardo draws from the privilege exercised by Pinay filmmakers, where women’s suffering can be depicted with the certainty that they would be aware of its origins and dimensions, and that the director would never let go of her empathy for the sufferer. Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s Milagros (1997) would be the ne plus ultra in this realm of discourse, but Bernardo’s achievement lies in stepping away from these concerns and revealing, in progressively startling ways, the sadistic pleasure that men might be able to derive and, as payback, the cruelty that women are capable of inflicting. The revelation is subtle and ironic, since in any realistic instance of mutual combat, human females would inevitably physically lose to males. Yet UnTrue requires an impartial foreign system to rescue (as it were) the defeated male; the selection of the Republic of Georgia as figurative battleground resonates with the Philippines’s labor-export strategies and blends near-perfectly with the detrital beauty that typifies Eastern European film aesthetics, but it also raises parallel issues in both countries’ predicaments—i.e., lying adjacent to hostile neighbors, approaching developed status with difficulty, and observing Christian practice (with Georgia fortunately aligned with its own Orthodox church rather than the Vatican State). In its refusal to declare any definitive winner between its flawed though well-matched protagonists, UnTrue looks forward to more ambitious material from a still-young but already unstoppable talent.

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After the triumphant global release of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), two European filmmakers followed suit, completing projects located in Manila. These had the distinction of being set around the time of the early 1980s Manila International Film Festival, when the Marcos dictatorship encouraged global personalities to highlight the country in every way they could. One of the titles, Cinq et la peau (Five and the Skin, 1982), by Cannes Film Festival talent scout Pierre Rissient, was reissued on video by Carlotta Films, the same outfit that made the Second Golden Age Euro releases of Lino Brocka and Mike de Leon available once more.

11011One other title from that period has been near-impossible to access: Jag Rodnar (I Am Blushing), Vilgot Sjöman’s typically semi-autobiographical feature whose title was meant to recall the succès de scandale of his soft-core I Am Curious films, subordinately titled Yellow (1967) and Blue (1968), as well as one of his better-received subsequent releases, Blushing Charlie (Lyckliga skitar, 1970). I remember watching rather unexceptional excerpts of Jag Rodnar from some collectors at the time of its release, although unlike Cinq et la peau, it was never exhibited in Pinas theaters.

11011I inquired with the Swedish Film Archives, whose representative said that the only available copy is in their national library; unfortunately the latter’s policy allowed researchers to watch their film collections only in their premises or via interlibrary loans with selected institutes in Scandinavia. Since my Canon Decampment writing project was self-funded, the next best thing would be to source a copy of Jag Rodnar’s storyline, the more detailed the better. The English-language interface of the archive listed the film but had no entry for story; fortunately the librarian I corresponded with provided a link for the film’s Swedish-language plotline. I’m reprinting it in full below, with minor edits and conflation of several isolated sentences into paragraphs. It’s a better-developed narrative arc than Cinq et la peau’s, but still partakes of the same narcissistic self-rationalization—something that future scholars of the period might be interested in inspecting.

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The storyline of I Am Blushing (1981), written by Vilgot Sjöman:

A voiceover tells us that the film is dedicated to “Ford Francis Coppola” in memory of his expedition to the Philippines, where he created his masterpiece Apocalypse Now with Marlon Brando. Then an airplane interior is shown. And here is my doppelgänger Gunnar Sjöman, the announcer continues. He has had the same idea as Coppola—to draw inspiration from a novel by Joseph Conrad.

11011The novel is Victory (1915), and the main roles will be played by Max von Sydow and Siv Andersson. Gunnar Sjöman arrives in Manila, where he is reached by a phone call from Max von Sydow in the office of producer Domingo de Jesus. But the call is cut off before clarity is reached about Max von Sydow’s involvement.

11011The Swedish Film Institute pays 50 percent of the production costs, Gunnar says. The producer’s wife suggests [then-top tennis player] Björn Borg for the lead role. Then success is a given. A sailor searches for environments. He is well received in a remote village. But he is dissatisfied. The savages are too civilized. At a path he sees a sign with the text “Coppola was here.”

11011While Gunnar vainly seeks contact with Max von Sydow, the producer advocates hiring an international superstar for the lead role. Increasingly desperate, Gunnar drifts around town. At a bar, he begins to talk about his film plans with the American owner, Pete Cooper—who claims to have participated in Coppola’s filming as a military adviser and as Marlon Brando’s stuntman. Cooper runs a diversified business. He provides a room and a prostitute, and Gunnar stays for several days.

11011Siv Andersson arrives in Manila earlier than agreed. She tries to secretly contact the family of a political prisoner, but to no avail. Instead, she meets a lawyer, Jose Diokno, who tells her that the prisoner, Emanuel,[1] has been transferred to another prison and is no longer being tortured. The reunion between Gunnar and Siv is happy. They then talk about how many years earlier they broke up from their private relationship. It happened without them sorting out their intertwined emotional threads. What once was is highlighted with a glimpse from the film Carnival (1961).[2]

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11011The streets are clogged with a religious procession. Gunnar and Siv leave a stalled taxi and end up meeting a healer who cures through the laying on of hands and performs operations with his bare hands. Blood flows.[3] Cries for healing and miracles are heard in Swedish. A short segment is shown from the film Simon the Sinner (1955).[4]

11011Actually, it was pretty crappy directing, Gunnar complains to Siv after the healer’s performance. Gunnar says he remembers the plot from his own film Simon 25 years ago. At the hotel, Siv receives a message that the prisoner Emanuel has escaped. Later, she learns that he is hiding in the mountains.

11011Gunnar, Siv and the producer are reconnoitering in the wild. They travel on rivers in long canoes. They pass a building on the shore, where a bald-headed man in a monk’s robe shouts: Ford Francis Coppola, where are you? It’s me, the Horror![5] “But I recognize him,” says Siv. “It’s Vilgot!” She shouts and waves, and he waves back. “What is he doing in this movie?” Gunnar wonders. Victory! Vilgot shouts with a clenched fist.

11011During a carnival-like party, the producer tells Gunnar that neither Max von Sydow nor Siv are in the film anymore. CBS has demanded an American TV star, and he in turn has demanded the female lead role for his wife. Gunnar and Siv seek refuge from the partying crowds. In a simple hotel room, they undress and kiss each other.

11011They have driven into deserted areas when they get into an argument. She is risking the entire film project through her contacts with certain elements, he says. She says that an Amnesty International group in Stockholm has simply asked her to seek justice for a political prisoner. Now the prisoner has escaped and is therefore no longer an Amnesty case. But she knows where to find him, and she is not out on political business. She just wants to help a fellow human being.

11011They get separated on the rough road. She is able to continue on a bus. His engine stalls after driving for a while. She is confronted with the news that her prisoner is dead. He has left behind a poem titled “Prayer,” in which he says he blushes at the injustices that God inflicts on poor people. Siv and Gunnar are reunited outside a telegraph station in a small town. They hug each other. Sorry, she says. He says he’s the one who should ask for forgiveness and shows a telegram he just received from the producer: “SUPERSTAR AND WIFE HAVE ARRIVED. RETURN IMMEDIATELY TO MANILA.”

11011Gunnar says he has to survive. It doesn’t have to be that bad to be an American TV star. Gunnar arrives at a swimming pool, where he is warmly greeted by the star—Larry Hagman—who introduces a new wife. Nearby, the bald Vilgot looks up. Siv introduces herself. Gunnar introduces her—after which she says goodbye to everyone.

11011Larry speaks confidentially to Gunnar. He hasn’t read the script yet, but the female lead role should probably be rewritten. It’s probably a bit too big for his wife to handle. A speech bubble rises from Gunnar’s mouth with the text “I blush.”

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Notes

Many thanks to archivist Sam Lane and librarian Katarina Sandblom-Laamanen for help in tracking down Jag rodnar.

[1] Possibly a reference to Emmanuel Lacaba (1948–76), an activist poet who was killed by soldiers while on assignment with the New People’s Army in Davao del Norte. He occasionally spelled his nickname “Eman” (see Jose F. Lacaba, “Emmanuel F. Lacaba,” Martial Law Files: A History of Resistance, posted October 1, 2012, originally published in 1985).

[2] Karneval (1961), directed by Lennart Olsson and produced by Svensk Filmindustri, featured Bibi Andersson, Gerd Bibi Andersson, and Gunnar Hellström.

[3] Spalding Gray, in the monologue filmed by Steven Soderbergh, titled Gray’s Anatomy (1996), narrates how he traveled to Pinas to seek faith healers to cure an eye ailment. The punchline was that for all the money he spent, his condition did not improve.

[4] Simon syndaren, directed by Gunnar Hellström and produced by Metronome Studios, starred Hellström, Ann-Marie Gyllenspetz, and Stig Järrel.

[5] Francis Ford Coppola’s name was jumbled possibly to avoid the complications of making a direct reference without his permission. “The horror” was the final line of dialogue uttered by Colonel Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando. The description of a bald-headed man in a monk’s robe approximated Brando’s appearance in the film, which was Coppola’s way of downplaying Brando’s unexpected weight gain.

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Cry of Battle

Alternate Titles: Officers and Men; Grido di battaglia
Language: English
Additional Language: Filipino
Year of Release: 1963
Director: Irving Lerner
Screenwriter: Bernard Gordon
(From the 1951 novel Fortress in the Rice by Benjamin Appel)
Producers: Allied Artists Pictures Corp & Petramonte Productions

Cast: Van Heflin, Rita Moreno, James MacArthur, Leopoldo Salcedo, Sidney Clute, Marilou Muñoz, Oscar Roncal, Liza Moreno, Michael Parsons, Claude Wilson, Vic Silayan, Oscar Keesee, Hal Bowie, Francisco Cruz

David MacVey, the son of a shipping magnate, escapes in his car from his family plantation when bandits attack and kill his caretakers. He’s assisted by Manuel Careo, an anti-Japanese guerrilla, and brought to a peasant home where the owner’s daughter teaches him some Tagalog words. Joe Trent arrives and mistakes David for his same-named father, who has ongoing trade relations with the Japanese. Joe decides to take David under his wing, but while David wanders outdoors, Joe gets drunk early in the day and rapes the owner’s daughter. David is angered but has to flee with Joe when the daughter keeps screaming even at him. They make the acquaintance of another guerrilla group led by Atong and befriend Sisa on their way to meet Colonel Ryker, whom Careo endorsed for army protection. Ryker sends them on a mission with a guide, but the latter gets killed by the Japanese they were planning to ambush. Joe and Sisa attempt to negotiate for replenishments from town elders, but when they’re told that their stocks are reserved for Careo, Joe ambushes them and takes what they have by force. After Joe kills Atong, Sisa aligns with Joe although she also spends a night with David. Careo returns to the town where they’re resting and presents the Americans with a list of Joe’s transgressions. When David refuses to testify, Careo places both of them under house arrest.

One of the most remarkable overseas productions ever made in the country, Cry of Battle’s reputation has been surpassed by its source novel, also a peak achievement in antiwar and anticolonial fiction. Director Irving Lerner is better remembered for The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969), his unsatisfactory adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s play on the Spanish conquistadors’ 16th-century incursion into the territory now called Peru and their incredibly barbaric betrayal of the Inca emperor in order to amass the kingdom’s entire store of gold. A victim of Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist blacklisting, Lerner may have engaged in pro-Soviet espionage and worked for a producer, Joe Steinberg, who raised funds via his brother Harry (who Anglicized his family name to Stonehill—and became notorious for allegedly paying off previous, present, and forthcoming Philippine presidents in the course of building his business empire). All these complications may have been part and parcel of the Cold War situation, which might also account for some of the film’s departures from the novel it was based on.[1] Nevertheless it’s an impressive, unfairly forgotten achievement, far superior to TRHS and unsparing in its delineation of American sexism, juvenility, and cupidity, factors unbecoming of imperialist aspirants (not that imperialism can ever be justified) and back on flagrant contemporary display in its corridors of power. CoB’s literary origin precludes the staging of extensive combat scenes, which is all for the better for material that requires careful exposition of conditions that would intensify further, after the narrative’s resolution, when the unstable alliance between American forces and Filipino guerrillas would result in a peasant-based war on land reform that has persisted to the present. The contention between old-line lawlessness mentoring yet being resisted by youthful-though-opportunistic idealism is all-too-neatly eroticized in the lead American characters’ competition for the affection of a Filipina guerrilla fighter (poignantly rendered by Rita Moreno), with the two sides arriving at some form of accord by admitting that they both need each other amid their irresolvable mutual hatred. With its paradisiacal backdrop, Pinas has proved irresistible to talents from Hollywood  and elsewhere looking to present war stories, including conflicts that actually took place in the country. CoB, with its intelligent grasp of global politics and unstinting proclivity for the interests of the neglected, deserves to be upheld as the entry to beat.

Note

[1] The acknowledged exegesis on the novel is E. San Juan Jr.’s “Benjamin Appel’s Fortress in the Rice: Forging the Radical Conscience of the Empire,” in Lineages of the Literary Left: Essays in Honor of Alan M. Wald, edited by Howard Brick, Robbie Lieberman, and Paula Rabinowitz (Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2015), pp. 227–244. The Harry Stonehill story was recollected after his death in Amando Doronila’s four-part series in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, all uploaded on the periodical’s website: “Stonehill and Pork: Prelude to Farce?” (September 9, 2013); “The Inside Story of the Raids on Stonehill Firms” (September 10, 2013); “The Curse of Stonehill’s ‘Blue Book’” (September 12, 2013); and “[Jose W.] Diokno Sacked, Key Witness Murdered” (September 20, 2013).

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Beloy Montemayor Jr.: Tirador ng Cebu

English Translation of Subordinate Title: Hitman of Cebu
Year of Release: 1993
Director: Junn P. Cabreira
Screenwriters: Chito B. Tapawan & Junn P. Cabreira
(From research conducted by Chito B. Tapawan & Junn P. Cabreira)
Producer: OctoArts Films

Cast: Jeric Raval, Patrick dela Rosa, Monica Herrera, Janet Arnaiz, Tirso Cruz III, Charito Solis, Vic Vargas, Nikka Abaya, Edgar Mande, Roldan Aquino, Benedict Aquino, Pocholo Montes, Dexter Doria, Howard Zaleta, Lindsay Custodio, Jean Zaleta, Ernie Reyes, Liza Garcia, Robert Miller, Tony Bagyo, Bomber Moran, Ronnel Victor, Vic Belaro, Jim Rosales, Eddie Tuazon, Jing Castaneda, Rene Pascual, Pol Tantay, Telly Babasa, Romy Blanco, Danny Labra, Miko Manzon, Edward Salvador, Harris Mantezo, Johnny Ramirez, Julito Nunez, Emil Estrada, Bella Flores

Beloy, Roy for short, started his life of crime at 16, his best friend Andy always standing by him and his mother constantly admonishing him to avoid trouble. Toughies seek him out, however, to find whether he can fight as well as his late father. After getting roughed up, he embarks on a workout routine and succeeds in overcoming the guys who bully him, but he winds up in prison as a result. After further scoring against jailhouse thugs, he contrives an escape plan by cross-dressing and asking his girlfriend to help; the latter’s family refuses to accept a hooligan in their circle, so she elopes with Roy and travels with him and Andy to Manila. Lt. Delgado, a crooked police officer, recruits Roy and Andy for his kidnapping-for-ransom racket. When they realize that Delgado plans to kill off his latest victim once he gets the ransom money, they free her and incur Delgado’s ire.

A sure indicator of a genre’s supremacy is when a number of stars can flourish in secondary capacity—headliners of low-budget quickie projects, rather than of the rarer prestige productions. As the French nouvelle vague critics were careful to impart, more innovations could be found in this mode of practice, with the artists’ freedom from producers’ impositions providing opportunities for fortuitous approaches meant to compensate for industrial limitations. As one of the more successful second-string personages during the heyday of Pinoy aksyon, Jeric Raval unsurprisingly commanded his own share of avid fandom, commemorated in Keith Deligero’s Iskalawags (2013), a semi-autobiographical account of growing up in a rural milieu in the Visayas, where Raval himself makes a reflexive appearance as an embodiment of Manila-based stardom. Beloy Montemayor Jr. might serve as satisfactory representation of Raval’s dapper yet congenial projection, with a former softcore star, Patrick dela Rosa, serving as comic sidekick. The material, like Raval’s persona, dwells on certain characters and settings only long enough to draw useful impressions from them, then finds any available excuse to quickly move on. In this way, BMJ is able to cover far more personalities and locations than the typical action outing, and manages to overlay loose ends and unanswered questions (not to mention budgetary restrictions) via the frenzy of its core characters’ concerns and movements. Director Junn P. Cabreira immersed in a variety of genre specializations, all of them with the same cost-effective orientation, so BMJ can be regarded as a culmination of his accumulation of skills in purveying fast-paced and well-modulated amusements for anyone willing to surrender to genre enchantments.

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The Golden Holiday

Language: Korean
Additional Languages: Filipino, English
Alternate Title: Gukjesusa (literally International Investigation)
Year of Release: 2020
Director & Screenwriter: Kim Bong-han
Producer: Yeonghwa-sa Jangchun

Cast: Kwak Do-won, Kim Dae-myung, Kim Hee-won, Kim Sang-ho, Nico Gomez, Fredie Abao, Mon Confiado, Shin Dong-mi, Joshua Eliason, Lee Han-seo, Jo Jae-yoon, Marnie Lapus, Hwang Moo-young, Cindy Miranda, Neil Ryan Sese, Shin Seung-hwan, Christian Villete, Fredie Abao, Loren Burgos, Kim Chang-ok, Yu Jinoo, Lee Chanyu, Kang Chaemin, Lee Kyuyeong, Kim Chaejun, Lee Sojin, Lee Yuri, Park Changhee, Rafael Robles, Candy Arcangel, Taos Obach, Cherish Maningat, Marnie Lapuz

Hong Byeong-soo’s house will be foreclosed by the bank if he’s unable to raise funds soon. He explains, to no avail, that his childhood friend, Kim Yongbae, absconded with the extra income he was hoping to raise and fled to the Philippines. His wife and daughter petition him to bring them to Pinas for his tenth wedding anniversary, since they’d never taken a foreign trip in their lives. He can barely afford the expenses on his salary as a rural detective in Daecheon City, so his colleagues chip in and raise some money for him to spend. While searching for Yongbae, he gets framed for murder by corrupt police officers and solicits the help of his Korean tourist guide, Mancheol. He then finds out that Yongbae’s in prison and confronts his friend there. Yongbae offers him a share of the legendary Yamashita gold, a collection of treasures hoarded by the eponymous World War II Japanese general who was executed for war crimes, with the location of the trove remaining a mystery that he (Yongbae) managed to place.

The Golden Holiday is all that any national cinema can reasonably expect from the Korean pop-culture industry at the peak of its prowess. A number of Pinas-shot K-productions have come out during the millennium, ranging from the furthest “indie” extreme (made by a protégé of the late Kim Ki-duk and better left to oblivion) to several gangster stories that raise issues of identity and difference; Koreans also hold the global record of having the most number of overseas kabayans acknowledged in varying degrees in their film material.[1] But like in the case of Hong Kong, specifically Alan Chui Chung-San and Yuen Bun’s Mabangis na Lungsod (Ferocious City, 1995), it took a tongue-in-cheek approach to devise the most effective entry, in the face of the expected hemming and hawing on the part of less-informed global appreciators. The use of Yamashita’s gold as MacGuffin in resolving the differences between childhood friends who grow up to find themselves on opposite sides of the law, turns out to have a larger significance in suggesting a critique of the various forays by shady foreign and local forces on the Philippine treasury. The Korean characters also keep reminding one another of their presence in a foreign country, in which corporate and government (including police) services are much less responsive to less-privileged individuals, even if they come from developed territories: a sharply observed series of Korea-set events, where the lead character’s friends raise an amount that would be able to cover the cost of a vacation in the Philippines, lands a real-world cognitive blow when we realize that it would barely last the family a day or two of sightseeing in Seoul. A final populist gesture pops up when a streetsmart Manila-based Korean recruits a pair of assistants, whom he accurately terms tambays (a Tagalized clipping of “standbys”)—layabouts with expertise in violence, or lumpenproles in short. The total takeaway is something that now mostly gone Pinas experts could have imparted: that pop-culture pleasure need not preclude political significance, a lesson that practitioners and evaluators of all stripes need to constantly relearn.

Note

[1] One potential for added insight was debunked, to my relief: the production company’s name resembles that of the Chinese Changchun studio (which it actually credited in Wikipedia), active since the 1940s, whose record is consistent in covering foreign-set material, with generally a pro-China stance. I’d feared that since The Golden Holiday was created and released during the presidency of Rodrigo Roa Duterte, known for favoring China in defiance of US policy, but also at the expense of Philippine territorial and economic interests, then its producer may have been attempting to replicate the Koreans’ success in deploying soft power. As it turns out, the actual production company of TGH “doesn’t have an official English name online (yet) … but has no connection to the Chinese film company” (from a Facebook Messenger note sent December 8, 2025, by Son Boemshik, a former student researcher of mine). The company’s Korean name, used in the credit listing here, is owned by the director and has only three other productions as of this time. (I am grateful to Mr. Son as well as to Yu Taeyun, a former graduate advisee, for uncovering these vital details, and to Jerrick Josue David for providing me with access to the film.)

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Amigo

English Translation: Friend
Additional Languages: Cantonese, Spanish
Year of Release: 2010
Director & Screenwriter: John Sayles
Based on research used in John Sayles’s novel A Moment in the Sun (Mc Sweeney’s Books, 2011); Tagalog translations by Jose F. Lacaba
Producers: Anarchist’s Convention Films & Pinoy Pictures

Cast: Arthur Acuña, Irma Adlawan, John Arcilla, Merlin Bonning, Hoffman Cheng, Reymart Colestines, Ermie Concepcion, Chris Cooper, Dane DeHaan, Garret Dillahunt, Miguel Faustmann, Brian Lee Franklin, Joe Gruta, J.P. Jagunos, Ronnie Lazaro, Rio Locsin, Diana Malahay, Raul Manikan, Spanky Manikan, Pen Medina, Raul Morit, Lucas Neff, James Obenza, Jemi Paretas, James Parks, Bodjie Pascua, DJ Qualls, Lady Jane Rellita, Bembol Roco, Bill Tangradi, Stephen Monroe Taylor, Joel Torre, Ka Chun Tsoi, Yul Vazquez

Rafael is the cabeza or head of the small rural town of San Isidro, while his brother joined the anticolonial revolution against Spain, which has transmuted into the Filipino–American War. American troops arrive and take over the town and instruct Rafael to continue his function while freeing the incarcerated Spanish priest, even as Rafael’s adolescent son flees to join his uncle’s resistance army. Rafael finds himself caught between the revolutionary leadership’s instructions and the commands of the new occupation forces, who provide a carrot-and-stick strategy to win the cooperation of the townfolk. They set up telegraph wires to communicate directly with the US administration in Manila but the rebels massacre the Chinese coolies that the Americans brought over. Lt. Compton, with the priest as go-between, organizes an election to select a new leader, but the qualified voters (males at least 21 years old) write in Rafael’s name; true to his promise, Compton honors their choice and even accedes to their plans for their annual town fiesta. The arrival of Col. Hardacre, who’d earlier instructed his troops to fence off the town to prevent San Isidro from providing insurrectionists with support, restores the tense relations between the natives and the US Army, as Rafael is waterboarded and forced to lead the US soldiers to the place where his brother and son might be hiding.

The resonance of the brother-vs.-brother conflict in Amigo is so schematic, biblical even, that it proves a relief when John Sayles opts to focus instead on the regular interactions between Rafael and the people in his community, even including the foreign invaders. Amigo demonstrates that authors of Western film and literature can only begin to understand their own societies’ prosperity-driven triumphs by confronting their colonial records. John Sayles’s political honesty and moral clarity enabled him to come up with the first US-made critical text on his country’s occupation of the Philippines, and one can see the approach’s usefulness in how Western film critics eagerly read contemporary American political concerns in their appreciation of the release, including a covert attempt by the official whom Rafael had won over, to subvert his own superior. There were also a lot of reservations expressed about the work compared to Sayles’s earlier output, although we might be able to take the cue from the quandary that Rafael finds himself trapped in: try as he might to reconcile the demands of either side, their inherent antagonisms will result (as they did in the plot) in either division deciding that their best interest will be best realized if they get rid of him. In this respect, it would also prove productive to see how Sayles, inadvertently or otherwise, anticipated several then-forthcoming developments in Philippine politics: the population’s frustration with democratic processes, the acceptance of militaristic violence against elements configured as outlaws, the vulnerability to influence-peddlers who have their own agenda to advance. The viewing experience has always been difficult for anyone, regardless of nationality, invested in the story’s historical implications—which is tantamount to saying that more ambitious plans announced by other American film artists might encounter greater difficulty in reaching an audience. Amigo might therefore remain for some time the only overt progressive treatment by Americans on their only successful overseas colonial adventure (to our long-term detriment, needless to add), and it serves as a fitting cap to its filmmaker’s exemplary career.

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