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The draft of an appendix entry for the 2023 edition of the online-only Canon Decampment, which I decided to revise and eventually jettison, since I planned to expand the contents while processing the downloadable digital edition:
From the arbitrary limit of 100 titles, the total number of films included in the current volume’s final list reached exactly 160, the composite number having been a welcome indication of a determined pursuit of standards that may be awkwardly described as openhearted yet lofty (a useful way of confirming true love, if I may say so).[1]
11011In terms of my libertarian orientation, a higher total would have definitely resulted if I had my way, but then I’d also have too many moments of wondering whether a level of consistency was successfully maintained. This frame of mind is annoying (to put it kindly) to me, and I also used to wonder how other self-identified critics—not just in the Philippines, to be fair—could sustain such an attitude toward film appreciation; but at the point where whatever career I’ve carved out might have to contend with a permanent shutdown, I’ll just have to accept that several anomalies will remain in place long after I’ve left.
11011Meanwhile, this quantitative exercise, which should be open-ended and ultimately futile (because quality production will not have stopped at 2020, among other reasons), will still be able to yield several useful points as well as several intriguing insights. I’ve harped enough on the qualitative limits of canon-formation at every point I could throughout this book, so all we’re left with here is just the “facts,” such as they are. Starting with the above annual production chart, certain conventional practices in Pinas film criticism can already be emphasized, qualified, or repudiated. The first would be the near-zero record from the start of Philippine film activity in the 1900s all through the 1940s. Film production maintained a healthy level of output throughout its first century even during the Japanese occupation, with a number of pre-war releases and an epic coproduction included in the current canon listing. (I can point to an “expert” who claimed in print that two discrete years during the past quarter century, plus the entire period of Japanese occupation, resulted in zero film productions—entirely verifiable false claims, as any quick internet search will disclose.)
Note
[1] Curiously enough, this figure happens to be close enough to the first appendix in Philippine Cinema: 1897–2020, the history book written by Gaspar A. Vibal and Dennis Villegas and edited by Teddy O. Co. Titled “Notable Philippine Films, 1898–2020” (322–24), the list included nonextant works, non-features, and foreign-produced titles “selected on the basis of ratings, recommendations, awards and honors, and popularity” (324) drawn from sixteen sources including the first canon survey I conducted and arbitrarily cut off and identified as “Top 50 Films,” as tabulated in the Annex of Patrick F. Campos’s “On Film Polls and Pinoy Rebyu: Interview with Skilty C. Labastilla” (Plaridel, vol. 14, no. 2, July–December 2017, pp. 203–05). However weakly or coincidentally, this affirms for me that canon listings for Philippine cinema can no longer comfortably reside within a 100-title limit.
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The aforementioned draft ended with an incomplete sentence that soon became inaccurate: “The fact that we had minimal or no canonizable works for certain stretches during the past century” [end of draft]. Herewith’s the subsequent text I uploaded on my Facebook post of October 15, 2026, with a photo file appended at the end:
The canon project always made me feel guilty for its reliance on dated approaches regarding auteurism and canonization. Its premise was even more old-fashioned, although soc-science types would be more aware than laypersons about my longstanding misgivings regarding empirical methods.
11011Then again, everyone seems to be obsessed with counting in pop culture anyway, so that guarantees some longterm readership for the book. Celeb-obsessives (fans actually, but I don’t judge since I also indulge my faves outside of canon projects) seem to prefer the PDF file, because they could use the search function to see how many of their preferences show up. Unsurprisingly, last year’s National Artists for Film in writing and performing arts scored highest in their fields.
11011But what if we did determine the most qualified according to number of achievements, in an honest-to-goodness national comprehensive film canon effort? (Of which only one exists, not just in Pinas but in the world, and it’s free, you’re welcome.) A number of these auteurs of course have already been installed in the Order of NAs, but you’ll be surprised who else hasn’t showed up. Ishmael Bernal and Lino Brocka kept playing catchup with each other until the dust settled with Ishma having an edge, 15 films to Lino’s 14. The others with ten or more titles were unsurprisingly both from the Second Golden Age, but amazingly they’re usually or always overlooked—Mel Chionglo with 11 and Chito S. Roño with 10.
11011As we go further we find names from the past who might have had larger counts if their films weren’t lost: Gerardo de Leon with 8 (plus a codirected title), Gregorio Fernandez with 6, Ramon Estella tying with Lamberto V. Avellana’s 4. Except for last year’s NA Marilou Diaz-Abaya, those with 5 titles and above awaiting their turn are: Maryo J. de los Reyes, Mario O’Hara, Mike De Leon, and Toto Natividad with 7 each, Celso Ad. Castillo, Jeffrey Jeturian, and Laurice Guillen each tying with Marilou’s 6. Fernando Poe Jr.’s a special case: he also has 6 solo titles, but he codirected 2 more and starred in a few others he didn’t direct.
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11011Filmmakers with 5 titles each are all still active: Adolfo Alix Jr., Brillante Mendoza, Khavn, and Ralston Jover. Those with 4 each once more belong to a mix of eras, with Eddie Romero and Bert Avellana already honored: Carlos Siguion-Reyna, Elwood Perez, Joyce Bernal, Lawrence Fajardo, and Yam Laranas, although Peque Gallaga’s 4 should also be in addition to the 3 he codirected with Lore Reyes. My warning about the rest is that if they’re still around, then they can add to their numbers if the project didn’t observe a 2020 cutoff.
11011Hence 3 films each: Antoinette Jadaone, Dan Villegas, Danny L. Zialcita, Emmanuel H. Borlaza, Gil Portes, Irene Villamor, Joel Lamangan, Jose Javier Reyes, Joselito Altarejos, Keith Deligero, Lav Diaz, Pablo Santiago, Sigrid Andrea Bernardo, and Tikoy Aguiluz. 2 each: Arnel Mardoquio, Artemio Marquez, Augusto Salvador, Bobby A. Suarez, Christian Linaban, Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil, Francis Posadas, Giancarlo Abrahan, Jade Castro, Joey Gosiengfiao, Jon Red, Leroy Salvador, Mae Cruz-Alviar, Mikhail Red, Monti Parungao, Olivia M. Lamasan, Pam Miras, Raya Martin, Richard Somes, Rico Maria Ilarde, Romy Suzara, Sherad Anthony Sanchez, Tara Illenberger, Tata Esteban, and Wenn V. Deramas.
11011The vast majority have one each, most of them made during the present millennium, but with a number of these names having been foreign-born (because “Philippine cinema” can’t be essentialized to mean works made only by native-born folks, just as several nonlisted items might as well be called anything but Filipino). I just compiled them, alphabetized according to given name, and included their title’s year of release in the attached picture file, as a way of honoring practitioners who succeeded in such a complex and stressful undertaking; I included the codirectors of FPJ and Manong Gerry, and mention here that Armando Lao, Kidlat Tahimik, Manuel Conde, and Nora Aunor are already members of the Order.
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One final Facebook post, dated October 19, 2026, this time focused on the quantifying of readers who’d be downloading copies of the book:
I “lost” the ability to track how many people would be downloading the digital edition of Canon Decampment, which initially came out as an internet post in 2023 as a final fulfillment of my retirement requirements.
11011Long story short—I claimed to have written a book text when I was assigned the project in the early 2010s but I had to present a “published” copy of the completed file to be able to get clearance. Since the physical book itself (less than half of the number of films but with lots of pictures, priced at who knows how much) was printed some time this year, that meant that I had to self-publish the text myself in 2023 or face possible retirement complications for a claimed publication that never came out.
11011When planning the downloadable file of the book, I decided to skip the top-100 nonsense if other titles deserved to be included; I kept adding until the list was full, not until I hit a higher round number—but wound up with the half-round figure of 350 titles anyway.
11011My predicament was figuring out how to crunch the readership numbers. I thought—why not “sell” the text as a free Amazon book? So I actually self-trained in converting my Word draft to MOBI, which meant that interested downloaders would have to register with Amazon to avail of a copy and read it as a Kindle file.
11011But then the 2nd Trump presidency happened, the Amazon owner joined his tech bros in kowtowing to the Big Kahuna, and I thought “back to finalizing in PDF bitch, at least you won’t have to go through the trouble of converting and uploading the text to Bezos’s website—who cares how many times it gets shared when its free availability’s the whole point anyways.”
11011And that’s one small way of ridding ourselves of one of the shameless fascist supporters of our time.
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Á!
Edjop
A few followers asked when I’ll be following through my threat to do more gossip writing than my well-being will allow. Problem is, I can’t provide something that everyone already knows about, aside from the usual limit of not having enough time. Retirement somewhat eased the latter difficulty, though not significantly and possibly delusively.
ORCID ID 
Workforce of Overseas Pleasures
Directed by Irene Villamor
Written by Rod Marmol & Irene Villamor
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Real-life interviewees in Midnight Girls.
Scholars of intercultural exchanges, myself included, might be surprised to realize that the Philippines has had the best film crossover examples with Japan. Even their severely unpopular occupation of the country during World War II yielded superior propaganda in Dawn of Freedom (1944), codirected by Abe Yutaka and National Artist Gerardo de Leon. Their postwar soul-searching gave the world Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain (1959, remade by Tsukamoto Shin’ya in 2014), based on accounts of stragglers stranded in the country by their Emperor’s sudden surrender to invading US forces.
11011The only other Asian capital with a similar record during the period would be yet another unheralded discovery: Malaysia, where Sir Run Run Shaw decided to hire the Filipino talents he could lure overseas (including Lamberto V. Avellana, Teodorico C. Santos, Eddie Infante, and Rolf Bayer) and lucked out with Ramon A. Estella, whom he persuaded to stay on and finish about a dozen more projects before allowing him to explore other overseas film industries.
The Guys from Paradise (left) and The Golden Holiday (right).
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11011Japan nevertheless holds the distinction of having must-watch output, both by Japanese filmmakers and Filipino auteurs, all the way to the current millennium: Miike Takashi’s The Guys from Paradise (2000) may have disappointed his usual fanboys by being far less comically violent than his usual product, but it nevertheless manages to provide discursive insights drawn from the source novel by Hayashi Yōji; only the more recent Korean film, Kim Bong-han’s The Golden Holiday (2020), manages to exceed it as sheer entertainment, given the effervescent proficiencies of contemporary Korean popular culture.
Sanya Lopez as Paris, Jodi Sta. Maria as Vicky, and Jane Oineza as Saki.
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11011The export of labor as a national survival strategy resulted in the accumulation of mostly working-class Filipinas in nearly every country in the world, with Japanese film culture taking due notice. The still-awaiting-rediscovery of Sai Yōichi’s masterwork All Under the Moon (1993) enlarges on its narrative of Zainichi or Japan-based ethnic Koreans, by allotting its main character, a cab driver, with a Filipina girlfriend (impressively played by Ruby Moreno), who happens to work as an entertainer in his mother’s nightclub.
11011All this is by way of building up to Midnight Girls (2026), Irene Villamor’s latest of several peaks as director and only her second overseas setting, after 2018’s FACINE grand prize winner Meet Me in St. Gallen. MG might seem remarkable for featuring multiple protagonists, until we remember that another peak achievement by yet another Noypi filmmaker, Lawrence Fajardo’s Imbisibol (2015), an adaptation of a multicharacter play, was also set in Japan.
Loisa Andalio as Wanna, a newcomer, is welcomed by Vicky (left), and briefed on omise rules by Saki (right).
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11011MG was beset by a perfect storm of climate and political disasters during its initial midyear release in Manila, but has since started to thrive in streaming platforms. The narrative features three omise or hospitality-club veterans, who welcome a newcomer into their fold. Each of the four contends with distinct but complex personal challenges, all premised on supporting family members back home while being driven onward by the attainment of dreams that would have been unavailable to them if they had remained in the home country. The fiction is intercut with real-life documentary interviews that suggest even more complex and tragic (as well as uplifting) narratives that would have weighed down the presentation if these had been pursued. The film judiciously leaves in just enough to affirm that its material would be validatable without much difficulty, before restoring the fictional accounts that manage to earn their bittersweet resolutions.
Saki expresses jealousy over the re-emergence of Paris’s ex-BF (left), as Carmi Martin as Mama Charry namedrops a famous director of the 2nd Golden Age (right).
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11011Villamor confirmed in an email interview that she referred to Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s Moral (1982), a similarly empowering work that featured four young women, as a benchmark for MG. The definitive female sex-work film happened along a few years earlier, with Ishmael Bernal’s Aliw (1979), where a trio of painted ladies plied their trade in one of the then-flourishing “supper clubs” fronting Manila Bay, with Japanese sex tourists among the clientele. In MG, the women’s mama-san is portrayed by Carmi Martin, who first made a splash as an unapologetic gold-digger in Bernal’s Makati-based Working Girls (1985); for her birthday celebration, her character crows about how Bernal discovered her in the working-class department store Ever Gotesco, and predicted that she would go places, which she takes to mean the spot where she now stands.
Vicky attends to Hideo (Sumioku Masakatsu), an abandoned customer who remained loyal to her (left); later, the coworkers encounter one another because Mama Charry had a medical emergency (right).
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11011The larger property that MG shares with these samples is its use of humor and irony. It may be precipitate to evaluate it in relation to these and the other titles discussed so far, although in terms of Villamor’s still-evolving body of work, one can understand how observers are describing it as her best: where her earlier films expressed a reserve about her characters and how they felt, in MG, as the friends state in several of their conversations, they confront the difficulty of caring for the people they love. We can only be grateful that the director appreciates their predicament, but has decided to embrace them for us without any reservations anyway.
Published October 24, 2026, in The FilAm, as “Midnight Girls Explores Lives of Filipina Entertainers in Japan.” The film was produced by TJAV Productions. Aliw was by Seven Stars Productions, All Under the Moon was by Cine Qua Non Films, The Guys from Paradise was by Asahi National Broadcasting Co., Excellent Film, & Hammers, and The Golden Holiday was by Yeonghwa-sa Jangchun. All screen caps from MG were taken by the author, who wishes to acknowledge Mauro Feria Tumbocon Jr. for recommending the film, Jek Josue David for providing access to the film, and Jim Paranal for enabling access to the director.
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