July 8, 2021

Writing Pinas Film Commentary

By Joel David

Original Digital Edition (2021)
Cover design by Paolo Miguel G. Tiausas
“Bomba” © 2019 by Mina Saha
[Click on pic to enlarge]

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing Pinas Film Commentary’s entire text was written during the Covid-19 pandemic that left me (and several other citizens) stranded in foreign locales. The Twosome Place coffeehouse branch of Inha University in Incheon, Korea, became my virtual workplace during the several months it was allowed to operate, under the first-rate management of Lee Sanghun, with my occasional craving for Turkish coffee adequately covered by Sinan Çakiltepe’s Itaewon diner. Affairs in the home country were worked out by my brother Aris David, colleague Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil, and scholars Juan Miguel Manansala and John Cris Velasquez. Upon deactivating from social media and discovering I preferred to remain virtually stranded as well, my connections to the digital world were sustained by a small circle of contacts, primarily Mauro Feria Tumbocon Jr. and Jerrick Josue David (not a relation). An accumulation of self-doubt was relieved by welcome news from Louie Jon A. Sánchez.

11011As always I managed to count on my colleague, Ha Ju-Yong, to make sure I could accomplish official work requirements that entail reporting or coordinating in my host country’s language (which I still to struggle to learn, embarrassing as that sounds), with Kwon Sungjin and Yoo Hee-chan taking care of the more casual end. The work of scholars from all over such as Patricio N. Abinales, Lulu Torres-Reyes, Caroline S. Hau, and Paul Grant continues to inspire me to be productive, and I share with overseas Filipinos everywhere the fond hope that in a future that ought to arrive soon, we can finally thank everyone who helped us in person, rather than in print. The individual with the most impact on my development as a writer was my high-school English teacher, Teret de Villa, now a professorial lecturer at the national university’s Open University; I dedicated my first book to her and my other HS English teachers, but her influence abides throughout all my publications. In the same spirit of acknowledging formative influences, this book is dedicated to the first circle of friends I made in Korea: 박신구, 박해석, 손범식, 유태윤.

Disclaimer: The manuscript occasionally makes use of literary devices, including satire, hyperbole, and absurd humor, and thereby assumes basic competence in comprehension. The author will not be responsible for any person who observes a literal application of these passages in real life.

National Library of the Philippines CIP Data

David, Joel.
11011Writing Pinas film commentary / Joel David. — Original Digital Edition. — Quezon City : Amauteurish Publishing, [2020], © 2021.
1101152+vi pages ; 30 cm

11011ISBN 978-621-96191-7-2

110111. Film criticism — Philippines — Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Film criticism — Philippines. 3. Philippine essays (English). I. Title.

791.43702841101111011PN19951101111011P120210039

US Copyright Office Certificate of Registration:
TXu 2-255-122

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Contents
© 2021 by Amauteurish Publishing
All Rights Reserved

Introduction: Forebearance

Turning Point

Inklings 1
• There is no such thing as too much preparation
• Start with the long view: history, theory, long-form study
• Look inward at your personal motive(s)
• Insist on the use of basic study tools
11011Break: But where are the shortcuts?

Inklings 2
• Review or critique, or is there a difference? (Part 1)
• Review or critique, or is there a difference? (Part 2)
• Watch and read the necessary texts more than once
• Pay attention to your stylistic approach, to determine its adequacy
11011Break: You call these writing tips?

Inklings 3
• Be prepared to revise constantly
• Submit or upload your text, then attempt further revisions
• Own your errors
• Careful with the claims you make
11011Break: What about my actual motives?

Persistence of Vision

Mini-Appendices [including Works Cited section]
11011• A: Self-Study
11011• B: Deconstruction

Works Cited

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May 1, 2021

Acceptance message for the 2021 Gawad Balagtas for Film Criticism

By Joel David

The Covid-19 global pandemic necessitated an online program for the recognition ceremony of the annual awards of the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (Writers Union of the Philippines). With three minutes set as the limit for the recorded acceptance message, I read out the text below.[1].

An anachronistic pabebe wave to everyone.[2] I will admit that my response to the news of winning the Gawad Balagtas was immensely moving, partly because it reminded me that people at home were keeping tabs on me, and partly because these people represented an organization for whom criticism used to be distinct from (and less essential than) literature. The big secret I’ve kept to myself was that I never regarded criticism as any different from other forms of literature. I could sense throughout my career that some artists and authors appreciated the efforts I invested in my output, just as I also admired them when they were able to critique their own work and plow back their lessons and insights in their future products.

11011The reason why the UMPIL recognition is meaningful for a still-active critic like me is that the field where I function has been making occasionally valiant efforts at moving forward, to keep up with advances in other areas of criticism as well as in art and literature. But the distractions of more lucrative options in public relations as well as the dangerous assumption that film criticism should never challenge its readers’ intelligence all conspire against introducing new ideas and approaches.

11011This is why whenever I step back to assess how far I’ve been able to arrive, my journey was extensive only in terms of time and space. As public intellectual, I always feel like I’ve barely moved from where I started. I am hopeful that UMPIL will allow me the option of meandering down new pathways, playing with new concepts, championing practitioners who I feel have been overlooked, stumbling around once in a while, and maybe looking like I’m having too much fun – because I’ve learned that that’s the best way that difficult innovations can be announced and implemented.

11011I always delight in pointing out how I keep attacking canon-formation activities but ironically have to set up canons the right way in the first place. And at this stage in my life, I find myself being canonized as well, sometimes by institutions whose premises and motives I find necessary to contend with. This of course is always the risk we face when we announce our approbation of individuals who are still capable of, and intent on, changing.

11011For all the timeliness of the Gawad Balagtas, the careful deliberation that I’m sure must have gone in deciding to add me to the roster, and the symbolic consequence of being cited by the most credible and accomplished community of Pinas citizens, considerately extending their reach overseas, in defiance of a still-ongoing historic health disaster: my sincerest gratitude, lubos na pasasalamat sa inyo, 여러분 정말 더럽.[3]

Notes

Thanks to the people who provided advice on what I should (and shouldn’t) be saying: 박신구, 박해석, and 손범식, as well as to 권성진 for helping me pick out an appropriate final greeting. Special shoutout to UMPIL Board Member Louie Jon A. Sánchez, who made sure I had enough time to prepare for the occasion.


[1] The text of the citation was in Filipino and appears in the preceding illustration. It may be translated as follows:

For his vigilant advocacy of his field of practice, his faithful guidance in its nationalist and democratic aspirations, and his interventions in upholding film as a vital component of the everyday life of Filipinos and as a crucial factor in the unfolding of the history of the Philippines.

11011He is not only foremost in his field, but also the primary developer of [Philippine] film criticism, which has become a flourishing and indispensable literary form because of his tireless contributions.

[2] “Pabebe” is a Taglish term that may be approximated as “trying to be baby-like.” It was first used for the popular phenomenon on Philippine TV that enjoyed its own coinage, AlDub. The baby-ism specifically referred to a voiceless character appropriating the beauty-queen wave, which in turn was an imitation of the Queen of England’s distinctive hand wave.

[3] The standard utterance, “yeoreobun jeongmal dureob,” is a comic insult that translates to “you’re all really dirty.” The L and R sounds are represented by the same letter (ㄹ) in the Korean featural system, so with the adjustment of a consonant in the last word (to “duleob”), the statement aurally registers as “you’re really all the [ones I] love” in Konglish. Understandably, the wordplay will be recognizable mostly to younger generations of Koreans.

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April 19, 2021

List of Illustrational Problematics for Manila by Night: A Queer Film Classic

By Joel David

Illustrational Problematics is a self-descriptive category spun off from the list of textual problematics. I designated it to explain issues with visual content. These affect pages 38, 45, 50, 82, and 127. For discussions of textual problematics, click here. To return to the corrigenda page, click here. The problematics are listed according to the order they appear in the book; for a topical list of issues linked to the discussions:

Bernal, Elena (Ishmael’s mother)
Bongbong at Kris (1987), play by Boy Noriega
Estregan, George, pic of Eric (1969)
Iginuhit ng Tadhana (1965), “Bongbong” Marcos in
Manila Film Center’s Malakas at Maganda mural
11011• Si Malakas, si Maganda, at si Mahinhin (1980)
Paloma, Pepsi rape case
Presidential children as film performers
When It Is a Gray November in Your Soul Coffee Shop

Page 38, Figure 4:

Several elements in this pair of pictures are capable of generating discussions in themselves, but would detract significantly from the concerns of the book text. To bring up a novel example: one figure is common to both – Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., only son of the Marcos couple and latter-day frustrated vice presidential aspirant. This detail would alter most people’s impression that the first presidential offspring to perform in movies was Corazon Aquino’s daughter Kris. (At one point, Lino Brocka was considering casting Imee Marcos in the title role of his Cannes breakout entry Insiang, but fortunately managed in time to cast aside that phantasmagoria; see pp. 125-26 of Jo-Ann Q. Maglipon’s “The Brocka Battles,” in Lino Brocka: The Artist and His Times, ed. Mario A. Hernando, Manila: Sentrong Pangkultura ng Pilipinas, 1993, pp. 118-54.) During the euphoric period that followed the 1986 “people-power” revolt that deposed the Marcoses and installed Cory Aquino, playwright Bienvenido M. Noriega Jr. (formerly with Imee Marcos’s Experimental Cinema of the Philippines) wrote a popular stage comedy premised on a speculative Romeo & Juliet-inspired romance titled Bongbong at Kris (1987).

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Page 45, Figure 7:

I would have preferred to use the evocative pic below (click to enlarge) in place of this solo portrait of Elena Bernal. Unfortunately its source, the phenomenal Pro Bernal Anti Bio volume (Manila: ABS-CBN Publishing, 2017) – drafted as an autobiography of Ishmael Bernal, passed on to his confidant Jorge Arago, and completed by Angela Stuart-Santiago in honor of her late friends – came out about the same time as Manila by Night: A Queer Film Classic. It would also have corrected the commonly misspelled and uncompleted name of the café run by Bernal, with “When It Is a Gray November in Your Soul Coffee Shop” rather than “When It’s a Grey November in Your Soul.”

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Page 50, Figure 9:

The pic in question came from a framed entry in Cinema Paraiso (Film Paradise), an exhibit of Filipino movie memorabilia with film screenings and lectures, held February to April 2003 at the National Commission for Culture and Arts gallery in Intramuros, Manila. According to historian and archivist Teddy Co, one of the organizers, “It’s actually from my collection of bomba magazines, ca. 1969-70. I cannot find the issue anymore so I cannot name the magazine and what month it was in. The other exhibit curators were Josephine Atienza and Cesar Hernando…. The pic was in a section called A History of Kissing in Filipino Movies, starting from the first smooch between Dimples Cooper and Luis Tuazon to a digitally rendered kiss from Lastikman [dir. Tony Y. Reyes, 2003]” (Facebook Messenger exchange, June 5, 2020). The explanation may be too long for a caption and should be written as a footnote.

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Page 82, Figure 15:

I could have replaced either one of two exterior shots of the Manila Film Center with the mural in the lobby, painted by Victor Cabisada Jr. and Peter Alcántara, then-impossible to access after a fire damaged the building (see this blog’s header image). In September 2020, an art historian, John Paul “Lakan” Olivares, posted the pic below (click to enlarge), apparently taken when the object was still new, on his blog Lakbay ng Lakan, and granted me permission to use the illustration. It depicts the native myth of the first cis couple, Malakas (strong) and Maganda (beautiful), the latter resembling Imelda Marcos; both were supposedly locked together in a node of bamboo, pecked open by a curious bird. Although many other Malakas at Maganda murals with the same intent of identifying the Marcoses as first Filipinos can still be found in various government buildings, the Manila Film Center version was far and away the best-rendered of the lot.


11011Incidental observation, which I admit being unprepared to fully comment on: the couple were notoriously sensitive to criticism (not to mention mockery) about themselves, but the biggest queer-themed hit up to that point, Danny L. Zialcita’s Si Malakas, si Maganda, at si Mahinhin [The Strong, the Pretty, and the Timid] (Trigon Cinema Arts, 1980), came out around this time. The surest speculation I can make is that, inasmuch as the movie was released just as the controversy over Manila by Night was making headlines all over the world, Imelda was certainly not going to risk her culture-czarina status over what appeared to be a potboiler that would never attract the same amount of attention as the production she deemed was a smear on her dream of setting up what she termed the City of Man.

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Page 127, Figure 26:

Re the caption: upon the prompting of director-writer and actor Bibeth Orteza, a close associate of the accused comedians (one of whom had died), I reread available material on the controversy and was surprised to find that the case for reasonable doubt was strong. Pepsi Paloma advanced her accusation of rape in the media on the basis of a photograph where she was apparently being held against her will. Splashed on the front pages of tabloids and now inexplicably unavailable, the picture showed Joey de Leon kissing an unwilling Paloma, with the other comedians looking on with amusement. The worst that the picture denotes would be molestation, rather than rape.

11011The photographer was Guada Guarin, an actress who was also a ward of talent manager Rey de la Cruz; she has since refused to speak on the matter, as do the surviving accused. The rape story attracted renewed attention from an extended article and its follow-ups that were subsequently withdrawn by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, after the current Philippine Senate President, who was part of the comedy team but not present during the incident, successfully contested the timeline of events claimed in the articles (see “INQUIRER.net Statement on the Pepsi Paloma Stories,” July 5, 2018).

11011I had to conclude that the rape accusation may have been one of the publicity gimmicks de la Cruz (whom I’d interviewed more than once) was known for. The softdrink beauties and the comedy trio used to have their own regular projects with Regal Films (also Manila by Night’s production outfit). When the production company severed its ties with de la Cruz and his talents as a result of the controversy, that indicated to me that the accused had enough of a strong case to demand that Regal either take their side or risk a lawsuit.

11011The circumstances behind the incident, where the alleged rapists invited the actresses to visit a room in a five-star hotel, had no indication of coercion or the use of an incapacitating agent; each side claimed that the other was enthusiastic about extending invitations to visit the room. The last few weeks before Paloma announced she was dropping her case, only de la Cruz continued to denounce the comedians. The Senate President, unfortunately, is a right-wing pro-Church bigot with the expected sexist and homophobic trains of thought; the condition gives rise to less-informed liberals readily believing that he shares the same type of malevolence with his associates – which, according to people within showbiz circles, is far from true. Everyone familiar with the team avers that incumbent Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto, regarded as a future liberal favorite for national politics, holds values closer to his father than to his uncle.

11011As a direct result of the suppression of the Inquirer articles, several misimpressions about the incident have proliferated. In one instance, Eraserheads frontperson Ely Buendia found it necessary to debunk the long-standing rumor that the song “Spoliarium” (titled after the celebrated 1884 painting of Juan Luna) was about the rape of Pepsi Paloma. One other verifiably erroneous claim making the rounds of internet posts concerns the ungrammatical suicide note supposedly left by Paloma, stating “This is a crazy planets.” This was in fact the message left by a near-contemporaneous suicide, Stella Strada, who like Paloma also became famous as a sex-film ingenue.

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April 19, 2021

List of Textual Problematics for Manila by Night: A Queer Film Classic

By Joel David

Textual Problematics is the term I use to refer to issues that occasionally are unresolved, or that otherwise would be too cumbersome to attend to, within the physical and/or editorial limits of the publication. Most of these issues already inhered in the material during the process of its creation, although in one instance, the problem arose some time after publication. They range from the aforementioned complication in attribution, to a queer controversy involving a different film, to the usual quirks in historical interpretation. These affect pages 11-12, 36-38, 53-59, 56, 57n10, 61, 64, 69, 78-79, 88, 111, 128, and 148-49. For discussions of illustrational problematics, click here. To return to the corrigenda page, click here. The problematics are listed according to the order they appear in the book; for a topical list of issues linked to the discussions:

Availability of First Golden Age titles
Bernal, Ishmael
11011• Cooperation with the Metro Manila Commission
11011• Traumatized in his first film project
Book writing process, including close reading
Brocka, Lino’s last-minute rejection of commerce-vs.-artistry binary
Censorship politics during the Marcos presidency
Manila by Night (1980)
11011• As a comedy film
11011• Erroneous title (Manila after Dark)
11011• Production design problem
11011• Storyline
Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag (1975)
11011• Internal censorial troubles
11011• Missing sequences’ similarities with Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Pito ang Asawa Ko, Huwag Tularan (1974)
11011• Falling out with film producer
11011• Homage to a François Truffaut film
Plot & structure, rather than characters
Smorgasbord movies
11011• Iginuhit ng Tadhana (1965), elements in
11011• Partial list of prototypes

Pages 11-12:

I prepared for the project by rereading some of my favorite volumes in the British Film Institute Film Classics series (renamed BFI Film and TV Classics) as well as some of the recent Queer Film Classics texts. As far as I could tell, their approaches reflected their respective authors’ scholarly concerns. What they all had in common though was close readings of the specific films after which each volume was titled. In anticipation of this exercise, I drafted a detailed account of Manila by Night’s plotline, running for several pages. To my relief, the editors described it as too long and asked for a story summary instead. (I posted on Ámauteurish! the said extensive storyline.)

11011In writing out the book, I had to provide expositions of the Philippines and its cinema in the first of the standard three chapters, so I thought I could do the close reading in the second chapter. But then I wound up explicating Philippine queer cinema and the auteur I was covering, and in the final chapter I had to explain how the multicharacter movie functioned as a politically responsive genre product. I provided some relevant technical observations and decided to see where the editors might think I could insert the missing close reading of the entire film. To be honest, though, I thought that any scene-by-scene analysis would disrupt the textual flow, if not stanch it altogether. So once more I was relieved when their list of revisions did not include the specification I dreaded.

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Pages 36-38:

In a manner of speaking, the first Ferdinand Marcos biopic that Sampaguita Pictures produced had the trappings of a smorgasbord production (see page 88) – multi-episodic and multi-directed – except where it mattered: it featured a singular (pseudo-)heroic character. I am only certain of the availability of few of the proto-smorgasbord Sampaguita films in this listing, Tony Cayado’s Mga Ligaw na Bulaklak and Kaming mga Talyada, Armando Garces’s Sino ang Maysala?, as well as the final one referenced here, Iginuhit ng Tadhana: The Ferdinand E. Marcos Story. All the other ones are apparently lost. Will update if any of the others surfaces. [Update: An apparent smorgasbord-movie predecessor, produced by LVN Pictures and more aligned in fact with the late-1950s bad-boy Lo’ Waist Gang trend initiated by Larry Santiago of Premiere Productions, has surfaced: Barkada [Gang], a 1958 release directed by Lou Salvador Sr., may be accessed at Mike de Leon’s Citizen Jake Vimeo page.]

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Pages 53-59:

I ought to express with utmost care the dynamics behind censorship as a political process during the Marcos martial-law era. When the Philippines began to acquire a higher global profile and a then-upstart studio, Regal Films, made its bid for overseas presence via Manila by Night, only someone with the right combination of motives and connections could step up and make sure that the powers-that-be develop an animosity toward the film. Why against Ishmael Bernal but not against the Cannes Film Festival celebrants, Lino Brocka and Mike de Leon? The person in question, Marichu Vera-Perez Maceda, may have been connected as much with Brocka, or at least with the Philippine Educational Theater Association, as with the Marcoses. Brocka and de Leon worked for Maceda’s outfit. Bernal however had a celebrated falling-out over Huwag Tularan: Pito ang Asawa Ko, the film project he completed with Sampaguita Pictures, the studio run by her father, after the latter shot additional scenes without the director’s approval. This means that reports of her behavior in mediating between the conflicting sides in the censorship controversy must be subjected to intensive critical scrutiny.

11011I had the opportunity to observe, as an insider in the Marcos film agency, how Maceda opted for the program that directly handled the disbursement of funds to favored film projects. When a project she produced potentially conflicted with the output of Marilou Diaz-Abaya, an associate of Bernal, I heard her make an excessively dramatic claim to mediating between the creative team and the forces of censorship. Bernal carefully demonstrated deference for someone who was after all part of the inner circle of the First Lady, but condemned her in the strongest terms after she left, for once more finding ways to advance her political and financial standing at the expense of some of the most outstanding films of the time. The Philippine critical community continues to hold Maceda in high esteem, mainly because of her association with a noteworthy period in film history; for this reason the many significant accomplishments of her family’s studio (active during and beyond the First Golden Age) will have to be qualified with the underhanded intrigues she fomented during a period when the act of opposing figures of power carried inordinate political, professional, and personal risks.

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Page 56, second (parenthesized) sentence:

Bernal’s familiarity with official government communication policy derived from his working relation with another functionary, similar in terms of access to power as the two-faced censoring agent in the preceding entry, but benevolent for a change. Marita Manuel, whose tracks since the end of the Marcos dispensation have become scarce, ran Metro Manila Commission, one of many agencies that accommodated people with radical backgrounds who needed to be “rehabilitated” after a spell in political detention. By this means Marcos was able to harness talent that would have otherwise remained dormant or that would have returned to underground activities. In 1980, apparently as a means of mollifying the government, she initiated a “documentary” project titled Manila, with Bernal directing and several of the Manila by Night talents appearing. Rediscovered in 2018, the 45-minute curiosity was more of a travelogue that aimed to persuade foreign viewers to tour the city. See Edwin P. Sallan, “Ishmael Bernal’s ‘Lost’ Manila Docu Evokes Nostalgia,” Daily Tribune (July 8, 2018).

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Page 57, footnote 10:

This may well be an unnecessary inclusion but I’ll just be placing it here for thoroughness’s sake. Manila by Night’s still-ongoing troubles begin with its title, which for some reason left-identified Pinas cultural officials refuse to use. City after Dark was the military censors’ designation, so any film screened with that title should be considerably shorter and replete with aural deletions of cusswords and references to the capital city. The claim I made however that another moniker, Manila after Dark, does not exist anywhere in Philippine cinema now has to be qualified, as of mid-2021, with the streaming release of Joel C. Lamangan’s Lockdown. It’s a meta-detail though, since it’s a fiction within a fiction, fascinating in itself and utterly attuned to the world envisioned by Manila by Night. A police-protected proprietor’s illicit vidjakol website – which provides erogenous solo-male or man-on-man displays for paying customers – is depicted as using the title in question, as screen-capped below. (The internet-specific coinage vidjakol, a pun on “video call,” is a portmanteau conflating “video” with the Tagalog slang word for masturbation, jakól, from the word “ejaculate.”)

Screen cap from Joel C. Lamangan’s 2021 film Lockdown.

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Page 61, end of first paragraph:

The out-of-court settlement between the author of the novel Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag and the production team of the film adaptation Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag may have involved a demand from the novelist to delete the improvised gay-hustler sequences. The current existing product, including the Blu-ray versions released by the British Film Institute and the Criterion Collection, contains the section from Julio Madiaga (Rafael Roco Jr.) wandering the Metropolitan Theater’s adjacent Mehan Garden, where he is befriended by Bobby (Jojo Abella), through Julio’s first night at Bobby’s apartment where he witnesses Bobby accommodating a client, to his initial attempt at gay-for-pay sex in the brothel where Bobby works.

11011We may be allowed to speculate here (based on scriptwriter Clodualdo del Mundo Jr.’s account) that Edgardo Reyes, the novelist, demanded that the entire rentboy detour be excised, while Lino Brocka held fast on retaining its opening section. The fact that a literary figure insisted on anti-queer censorship while a filmmaker immersed his material in homophobic imaging – both artists left-identified and left-supported – may be reflective of a period when perversion was regarded as immoral rather than potentially transgressive. Hence unlike Manila by Night, Maynila’s censorial difficulties were internal, waged by one progressive side against another, one outraged by the attempt “to sissify a manly novel about an ever-masculine city” (actual words used in an article written by a defender of the novelist’s claims) and the other insistent on presenting the underworld of male hustling in the worst possible light.

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Page 64, second paragraph, third sentence continuing to next page:

The Ideal Theater sequence recalls a similar episode in John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy (1969), where Joe Buck (Jon Voight), broke and homeless after being fleeced by “Ratso” Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), agrees to be fellated by a student (Bob Balaban) in a grindhouse along the Deuce, the stretch of pre-Disneyfied 42nd Street known for sleaze and petty crime. Afterward the latter reveals he has no money, angering Joe but ending with him letting the kid go. Midnight Cowboy turns out to have had a broader connection with Maynila, in the sense that, symptomatic of their era, their moralism and homophobia were in effect rewarded by top industry prizes in their respective countries.

11011Similar incidents in both films culminate in a more striking parallel, where male strangers behave abusively. Both narrative heroes, their fists clenched and shaking with rage, restrain themselves from further attacking the men – with Joe Buck clutching a broken bottle and Julio Madiaga managing to return a lady’s snatched handbag.

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Page 69, second sentence:

My primary source for this still-to-be-standardized insight has been Ricky Lee, who kept me updated during the making of Gumapang Ka sa Lusak [Dirty Affair] (1990), the project he was working on with Lino Brocka. Lee mentioned how delighted Brocka was that he could accept an outright commercial assignment yet imbue it with political relevance. This occurred at a felicitous intersection in Brocka’s career, where he had accumulated enough skills in a wide variety of popular genres during the precise historical moment when demonizing elected officials became extremely profitable box-office material. Lee devised a postmodern narrative that blended elements of the dance musical, suspense, melodrama, action, comedy, and soft-core porn to which Brocka once devoted specific projects in the past, within a brazenly reflexive premise. Brocka rose to the challenge while making sure to enjoy himself in the process, and was rewarded with not just what may have been his strongest box-office hit, but also a recognizable mass following: when he died in an accident the year after, the folk-hero dimension of his wake and funeral march would have been the envy of popular movie stars. A summary of Lee’s account appears on page 76 of Jose Dalisay Jr.’s “From Gingoog to Greenhills: Lino and His Writers” (in Lino Brocka: The Artist and His Times, ed. Mario A. Hernando, Sentrong Pangkultura ng Pilipinas, 1993, pp. 74-85).

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Page 78-79, second sentence:

One consequence of David Bordwell’s formulation would be a study focused on plot and structure rather than on characters. A noteworthy example would be Dan Hassler-Forest’s well-regarded master’s thesis titled “Multiple Narrative Structures in Contemporary Cinema” (University of Amsterdam, April 1999).

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Page 88, Figure 18:

The “first” smorgasbord title is nominal; Sampaguita Pictures had been known for multi-performer presentations as early as the late 1950s, with Tony Cayado’s Mga Ligaw na Bulaklak [Wildflowers] (1957). A sampling of titles up to and including the year of Maraming Kulay ang Pag-ibig [Love Has Many Colors] (1966), featuring large casts in “epic” narratives: Armando Garces’s Sino ang Maysala? [Who Is to Blame?] (1957) Ding M. de Jesus’s Ginang Hukom [Madame Judge] (1960); Octavio Silos’s Mga Kwela sa Eskwela [The Cool Kids of School] (1963); Tony Santos’s Pinakamalaking Takas (ng 7 Atsay) [Biggest Escape (of 7 Domestic Helpers)] (1963); Mar S. Torres’s Bathing Beauties and Mga Bata ng Lagim [Kids of Horror] (1964); Tony Cayado’s Kaming mga Talyada [We Who Are Sexy] (1962), Mga Batang Iskwater [Slum Kids] and Pitong Desperada [Seven Women Bandits] (1964); Octavio Silos’s Mga Batang Bakasyonista [Vacationing Kids], Mga Batang Milyonaryo [Millionaire Kids], and Mga Batang Artista [Showbiz Kids] (1964); Conrado Conde’s Apat na Kagandahan [Four Daughters] (1965); Octavio Silos’s Mga Batang Turista [Tourist Kids] (1965); Jose de Villa’s Paano Kita Lilimutin [How Will I Forget You] (1966); and Luciano B. Carlos’s Jamboree ’66 (1966).

11011Closer to the multiply directed example of Maraming Kulay ang Pag-ibig would be Sweet Valentines, directed by Tony Cayado, Conrado Conde, Rosa Mia, Octavio Silos, Carlos Vander Tolosa, Jose de Villa, and Romy Villaflor (1963); and Umibig Ay Di Biro [Love Is No Joke], directed by Emmanuel H. Borlaza, Luciano Carlos, Conrado Conde, Rosa Mia, Octavio Silos, Carlos Vander Tolosa, and Romy Villaflor (1964). All were produced by Sampaguita Pictures and/or its subsidiary, VP Pictures; in the instance of Pinakamalaking Takas, Sampaguita linked up with a rival studio’s subsidiary, Dalisay Pictures. Pitong Desperada was by Ambassador Productions, but its talents and stars were all also identified with Sampaguita.

11011The other First Golden Age studios were of course more than willing to replicate the success of the Sampaguita projects. LVN Pictures produced the recently rediscovered Barkada [Gang] (dir. Lou Salvador Sr.) in 1958, which Premiere in turn repurposed into its successful Lo’-Waist Gang bad-boy films. This may have possibly convinced Sampaguita to find a way to profit from an innovation it initiated – hence the smorgasbord concept as well as the Stars ’66 batch of talents, two strategies that proved influential (because profitable) throughout the Second Golden Age and thereafter. Interestingly, two mid-1950s titles by Premiere Productions featured omnibus projects by different filmmakers: Apat na Kasaysayang Ginto [Four Golden Stories] (1956), with Gerardo de Leon, Cesar Gallardo, Cirio H. Santiago, & Teodorico C. Santos; and Bicol Express (1957), with Josefino Cenizal, Abraham Cruz, Gerardo de Leon, Efren Reyes, Eddie Romero, Cirio H. Santiago, & Teodorico C. Santos (an incredible seven segments!). Such chutzpah may have derived from the studio’s reputation for prestige, in terms of boasting of award-winning film artists. No surprise, however, in the subsequent observation that Filipino film releases may have occasionally lengthened, requiring ten-hour screenings in two instances so far, but none have attempted an equivalent number of filmmakers working in a singular commercial project.

11011Final unrelated though intriguing insight: the initial smorgasbord film practice of recruiting several directors, each of whom would direct an episode in an omnibus project, was observed in two competing entries from 1965 that were anything-but-multicharacter: the then-incumbent president’s campaign film Tagumpay ng Mahirap [Triumph of the Poor] (featuring directors associated with Premiere, specifically Lamberto V. Avellana, Gerardo de Leon, & Eddie Romero) as well as the pseudo-heroic Sampaguita production Iginuhit ng Tadhana [Drawn by Destiny]: The Ferdinand E. Marcos Story (dir. Conrado Conde, Jose de Villa, & Mar S. Torres), annoyingly available for what it’s worth. (Also FWIW, Sampaguita was where then-hopeful movie aspirant Imelda Romualdez screen-tested, before she was Marcosed away.) The smorgasbord and Stars ’66 trends were launched the year after FM won, when an interesting new era for Pinas cinema (and Pinas history) took off. As far as I could find, the multi-directed local film presentation has culminated so far with the 3.5-hour-long Dugo at Pag-ibig sa Kapirasong Lupa [Blood and Passion on a Parcel of Land], released June 12, 1975 (the third Independence Day after the declaration of martial law), with five segments handled by Ding M. de Jesus, Cesar Gallardo, Armando A. Herrera, Johnny Pangilinan, & Romy Suzara.

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Page 111, first paragraph:

Around the time I was drafting the book, Manila by Night production designer Peque Gallaga reminisced, on his own and on others’ Facebook posts, regarding his participation in the project. He expressed extreme frustration with the cinematographer’s failure to use the proper filters for the breakwater sequence. Ishmael Bernal also mentioned this as one of the scenes he wanted to trim for the print expected to be finalized for the film’s Berlinale participation – which Moritz de Hadeln overruled (see page 55).

11011Gallaga’s recollection of his problem went as follows: “I talked to Sergio Lobo who was the cameraman. I said, ‘For their LSD sequence what I want to do is to get those little cups for the candles and float them by fitting them in small Styropors. But is it possible if you can put Vaseline around your lens so that it will just be out-of-focus lights and it’s only the faces of Cherie [Gil] and William [Martinez] that are going to be seen, so that all of a sudden these lights come on?’ He said ‘Yeah just paint the Styropor orange so that the lights would still be warm.’ So we bought about 200 [candles on Styropor] and on two [small outrigger boats], we lit each and every one of them and swept them with bamboo so that as the scene goes on these things start floating in.

11011“When we saw the rushes, I said, ‘Bernie, that’s shit! He didn’t defocus it in any way!’ All of a sudden they were surrounded by stupid candles and Styropors. ‘It’s ridiculous. This is really bad. We have to reshoot it!’ He said ‘No, just remember this scene will keep you humble the rest of your life’” (“Brocka-Bernal Interviews, 2018-2019,” for the exhibit Brocka, Bernal, and the City, January 24 to April 29, 2019, at the De La Salle – College of Saint Benilde’s School of Design and Arts, excerpted from “Peque on Bernie: Full Interview,” posted on YouTube by Benilde Campus Art).

11011A further insight that necessarily entails provisional and speculative conclusions was provided by one of Bernal’s colleagues, who must remain anonymous for now: Bernal was bullied by the cinematographer on the set of his first film assignment, Ah, Ewan! Basta sa Maynila Pa Rin Ako! (I am indebted to the innovative and dedicated archivist Jojo Devera for this exclusive bit of information.) Apparently angered and/or traumatized enough to refuse directorial credit (too late for the celluloid print, but observed in all the film’s print announcements), Bernal’s maltreatment may account for his hesitation in trying out other directors of photography until years later, when younger filmmakers could assure him of the reliability of their own cinematographers. Once more, homophobia (on the part of the house staff of Virgo Productions) may have factored in their engagement with the then-newbie. (See footnote 15 on page 99.)

11011Regarding the cinematographer fondly addressed as Mang Serge, one must also keep in mind that, apart from the aforementioned bullying that Bernal experienced in his first film project, he also insisted on maintaining Lobo during the period when the latter had to prepare for retirement. Lobo had provided superior work in his earlier output for Bernal, but it became apparent around this time that the lure of better-paying co-production projects with foreign investors was proving too strong to ignore. They would continue collaborating on several major projects for a couple of years afterward, but Bernal finally yielded to his associates’ request to consider other directors of photography. Unfortunately, a prospective project with Conrado Baltazar, Lino Brocka’s signature cinematographer, fell through with Baltazar’s sudden demise due to an accident. [Update: the Eddie Garcia Law, intended to secure the on-set safety of workers in the film and television industries, was passed in 2024, more than three decades after Baltazar’s case.] Most of his major projects after Manila by Night were helmed by Manolo Abaya, husband of the director he mentored, Marilou Diaz-Abaya; other DOPs in subsequent Bernal films read like a who’s who of the best younger talents in the field.

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Page 128, second sentence of second paragraph:

Not a correction, more of a reminder for myself. I heard of Huwag Tularan: Pito ang Asawa Ko years before I saw it, which meant I’d seen most of François Truffaut’s films by then. I vaguely remembered a connection between a Truffaut film and this specific Bernal title, so I concluded that it must have been L’Homme qui aimait les femmes, since their main characters resembled each other. (Pito ang Asawa Ko is privileged by the same queer twist that appeared in a near-contemporaneous Truffaut film, La nuit américaine, and I insist on following the popular practice of dropping Huwag Tularan since it was imposed by the censors and was not present in initial publicity announcements.) In writing the Queer Film Classic text I checked the usual sources, and was flabbergasted at how my memory had tricked me: The Man Who Loved Women (as it was known in English) came out three years after Pito ang Asawa Ko.

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Pages 148-49, paragraph in common:

I ought to have proposed considering Ishmael Bernal as a comic filmmaker, with Manila by Night as black comedy – similar to the way that a review of Robert Altman’s Nashville was anthologized in The National Society of Film Critics on Movie Comedy (ed. Stuart Byron, Grossman, 1977). In fact, I would venture even further and claim that the film is the closest that Philippine narrative culture has ever gotten to Menippean satire (elaborated in, among others, Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, Princeton University Press, 1957). The perspective would have been unthinkable for people who approach the text with advanced knowledge of its censorship troubles. The notion of laughter as subversive force, however, would have considerably explained why its persecution by the Marcos administration exceeded that of the other city movie, Lino Brocka’s Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag. This would also have enabled me to raise issues of masquerade and irony more logically.

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Á!

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April 15, 2021

NUT’s Kernel

By Joel David

When I started looking out for bylines of prolific Filipino writers in English, Nestor U. Torre’s was the one I wound up reading most often. His writing style could be summed up in a string of adjectives that would soon be considered embarrassing, if not unacceptable, for anyone caught up in the call to resist Ferdinand E. Marcos’s then-emergent fascism.

11011He didn’t help matters for his standing among progressives when martial law was finally declared, and he moved from the opposition’s already-shuttered Manila Chronicle to the Philippines Daily Express, edited by a brother of the First Lady. Yet this was the period of the ascendancy of Torre (or NUT as he preferred to refer to himself) as film commentator. He was also known as the director-writer of Crush Ko si Sir (1971), a pre-ML vehicle for Lino Brocka’s muse Hilda Koronel. A few years later, a movie by another gifted critic-director, Ishmael Bernal, would attempt the same sly reference to Macoy’s womanizing, but the censors by then were sharp and fast enough to take action: Aliw, Sir! simply became Aliw [Pleasure] (1979).

11011These connections will become significant later, but not enough focus was placed then on NUT’s film writing, just as it was relegated to the background in nearly all the tributes paid to him by his colleagues in theater. This was the moment when film was setting out to stake its claim as a creative activity worth taking seriously. Most reviewers, then as now, claimed academic credentials and wrote accordingly. Like Bernal, however, NUT stepped in from an immersion in pop culture. Academia eventually came around to appreciating that kind of orientation, but it was too late for the likes of NUT.

11011Hence the (usually self-serving) drama of asking after theoretical foundations and political allegiances was just about to assert itself, but NUT first made sure that the local intelligentsia would be enthralled and challenged by the prospect of film analysis and evaluation written for its own sake. He published film reviews in a breezy, amused, occasionally ironic, sometimes self-deprecating manner (hence his acronym), in a style that serious students of English literature recognized as highly accomplished. Of his Chronicle-era batch, only Bernal came close, but then “Ishma” eventually pulled away by attaining success as a filmmaker.

11011When a NUT review appeared in the Express, some of my classmates and professors would engage in discussion about it. I remember a senior stating that his take on Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) was better than what came out in foreign newspapers – so I did spend some time afterward at the national university’s main library to check out the claim. Around this time an announcement involving NUT came out, one that I was still too young to realize was ominous: he and the other reviewers published by the Express were forming a critics’ organization, with NUT as founding chair.

11011I was to subsequently become a member of this group, the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino (Filipino Film Critics Circle), which was how I learned about NUT’s departure. He was able to work on his last film project, Ang Isinilang Ko Ba’y Kasalanan? [Is It Wrong to Give Birth?] (1977), the year after the group launched its still-ongoing annual awards. At the meeting where it was discussed, the other members raised questions pertaining to its lack of political content and its derivative quality. He walked out and never showed up again.

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11011The MPP prided itself on objectivity and admitted being harsher on its own members who aspired to industry practice. NUT’s misfortune was that he was the first to be subjected to this type of critical interrogation; ironically another founding member, Behn Cervantes, released Sakada [Plantation Peons] during the year of the MPP’s founding.[1] It had enough so-called social relevance to be considered subversive and was eventually banned by the government. Not surprisingly, it elicited rave reviews from the MPP members and was able to receive citations in major film categories, though its later unavailability excluded it from the awards competition.

11011Still another founding member, Pio de Castro III, came up with Soltero [Bachelor] in 1984 and was rewarded with nominations from the group for direction, performance, and technical categories. Yet although AIKBK was completely bypassed, it had qualities that placed it a cut above the other two films: it featured eight women at a well-known halfway house for unwed mothers-to-be, and although the narrative finally gave precedence to the male superintendent burdened by empathizing with the expectant mothers, several of the individual stories succeeded in focusing attention on the plight of outcast women.

11011I remember AIKBK coming out a few months after Brocka’s Lunes, Martes, Miyerkules, Huwebes, Biyernes, Sabado, Linggo [Monday through Sunday] (1976), which had almost the same number of female characters but which more easily capitulated to the central tale of a son seeking his mother and discovering how she worked as a has-been hooker in Olongapo. Unfortunately these last two films may be lost for good, so we have no way of revaluating the merits of NUT’s entry vis-à-vis the others. All I can attest, to the best of my recollection, is that it left a far more positive impression on me than all the other films I mentioned except for Aliw, which finally succeeded in interweaving its fallen-women tales into an impressive equal-opportunity balancing act.

11011I had only one interaction with NUT, years after he gave up most “creative” film activities including his distinctive brand of film reviewing.[2] We were covering a 1980s film set troubled by serious conflicts among the artists and producers. Upon arriving, he immediately launched into an expertly parodic performance of film buffery (not all that far removed from buffoonery): he would mention an obscure decades-old movie title and state what its opening-day gross was, then he would start mentioning bit players no one ever heard of, as well as running times of ancient films no one had seen. “Isn’t it great to waste everyone’s time with information no one will ever need?” he went.

11011I later asked him what he thought film critics should be doing if they wanted to make a positive contribution. “Make sure to connect,” he said, “and don’t take things too seriously.”[3] Bibeth Orteza, whom I remember made the strongest impression in AIKBK (where she was ironically only one of two newcomers), once mentioned that NUT was determined to compile an anthology of his early articles – so at least his stature as film critic could be recouped. This was before he had his stroke in 2018, after which his mother died, he contracted Covid-19, and passed away last April 6, at 78. He was determined to recover from his stroke, but got exposed to the pandemic virus via his physiotherapy program. He will be remembered for several accomplishments like public relations and theater activities, but not for far more significant ones, which will remain one more cultural anomaly in our time that demands to be redressed.

Notes

First published April 14, 2021, as “NUT to Film Critics: ‘Don’t Take Things Too Seriously,’” in The FilAm, and reprinted as “Writer, Director, Critic Nestor U. Torre, 78,” in the May 2021 issue of The FilAm: Newsmagazine Serving Filipino Americans in New York. The author acknowledges discussions on NUT with Lulu Torres Reyes, Mauro Feria Tumbocon Jr., and Jerrick Josue David.

[1] The only social-media posts that acknowledged NUT’s stint as founding chair of the local critics circle came first from Mauro Feria Tumbocon Jr., head of the FACINE International Film Festival, and later from the Directors Guild of the Philippines. All the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino came out with was a post announcing the birthday of its oldest founding member.

[2] One positive result for Pinas pop-culture commentary was NUT’s turn to television criticism, explicated in Louie Jon A. Sánchez’s exemplary assessment in Filipino, titled “Kritisismong Pantelebisyon at si Nestor U. Torre Jr. [Television Criticism and Nestor U. Torre Jr.]”: “During Torre’s active period, he was the only one who focused insistently on reviewing programs in the hurried and impatient medium. When his byline started appearing less frequently starting in 2018, after he suffered a stroke, there was also a decline, in my view, of a high quality of commentary on television in our publications” (Squeeze News Agency Services, April 14, 2021; my translation). See as well “Mga Kislap-Diwa: Ilang Tala sa Mga Gawa ni Nestor Torre Jr. [Ingenious Insights: Some Notes on the Output of Nestor U. Torre Jr.]” by the same author (also SNAS, April 14, 2021). [Usage note: Since Torre’s more recent bylines eschewed the suffix “Jr.,” I have opted to drop it as well. Always NUT, never NUTJ.]

[3] As someone who occasionally gets scolded for supposedly incompatible elements in my writing, I can confirm for myself, and anyone who cares to take notice, that I don’t always faithfully conform to the prescriptions of my predecessors. (Sometimes I even perform the exact opposite of what they advice, but that’s a subject for another article.) The incompatibility I mentioned hinges on my pursuit of useful – and inevitably serious – insights while aspiring to wield the airiest tone I can muster. This constitutes my guarantee to myself that every writing activity poses a formal challenge constantly in danger of failure. Certain contexts are more permissive than others in allowing this anomalous combination (blogs included, fortunately), and such precarious balancing acts don’t always succeed, but I draw some lines whenever necessary: against airheaded whiners who think I should settle for simpler ideas, and against high-minded pretenders who disavow the usefulness of laughter.

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March 20, 2021

Listing of Publications: Reverse Chronological Order

By Joel David

Warning: you might find this (incomplete but still-growing) section too extensive for casual browsing. For chronologically ordered listing, click here.

11011A number of entries may appear bloated because of my insistence in tracking where they may have been reprinted; similarly, the reprints would be extended by the acknowledgments of original publication. I do not hold copies any longer of everything listed here. The claim I can make, however, is that each entry existed in a legally definable published format (including on the internet) that I once laid eyes on, if not actually possessed, except for a number of reviews whose non-publication arose from the editor’s backward orientation or the periodical’s inability to come out. When I realized that I would have to leave most of my collected materials behind to commence graduate studies abroad, I endeavored to list everything I had – a wise decision, since nearly the entirety of my possessions were either pilfered or damaged by the time I returned. My work as university faculty similarly inculcated in me the discipline of summarizing my output every yearend.

11011Pointedly missing from this list are three types of mimeographed material, some of which I was able to jot down, as well as news items generated in my capacity as journalism intern or reporter. The latter were contractually anonymized although my initials started appearing as taglines in some of the later published material; but the requirement of writing up to four reports a day, none of which were guaranteed to see print unless a desk editor happened to favor them, resonates in the most disagreeable way with me. Of the mimeo publications, one was legitimate but literally juvenile: my stint as editor-in-chief of the low-end student paper of my public elementary school (during the time when such institutions were markedly superior to private schools, which I had also attended). The other two types, where I first made use of pseudonyms, were juvenile in other senses: college-era fundamentalist-Christian newsletters and orthodox-Marxist underground propaganda, both types of which are, for better or worse, still around, and not much different from each other, if I may speak from direct experience.

11011To jump to half-decade marks, please click here for: 2020; 2015; 2010; 2005; 2000; 1995; 1990; 1985; 1980. To find an entry’s link in the blog, enter the title in the Search box in the footer (for the website version). Or track the source of the article using these means of identification: book titles (including anthologies and conference proceedings) in Books; journal and non-journal titles in Articles; non-journal periodicals after 2016 and independent statements in Remarks; and all other unclassifiable texts in Extras. If you’re searching for any number of commentaries on film, book, or stage titles, I recommend you look them up in Reviews instead, or in Auteurs & Authors if you prefer to search according to artist. For a tentative evaluation of these listings as tallied data entries, I prepared a page titled Empiricals.

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2023

David, Joel. Canon Decampment (Quezon City: Amauteurish Publishing, 2023).

David, Joel. “Bringing Theater to the Home.” The PETA Milestone Book Project. Eds. Brenda Fajardo, CB Garrucho, Maribel Legarda, & Beng Cabangon (Quezon City: Philippine Educational Theater Association, 2023 forthcoming).

———. “Chaotic Waters and Well-Tempered Specters: The Philippines as Source of Overseas Labor.” Mobility in Islandic Geographies and Textual Representations in Literature, Culture, and Media Forms. Proceedings of the 2023 International Colloquium on Literary and Cultural Studies. (Jeju Island: Konkuk University & National Research Foundation of Korea, 2023): 45-51.

———. “Introduction: A Forum on Genders and Sexualities in Asian Cinema.” Kritika Kultura 40 (February 2023): 272-75. Posted online.

———. “From Hostesses to Working Girls: Sex Workers in Late 1970s Philippine Cinema.” Kritika Kultura 40 (February 2023): 276-310. Posted online.

———. “Anonymity & Its Discontents.” On social-media practice by unidentified film critics. Amauteurish! (February 9, 2023).Posted online.

———. “Sharon Torch Song Used in Absurd Soda Ad.” Originally titled “Pop for All Seasons.” Review of “Balot,” dir. Marius Talampas, advertising short produced by Gigil Agency for RC Cola Philippines. The FilAm (April 24, 2023).Posted online.

———. “Pop for All Seasons.” Review of “Balot,” dir. Marius Talampas, first published April 24, 2023, as “Sharon Torch Song Used in Absurd Soda Ad” in The FilAm. Amauteurish! (April 26, 2023). Posted online.

———. “Trauma at Length.” Review of Florentina Hubaldo, CTE, dir. Marius Talampas. Amauteurish! (May 7, 2023). Posted online.

———. “Mystique of the Past.” Separately posted update to “An Intro to Chapter 16 of Marcos’ Lovey Dovie,” published February 2, 2021, in Ámauteurish! Amauteurish! (May 11, 2023).Posted online.

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2022

David, Joel. “The Marcos Dictatorship and the Irreparable Damage to a Family, the Filipino Experience.” Abridgment of “The Marcos Dictatorship and the Irreparable Damage to a Family,” published September 18, 2012. The FilAm: Newsmagazine Serving Filipino Americans in New York 47 (January 2022): 14. Print edition.

———. “The Political Is Personal.” Review of “Marcos and Memory: The Past in Our Future,” Sheila Coronel’s Adrian E. Cristobal Lecture of the Writers Union of the Philippines. The FilAm (March 6, 2022). Posted online.

———. “The Political Is Personal.” Expanded version of review of “Marcos and Memory: The Past in Our Future,” Sheila Coronel’s Adrian E. Cristobal Lecture of the Writers Union of the Philippines, first published March 6, 2022, in The FilAm. Amauteurish! (March 10, 2022).Posted online.

———. “Jesusa Sonora Is Gone; Long Live Susan Roces.” Obituary for Susan Roces. The FilAm (May 24, 2022). Posted online.

———. “The Studio System’s Final Movie Queen.” Expanded version of “Jesusa Sonora Is Gone; Long Live Susan Roces,” first published May 24, 2022, in The FilAm. Amauteurish! (May 27, 2022).Posted online.

———. “What Lies Above: A Mini-Commentary.” On the failure of editorial supervision of cultural submissions in self-identified “serious” local publications. Amauteurish! (June 3, 2022).Posted online.

———. “National Artist Endorsement for Ricky Lee.” Letter addressed to the Order of National Artist Secretariat, dated October 20, 2020, uploaded February 2, 2021, embargoed until the proclamation of awardees. Amauteurish! (June 11, 2022).Posted online.

———. “A Season of Comebacks.” On the recently declared batch of recipients of the Order of the National Artist, coinciding with the presidential win of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the dictator who openly patronized cultural activities. Amauteurish! (June 26, 2022).Posted online.

———. “This Genre Which Is Not One.” UNITAS: Semi-Annual Peer-Reviewed International Journal of Advanced Research in Literature, Culture, and Society 95.2 (July 2022): 315-47. Posted online.

———. “A Formative Sojourn.” On the process of learning about best and worst practices in film criticism based on organizational experience. Amauteurish! (August 6, 2022).Posted online.

———. “Artist in a Hurry.” Obituary for Cherie Gil. The FilAm (August 7, 2022). Posted online.

———. “Artist in a Hurry.” Expanded version of obituary for Cherie Gil, first published August 7, 2022, in The FilAm. Amauteurish! (August 9, 2022).Posted online.

———. “From Cloud to Resistance.” On political film criticism in the Philippines, comprising three separate uploads: Part 1, “The Problem of Our Critical Approaches” (August 30, 2022); Part 2, “Toward a More Responsive Critical Practice” (September 7, 2022); and Appendix, “‘Category E’ Samples.” Amauteurish! (September 13, 2022).Posted online.

———. “Shout Out Film Festival Citations.” Tiered award results as determined by a board of jurors. Amauteurish! (October 16, 2022).Posted online.

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2021

David, Joel. Writing Pinas Film Commentary. (Quezon City: Amauteurish Publishing, 2021). Posted online.

———. “Videodisc Piracy as an Instance of Resistance.” International Journal of Diaspora & Cultural Criticism 11.1 (January 2021): 98-137. Posted online.

———. “Selected Exchanges.” In Queries section. Amauteurish! (January 13, 2021). Posted online.

———. “An Intro to Chapter 16 of Marcos’ Lovey Dovie.” Belated tribute to Dovie Beams (1932-2017). Amauteurish! (February 2, 2021). Posted online.

———. “Experimental Cinema of the Philippines: A Hasty Recollection.” Landing page (et al.) for uploaded ECP materials. Amauteurish! (February 15, 2021). Posted online.

———. “Bibliographic Mini-Essay 3: The Rise in Spin-offs.” Amauteurish! (February 21, 2021). Posted online.

———. “[Nestor U. Torre] to Film Critics: ‘Don’t Take Things Too Seriously.’” The FilAm (April 14, 2021). Posted online.

———. “NUT’s Kernel.” Expanded version of “[Nestor U. Torre] to Film Critics: ‘Don’t Take Things Too Seriously,’” previously published April 14, 2021, in The FilAm. Amauteurish! (April 15, 2021). Posted online.

———. “Writer, Director, Critic Nestor U. Torre, 78.” Abridgment of “NUT to Film Critics: ‘Don’t Take Things Too Seriously,’” published April 14, 2021, in The FilAm. The FilAm: Newsmagazine Serving Filipino Americans in New York 39 (May 2020): 9. Print edition.

———. “Acceptance Message for the 2021 Gawad Balagtas for Film Criticism.” Amauteurish! (May 1, 2021). Posted online.

———. “An Error in the Urian’s Internet Record.” Amauteurish! (July 16, 2021). Posted online.

———. “In Nerisa, Viva Brings Back Regal’s Low-Budget Blockbuster Formula.” Review of Nerisa, dir. Lawrence Fajardo. The FilAm (August 23, 2021). Posted online.

———. “Siren Call.” Expanded version of review of Nerisa, dir. Lawrence Fajardo, first published August 23, 2021, as “In Nerisa, Viva Brings Back Regal’s Low-Budget Blockbuster Formula” in The FilAm. Amauteurish! (August 25, 2021). Posted online.

———. “A Missing Installation in the Philippine Pantheon.” Draft of an article on director-actor Gregorio Fernandez (1904-73). Amauteurish! (September 13, 2021). Posted online.

———. “Macho Dancing Goes Virtual in Joel Lamangan’s Lockdown.” Review of Lockdown, dir. Joel C. Lamangan. The FilAm (September 27, 2021). Posted online.

———. “Nether Nation.” Expanded version of review of Lockdown, dir. Joel C. Lamangan, first published September 27, 2021, as “Macho Dancing Goes Virtual in Joel Lamangan’s Lockdown” in The FilAm. Amauteurish! (September 28, 2021). Posted online.

———. “Nearly 3 Decades-Old FACINE Is the Longest-Running Fil-Am Film Festival.” The FilAm (October 30, 2021). Posted online.

———. “Macho Dancing Goes Virtual in Joel Lamangan’s Lockdown.” Abridgment of the same-titled article published September 27, 2021, in The FilAm. The FilAm: Newsmagazine Serving Filipino Americans in New York 45 (November 2021): 13. Print edition.

———. “Every Tier a Victory; Or Why Film Awards Don’t Have to Be So Divisive.” Published as a postmortem to “Nearly 3 Decades-Old FACINE Is the Longest-Running Fil-Am Film Festival,” in the October 30, 2021, issue of The FilAm. Amauteurish! (November 16, 2021). Posted online.

———. “FACINE: The Longest-Running FilAm Film Festival at Nearly 3 Decades.” Abridgment of “Nearly 3 Decades-Old FACINE Is the Longest-Running Fil-Am Film Festival,” published October 30, 2021, in The FilAm. The FilAm: Newsmagazine Serving Filipino Americans in New York 46 (December 2021): 14. Print edition.

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2020

David, Joel. Authoring Auteurs: The Comprehensive Pinas Film Bibliography (Quezon City: Amauteurish Publishing, 2020). Posted online.

———. “Authoring Auteurs: A Bibliographical Essay.” In relation to the Comprehensive Pinas Film Biblio posted on December 4, 2019. Amauteurish! (January 18, 2020). Posted online.

———. “Bibliographic Mini-Essay 1: The Aunor Effect in Philippine Film Book Publications.” A spinoff of the bibliographical essay “Authoring Auteurs,” posted on January 18, 2020. Amauteurish! (January 28, 2020). Posted online.

David, Joel, and Joyce L. Arriola. “Film Criticism in the Philippines: Introduction to a Symposium.” UNITAS: Semi-Annual Peer-Reviewed International Journal of Advanced Research in Literature, Culture, and Society 93.1 (May 2020): 1-16. Posted online.

David, Joel. “Auteurs & Amateurs: Toward an Ethics of Film Criticism.” UNITAS: Semi-Annual Peer-Reviewed International Journal of Advanced Research in Literature, Culture, and Society 93.1 (May 2020): 17-36. Posted online.

———. “My Peque Gallaga Interview.” Commemoration of the recently departed filmmaker. Amauteurish! (May 9, 2020). Posted online.

———. “Peque’s Rage: A Retelling.” Abridgment of “My Peque Gallaga Interview,” printed in Amauteurish! on May 9, 2020. The FilAm (May 12, 2020). Posted online.

———. “Peque’s Rage: A Retelling.” Abridgment of the same-titled article published May 9, 2019, in The FilAm. The FilAm: Newsmagazine Serving Filipino Americans in New York 28 (June 2020): 17. Print edition.

———. “Corrigenda & Problematics for Manila by Night: A Queer Film Classic.” A supplement to the Arsenal Pulp Press 2017 publication. Amauteurish! (June 6, 2020). Posted online.

———. “Remembering Anita Linda: She Devoted Her Life So Completely to Her Craft that It Defined Her.” Tribute to the late film actress. ABS-CBN News Channel [ANCX, formerly ABS-CBNnews.com] (June 13, 2020). Posted online.

———. “Comprehensive Pinas Film Biblio: Reverse-Chronologized.” Amauteurish! (June 22, 2020). Posted online.

———. “Empiricals; or the Bearable Heaviness of Having-Been.” Amauteurish! (June 29, 2020). Posted online.

———. “Mother Pinas, Onscreen.” Expanded version of “Remembering Anita Linda: She Devoted Her Life So Completely to Her Craft that It Defined Her,” published June 13, 2020, in ABS-CBN News Channel. Amauteurish! (July 9, 2020). Posted online.

———. “Bibliographic Mini-Reviews: Memoirs & Bios.” Amauteurish! (July 30, 2020). Posted online.

———. “The Marcos Dictatorship and the Irreparable Damage to a Family.” Abridgment of “The Marcos Dictatorship and the Irreparable Damage to a Family and the Filipino Experience,” published September 18, 2012, in The FilAm. The FilAm: Newsmagazine Serving Filipino Americans in New York 30 (August 2020): 8. Print edition.

———. “By Way of an Epilogue: Commemorating Laura Samson (September 1, 1953 – September 10, 2020).” Commemoration of the co-conceptualizer and publisher of Wages of Cinema (University of the Philippines Press, 1998). Amauteurish! (September 16, 2020). Posted online.

———. “Comprehensive Pinas Film Biblio: Alphabetized List by Title.” Amauteurish! (October 2, 2020). Posted online.

———. “Comprehensive Pinas Film Biblio: Chronologized List: Earliest to Latest.” Amauteurish! (October 4, 2020). Posted online.

———. “The Masses Matter: A Review of Manila by Night: A Queer Film Classic by Joel David.” Translation of “Mahalaga ang Marami: Rebyu ng Manila by Night: A Queer Film Classic ni Joel David” by Chuckberry J. Pascual, 2020 in Pelikula: A Journal of Philippine Cinema. Amauteurish! (December 21, 2020), pp. 76-77. Posted online.

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2019

David, Joel. Millennial Traversals: Outliers, Juvenilia, & Quondam Popcult Blabbery. Book Edition (single-volume, back-to-back). Quezon City: Ámauteurish Publishing, 2019.

———. “Theater, Film, & Everything in Between.” Introduction. Two Women as Specters of History: Lakambini & Indigo Child by Rody Vera. Ed. Ellen Ongkeko Marfil (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2019): xiii-xxii.

———. “A Salute to Our Pinay Filmmakers.” Amauteurish! (March 26, 2019). Originally posted March 25, 2019, on Facebook.

———. “Auteurs & Amateurs: Toward an Ethics of Film Criticism (Lecture Version).” Plenary lecture delivered during the International Conference on Ethical Literary Criticism: Celebrating Literature as a Distinctive Ethical Expression. Amauteurish! (May 1, 2019). Posted online.

———. “Manoy Takes His Leave.” Tribute to the late Eddie Garcia. The FilAm (June 23, 2019). Posted online.

———. “Manoy Takes His Leave.” Tribute to Eddie Garcia, first published June 23, 2019, in The FilAm. Amauteurish! (June 27, 2019). Posted online.

———. “Di/Visibility: Marks of Bisexuality in Philippine Cinema.” Survey article. Journal of Bisexuality 19.3 (September 2019): 440-54. Posted online.

———. “The Barrettos and the Privilege of Behaving Badly.” On the latest saga in the long-running showbiz family scandal. The FilAm (October 28, 2019). Posted online.

———. “Showbiz Babylon: A Tribute-of-Sorts to the Barretto Sisters.” Expanded version of “The Barrettos and the Privilege of Behaving Badly,” published October 28, 2019, in The FilAm. Amauteurish! (October 29, 2019). Posted online.

———. “Barretto Sisters: The Privilege of Behaving Badly.” Abridgment of “The Barrettos and the Privilege of Behaving Badly,” published October 28, 2019, in The FilAm. The FilAm: Newsmagazine Serving Filipino Americans in New York 22 (December 2019): 6. Print edition.

———. “Comprehensive Pinas Film Biblio: Categorized.” Amauteurish! (December 4, 2019). Posted online.

———. “Comprehensive Pinas Film Biblio: Alphabetized.” Amauteurish! (December 4, 2019). Posted online.

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2018

David, Joel. “The Storyline of Ishmael Bernal’s Manila by Night (1980).” Originally drafted for Arsenal Pulp Press’s Manila by Night: A Queer Film Classic. Amauteurish! (February 9, 2018). Posted online.

———. “Parallel Growths.” Kolum Kritika on the 30th Anniversary. Kritika Kultura 30/31 (February-August 2018): 90-91. Posted online.

———. “Farewell Farewell, Bernardo Bernardo” “Toward the End, a Hopeful Outlook for the Philippines.” The FilAm (March 21, 2018). Posted online.

———. “Farewell Farewell, Bernardo Bernardo.” First published March 21, 2018, in two parts, as “Farewell Farewell, Bernardo Bernardo” and as “Toward the End, a Hopeful Outlook for the Philippines,” The FilAm. Amauteurish! (March 23, 2018). Posted online.

———. “Statement on the Availability of Filipino Films during the Internet Era.” Amauteurish! (April 15, 2018). Posted online.

———. “High Five for Ninotchka Rosca’s Gang of 5.” Abridgment of “High Five for Ninotchka Rosca’s Sanaysay Anthology,” published February 21, 2013, in The FilAm. The FilAm: Newsmagazine Serving Filipino Americans in New York 3 (May 2018): 6. Print edition.

———. “Amid the Nightmare of War, a Coming-of-Age.” Review of Balangiga: Howling Wilderness, dir. Khavn. The FilAm (July 16, 2018). Posted online.

———. “Innocence Regained.” Review of Balangiga: Howling Wilderness, dir. Khavn, first published July 16, 2018, as “Amid the Nightmare of War, a Coming-of-Age” in The FilAm. Amauteurish! (July 30, 2018). Posted online.

———. “Queerness as Defiance in Manila by Night.” Lecture delivered during the launch of Angela Stuart-Santiago’s Pro Bernal, Anti Bio. Amauteurish! (August 7, 2018). Posted online.

———. “The Millennial Traversals of Millennial Traversals.” Lecture delivered during the launch of the University of Santo Tomas’s UNITAS website. Amauteurish! (August 16, 2018). Posted online.

———. “Signal Rock and a Hard Place.” Review of Signal Rock, dir. Chito Roño. Philippine Entertainment Portal (August 17, 2018). Posted online.

———. “Signal Rock and a Hard Place.” Review of Signal Rock, dir. Chito Roño, first published August 17, 2018, in the Philippine Entertainment Portal. Amauteurish! (August 24, 2018). Posted online.

———. “Tears Go By.” Review of Ang Pamilyang Hindi Lumuluha, dir. Mes de Guzman. All Things Sharon (October 18, 2018). Posted online.

———. “Tears Go By.” Review of Ang Pamilyang Hindi Lumuluha, dir. Mes de Guzman, first published October 18, 2018, in All Things Sharon. Amauteurish! (December 25, 2018). Posted online.

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2017

David, Joel. Manila by Night: A Queer Film Classic. Queer Film Classics series, eds. Thomas Waugh & Matthew Hayes. Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2017.

———. Various entries for Film, vol. 6 of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Encyclopedia of Philippine Art, ed. Nicanor G. Tiongson (Manila: CCP & the Office of the Chancellor, University of the Philippines Diliman, 2017): “Aksyon” (with Lynn Pareja, updated by Mesandel Arguelles), 112-13; “Animation” (with Lynn Pareja, updated by Michael Kho Lim), 114-17; “Horror” (with Lynn Pareja, updated by Erika Carreon), 134-35; “Komedi” (with Lynn Pareja, updated by Mesandel Arguelles), 136-38; “Musical” (with Lynn Pareja & Nicanor G. Tiongson, updated by Johann Vladimir J. Espiritu), 139-40; “Acting in Film” (with Justino Dormiendo, updated by Johann Vladimir J. Espiritu), 146-47; “Cinematography” (with Nick Cruz, updated by Elvin Valerio and Clodualdo del Mundo Jr.), 161-64; “Distribution in Film” (with Rosalie Matilac, updated by Albert Almendralejo), 179-82; “Producing for Film” (with Nick Cruz & Rosalie Matilac, updated by Jose Javier Reyes, 196-99; “Sound Recording in Film” (with Nick Cruz, updated by Rica Arevalo), 210-11; and “Training and Education for Film” (with Lynn Pareja, updated by Johann Vladimir J. Espiritu), 213-14.

David, Joel. “Velasco, Johven.” Theater, vol. 9 of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Encyclopedia of Philippine Art, ed. Nicanor G. Tiongson (Manila: CCP & the Office of the Chancellor, University of the Philippines Diliman, 2017) 796.

호세 에르나니 S. 다비드. “녹슨 팔과 가려운 손가락; 두테르테 대통령의 마약과의 전쟁에 대한 문화적 시각.” 제5회 국가폭력과 트라우마 국제회의. Trans. n.a. (Gwangju: Trauma Center, 2017) 103-12.

David, Jose Hernani S. “Rusty Arms and Itchy Fingers: A Cultural Perspective on President Duterte’s War on Drugs.” The 5th International Conference on State Violence and Trauma. (Gwangju: Trauma Center, 2017) 113-27.

David, Joel. “Contestable Nation-Space: Cinema, Cultural Politics, and Transnationalism in the Marcos-Brocka Philippines. By Rolando B. Tolentino. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2014. Pp. 267 + xii. ISBN-10: 971-5427359; ISBN-13: 978-9715427357.” Book review. International Journal of Asian Studies (January 2017): 112-15. Posted online.

———. “Pop Culture and Halalan 2016.” First published May 15, 2016, as “How Pop Culture, Social Media Played a Role in Halalan 2016” in The FilAm. Amauteurish! (January 2, 2017). Posted online.

———. “Vampariah as Subversive Aswang Film.” Originally titled “Peerless Vampire Killers.” Review of Vampariah, dir. Matthew Abaya. The FilAm (January 12, 2017). Posted online.

———. “Peerless Vampire Killers.” Review of Vampariah, dir. Matthew Abaya, first published January 13, 2017, as “Vampariah as Subversive Aswang Film” in The FilAm. Amauteurish! (January 23, 2017). Posted online.

———. “Remembering the Forgotten War: Origins of the Korean War Film and Its Development during Hallyu.” Kritika Kultura 28 (February 2017): 112-46. Posted online.

———. “The Transnational Pastime: An Interview with Joel David.” Interviewed by Paul Douglas Grant. Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication, Media, and Society 14.1 (June 2017): 135-45. Posted online.

———. “Seeds in the Garden of Letters: A Review of The End of National Cinema by Patrick F. Campos.” Humanities Diliman: A Philippine Journal of Humanities 14.2 (July-December 2017) 153-57. Posted online.

———. “Film May Be Dead, But Film Culture Is Alive and Well.” Review of Respeto, dir. Treb Monteras II. The FilAm (August 18, 2017). Posted online.

———. “Film May Be Dead, but Film Culture Is Alive and Well.” Review of Respeto, dir. Treb Monteras II, first published August 18, 2017, in The FilAm. Amauteurish! (September 18, 2017). Posted online.

———. “Tribute to Bangy Dioquino.” Delivered May 2013. Amauteurish! (October 5, 2017). Posted online.

Campos, Patrick F. “On Film Polls and Pinoy Rebyu.” Interview of Skilty C. Labastilla. Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication, Media, and Society 14.2 (November 2017): 195-205. With Annex, titled “Matrix of Top 51 Films in the 1989 Joel David Poll and the 2013 Pinoy Rebyu Poll of the Best Filipino Films of All Time,” 203-05. Posted online.

David, Joel. “Muzzled Bombardments: The Philippine Film Canon and Its Discontents.” Roundtable on the Filipino Film Canon. Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication, Media, and Society 14.2 (November 2017): 221-31. Posted online.

———. “A Certain Tendency: Europeanization as a Response to Americanization in the Philippines’s ‘Golden Age’ Studio System.” UNITAS: Semi-Annual Peer-Reviewed International Journal of Advanced Research in Literature, Culture, and Society 90.2 (November 2017): 24-53. Posted online.

———. “The First Glory Awards (2017): A Mini-Album.” Amauteurish! (November 23, 2017). Posted online.

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2016

David, Joel. Book Texts: A Pinoy Film Course, original digital edition (Amauteurish, 2016).

———. “Grains and Flickers.” Remembering/Rethinking EDSA, eds. JPaul S. Manzanilla and Carolyn Hau (Mandaluyong City: Anvil, 2016): 172-87.

———. “Manay Revisits Manila by Night.” Interview with Bernardo Bernardo. Amauteurish! (January 26, 2016). Formerly posted online, now an Appendix in Manila by Night: A Queer Film Classic.

———. “Roads Less Traveled.” Review of Lakbay2Love, dir. Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil. Rappler (February 10, 2016). Posted online.

———. “Annual Filipino Film Production Chart.” Amauteurish! (February 25, 2016). Posted online.

———. “Grains & Flickers.” First published 2016 in Remembering/Rethinking EDSA (ed. JPaul S. Manzanilla and Caroline S. Hau, Mandaluyong City: Anvil). Amauteurish! (March 25, 2016). Posted online.

———. Millennial Traversals: Outliers, Juvenilia, & Quondam Popcult Blabbery. Part II: Expanded Perspectives – special issue of UNITAS: Semi-Annual Peer-Reviewed International Journal of Advanced Research in Literature, Culture, and Society (May 2016). Posted online.

———. “How Pop Culture, Social Media Played a Role in Halalan 2016.” Commentary on the 2016 Philippine presidential election campaign. The FilAm (May 15, 2016). Posted online.

———. “Doy del Mundo on a Controversy over Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag.” Interview with Clodualdo del Mundo Jr. Amauteurish! (July 2, 2016). Posted online.

———. “In Ma’ Rosa, Cannes Best Actress Jaclyn Jose Plays a Meth Dealer with Eloquence, Warmth.” Originally titled “Ice with a Face.” Review of Ma’ Rosa, dir. Brillante Ma. Mendoza. The FilAm (July 14, 2016). Posted online.

———. “Searched For, But Not Missing.” Review of Ang Nawawala, dir. Marie Jamora. Amauteurish! (September 1, 2016). Posted online.

———. “Fallout over ‘A Lover’s Polemic’.” Amauteurish! (September 19, 2016). Posted online.

———. “Cold Word Wars: Philippine Film as a Critical Activity.” 2016 FACINE Gawad Lingap Sining Lecture, delivered October 18, 2016 at the Diego Rivera Theater, City College of San Francisco. Amauteurish! (October 19, 2016). Posted online.

———. “The Role of the Film Critic in Cultural Discourse.” Abridged version of “Cold Word Wars: Philippine Film as a Critical Activity.” 2016 FACINE Gawad Lingap Sining Lecture. The FilAm (October 23, 2016). Posted online.

———. “President Duterte’s War on Drugs.” Delivered October 6, 2016 at the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy auditorium. Amauteurish! (November 27, 2016). Posted online.

———. “A Festival in Flux.” First published December 22, 2016, as “MMFF: A Festival in Flux” in Philippine Daily Inquirer. Amauteurish! (December 22, 2016). Posted online.

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2015

David, Joel. Millennial Traversals: Outliers, Juvenilia, & Quondam Popcult Blabbery. Original digital edition. Amauteurish, 2015.

———. Millennial Traversals: Outliers, Juvenilia, & Quondam Popcult Blabbery. Part I: Traversals within Cinema – special issue of UNITAS: Semi-Annual Peer-Reviewed International Journal of Advanced Research in Literature, Culture, and Society (May 2015). Posted online.

———. “Pinoy Filmfests ca. 2013.” Review of the All Masters Edition of the 2013 Sineng Pambansa National Film Festival. First published February 2014 in The Manila Review. Amauteurish! (June 30, 2015). Posted online.

———. “A Lover’s Polemic.” First published August 2013 as “Pinoy Film Criticism: A Lover’s Polemic” in The Manila Review. Amauteurish! (July 1, 2015). Posted online.

———. “On Nora Aunor and the Philippine Star System: An Introduction.” Guest Editor’s introduction. Kritika Kultura 25 (August 2015): 46-48. Posted online.

———. “Firmament Occupation: The Philippine Star System.” Kritika Kultura 25 (August 2015): 248-84. Posted online.

———. “Historical Film Depicts Antonio Luna’s Fall and Rise.” Originally titled “Antonio Luna’s Fall and Rise.” Review of Heneral Luna, dir. Jerrold Tarog. The FilAm (October 15, 2015). Posted online.

———. “Alien Abjection amid the Morning Calm: A Singular Reading of Horror Films from beyond Southeast Asia.” Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication, Media, and Society 12.2 (August 2015): 201-23. Posted online.

———. “Intrigues, Maneuvers, Interventions: Screen Images of the Korean War and its Aftermath.” Keynote lecture. 4PKSS: Proceedings of the 4th Philippine Korean Studies Symposium (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Department of Linguistics, 2015): 25-49.

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2014

David, Joel. The National Pastime: The Digital Edition. Revision, update, & digitalization of The National Pastime: Contemporary Philippine Cinema (1990). Amauteurish, 2014.

———. Fields of Vision: The Digital Edition. Revision, update, & digitalization edition of Fields of Vision: Critical Applications in Recent Philippine Cinema. Amauteurish, 2014.

———. Wages of Cinema: The Digital Edition. Revision, update, & digitalization edition of Wages of Cinema: Film in Philippine Perspective. Amauteurish, 2014.

———. “Pinoy Filmfests circa 2013.” The Manila Review 4 (February 2014): 29-32. Posted online.

———. “Phantom Limbs in the Body Politic: Filipinos in Foreign Cinema.” Plaridel 11.1 (February 2014): 35-60.

———. “Norte, a Four-Hour Ideological Tearjerker by Lav Diaz.” Originally titled “Beyond Borders.” Review of Norte, dir. Lav Diaz. The FilAm (March 12, 2014). Posted online.

———. “Sight & Sound ’02.” Inside account of the process of my submission to the decadal poll. Amauteurish! (May 30, 2014). Posted online.

———. “A National Artist We Deserve.” The FilAm (June 21, 2014). Posted online.

———. “Nora Aunor: A National Artist We Deserve.” Rappler (June 23, 2014). Posted online.

David, Joel, and Ha Ju-Yong. “A Revaluation of the Use of Trauma as an Approach to Understanding Contemporary Korean Cinema.” Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia 50.1 (2014): 16-50.

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2013

David, Joel. “A Benediction We Deserve.” The FilAm (February 13, 2013). Posted online.

———. “High Five for Ninotchka Rosca’s Sanaysay Anthology.” Originally titled “High Five.” Review of Gang of 5: Tales, Cuentos, Sanaysay ([Los Angeles]: Mariposa Center [for Change], 2012). The FilAm (February 21, 2013). Posted online.

———. “Across the Korean Peninsula, Unease in the Morning Calm.” The FilAm (April 18, 2013). Posted online. Rpt. as “Kwentong Kapuso: Unease in the ‘Land of the Morning Calm,’” GMA News Online (April 19, 2013), also posted online.

———. “OFWs in Foreign Cinema: An Introduction.” Guest Editor’s introduction to Monograph Section. Kritika Kultura 21/22 (August 2013): 557-59. Posted online.

———. “Phantom in Paradise: A Philippine Presence in Hollywood Cinema.” Kritika Kultura 21/22 (August 2013): 560-83. Posted online.

———. “Pinoy Film Criticism: A Lover’s Polemic.” The Manila Review 3 (August 2013): 6-8 [n.b.: print edition is erroneously indicated as issue “1”]. Posted online.

———. “On the Job: On the Edge.” Originally titled “On the Edge.” Review of On the Job, dir. Erik Matti. The FilAm (September 12, 2013). Posted online.

———. “The OFW Finds Well-Deserved Recognition in Hollywood (Part 1).” Originally titled “A Desire Named Oscar,” first part. Including review of Ilo Ilo, dir. Anthony Chen. The FilAm (December 4, 2013). Posted online.

———. “Metro Manila and Transit: Ambitious, Impressive (Part 2).” Originally titled “A Desire Named Oscar,” second part. Reviews of Metro Manila, dir. Sean Ellis; and Transit, dir. Hannah Espia. The FilAm (December 4, 2013). Posted online.

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2012

David, Joel. “The Dolphy Conundrum.” The FilAm (July 16, 2012). Posted online. Rpt. as “Kwentong Kapuso: The Dolphy ‘Riddle,’” GMA News Online (July 17, 2012), also posted online.

———. “Introduction.” Guest Editor’s introduction to Forum Kritika: A Closer Look at Manila by Night. Kritika Kultura 19 (August 2012): 6-13. Posted online.

———. “Film Plastics in Manila by Night.” Kritika Kultura 19 (August 2012): 36-69. Posted online.

———, transcription and notes. “Ishmael Bernal’s Manila by Night.” Screenplay, with transcription by Alfred A. Yuson. Kritika Kultura 19 (August 2012): 172-272. Posted online.

———. “The Marcos Dictatorship and the Irreparable Damage to a Family and the Filipino Experience.” Review of Subversive Lives: A Family Memoir of the Marcos Years, by Susan F. Quimpo & Nathan Gilbert Quimpo. Originally titled “Disorder & Constant Sorrow (A Review of Subversive Lives).” The FilAm (September 18, 2012). Posted online. Rpt. as “The Marcos Regime and Its Impact on the Pinoy Family,” GMA News Online (September 18, 2012), also posted online.

———. “Marilou Diaz-Abaya, 57: Rule Breaker, Risk Taker.” Obituary. Originally titled “The Carnal Moral of a Brutal Miracle.” The FilAm (October 12, 2012). Posted online. Rpt. as “Acclaimed Filmmaker Marilou Diaz-Abaya Was a Rule Breaker,” GMA News Online (October 12, 2012), also posted online.

———. “High Drama and Low Humor in Ricky Lee’s New Fiction about a Cross-Dressing Manananggal.” Review of Si Amapola sa 65 na Kabanata, by Ricky Lee. Originally titled “The Novel Pinoy Novel.” The FilAm (November 8, 2012). Posted online. Rpt. as “What Republicans Could Have Learned from Ricky Lee’s Amapola,” GMA News Online (November 9, 2012), also posted online.

———. “Thinking Straight: Queer Imaging in Lino Brocka’s Maynila (1975).” Plaridel 9.2 (August 2012): 21-40.

———. “Glimpses of Freedom: Independent Cinema in Southeast Asia [by] May Adadol Ingawanij & Benjamin McKay, eds, Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2012, viii+246 pp.” Book review. Southeast Asian Studies 1.3 (December 2012): 529-33. Posted online.

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2011

David, Joel. “Primates in Paradise: Critical Possibilities of the Milieu Movie.” Kritika Kultura 17 (August 2011): 70-104. Posted online.

———. “Punch Tackles Fil-Korean’s Search for Mother.” Film review of Wandeugi, dir. Lee Han. ABS-CBNnews.com (November 28, 2011). Posted online. Rpt. in Chinese News of Las Vegas (November 28, 2011); Filipinos Abroad (November 27, 2011); H3 blog (November 28, 2011); MabuhayCity.com (November 28, 2011); Philippine Times of Southern Nevada (November 28, 2011); Saigon News of Las Vegas (November 28 2011); US News Las Vegas (November 28, 2011); US News Los Angeles (November 28, 2011) – all posted online.

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2010

David, Joel. “A Few Insights into our Asian Casanovas.” Pinoy Voices column. JungAng Daily (January 25, 2010): 11. Posted online.

———. “The Sins of the Fathers.” Viewpoints (formerly Pinoy Voices) column. JungAng Daily (April 12, 2010): 11. Posted online.

———. “2 Guys Watching Avatar.” Viewpoints (formerly Pinoy Voices) column. JungAng Daily (March 8, 2010): unpublished. Anthologized in Millennial Traversals, Part I: Traversals within Cinema 154-57. Posted online.

———. “Sighs and Whispers.” Film review of Biyaheng Lupa, dir. Armando Lao. Philippine Star (May 2, 2010): E2. Posted online.

David, Joel, and Ha Ju-Yong. “A Yearning for Tenderness in Korean Cinema.” Global Makeover: Media and Culture in Asia, ed. Danilo Araña Arao (Quezon City and Seoul: Development Center for Asia Africa Pacific and Asian Media and Culture Forum, 2010) 35-54.

David, Joel. “Orientalism and Classical Film Practice.” Global Makeover: Media and Culture in Asia, ed. Danilo Araña Arao (Quezon City and Seoul: Development Center for Asia Africa Pacific and Asian Media and Culture Forum, 2010) 139-54.

———. “Las edades de oro del cine Filipino: Una reevaluación crítica.” Cinema Filipinas: Historia, teoría y crítica fílmica (1999-2009), ed. Juan Guardiola ([Andalucía]: Juna de Andalucía, Consejería de Cultura Fundación El Legado Andalusí, [2010]) 37-48.

———. “The Golden Ages of Philippine Cinema: A Critical Reassessment.” Cinema Filipinas 217-24.

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2009

David, Joel. “Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic, and Temporal Critique [by] Bliss Cua Lim, Durham: Duke University Press, 2009, 246+xiv pages.” Book review. Asian Journal of Women’s Studies 15.4 (Winter 2009): 124-32.

———. “Retrospective: Serbis Review.” Film review of Serbis, dir. Brillante Ma. Mendoza. Philippine Entertainment Portal (May 31, 2009). Posted online.

———. “A New Role for Korea in Asia.” Korea Times (June 2, 2009): 15. Posted online.

———. “Kim Dae-jung & the Aquinos.” Korea Times (August 24, 2009): 4. Posted online.

———. “Boses Is for the World.” Film review of Boses, dir. Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil. Philippine Daily Inquirer (October 16, 2009): F2. Posted online.

———. “Clueless Global Hybrid, Now Showing.” Film review of I Come with the Rain, dir. Tran Anh Hung. Pinoy Voices column. JungAng Daily (November 9, 2009): 11. Posted online.

———. “Heartbreak in Mindanao.” Pinoy Voices column. JungAng Daily (December 14, 2009): 11. Posted online.

———. [“Film-Writing.”] Excerpt of book review. Si Tatang at mga Himala ng Ating Panahon: Koleksyon ng mga Akda by Ricky Lee. (Quezon City: Writers Studio Foundation, 2009) 11. Originally in National Midweek (February 8, 1989): 27-28.

———. “Context: An Introduction.” Hulmahan/Huwaran Atbp.: The Film Writings of Johven Velasco, ed. Joel David (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2009) ix-xiv.

데이비드, 조엘. “냉전시기필리핀의영화정책.” 냉전 아시아의 문화풍경 2: 1960~1970년대, trans. 김수현 (Seoul: Institute for East Asian Studies, SungKongHoe University, 2009) 277-96.

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2008

David, Joel. “Awake in the Dark: Philippine Film During the Marcos Era.” Philippine Studies: Have We Gone Beyond St. Louis? ed. Priscelina Patajo Legasto (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2008) 227-43.

———. “The Cold-War and Marcos-Era Cinema in the Philippines.” Paper read at the 8th ASEAN Inter-University Conference on Social Development (Manila, 2008).

———. “Understanding Film.” Paper read at the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication Faculty Colloquium (Quezon City, 2008).

———. “The Philippine Culture Industry (with Emphasis on Cinema).” Paper read at the Institute of Asian Studies Colloquium. SungKongHoe University (Seoul, 2008).

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2007

데이비드, 조엘. “필리핀의 냉전 영화정책” and “Cold-War Film Policy in the Philippines.” 동아시아 냉전문화의 역학: 1960~70년대 냉전기 동아시아 지역의 문화변동과 국민국가의 문화정치학 세미나, 성공회대학교 동아시아연구소, translator unknown (Seoul: Institute for East Asian Studies, SungKongHoe University, 2007) 74-86 and 186-99 resp. Paper read at the Dynamics of Cold War Culture in East Asia: Cultural Changes in the Region during the Cold War in the 1960s-70s and Cultural Politics of the Nation-State conference sponsored by the Institute for East Asian Studies, Sungkonghoe University (Seoul, 2007).

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2006

David, Joel. “Queer Shuttling: Korea – Manila – New York.” Queer Film and Video Festival Forum, Take Two: Critics Speak Out section. Ed. Chris Straayer and Thomas Waugh. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 12.4 (2006): 614-17.

———. “Indochine and the Dynamics of Gender.” Proceedings of the Whither the Orient: Asians in Asian and Non-Asian Cinema Conference, Kimdaejung Convention Center, Gwangju, Korea, 28-29 October 2006, ed. Joel David (Seoul: Asia Culture Forum, 2006) 248-72.

———. “Indochine and the Politics of Gender.” Asian Journal of Women’s Studies 12.4 (Winter 2006): 61-93.

———. “Condemned Property: Film Piracy in the Philippines.” Paper read at The Film Scene: Cinema, the Arts, and Social Change conference sponsored by the Film Culture Project of the Department of Comparative Literature, Department of Music, and the Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 2006).

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2005

David, Joel. “Cutthroat Archipelago: Video Piracy in and around the Philippines.” Culture Industry and Cultural Capital: Transnational Media Consumption and the Korean New Wave in East Asia: Conference Proceedings, ed. Kim Shin-dong. Paper read at the Culture Industry and Cultural Capital: Transnational Media Consumption and the Korean New Wave in East Asia conference sponsored by the Institute for Communication Arts & Technology, Hallym University (Seoul, Korea, 2005).

———. “Introduction.” Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives: A Folio by the Feature Writing Class, Fall Semester 2004-2005, School of Communication, Hallym University (Chuncheon: Hallym University, 2005) 3.

———. “Growing Old in New York (or Small World, Big Apple).” Personal essay. The Hallym Post 21 (May 2, 2005): 4.

———. “A Yearning for Tenderness: A Scenario for Korean Cinema.” Paper for “Waves from Korea and Japan in a Cross-Cultural Context” panel at the National, Transnational, and International: Asian Cinema in the Context of Globalization – Centennial Celebration of Chinese Cinema conference sponsored by the Shanghai University School of Film and TV Arts and Technology, Beijing University Department of Arts Studies, and (US) Asian Cinema Studies Society (Shanghai and Beijing, China, 2005).

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2004

David, Joel. “Sabel: Heaven in Mind.” Film review of Sabel, dir. Joel C. Lamangan. Philippine Star (July 11, 2004): E6. Posted online. Also posted online at Regalfilms.com. Rpt. as “They Don’t Make Films Like Sabel Anymore,” Philippine Daily Inquirer (July 13, 2004): A23.

———. “They Don’t Make Films Like Sabel Anymore.” Film review of Sabel, dir. Joel C. Lamangan. Philippine Daily Inquirer (July 13, 2004): A23. Also posted online at Inq7.net. Originally published as “Sabel: Heaven in Mind,” Philippine Star (July 11, 2004): E6.

———. “Literalized Communities: The Pinoy Milieu Movie’s Aesthetic and Social Dimensions.” Ramon Cojuangco Professorial Chair lecture read at the UP College of Mass Communication Faculty Colloquia (Quezon City, 2004).

———. “Multiple Choices, Multiple Voices: Critical Possibilities of the Milieu Movie.” Paper read at the 40th Communication Colloquium, Institute for Communication Arts & Technology, Hallym University (Chuncheon, Korea, 2004).

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2003

David, Joel. “A Certain Tendency: Europeanization as a Response to Americanization and Other Issues in the ‘Golden-Age’ Studio System.” Paper read at the Sangandaan: Arts and Media in Philippine-American Relations, 1899-2002 conference sponsored by the University of the Philippines and the Filipino American National Historical Society (Quezon City, 2003).

———. “Chosen Few: Minimal Multi-Character Patterns in Recent Filipino Films.” Paper read at the Freeze-Frame: New Issues in Philippine Cinema conference sponsored by the University of the Philippines Visayas Cebu College (Cebu City, 2003).

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2002

David, Jose Hernani Segovia. Primates in Paradise: The Multiple-Character Format in Philippine Film Practice (New York University, 2002 and Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 2002). UMI 3048810.

David, Joel. “Ten Best Films of All Time” contribution. Sight & Sound, British Film Institute magazine (September 2002): 29. Posted online.

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2001

David, Joel. Reviews and essays. The Urian Anthology 1980-1989, ed. Nicanor G. Tiongson (Quezon City: Tuviera, 2001). Originally published in various print outlets.

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2000

David, Joel. “Philippine Film History as a Site of Postcolonial Discourse.” Geopolitics of the Visible: Essays on Philippine Film Cultures, ed. Rolando B. Tolentino (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2000) 3-12.

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1998

David, Joel. Wages of Cinema: Film in Philippine Perspective. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1998.

———. “A Question of Appositeness: Structuralism to Poststructuralism.” Wages of Cinema: Film in Philippine Perspective (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1998) 3-13.

———. “The Multiple-Character Film Format.” Wages of Cinema 14-25.

———. “Genre Pastiche in the Horror Film.” Wages of Cinema 26-37.

———. “Auteur Criticism: A Non-Recuperative Reappraisal.” Wages of Cinema 38-47. Originally read at the New York University Annual Student Conference (New York, 1994).

———. “A Cultural Policy Experience in Philippine Cinema.” Wages of Cinema 48-61. Originally read at the Socio-Politics of the Cinema of the Philippines panel at the Asian Cinema (Poetics & Politics) Annual Ohio University Film Conference (Athens, 1994).

———. “Viable Lessons From Another Third-World Model.” Wages of Cinema 65-79.

———. “Race as Discourse in Southeast Asia Film Ethnographies.” Wages of Cinema 80-91.

———. “Ideas in Philippine Film: A Critical Survey.” Wages of Cinema. 92-101. Originally read in altered form at the Pelikulang Pilipino: A Review of Contemporary Philippine Cinema forum at Columbia University, sponsored by Liga Filipina and Arkipelago (New York, 1994).

———. “Practice Makes Perfect: Alternative Philippine Cinema.” Wages of Cinema. 102-12. Originally read at the (In)Dependent Film Practice in a Third-World Setting panel of the Society for Cinema Studies Annual Conference (Syracuse, 1994).

———. “A History of the History of a History-To-Be.” Wages of Cinema. 113-28. Originally read at the PeregriNations: The Philippines as a Nation in Cinema panel of the Society for Cinema Studies Annual Conference (New York, 1995).

———. “Gender as Masquerade in the Vietnam-War Film.” Wages of Cinema 131-45. Originally read at the New York University Annual Student Conference (New York, 1995).

———. “Film in the Light of the ‘History’ of Sexuality.” Wages of Cinema 146-56.

———. “Pornography and Erotica: Boundaries in Dissolution.” Wages of Cinema 157-68.

———. “Womanliness as (Masculine) Masquerade in Psychoanalytic Film-Texts.” Wages of Cinema 169-79.

———. “Postcolonial Conundrum: Third-World Film in Perverse Perspective.” Wages of Cinema. 180-200. Originally read at the New York University Annual Student Conference (New York, 1996).

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1995

David, Joel. Fields of Vision: Critical Applications in Recent Philippine Cinema. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1995.

———. “The ‘New’ Cinema in Retrospect.” Fields of Vision 1-36. Anthologized in The Urian Anthology 1990-1999, ed. Nicanor G. Tiongson (Manila: University of the Philippines Press, 2010) 58-83.

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1994

David, Joel. Various entries for Philippine Film, vol. 8 of the CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art, ed. Nicanor G. Tiongson (Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines, 1994): “Aksyon” (with Lynn Pareja) 82-83; “Animation” (with Lynn Pareja) 83-84; “Horror” (with Lynn Pareja) 90; “Komedi” (with Lynn Pareja) 90-91; “Musical” (with Lynn Pareja & Nicanor G. Tiongson) 92-93; “Acting” (with Justino Dormiendo) 96-97; “Cinematography” (with Nick Cruz) 105-07; “Distribution” (with Rosalie Matilac) 112-14; “Production” (with Nick Cruz & Rosalie Matilac) 124-28; “Sound Recording” (with Nick Cruz) 134-36; and “Studies and Training” (with Lynn Pareja) 136-37.

David, Joel. Various entries for Philippine Literature, vol. 9 of the CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art, ed. Nicanor G. Tiongson (Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines, 1994): “Movie Times” 473; “Notes on Philippine Cinema” 475; “Readings in Philippine Cinema” 484-85; and “The Urian Anthology 1970-1979” 495.

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1993

David, Jose Hernani S. “Fictions in Flux: Documentary Dimensions of Philippine Cinema.” Paper read at the Documenting Fictions: Documentary Dimensions of the Fiction Film conference sponsored by the Centre Universitaire de Luxembourg American Studies Center, Clark European Center in Luxembourg, Fondation Promomedia, Bibliotheque Nationale, Cinematheque Municipale, and the American Embassy. Luxembourg City, 1993.

———. “Queer Representation in Philippine Cinema.” Paper read at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center sponsored by the Gay Asian & Pacific Islander Men of New York. New York, 1993.

———. “Moving Out of the Outhouse: A Who’s Who in Alternative Filmmaking.” Kultura 6.1 (April-June 1993): 34-40.

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1992

David, Joel. “Adaptation Comes of Age.” Opera review of Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohéme, dir. Rolando Tinio. Manila Standard (submitted 1992). Anthologized in Millennial Traversals, Part II: Expanded Perspectives 1-3. Posted online.

———. “Some Words on Film Awards.” MediaWatch. [N.d. 1992?]: [Pp. undetermined, 3 pp. + 2-p. sidebar titled “List of Film Awards for 1991 Productions”].

———. “Black and Blue and Red.” Film review of Bayani, dir. Raymond Red. Manila Standard (July 1, 1992): 19.

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1991

David, Joel. “Sequacious and Second-Rate.” Comparative film review of Pido Dida 2 (Kasal Na), dir. Tony Cruz, and Anak ni Baby Ama, dir. Deo J. Fajardo Jr. National Midweek (submitted 1991): unpublished. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 71-74.

———. “Persistence of Vision.” Film review of Bakit Kay Tagal ng Sandali, dir. Chito Roño. National Midweek (submitted 1991): unpublished. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 47-51.

———. “No End in Sight.” Film review of Kung Tapos Na ang Kailanman, dir. Lino Brocka. National Midweek (submitted 1991): unpublished. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 62-65.

———. “Maryo J. and Mr. de los Reyes.” Comparative film review of My Other Woman and Underage Too, both dir. Maryo J. de los Reyes. National Midweek (submitted 1991): unpublished. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 44-47.

———. “Indigenous Ingenuity.” Film review of Andrea, Paano Ba ang Maging Isang Ina?, dir. Gil Portes. National Midweek (submitted 1991): unpublished. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 56-62.

———. “Directors-Editors.” Comparative film review of Kaaway ng Batas, dir. Pepe Marcos, and Angel Molave, dir. Augusto Salvador. National Midweek (submitted 1991): unpublished. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 41-44.

———. “Horse Yearender.” 1990 in review. National Midweek (February 27, 1991): 30.

———. “Class Clamorers.” Comparative film review of Too Young and Shake, Rattle & Roll II, dir. Peque Gallaga and Lore Reyes, and Biktima and Ama … Bakit Mo Ako Pinabayaan?, dir. Lino Brocka. National Midweek (February 13, 1991): 28-29. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 92-97.

———. “Great Philippine All-Time One-Shot Awards Ceremony.” National Midweek (February 20, 1991): 28-29. Anthologized as “All-Time One-Shot Awards Ceremony” in Fields of Vision 137-42.

———. “Three Careers.” Comparative film review of Umiyak Pati Langit, dir. Eduardo Palmos, Bago Matapos ang Lahat, dir. Joselito “Abbo” de la Cruz, and Ganito Ba ang Umibig?, dir. Laurice Guillen. National Midweek (March 27, 1991): 28-29. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 37-41.

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1990

David, Joel. The National Pastime: Contemporary Philippine Cinema. Pasig City: Anvil, 1990.

———. “A Second Golden Age.” Kultura 2.4 (January-March 1990): 14-26.

———. “A Second Golden Age: An Informal History.” The National Pastime 1-17. Originally published in Kultura.

———. Reviews and essays. The National Pastime. Originally published in various print outlets.

——— [uncredited]. “After the Revolution.” Film review of Orapronobis, dir. Lino Brocka. National Midweek (January 10, 1990): 28-29. Error in missing credit acknowledged in “Self-Criticism Department” (January 17, 1990): 43. Anthologized in The National Pastime 185-89.

———. “From ‘Sister Stella L.’ to ‘Starzan.’” 1980s Philippine cinema in review. National Midweek (January 24, 1990): 14-16.

———. “Slugged Out.” Comparative film review of Imortal, dir. Eddie Garcia, and Ang Bukas Ay Akin: Langit ang Uusig, dir. Laurice Guillen. National Midweek (January 31, 1990): 30-31. Anthologized in The National Pastime 147-50.

———. “Carnival Cinema.” Exhibition review of Cinevision 2000’s “Adventures of America.” National Midweek (February 7, 1990): 28-29. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 102-05.

———. “…And the First Shall Be the Last.” Film review of The Last Temptation of Christ, dir. Martin Scorsese. National Midweek (March 14, 1990): 31.

———. “’80s Foreign Fare.” 1980s foreign cinema in review. National Midweek (March 28, 1990): 28-29.

———. “No End in Sight.” Film review of Kung Tapos Na ang Kailanman, dir. Lino Brocka. National Midweek (March 28, 1990): 29-30. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 62-65.

———. “Bienvenido Lumbera.” Interview (cover title “Critic in Academe). National Midweek (April 4, 1990): 20-22, 46.

———. “Levels of Independence.” Attempted definition of indie cinema. National Midweek (April 25, 1990): 29-30.

———. “Soldier Blues.” Film review of Casualties of War, dir. Brian De Palma. National Midweek (May 9, 1990): 29.

———. “Ma(so?)chismo.” Comparative film review of Barumbado, dir. Willy Milan, and Kasalanan ang Buhayin Ka, dir. Francisco Posadas. National Midweek (May 23, 1990): 30. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 82-84.

———. “Firmament Occupation.” Discussion of star system. National Midweek (May 30, 1990): 29-30. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 114-16.

———. “I.O.U.” Film review of Kahit Singko Hindi Ko Babayaran ang Buhay Mo, dir. Jesus Jose. National Midweek (June 6, 1990): 31. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 85-87.

———. “Men & Myths.” Film review of Bala at Rosaryo, dir. Pepe Marcos. National Midweek (June 6, 1990): 31. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 80-82.

———. “Head Held High.” Film review of Gumapang Ka sa Lusak, dir. Lino Brocka. National Midweek (June 20, 1990): 28-29. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 65-68; and in The Urian Anthology 1990-1999, ed. Nicanor G. Tiongson (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2010) 148-51.

———. “Record-Breaking Blues.” Originally titled “Blues Hit Parade.” Discussion of blockbusters. National Midweek (June 27, 1990): 28. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 116-18.

———. “Film on Film.” Film review of Big Flick in the Sky, dir. Kenneth M. Angliongto. National Midweek (June 27, 1990): 29.

David, Joel, with Melanie Joy C. Garduño. “The 10 Best Filipino Films.” Cover story, titled “The 10 Best Filipino Films Ever Made.” National Midweek (July 4, 1990): 3-9. Anthologized as “Ten Best Filipino Films Up to 1990” in Fields of Vision 125-36.

David, Joel. “Gloria in Excessus.” Film review of Glory, dir. Edward Zwick. National Midweek (July 4, 1990): 30.

———. “Frontline.” Film review of Born on the Fourth of July, dir. Oliver Stone. National Midweek (August 22, 1990): 30.

———. “Cool Film.” Film review of Hot Summer, dir. Mel Chionglo. National Midweek (September 5, 1990): 29. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 51-53.

———. “Mudslung.” Comparative film review of Ibabaon Kita sa Lupa, dir. Toto Natividad, and Ayaw Matulog ng Gabi, dir. Carlo J. Caparas. National Midweek (September 19, 1990): 31. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 87-89.

———. “Demachofication.” Film review of Kristobal, dir. Francis Posadas. National Midweek (September 26, 1990): 30. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 77-80.

———. “Worth the While.” Listing of “memorable” ’80s film scenes. National Midweek (September 26, 1990): 30-32. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 119-24.

———. “World’s Longest Footnote.” “From the author’s forthcoming Anvil Publishing volume, Contemporary Philippine Cinema: Reviews and Criticism [sic – title should read The National Pastime: Contemporary Philippine Cinema].” National Midweek (October 3, 1990): 30. Anthologized as “World’s Longest Prequel” in The National Pastime 198-99.

———. “Film Critics Speak.” “Prepared by Mike Feria, Patrick Flores, and the author as State of Criticism statement of the Young Critics Circle.” National Midweek (October 3, 1990): 32. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 80-82. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 107-09.

———. “Woman-Worthy.” Comparative film review of Kasalanan Ba’ng Sambahin Ka?, dir. Chito Roño, and Hahamakin Lahat, dir. Lino Brocka. National Midweek (October 17, 1990): 28-30. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 74-77.

———. “Classroom as Theater.” Discussion of film education policy. National Midweek (October 17, 1990): 31-32. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 105-07.

———. “Nothing Much about Ado.” Film review of Pido Dida (Sabay Tayo), dir. Tony Cruz. National Midweek (October 24, 1990): 28. Anthologized in The Urian Anthology 1990-1999, ed. Nicanor G. Tiongson (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2010) 136-37; and as “Family Affairs” in Fields of Vision 69-71.

———. “Updates.” Short discussions of the horror, sex, and action genres; melodrama; performers; formats; and media. National Midweek (October 24, 1990): 30. Anthologized in The National Pastime 65, 151, 97, 83, 163 resp.

———. “Movable Fists.” Comparative film review of Walang Awa Kung Pumatay, dir. Junn P. Cabreira, Iisa-Isahin Ko Kayo, Francis Posadas, and Apoy sa Lupang Hinirang, dir. Mauro Gia Samonte. National Midweek (November 28, 1990): 30. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 89-92.

———. “Sedulously Cebuano.” Film review of Eh … Kasi … Bisaya!, dir. Junn P. Cabreira. National Midweek (November 28, 1990): p. unkn. Anthologized in Fields of Vision 97-99.

———. “Film Reviewing and Criticism I,” “Film Reviewing and Criticism II,” & “Film Reviewing and Criticism III.” National Midweek (December 5, 12, & 26 [resp.], 1990): 29, 30, & 29-30 resp. Anthologized as “Film Reviewing and Criticism” in The National Pastime 42-47.

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1989

David, Joel. “To Give Critical Support to Filmmakers.” Kultura. Quarterly journal of the Sentrong Pangkultura ng Pilipinas. 2.1 (April-June 1989): 52-56. Originally titled “Film Reviewing and Film Criticism” and anthologized as “Film Reviewing and Criticism” in The National Pastime 42-47.

———. “Filmfest Flimflam.” 1988 Metro Manila Film Festival evaluation. National Midweek (January 18, 1989): 8-9. Originally titled “Filmfest Flimflammery”; with cover citation and sidebar “MMFF Winners” 9.

———. “Local Cinema ’88.” 1988 yearend evaluation of Filipino films. National Midweek (January 25, 1989): 28-29.

———. “Film-Writing.” Book review of Ricardo Lee’s Si Tatang at mga Himala ng Ating Panahon. National Midweek (February 8, 1989): 27-28. Anthologized in The National Pastime 161-62. Excerpted in Ricky Lee, Si Tatang at mga Himala ng Ating Panahon: Koleksyon ng mga Akda (Quezon City: Writers Studio Foundation, 2009) 11.

———. “Roño’s Rondos.” Comparative film review of Itanong Mo sa Buwan and Si Baleleng at ang Gintong Sirena, dir. Chito Roño. National Midweek (March 1, 1989): 29-30. Anthologized as “Roño’s Rondo,” excluding Si Baleleng review, in The Urian Anthology 1980-1989 236-37.

———. “High-Flying.” Video review of Imelda: Paruparong Bakal, dir. Chito Roño. National Midweek (March 15, 1989): 32. Anthologized in The National Pastime 81-82.

———. “Macho Dancer: Text vs. Texture.” Cover story, film review of Macho Dancer, dir. Lino Brocka. Kultura 2.2 (July-September 1989): 26-33. Originally titled “Text vs. Texture” and anthologized in The National Pastime 179-84.

———. “Empire of the (Risen) Sun.” Cover topic, interpretive report on contemporary Japanese film scene. National Midweek (April 12, 1989): 3-7.

———. “An Awakening.” Film review of Pahiram ng Isang Umaga, dir. Ishmael Bernal. National Midweek (April 12, 1989): 32. Anthologized in The National Pastime 172-74.

———. “Short Subjects.” Comparative film review of Mga Kuwento ng Pag-ibig, dir. Jun Cabreira, Luciano Carlos, and Artemio Marquez, and 3 Mukha ng Pag-ibig, dir. Emmanuel H. Borlaza, Lino Brocka, and Leroy Salvador. National Midweek (May 10, 1989): 28-29. Anthologized in The National Pastime 68-70.

———. “Life after Life.” Comparative film review of Mississippi Burning, dir. Alan Parker, and They Live, dir. John Carpenter. National Midweek (June 21, 1989): 29-30.

David, Jose Hernani S. “Ethics First (Rather than Aesthetics).” The National Pastime 190-97. Originally read at the Aspects of Philippine Film panel of the Third International Philippine Studies Conference. Quezon City, 1989.

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1988

———. “A Festival to Forget.” 1987 Metro Manila Film Festival evaluation. Conjuncture [Institute for Popular Democracy publication] 1.4 (January 1988): 8.

———. “Chauvinist’s Nightmare.” Film review of Kumander Gringa, dir. Mike Relon Makiling. National Midweek (January 13, 1988): 33-34. Inside pages erroneously bear “1987” as year. Anthologized in The National Pastime 91-93 and in The Urian Anthology 1980-1989 136-39.

———. “The Curse of Good Intentions.” 1987 Metro Manila Film Festival evaluation. National Midweek (January 20, 1988): 29-31.

———. “Movie(?) of ’87.” Film review of Film Trilogy on the Theme of Poverty and Prostitution, dir. Rosa ng Maynila. National Midweek (January 27, 1988): 29-30. Anthologized as “Movie(?) of the Year” in The National Pastime 75-77 and in The Urian Anthology 1980-1989 260-63.

———. “Bad Takes for the Film Industry,” Conjuncture 1.5-6 (February-March 1988): 8.

———. “’87 in Review: Quo Vadis?” 1987 yearend evaluation of Filipino films. National Midweek (February 3, 1988): 30-31.

———. “Image-Building.” Film review of Huwag Mong Itanong Kung Bakit, dir. Eddie Garcia. National Midweek (February 3, 1988): 31-32.

———. “Down But Not Out.” Comparative film review of Nektar, dir. Francis Posadas, and Tubusin Mo ng Dugo, dir. Pepe Marcos. National Midweek (February 17, 1988): 28-29. Anthologized in The National Pastime 56-58.

———. “Reversals.” Film review of Misis Mo, Misis Ko, dir. Carlos Siguion Reyna. National Midweek (March 2, 1988): 35-36. Anthologized in The National Pastime 138-40 and in The Urian Anthology 1980-1989 238-40.

———. “Renewal of Appreciation.” Film review of Manila by Night, dir. Ishmael Bernal. National Midweek (March 16, 1988): 4-5. Anthologized in The National Pastime 169-71.

———. “Moments of Truth.” Comparative film review of Anak ng Cabron, dir. Wilfredo Milan, and Afuang: Bounty Hunter, dir. Mike Relon Makiling. National Midweek (March 23, 1988): 29-30. Anthologized in The National Pastime 59-61.

———. “Form and Function.” Comparative film review of Silent Voice, dir. Mike Newell, and Full Metal Jacket, dir. Stanley Kubrick. National Midweek (April 6, 1988): 30-31.

———. “Komiks Without Pain.” Film review of Saan Nagtatago ang Pag-ibig?, dir. Eddie Garcia. National Midweek (April 13, 1988): 31.

———. “Balancing Acts.” Film review of Hati Tayo sa Magdamag, dir. Lupita A. Kashiwahara. National Midweek (April 27, 1988): 29-30.

———. “Slow Train to Thailand.” Interpretive report on contemporary Thai film scene. National Midweek (July 20, 1988): 20-22.

———. “Studious Studios.” Interpretive report on re-emergence of Filipino studio system. National Midweek (July 20, 1988): 30-31. Anthologized in The National Pastime 126-28.

———. “Progressions, Retrogressions.” Comparative film review of Isusumbong Kita sa Diyos, dir. Emmanuel H. Borlaza, Kapag Napagod ang Puso, dir. Maryo J. de los Reyes, and Nagbabagang Luha, dir. Ishmael Bernal. National Midweek (August 24, 1988): 31-32. Originally titled “Progressions” and anthologized in The National Pastime 141-43.

———. “Bioflicks.” Comparative film review of Operation: Get Victor Corpus, the Rebel Soldier, dir. Pablo Santiago, Balweg: The Rebel Priest, dir. Butch Perez, and Kumander Dante, dir. Ben (M-7) Yalung. National Midweek (October 26, 1988): 29-30. Anthologized in The National Pastime 62-64.

David, Joel. “Perils of Politics.” Film review of A Dangerous Life, dir. Robert Markowitz. National Midweek (submitted November 1988): unpublished. Anthologized in The National Pastime 78-80.

———. “Campout.” Comparative film review of Natutulog Pa ang Diyos, dir. Lino Brocka, Paano Tatakasan ang Bukas, dir. Emmanuel H. Borlaza, and Sa Puso Ko Hahalik ang Mundo, dir. Artemio Marquez. National Midweek (November 9, 1988): 33. Anthologized in The National Pastime 144-46.

———. “Causes for Cerebration.” Comparative film review of Tiyanak, dir. Peque Gallaga and Lorenzo Reyes, and Babaing Hampaslupa, dir. Mel Chionglo. National Midweek (December 21, 1988): 28-29. Anthologized in The National Pastime 53-55.

———. “Perils of Politics.” Unpublished film review of A Dangerous Life, dir. Robert Markowitz. Submitted to National Midweek, 1988. Anthologized in The National Pastime 78-80.

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1987

Legaspi, Jojo. “Exploring the World of Dreams.” Film review of Dreamscape, dir. Joseph Ruben. National Midweek (January 7, 1987): 49.

———. “Ten Years of the Metro Filmfest.” National Midweek (January 28, 1987): 39-40.

———. “Niño’s Comeback.” Film review of Kontra Bandido, dir. J. Erastheo Navoa. National Midweek (February 11, 1987): 41. Anthologized in The National Pastime 86-87.

———. “Waiting for a Renaissance.” 1986 yearend evaluation of Filipino films. National Midweek (February 11, 1987): 42-43.

———. “The Return of the Melodrama.” Film review of Kung Aagawin Mo ang Lahat sa Akin, dir. Eddie Garcia. National Midweek (March 18, 1987): 45. Anthologized as “Return of the Melodrama” in The National Pastime 132-33.

David, Joel. “Film Book Publishing.” Philippines Communication Journal 3 (June 1987): 76-79. Rpt. as “Film Books,” National Midweek (December 9, 1987): 34-35.

———. “Searching for Options.” Film review of Kid … Huwag Kang Susuko!, dir. Peque Gallaga. National Midweek (August 19, 1987): 37-38. Anthologized in The National Pastime 110-11.

———. “Mid-Year in Review.” 1987 mid-year evaluation of Filipino films. National Midweek (August 26, 1987): 41-42.

———. “O’Hara Strikes Again.” Film review of Tatlong Ina, Isang Anak, dir. Mario O’Hara. National Midweek (September 2, 1987): 40-41. Anthologized in The National Pastime 103-05.

———. “Film Education Comes of Age.” National Midweek (September 16, 1987): 31-33.

———. “Secret Love.” Film review of Mga Lihim ng Kalapati, dir. Celso Ad. Castillo. National Midweek (September 23, 1987): 34.

———. “Romero’s Flip-Flop.” Film review of Hari sa Hari, Lahi sa Lahi, dir. Eddie Romero for Philippine version and Hsiao Lang and Chou Lili for Chinese version. National Midweek (September 23, 1987): 35. Anthologized in The National Pastime 26-27.

———. “Gay Days.” Film review of Ako si Kiko, Ako si Kikay, dir. Mike Relon Makiling. National Midweek (September 30, 1987): 33-34. Anthologized as “Gross, Gaudy, & Gay” in The National Pastime 88-90.

———. “Classics for College Kids.” National Midweek (October 7, 1987): 32-33.

———. “Mellow Drama.” Film review of Paano Kung Wala Ka Na, dir. Mel Chionglo. National Midweek (October 14, 1987): 36. Anthologized in The National Pastime 134-35.

———. “Grave Burden.” Film review of Pasan Ko ang Daigdig, dir. Lino Brocka. National Midweek (October 21, 1987): 34.

———. “People Power & Cinema.” National Midweek (October 28, 1987): 36. Anthologized as “People-Power Cinema” in The National Pastime 124-26 and as “People Power and Cinema” in The Urian Anthology 1980-1989 56-59.

———. “Regal Fest.” 1987 Regal Films retrospective National Midweek (submitted November 1987): unpublished.

———. “Movie Worker.” Autobiographical account for cover feature on theme “Ordinary People.” National Midweek (November 4, 1987): 15-16.

———. “Bloody Fine.” Film review of The Untouchables, dir. Brian De Palma. National Midweek (November 11, 1987): 36, 44.

———. “Earthbound.” Film review of Pinulot Ka Lang sa Lupa, dir. Ishmael Bernal. National Midweek (November 18, 1987): 36.

———. “Child’s Play.” Film review of Takot Ako, Eh!, dir. Mario O’Hara. National Midweek (November 25, 1987): 34-35. Anthologized in The National Pastime 94-96.

———. “Preeminence of Film as Artistic Mass Medium.” Philippines Communication Journal 5 (December 1987): 43-48. Originally titled “Reflections on a National Pastime”; includes sidebar “Filmography of Titles Cited” 48.

———. “Home Sweet Home.” Theater review of Elsa Martinez Coscolluela’s Sa Tahanan ng Aking Ama, translated by Raul Regalado. National Midweek (December 2, 1987): 34-35. Anthologized in The National Pastime 158-60.

———. “Reactions to UP Film Major’s Letter.” “Feedback” section, addressed to “My dear Mr. UP Film Major.” National Midweek (December 2, 1987): 42-43.

———. “Film Books.” National Midweek (December 9, 1987): 34-35. Originally published as “Film Book Publishing” in Philippines Communication Journal 3 (June 1987): 76-79.

———. “Failed-Safe.” Film review of Walang Karugtong ang Nakaraan, dir. Leroy Salvador. National Midweek (December 16, 1987): 33. Anthologized in The National Pastime 136-37.

———. “The Devil to Pay.” Film review of The Witches of Eastwick, dir. George Miller. National Midweek (December 23, 1987): 35-36.

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1986

David, J. Hernani. “Censorship and Other Compromises.” New Day, weekend supplement of Business Day (September 15, 1986): 13. Anthologized in The National Pastime 40-41.

David, Joel. “Mike de Leon at His Best in Bilanggo sa Dilim.” Film review of Bilanggo sa Dilim, dir. Mike de Leon. New Day (September 22, 1986): 15. Includes sidebar “Mike de Leon Filmography” 15. Anthologized as “Return to Form” (without sidebar) in The National Pastime 35-37 and in The Urian Anthology 1980-1989 256-59.

———. “A Film Writer’s Experience.” Interview with Ricardo Lee. New Day (September 29, 1986): 13.

———. “The Fantasy World of Rey de la Cruz.” Interview. New Day (October 6, 1986): 12, 14.

———. “Underground, in the Heat of the Night.” Interpretive report on Filipino pornographic komiks. New Day (October 13, 1986): 17. Anthologized in The National Pastime 154-57.

———. “Triumph of 16mm. Film.” “Fantalk” column, film review of Damortis, dir. Briccio Santos. New Day (October 20, 1986): 13. Anthologized as “Triumph in 16mm.” in The National Pastime 71-74.

———. “The Business of Pleasure in ’Gapo.” Interpretive report on Olongapo City. New Day (October 27, 1986): 13-14.

———. “Where Have All Horror Films Gone?” Survey of Filipino horror films. New Day (November 3, 1986): 13. Anthologized as “Where Has All the Horror Gone?” in The National Pastime 50-52.

———. “School Lures Film Buffs to Pioneer UP Course.” New Day (November 10, 1986): 13.

———. “Local Cinema in Today’s Mass Media.” Philippines Communication Journal [quarterly publication of the University of the Philippines Institute of Mass Communication] 1 (December 1986): 69-71. Anthologized as “Film Since February 1986” in The National Pastime 120-23.

Legaspi, Jojo. “Epic Grandstanding.” Film review of The Mission, dir. Roland Joffe. National Midweek (December 10, 1986): 40(?).

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1985

David, Joel. “Historical Lessons.” Film review of Virgin Forest, dir. Peque Gallaga. Manila Standard (submitted 1985): unpublished. Anthologized in Millennial Traversals, Part I: Traversals within Cinema 60-61. Posted online.

———. “Major Bid.” Film review of Bulaklak sa City Jail, dir. Mario O’Hara. Tinig ng Plaridel (submitted 1985): unpublished. Anthologized in The National Pastime 100-02 and in The Urian Anthology 1980-1989 203-05.

———. “Bulaklak sa City Jail.” Excerpt of unpublished film review of Bulaklak sa City Jail, dir. Mario O’Hara. Ikasiyam na Gawad Urian, MPP souvenir program (March 15, 1985): n.p. Erroneously attributed to “Tinig, a UP publication.”

———. “Search Point.” Personal essay. Ang Aninag (October 1985): 4, 7. Originally titled “Searchpoint.”

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1984

David, Joel. “Perseverance in a Neglected Dimension.” Interview with soundperson Ramon Reyes. Diliman Review 32.2 (March-April 1984): 66-72. Includes sidebar “Partial Filmography” 69.

———. “Scenario.” Editor’s introduction. SineManila, maiden issue of Experimental Cinema of the Philippines film journal (July-September 1984): 1.

———, introducer and translator. “The Screenplay of ‘Ang Magpakailanman,’” Raymond “Goto” Red, screenwriter. SineManila (July-September 1984): 14-20. Rpt. without credit in Nick Deocampo, Short Film: Emergence of a New Philippine Cinema (Metro Manila: Communication Foundation for Asia, 1985) 143-48.

———. “Critics’ Quarterly Citations.” Report. SineManila (July-September 1984): 44.

———. “Manila Short Film Competition.” Report. SineManila (July-September 1984): 44.

———. “The Critic as Creator.” Interview with Pio de Castro III. Philippine Collegian (December 4, 1984): 4, 7.

Deloso, Rollie. “Review: Misteryo sa Tuwa.” Film review of Misteryo sa Tuwa, dir. Abbo Q. de la Cruz. Bulletin Today (December 28, 1984): 27.

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1983

ALR Contributor. “Trends: A Fillip for Film Books.” Asiaweek [international weekly newsmagazine; in Literary Review section] (February 25, 1983): 46-47.

David, Joel. “In Defense of Oro.” Opening installment of comparative review of Oro, Plata, Mata, dir. Peque Gallaga, and Moral, dir. Marilou Diaz-Abaya, in Eddie Pacheco’s “Simply Divine” column. Sunday Special, supplement of Times Journal (May 1, 1983): 10. Originally titled “Transcendence” and anthologized in The National Pastime 106-09.

———. “Transcendence.” Concluding installment of comparative review of Oro, Plata, Mata, dir. Peque Gallaga, and Moral, dir. Marilou Diaz-Abaya, in Eddie Pacheco’s “Simply Divine” column. Sunday Special (May 8, 1983): 10. Anthologized in The National Pastime 106-09.

———. “Filipino Films Well-Received in Moscow.” Interview with Ishmael Bernal re Himala. Times Journal (July 10, 1983): 20, 19.

———. “Maestro Bandido: Refreshing Change, Precious Insights.” Film review of Maestro Bandido, dir. Reginald King. Times Mirror, afternoon newspaper of Times Journal (Aug. 15, 1983): 8.

———. “Repression and Rebellion.” Film review of Pedro Tunasan, dir. Celso Ad. Castillo. Jario Scenario, official monthly newsletter of the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines (September 1983): 4.

———. “An Everyday Tragedy.” Feature. Jario Scenario (September 1983): 3, 6.

———. “Dope Godfather: Petty, Deficient.” Film review of Dope Godfather, dir. Junn P. Cabreira. Times Mirror (September 13, 1983): 8.

———. “ECP: Indispensable to Movie Industry.” “Special Report on Film Industry” in Supplement section. Manila Evening Post, afternoon daily newspaper (September 28, 1983): 5.

———. “Pagputi: Birds of Omen.” “The New Cinema” section, film review of Pagputi ng Uwak, Pag-itim ng Tagak dir. Celso Ad. Castillo. The Urian Anthology 1970-1979, ed. Nicanor G. Tiongson (Manila: Morato, 1983) 268-71. Originally published in Philippine Collegian (July 26, 1978): 3, 6.

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1982

David, Joel. “Ragtime (USA), dir. Milos Forman.” Film review. The Review (February 1982): 13.

———. “Man of Iron (Poland), dir. Andrzej Wajda.” Film review. The Review (February 1982): 14-15.

———. “Insurgency in These Islands.” Feature article. The Review (March 1982): 28-31. Includes as sidebar “The 10-Point Program of the National Democratic Front,” rpt. from Southeast Asia Chronicle (May-June 1978).

———. “Holy Pain.” “Literary Folio” short story. Observer. [Sunday supplement of Times Journal, vice Parade] (May 16, 1982): 24-26. Anthologized in The Literary Apprentice 1981-1982 (Quezon City: UP Writers Club, 1982) 142-51.

———. “Waiting for Godard.” Film review of Batch ’81, dir. Mike de Leon. Who (June 16, 1982): 19-20. Anthologized in The National Pastime 32-34.

———. “Naked Debut.” Film review of Hubad na Gubat, dir. Lito Tiongson. The Review (August 1982): 43.

———. “Cinemasex.” Survey of Filipino sex films. Who (August 25, 1982): 20-22.

———. “Philippine Fisheries: A Fish-Eye View.” Feature article. The Review (September 1982): 23-25.

———. “Holy Pain.” Short story. The Literary Apprentice 1981-1982. University of the Philippines Writers Club anthology. Quezon City: UPWC, 1982. 142-51. Originally published in Observer (May 16, 1982): 24-26.

———. “Revolutionary from the Center.” The Review Corner interview with Nilo S. Tayag re the Daop Palad program. The Review (September 1982): 48.

———. “Big Hopes for Short Films.” The First Experimental Cinema of the Philippines’ Annual Short Film Festival [souvenir program] (November 16-21, 1982): 28-31. Rpt. Who (Nov. 24, 1982): 19-20.

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1981

David, Joel. “Local Cinema ’80: New Directions for a New Decade.” Yearend evaluation of Filipino films. The Review (January 1981): 13-17.

———. “Nine Days that Shook the Campus.” Feature article. The Review (February 1981): 6-11. Originally published in Philippine Collegian (February 2, 1979): 7; includes sidebar “A Loss Remembered,” feature on Pastor Mesina, Jr. as recounted by his parents.

———. “A Festival to Forget.” Interpretive report on Manila ’81 Event. The Review (February 1981): 51.

———. “Manila by Night Under the Knife: Those Scissors-Happy Censors Don’t Know What They’ve Missed.” Who (February 21, 1981): 28-29. Original of “Bernal’s Manila by Night Mangled,” Times Journal (December 18, 1980): 25-26.

———, transcriber and introducer. “A Review Exclusive: Manila by Night.” Original screenplay by Ishmael Bernal. The Review (March 1981): 23-41.

———. “Brocka’s Satire is Effective.” Film review of Kontrobersyal, dir. Lino Brocka. Times Journal (April 3, 1981): 21-22.

David, Joel, and Geselle Militante. “Student Activism through the Years.” Feature article. The Review (June 1981): 24-29. Includes as sidebar Roberto Z. Coloma, “The Continuing Myth.”

David, Joel. “The Value of Humility.” “Book shorts” review of Philippine Prehistory: An Anthropological Overview of the Beginnings of Filipino Society and Culture by F. Landa Jocano. The Review (June 1981): 61.

———. “Oversimplifying Class Conflicts.” “The Arts” film review of Burgis, dir. Lino Brocka. Who (August 1, 1981): 16.

———. “Our Critical Condition.” Fictional forum on Filipino film criticism. The Review (September 1981): 41-44. Derived from “How to Become a Film Critic,” Who (November 28, 1981): 27-29.

———. “Pinoy in Gangsterland.” Survey of Filipino gangster films. The Review (October 1981): 10-12.

———. “Hateful Love.” Film review of Endless Love, dir. Franco Zeffirelli. The Review (October 1981): 55-56. Originally titled “Brainless Love.”

———. “Sense (or Its Absence) in Censorship.” The Review (November-December 1981): 11-13.

———. “Exceptions.” Comparative film review of Kamakalawa, dir. Eddie Romero, and Kisapmata, dir. Mike de Leon. The Review (November-December 1981): 44-45. Anthologized in The National Pastime 28-31.

———. “How to Become a Film Critic.” “The Arts” feature. Who (November 28, 1981): 27-29. Original of “Our Critical Condition,” The Review (September 1981): 41-44.

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1980

David, Jose Hernani S. “Malou Mangahas: Child of the Seventies.” “Campus” feature. Who [Who? renamed] (January 5, 1980): 32-33, 35.

———. “Rumpus at the International School.” “Campus” feature. Who (January 19, 1980): 1, 7. Original published as “At the International School: A Striking Story,” Philippine Collegian (January 23, 1980): 1, 7.

David, Joel. “A Festival to Forget.” “The Arts” feature, omnibus film review of 1979 Metro Manila Film Festival entries. Who (January 19, 1980): 40, 42.

David, Jose Hernani S. “At the International School: A Striking Story.” Interpretive report. Philippine Collegian (January 23, 1980): 1, 7.

———. “The World According to Aguila.” “Entertainment” feature, film review of Aguila, dir. Eddie Romero. Who (February 2, 1980): 44, 46. Anthologized in The National Pastime: Contemporary Philippine Cinema (Pasig City: Anvil, 1990) 20-23 and in The Urian Anthology 1980-1989, ed. Nicanor G. Tiongson (Quezon City: Tuviera, 2001) 142-45.

———. “A Clockwork Yellow.” “The Arts” feature, film review of The China Syndrome, dir. James Bridges. Who (February 22, 1980): 24-25, 42.

———. “The Night the Critics Gave Out Their Awards.” Interpretive report. Philippines Daily Express (March 4, 1980): 20-21.

———. “Why Aguila Was a Success at the Box-Office.” Interpretive report. Philippines Daily Express (March 6, 1980): 20-21.

———. “The World is a Newspaper.” Column. Tinig ng Plaridel [University of the Philippines Institute of Mass Communication official newspaper] (March 19, 1980): 8. Rpt. in Who (June 7, 1980): 42.

———. “Lighting Up the Countryside: Lesson in Rural Electrification.” Book review of Lighting Up the Countryside: The Story of Electric Cooperatives in the Philippines by Frank H. Denton. Daluyan [Development Academy of the Philippines bimonthly magazine] 80.1 (May-June 1980): 34- 39.

David, Joel. “Cartooning in the Philippines: A Win, Lose, and Draw Proposition.” “The Arts” feature, critical interviews of Willy Aquino, Pol Galvez, and Boy Togonon. Who (May 17, 1980): 27-29.

———. “Star-Building Pays.” Critical interviews of Dr. Rey de la Cruz, Jesse Ejercito, and Douglas Quijano. Times Journal (May 26, 1980): 21, 23.

David, Jose Hernani S. “The World is a Newspaper.” “Essay” feature. Who (June 7, 1980): 42. Originally published in Tinig ng Plaridel (March 19, 1980): 8.

———. “Second Thoughts on Kramer vs. Kramer.” Film review of Kramer vs. Kramer, dir. Robert Benton. Parade [Sunday supplement of Times Journal] (June 8, 1980): 5. Originally titled “Kramer vs. Women.”

———. “Star-Crossed.” Film review of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, dir. Robert Wise. Parade (June 15, 1980): 20.

———. “Palaban Puts Up a Decent Fight.” Film review of Palaban, dir. Eddie Romero. Times Journal (June 28, 1980): 23. Anthologized as “A Decent Fight” in The National Pastime 24-25.

———. “Rural Immersion for Career Executives.” Book review of The Indang Experience by Ledivina V. Cavino and Emma B. Vineza. Daluyan (July-August 1980): 46-48.

David, Joel. “In Bongga: Commercialism Triumphs Again.” Film review of Bongga Ka ’Day, dir. Maryo J. de los Reyes. Times Journal (August 1, 1980): 23.

David, Jose Hernani S. “Rural Organizations: In Search of Foolproof Answers.” Book review of Rural Organizations in the Philippines, ed. Marie S. Fernandez. Daluyan (November-December 1980): 36, 39.

David, Joel. “Just Another Brocka Film.” Film review of Angela Markado, dir. Lino Brocka. Times Journal (November 21, 1980): 28. Anthologized as “Just Another Exercise” in The National Pastime 175-78.

———. “Bernal’s Manila by Night Mangled.” Comparative report on Manila by Night (preview version) and City after Dark (censored version), dir. Ishmael Bernal. Times Journal (December 18, 1980): 25-26. Original published as “Manila by Night under the Knife: Those Scissors-Happy Censors Don’t Know What They’ve Missed,” Who (February 21, 1981): 28-29.

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1979

David, J. Hernani S. “When Enough is Enough.” “Tugon” column. Philippine Collegian (January 25, 1979): 8.

———. “The Provisional Directorate of the Diliman Commune, Feb. 1-9, 1971: 9 Days that Shook the Campus.” Feature article. Philippine Collegian (February 2, 1979): 7. Revised and published in The Review (February 1981): 6-11.

———. “NPC Under Water.” “Tugon” column. Philippine Collegian (February 2, 1979): 12.

———. “Oil Mighty.” “Tugon” column. Philippine Collegian (February 22, 1979): 8.

———. “Winning Editorials: Student Participation in University Affairs.” Philippine Collegian (March 2, 1979): 7.

———. “Oil Mighty II.” “Tugon” column. Philippine Collegian (April 20, 1979): 4.

David, Jose Hernani Segovia. “The Events in the Diliman Campus on February 1-9, 1971: A Historical Study.” Undergraduate thesis for B.A. Journalism. Bridget Zubiri, adviser. University of the Philippines, April 1979.

David, Joel. “Focus on the BPI Economic Garden.” Feature article. Greenfields 9.11 (November 1979): 40-45; with sidebar “The Plant Propagators,” 44-45.

David, Jose Hernani S., and Miguel Y. Puzon. “Introducing Fiberglass Fishing Boats in the Philippines.” “Research Features” section. Fisheries Today [Fishery Industry Development Council quarterly magazine] (November 4, 1979): 49-50.

David, Jose Hernani S. “Valiant Try.” Film review of Aliw, dir. Ishmael Bernal. Who (submitted November 1979). Anthologized in The National Pastime: Contemporary Philippine Cinema (Pasig City: Anvil, 1990).

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1978

David, Joel. “A New Twist to an Old Game.” “Common People” section. Who? [weekly magazine] (May 20, 1978): 6-7.

David, J. Hernani S. “The Student Regent: Work to Do.” “Winning Editorials (Topic: ‘Student Regent, Tuition Fee Hike and Minimum Wage’)” feature. Philippine Collegian [University of the Philippines official weekly student newspaper] (June 16, 1978): 3.

———. “Changes We’d Like to See.” “Innovations” column, “based on the editor’s entry to the layout phase of this year’s editorial exams.” Philippine Collegian (June 16, 1978): 8, 6.

———. “Today’s Press Systems: Four Tunes Western Theorists Sing.” Book review of Four Theories of the Press by Fred S. Siebert, Theodore Peterson, and Wilbur Schramm. Philippine Collegian (June 23, 1978): 3, 6.

———. “Pressed Freedom.” Editorial. Philippine Collegian (June 23, 1978): 8.

———. “Question Time.” “Tugon” column. Philippine Collegian (July 12, 1978): 8.

———. “The Fire Cure.” “Tugon” column. Philippine Collegian (July 20, 1978): 8.

———. “Birds of Omen.” Film review of Pagputi ng Uwak, Pag-itim ng Tagak dir. Celso Ad. Castillo. Philippine Collegian (July 26, 1978): 3, 6. Anthologized in The Urian Anthology 1970-1979, ed. Nicanor G. Tiongson (Manila: Morato, 1983) 268-71.

———. “A Semestral Carol.” “Tugon” column. Philippine Collegian (August 9, 1978): 8.

———. “Low Flight.” “Tugon” column. Philippine Collegian (September 8, 1978): 8.

———. “Youths Stage September 21 Rally.” Interpretive report. Campus Journal [University of the Philippines Institute of Mass Communication semestral laboratory newspaper] (October 2, 1978): 1, 6.

———. “A Clockwork Crimson.” “Tugon” column. Philippine Collegian (October 4, 1978): 12, 10.

———. “Behind Bicutan.” “Tugon” column. Philippine Collegian (November 16, 1978): 8.

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1975

David, Jose Hernani S. “Trivia.” “Deliberations” column. Ang Aninag (January-February 1975): 3.

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1974

David, Jose Hernani S. “Facing the Drug Abuse Problem.” “Piece of Mind” column. Ang Aninag (July-September 1974): 12.

———. “Of Population Boom and Errata.” “Deliberations” column. Ang Aninag (October-December 1974): 3.

———. “Eva Fernandez.” “Camera On” feature. Ang Aninag (October-December 1974): 5.

———. “Animal Farm: A Fairy Story by George Orwell.” Book review. Ang Aninag. (October-December 1974): 6.

———. “Lidy Nacpil.” “Camera On” feature. Ang Aninag (Christmas 1974): 3.

———. “But for the Lovers by Wilfrido Nolledo” and “Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game) by Hermann Hesse, translated by Richard and Clara Winston.” Book reviews. Ang Aninag (October-December 1974): 4.

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February 21, 2021

Bibliographic Mini-Essay 3: The Rise in Spin-offs

By Joel David

One game I’ve been playing in uploading and updating the Pinas film bibliography is predicting what category would be first to require splitting up because of a too-large number of entries. A few categories had to be handled this way right after I first posted the categorized file – which only meant that I observed how the majority of categories tended toward the same range. So after a period where some categories needed to be expanded – Novelizations added to Screenplays, Teleplays, and (filmmaking) Accounts; Special Journal Issues added to Studies & Festschrifts – the next stage was a reclassification of the largest groups in order to align them within the same range as the others.

11011Initially it seemed to me that the Reviews and Criticism category might be the first to require this treatment. As it turned out, the first three that needed to be adjusted, over a year since the bibliography went online, were: Histories – a good sign, since that meant that people were paying more attention to film development, with enough material to constitute its own pre-Marcos category); Auteurist Materials and Memoirs – essentially an overlapping differentiation, since the objects of the biographical issues would be auteurs in either instance, but I enforced a distinction wherein Memoirs would be personalized accounts of a subject’s private and professional experiences, while Auteurist Materials would be screen cultural studies that proceeded (partly or entirely) from an auteur’s psychobiography; and Screenplays, Teleplays, Novelizations, Accounts (the first to be expanded) – an extensive-seeming group that actually neatly subdivided itself in the middle.

11011My critical-academic biases, the same ones that led me to expect that Reviews and Criticism would be the fastest-growing category, caused me to pay the least attention to the last category I mentioned until the number of entries called for adjustment. One film-derived adaptation comprised short stories while another was a musical (of which several more can be published even at this point), so I changed the subcategory’s title, from Novelizations to Literary Adaptations. And had to confront the proverbial can of (book)worms: a great number of local films, especially during the early years, may not have been spun off into literary texts but were definitely adapted from pre-existing material. We may think that the end of our equivalent of the Classical Hollywood period, the First Golden Age, finally liberated us from relying on “worthy” samples like metric romances and historical novels, but look more closely. Some of the best output of that period actually originated from a still grossly underappreciated source: serialized graphic novels called komiks, to differentiate them from the US innovation that inspired and inspirited them.

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11011Komiks at one point became the primary print form for Philippine readers, so it naturally made sense for producers to schedule projects at around the time when a serialization was expected to conclude. This symbiosis between film and print proved fail-safe, so in fact we might make two corollary claims: that Filipinos were the most avid consumers per-capita of visual media (of which film was merely one among several possible instances), and that the closest to a unifying national language we ever had was, propitiously yet problematically, audiovisual.

11011If this sounds like an apology for an extensive gap in bibliographical material – Where are the literary sources of our film products? – I don’t see how it can be anything else but.[1] It’s a doable challenge for ambitious cultural historians, but it lies beyond the scope of other tasks I’ve designated for myself. For one thing, someone already counting down to retirement (as I am) will have to reset her timetable to accommodate the equivalent of a doctoral dissertation, just to accomplish the empirical groundwork. Let this goblet pass from me and I promise to fill it later with some delightfully filthy potables. Patience is our key.

11011As for the recent adaptational flurry of publishing activity on the part of pop-oriented publishers and alert production houses, education officials should be able to recognize how a decline in komiks patronage may have been replaced by our audience members’ willingness to read texts that recapture or enhance their movie-watching experience. It may have been a few years’ trend that does appear to be waning, another opportunity to upgrade young people’s literacy wasted by local educators’ inability to cope with the fairly dated challenge of teaching audiovisual appreciation.

Note

[1] The emergence of new media has occasioned several novel instances of narrative renewal and adaptation. Those written about in books include films derived from Wattpad stories, Facebook exchanges, viral videos (converging on the TikTok app during the Covid-19 pandemic), and online games. Mobile-phone content – in terms of oral conversations as well as SMS chats – have also become standard fiction-film features.

11011One might also have to face the possibility that the challenge of tracking every possible prior influence in Philippine cinema might amount to a snipe hunt, inasmuch as the country’s Westernization provided a wide range of influences from two continents through premodern to postmodern periods. Moreover, the still-unresolved obsession with “originality” that (at least during the early years of organized criticism) constantly intruded on useful film evaluation, along with the ever-present concern for moral values, promise to constitute stumbling blocks even for progressive thinkers. Finally, Pinas is nothing if not a globalized entity, from its inception to the foreseeable future; as a specific prominent sample, consider John du Pont’s Philippine Birds, a 1971 monograph published by the Delaware Museum of Natural History, determinedly innocuous if not for the subsequent sensation of its Forbes 400 author’s “guilty but mentally ill” conviction for the fatal shooting in 1996 of Dave Schultz, an Olympic freestyle wrestler. Du Pont died in prison, with the tragedy subsequently dramatized in Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher (2014), a prestige project named after the family estate where he sponsored and trained a number of athletes.

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Á!

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February 15, 2021

Experimental Cinema of the Philippines: A Hasty Recollection

By Joel David

The Experimental Cinema of the Philippines once appeared as a category in my list of pre-internet non-journal non-newspaper periodicals, which provides an incomplete picture of the agency’s persistence in my output. For this reason I thought of providing this landing page, essentially a provisional and still gap-filled collection. I happened to have just a few materials from the agency and only one from the Manila International Film Festival, which was officially one of the ECP’s departments but repudiated by the director-general (originally slated to be Imelda Marcos but preempted by her daughter Ma. Imelda a.k.a. Imee). These were the publications I brought along with me to my graduate studies abroad, to serve as basic research material; as it turned out, everything else I left back home – periodicals, videos, and memorabilia – was either pilfered or damaged by typhoons and/or termites.

11011The discovery of a building proposal, submitted in 1981 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, classified as restricted and titled “The Manila Film Centre,” was something I found online, presumably after having been cleared for whatever was confidential about it. The historical structure appears to have followed the proposal, implying that the former First Lady was closely involved in its design from the start.

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The Film Palace: A Divergence

Regarding the collapse of the Manila Film Center scaffolding during its construction in November 1981, attributed to careless building procedures, I have consistently presented the following qualifications:

  • the architect in charge, Froilan Hong, had extensive global academic preparation and experience in modernist construction (he was Dean of the national university’s College of Architecture around that period), so he understandably contested the number of victims – of which, typically, an exact number will never be determined;[1]
  • also, anyone then who still remembered the temblor-triggered collapse of the Ruby Tower residential building about a decade earlier (an event that vicariously traumatized Filipino architects and contractors everywhere, including my father) would not be tempted to cut corners in a far more complicated undertaking.

Since the martial-law regime imposed a news blackout for over a day, I have found it impossible to confirm any preliminary report of the incident even in foreign-press accounts. For this reason, two dates are also mentioned in various reports (either the 17th or the 18th), possibly arising from the confusion caused by the delay in the release of information.

11011The national dailies that carefully printed similar-sounding news acknowledged that some workers died but that construction activities had resumed. As anyone with sufficient experience with media psychology could have foretold, several speculations – ranging from natural to metaphysical – emerged to clarify, embellish, or challenge the official version of events.

11011For my part, I can only add what first-hand experience could affirm: on the (still-to-be-determined) date of the incident, I was in the vicinity of the construction, along with the rest of the public-relations staff, winding up overnight preparations required to beat some printing deadline for the production of materials for the MIFF. Our office at the Philippine International Convention Center faced the same parking lot where the MFC was rising dextrally, so occasionally we would peer out to see the structure, brightly lit as if being readied for a Hollywood blockbuster, with ladders, derricks, and hoists on all sides.

11011A few hours after midnight a strong tremor shook the place. Everyone rushed to the windows to see what happened to the construction. The sight was uncanny, with workers scampering everywhere, the ladders filled with men clambering downward. From this distant spectacle we knew that something dreadful could have happened (as it did), but we had our tasks to complete and were groggy from working nonstop already.

11011I mention this specific detail because it appears in no other account except “Grains & Flickers,” the article I wrote for the 2016 book edited by JPaul S. Manzanilla and Caroline S. Hau, titled Remembering/Rethinking EDSA, as well as in my monograph Manila by Night: A Queer Film Classic (Arsenal Press, 2017). One careless commenter blurted out in a group discussion (all right, chat) that my story sounds like an exoneration of the people involved in the tragedy – neglecting the crucial facts that first, it happened, and second, I was with witnesses. Undeniably it complicates the narrative, but I wouldn’t say it exculpates the usual suspects unless one were to operate within the fully guilty-vs.-fully innocent binary to which critically ill-equipped (though unfortunately typical) netizens have become accustomed.[2]

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The Malakas at Maganda mural displayed at the entrance to the main theater of the Manila Film Center (from Lakbay ng Lakan, reprinted with permission). For a discussion, please see the Illustrational Problematics page I uploaded for my book Manila by Night: A Queer Film Classic.

A Haunting

I have to begin by expressing my mounting vexation at the number of netizens asking about the presence of ghosts in the building. Scientific and historical materialism before everything else, please (and sorry for stating what should have been obvious already). We moved in after the MIFF for which the MFC was constructed had ended, and a number of accounts correctly state that government officials were hoping for an exorcism ritual – but identify Imelda Marcos as its instigator. This made no sense, since her event had just finished and it was the ECP, led by Imee Marcos, that was to hold office in the building; it was also out of character for Mrs. Marcos, whose advisers would have dissuaded her from conducting such an exercise. (The MIFF, as an independently run ECP department, occupied an upper floor but was operated by its Deputy Director John J. Litton, who preferred to use the initials JJL.) Fortunately a former supervisor, Nena C. Benigno, provided a definitive account of Imee Marcos’s direct involvement in the ritual in a magazine interview – see Nica de Guzman’s “The Mysterious Curse of the Manila Film Center” in the Philippine edition of Esquire (November 7, 2019).

11011The news about Betty Benitez perishing in a vehicular accident after an assignation with Onofre D. Corpuz had a whiff of karmic schadenfreude about it, since Benitez was in charge of the MFC construction project. The story that what caused their car to swerve disastrously was a vision of bloodied workers crossing the street first circulated as a persistent rumor, but it was another death – that of Benigno Aquino Jr. in September 1983, returning from exile in the US – that finally facilitated the publication of the tale. It came out in a Catholic Church opposition compact, Veritas, minus any authorial credit, and added the slant that the couple, married but not to each other, was conducting an affair.[3] I recognized the article’s stylistic flourishes as typical of a former office co-worker, Eduardo B. Pacheco, who had started expressing dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of the Aquino assassination, resigned soon afterward, and subsequently appeared in the Veritas staff box as business editor. (Pacheco lived in Pampanga after his retirement but was killed in an apparent early-morning burglary in 2012.)

11011What haunted my memory during and after my stint at the agency was an encounter with an elderly security guard. He was extraordinarily avuncular, in the manner that working-class men carry over from their drunken states when they realize how well it goes over with strangers they want to impress. I was leaving work with some of my office mates and lingered by the exit as they timestamped their employee-record (“bundy” in Noypi & Aussie English) cards. The old man started talking about how he’d been guarding the place during the construction period, so I asked if he witnessed the collapse of the scaffolding. He talked at length about workers who lost their limbs, if not their lives, and bodies that had to be cemented over in order to meet the building completion deadline.

11011I knew he was gravely endangering himself but he seemed to be unaware of the kind of reality I’d been able to observe: Imee Marcos enrolled in the same class on Philippine nationalism that I was taking under Renato Constantino a few years earlier, and several heavyset middle-aged barong-clad men, definitely not national-university types, presented their registration credentials and positioned themselves all over the classroom while she sat in the center. I thought I could just warn him another time, when less of a crowd would be standing around … but he never showed up again afterward.

11011He could have been fired, or transferred, or just scared away from his job – but this was martial law, and it was never advisable to assume anything less than the worst. If I’d been one of the over-imaginative (though frankly airheaded) cinema attendants who loved indulging in ghost tales and never wanted for listeners prepped by the MFC’s bloody history, I would have spread the story that he must have been one of the fallen workers who wanted his version of events told right, a revenant who returned to the afterlife upon accomplishing his mission. It would have been a far less distressing account than the real-life possibilities I had to accept.

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Other ECP Materials in Ámauteurish!

I’d reviewed a few films that came out during this period, including the ECP productions except the last one. I’d still been working out a critical voice and perspective then, so I’d prefer not to list these titles here, although anyone interested for whatever reason will be able to find the films in this blog’s Reviews section.

11011The release (in more ways than one) of the Ishmael Bernal film Manila by Night may be regarded as the ECP’s final positive contribution to Pinas pop-culture history: it was banned upon completion in early 1980 and screened with seemingly uncountable cuts and deletions – the most severely censored movie ever in local cinema. After the MIFF’s reliance on pornographic films in order to fund the First Lady’s world-scale bacchanals followed a few months later by the killing of Aquino, the MFC sounded out a call for artistic sex-themed products.[4] I remember writing an informal letter to an official suggesting that MbN should be considered a prime candidate because it was officially accepted for the Berlin International Film Festival competition (though prevented from leaving at the time because of the First Lady’s disapprobation); it won the local critics’ award despite its badly mangled condition; and its producer actively participated in providing well-attended titles for MFC screenings. After this I also recall processing the documentation necessary for the release of the integral version of the film for screening exclusively at the MFC.[5]

11011The definitive empirical summary of the agency’s performance lies in documents, stored on drives, that are now lost: its annual reports, all of which I researched, compiled, and wrote. The first one, titled Experimental Cinema of the Philippines: Year One, came out as a glossy publication, while the second and third were bound printouts. Why only three years, when the ECP was set up in 1981 and the EDSA uprising was in 1986? Once more, despite most accounts’ misperception, the organization existed only for as long as Imee Marcos could devote her full attention to it. After the Aquino assassination (and upon getting her now-controversial law degree from the national university), she decided to run for the interim parliament and focus on her duties therein. With the MIFF only too willing to take over the agency, she arranged for the ECP to be dissolved and a new body called the Film Development Foundation of the Philippines set up in its place. This was the body that was shut down in February 1986.

11011While it was around, the public relations department where I worked managed to come up with a magazine, SineManila, limited to a maiden issue because of a nasty turf war waged by a military agent and her staff who insisted that her department’s tiny magazine, Filipino Film Review (my complete file of which was lost), be the only ECP publication that the public could access. We also managed to come up with only one in-house publication, Jario Scenario, since the ECP at this stage was nearing its transition to the FDFP.

11011Since the officials in our department were outsourced from the National Media Production Center (now the Philippine Information Agency), we were obliged to serve all ECP departments including the MIFF. (Recall the opening account where our experience of the tremor that caused the MFC tragedy was due to one of several all-nighters necessitated by an impending MIFF printer’s deadline.) The start of my employment was right after the MIFF dry-run edition, during which I managed to secure passes for the critics circle and experienced the kind of overload that led me to regard filmfests as less-than-ideal venues for appreciating movies.

11011The next year’s (first regular) MIFF was the one held at the MFC building, already and inevitably notorious even before it opened. It had Satyajit Ray as chair of the competition jury, and honored a now-forgotten film, 36 Chowringhee Lane, Aparna Sen’s debut as a director, defeating entries by the likes of Roger Donaldson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Lawrence Kasdan, Karel Reisz, François Truffaut, and Peter Weir. A daily magazine, Manila Film International (of which my complete file was also irretrievably damaged), was published but not by our department. The next year’s winner was another close-to-forgotten entry, the late Yu Wigong’s Memories of Old Peking (a.k.a. My Memories of Old Beijing), but unlike the previous year, it also had Filipino films in competition: Oro, Plata, Mata (which won a special jury prize) by Peque Gallaga and Moral by Marilou Diaz-Abaya.

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Essential Readings

In coordination with the now-defunct Metro Manila Commission, the ECP and MIFF launched separate publications the next year. The ECP’s was a book edited by Rafael Ma. Guerrero, titled Readings in Philippine Cinema – as definitive a text as it was possible to compile up to that point. The MIFF had strictly supplementary material, also edited (though uncredited) by Guerrero, titled Focus on Filipino Films. The eponymously titled film module that the latter accompanied can well be regarded as the highlight of all the MIFF editions put together: a nearly ideal canon-formation project that conscripted film experts who screened available films (though only once) and deliberated on whether they should be included or not; new prints of the selected titles were then struck, with French and English subtitles. Eye-opener accounts such as “Manila’s Angels,” Elliott Stein’s article in Film Comment, made exceptions in a properly critical report of the MIFF’s proceedings in order to express admiration for several of the module entries.

11011Needless to add, this first-time attempt was never to be replicated thereafter. Many of the now faded prints are regarded as still the most acceptable available copies of their specific titles, with digital remastering the only possible future stage for them. The next year’s MIFF reverted to the dry-run dimension, to be able to evade the then-growing united-front movement that arose in protest over the Aquino assassination.

11011A still insistently forward-thinking ECP administration proceeded with its last batch of productions, which gave me the opportunity to interview Soltero director Pio de Castro III on location in Baguio – at the Hyatt Terraces, the same hotel that collapsed from another tremor several years after. They also assigned me to attend the courses of the lately introduced undergraduate film specialization at the national university, to be able to eventually set up the ECP’s own education program. I countered that, since I already held a bachelor’s diploma from the institute that proffered the degree, I would need only a few extra units in order to earn the new baccalaureate itself. I thought my proposal would have come across as audacious, but then there were already less tasks to attend to with the “indefinitely postponed” MIFF and the impending transition of the director-general to her interim Batasang Pambansa commitment. The February 1986 ouster of the Marcos administration occurred during my final semester of undergrad film studies, so just like in my first bachelor’s degree, I was once more a working student who was out of a job upon graduation.[6]

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Notes

I do acknowledge that the memoir format will better serve some of the material presented here, but I prefer not to let this opportunity pass in case I wind up unable to complete the writing project. So I will name this early the people to whom I plan to dedicate the forthcoming effort: the ones (possibly entirely men, but we have no way of knowing any longer) who unwillingly and prematurely gave up their lives for the construction of the hideously pretentious building where we had to work for too long. The ouster of the Marcos regime was not bloody enough to redress the violence visited on you (as well as on countless others), and the silence with which your annihilation was completed.

[1] A letter sent by Baltazar N. Endriga, former chair and president of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, states that Froilan Hong counted seven fatalities and recapitulates the standard account of how “the scaffolding supporting the platform into which concrete was being poured collapsed and the seven workers fell to their deaths. The bodies of all seven were then retrieved and given the proper rites befitting the dead. [Hong] belied the popular story that many workers were buried alive in concrete and that in the hurry to finish the construction, they were simply entombed under the Film Center’s bowels” (“Account on the 1981 Manila Film Center Deaths,” Inquirer.net, February 26, 2021). Endriga does not state his involvement in the project or whether Hong was present during the accident and/or rescue operations.

[2] I did manage to secure recent official confirmation that short night tremors, ranging from moderate to strong, hit Luzon during both dates, after the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology referred my query to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration. (Since PHIVOLCS was founded only after the incident, in September 1982, the tracking of earthquakes during the period in question was performed by PAGASA.) I have no knowledge of the reliability of the government’s seismographic instruments or record-keeping activities during that time, however, so these questions will have to be regarded for now as compounding the other problem I mentioned of determining the exact date of the MFC tragedy. The worst possible outcome from this admittedly traumatic incident would be a Mandela phenomenon, where the local and global public proceeds from a belief that the accident was caused by sheer carelessness and nothing else; there was carelessness in the obscene haste by which the project was rushed, but only an unanticipated tremor could have caused the internal scaffolding to collapse – which, tragically, turned out to be the case.

[3] Walden Bello, in his autobiography Global Battlefields: Memoir of a Legendary Public Intellectual from the Global South (Clarity Press, 2025), attributed the funding of the church’s same-named radio station to “the Asia Foundation, a well-known conduit of [Central Intelligence Agency] and [US] State Department money” (Michael Armacost, Speech at Foreign Service Institute, Rosslyn, Virginia, April 23, 1986).

[4] Not surprisingly, the MIFF concerned itself with the same goal, since it had already reaped profits from adults-only screenings from all over (downtown venues were censorship-exempt during the festival period). Producers were convened at the MFC’s MIFF office for specific instructions as to what they may be allowed to present – in porn parlance, tits & asses as well as simulated sex scenes. The ECP, for its part, provided support in the form of flyers and warm bodies for the Concerned Artists of the Philippines’s anti-censorship rallies.

11011When the expected moralist backlash occurred, with the chief of the Board of Censors for Motion Pictures asserting her presidential appointment and thereby operating at the same governmental level as Imee Marcos, a high-ranking MIFF official issued a statement that the films were smutty because producers were deliberately violating the limits that the government prescribed. The producers themselves, who were constant visitors at the MFC because of other services such as funding subsidies and tax rebates, replied (in strict confidence, understandably) that it was this same top MIFF official who kept pestering them to shoot far raunchier scenes even if these no longer had any relevance to the films being considered. Said official was blasted on national television after February 1986 by Lino Brocka, for his opportunistic claim that he had been supportive of the anti-Marcos opposition all along.

MbN, as restored by the Marcos regime.

[5] What mystifies me is why members of the critics circle (who that time congratulated me for actualizing the release of the uncensored print) insist on calling the film anything except the title its producer and director-writer provided: because the film that their awards honored was not titled Manila by Night? (City after Dark was the censored version, while Manila after Dark does not even apply to any movie whatsoever, although check out this kink in my argument.) The same government that banned, then censored, the film, also restored the original title when it was approved for an MFC screening. As the person designated to host the premiere night’s program, I saw with my own eyes the words “Manila by Night” projected onscreen during the movie’s opening credits.

[6] I might as well provide one of the plausible urban myths that some media colleagues of mine claim as factual, since it does denote a happy ending and resembles my experience: one of Imee Marcos’s bodyguards supposedly realized that his official enrollment in the same courses she was taking at the national university was an opportunity for self-advancement, and actually completed for his own credit the same undergraduate and law degrees that she claimed to have finished (though without any official documentation in her case); he passed the bar exam and no longer had to risk his life for the sake of any high-ranking government bigwig. Some day some enterprising investigative journalist will have to uncover the truth (or falsity) of this singularly marvelous story.

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February 2, 2021

An Intro to Chapter 16 of Marcos’ Lovey Dovie

By Joel David

I originally uploaded a PDF copy of the chapter comprising the transcription of the audiotape surreptitiously recorded by Dovie Beams during her intimate sessions with Ferdinand E. Marcos. Both parties are gone but I found out only recently that Beams had passed away over three years ago. I consider her a definite and indispensable historical figure in Philippine cinema, not only for having starred in the fake Marcos biopic, Jerry Hopper’s Maharlika a.k.a. Guerrilla Strike Force (Roadshow Films International, 1970), but also because of the intrepid and purplish way she stood up to the harassment of Imelda Marcos, who arguably claimed her own share from her husband afterward by staging the ludicrously extravagant editions of the Manila International Film Festival.

11011We have to note at the outset that Beams sued Hermie Rotea, author of Marcos’ Lovey Dovie (Los Angeles: Liberty Publishing, 1983) – a 180-degree turnaround apparently, considering the “very special wishes to a very special guy” message that she scribbled on the photo reprinted on the back cover of the book; her lawsuit alleged that Rotea pilfered some items that were relevant to her account of her high-profile romance. Hence the textual version of incontrovertible material that she went on record as authentically sourced (from and by her) would be the safest portion in a book that made no bones about waging its own political agendum, as manifested in its preliminary sections.

11011Beams lived to a ripe old age, dying at 85 in her birth city, Nashville. By the time that the Marcoses fell from power, she had apparently given up on her Hollywood acting prospects but was able to acquire some valuable property; in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, she clarified two important matters: first, that the money came from the man she just married and not from the recently deposed President; and second, more surprisingly, that she still loved Marcos even though she felt compelled to leave him when he admitted to her that he was declaring martial law, upon which she realized that he was having people killed.[1]

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11011What happened to her to occasion her return to her place of birth? That part of her narrative still has to be told, along with the cause of her death in 2017. Nevertheless a conflict in her fiscal claim seems to override most observers’ appreciation of the consistency of her affection: if she really did love Ferdie in spite of the many reprehensible acts that he and his spouse did to her, then Rotea’s book would have come across as a betrayal – as it did. A far more potentially upsetting scandal is how, with one exception,[2] real (sex-positive) feminists from either side of the Pacific still have to recuperate her narrative, as if being a then-emerging Third World dictator’s paramour positioned her beyond redemption.

From the Law and Behold! blogspot c/o Jun Brioso.

11011Speculation that any funds she had during the mid-1980s might have come from a mortally ill Ferdinand, could have proceeded from the guilt-ridden drive in liberal Western media (formerly protective, if not supportive, of pro-US despots) to track down and help recover the Marcoses’ record-breaking ill-gotten wealth, a project that still has to be completed at present. Beams though would have been an example of a contemporary Mata Hari[3] who barely got away from the wrath of Imelda. The latter, in turn (and thanks to Beams), abandoned all her cultivated pretensions to altruism and timidity and made sure that her rival’s reputation was thrashed beyond repair.

11011What I remember from media coverage was how both pro-Marcos and opposition publications prospered from exploiting a debased image of Beams, and how she could barely land roles in Hollywood thereafter despite the wide publicity her affair generated.[4] The “X-Rated Sex Tapes” chapter, comprising pages 143-81 of Marcos’ Lovey Dovie, is posted here along with the rest of the book, for its intrinsic though admittedly titillating research value, in place of the understandably now-rare recording that she once made available to Philippine media. (It was eventually broadcast over the national university radio station during the singularly liberative nine days of the Diliman Commune, which is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this month.) My way of commemorating a genuine survivor of one of the most excessive and dangerous conflations of film, carnality, and politics our time has ever had the opportunity to observe.

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Notes

For an update to this article, circa May 2023, see “Mystique of the Past.”

[1] See Deborah Hastings, “Ex-Actress Owns $7.7 Million in LA County Property: Controversy Follows Former Lover of Marcos” in the March 10, 1986, issue of the LA Times for the interview. An Associated Press report the next year, “Jury Convicts Alleged Former Marcos Mistress of Fraud” (datelined November 12, 1987), describes how Beams accumulated $18 million in loan applications from 13 banks in order to pursue a “lavish lifestyle,” with her personal financial bubble bursting after her husband Sergio de Villagran filed for bankruptcy, presumably after the 1986 interview.

11011Part of Beams’s defense included the now-implausible claim that she was suffering from HIV/AIDS and consequently had problems exercising proper judgment because of the medications she had to use. A curious sidelight of the report was her campaign to prevent a homeless shelter from being set up in the vicinity of her residence – a move oddly reminiscent of the sociopathic caprices of her nemesis Imelda Marcos, with whom she also shared a rags-to-riches-via-showbiz background.

[2] In “Dovie Beams and Philippine Politics: A President’s Scandalous Affair and First Lady Power on the Eve of Martial Law,” Caroline S. Hau describes how “Like Ferdinand Marcos, Dovie Beams has become a kind of ghost, haunting the narratives of our recent past and eluding all attempts at exorcism and closure” (626) – published in Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, vol. 67, nos. 3-4 (2019): 595-634. For a fascinating first-person account of how Imelda Marcos acquired a copy of the Beams tapes after her personal agent (a priest, no less) failed to get one during Beams’s press conference, see “How Imelda Confirmed Ferdinand Marcos’ Affair with Dovie Beams” by George Sison (Philippine Daily Inquirer, March 5, 2017); Sison also lists some of Beams’s local fair-weather friends in a separate article.

11011I plan to acquaint myself with a prolific New York City-based “dreampop instrumental music project” (whose output started in 2008) that calls itself Dovie Beams Love Child. The name apparently was intended as a milder version of the cross-referential shock effect that punk bands used to appropriate, from the Dead Kennedys to the several acts that use a mass murderer’s surname.

[3] The eponymously titled 1931 Greta Garbo film version (dir. George Fitzmaurice, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is what I had in mind. It’s necessarily fictionalized, but then most accounts of Margaretha Zelle MacLeod’s transgressions have been unreliable, inflected by World War I’s divisive geopolitical conflicts. The Garbo character remains memorable not only because of the actor’s beauty and performative skill, but also because of how her far-from-guiltless Mata Hari decides to endanger her own life for the sake of the soldier who remains unaware (literally blinded) to the end, of how faithfully she kept her vow to him. The closest to an actual Dovie Beams cinematic treatment is the masterly film à clef directed by Lino Brocka and scripted by Ricky Lee, titled Gumapang Ka sa Lusak [Dirty Affair] (Viva Films, 1990).

[4] The fact that the regime, presumably with the covert sanction of the US, could also deploy agents capable of “disappearing” renegades like Primitivo Mijares, who wrote extensively about Beams and other Marcos dalliances in the original edition of The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos (San Francisco: Union Square Publications, 1976), might have factored in Beams’s predicaments. Although again, short of any definitive disclosure in any form from her, the most we can indulge in on the matter are speculative exercises. In fact as early as 1973, she announced that she was working on a manuscript titled Dovie Beams by Me; during her 1986 interviews, she mentioned that it was already 1,500 pages long (see Patrick J. Killen, “Memo to ‘Freddie’: Dovie Has Some Interesting Tapes,” United Press International, January 31, 1986). A book with that title still has to materialize, however.

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February 2, 2021

National Artist Endorsement for Ricky Lee

By Joel David

Dated October 20, 2020, and addressed to the Order of National Artist Secretariat; forwarded via channels.

I am strongly endorsing Ricardo A. Lee, more popularly known as Ricky Lee, for the Order of the National Artist, for his achievements in the fields of film and literature. I am familiar with several of Lee’s output since our tenure as colleagues in the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, from which we separately organized a film-revival and book-publication proprietorship, Cine Gang. Aside from holding what was then the most successful revival series, we managed to publish a bestseller, a back-to-back edition of Lee’s scripts for Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s Brutal and Laurice Guillen’s Salome; the book was not just the country’s first screenplay publication but also won a National Book Award during the first year of the Manila Critics Circle.

11011In the process of my own growth as film critic and scholar, I count as my direct influences Bienvenido Lumbera and Ricky Lee. Lumbera provided me with basic principles in evaluating film samples; Lee encouraged me to work on style, expression, and perception, and taught me that risk-taking was useful even if it resulted in failure, as long as I managed to draw lessons for further growth from it.

11011These were of course the same principles that Lee observed for his own productivity. In undertaking advanced studies in cinema, I determined for myself that Philippine film culture has been fortunate in having three definite contemporaneous geniuses in different fields: Ishmael Bernal in directing, Nora Aunor in performing, and Ricky Lee in writing – by which I refer not just to scripts and fiction but also film journalism and criticism. As you can tell from this list, only one has been honored with the Order of the National Artist, and posthumously at that. I might also add here that my critical duties have not been affected by this conclusion. That is, I still have on record certain work by the three individuals where I expressed reservations or objections to some of their output.

11011My determination of the exceptional giftedness of an artist derives from my study of critical and creative processes. As far as my own praxis has enabled me, I can definitively say that the line dividing criticism and artistic production is an artificial and unnecessary one: as much as I allow myself the benefit of drawing from journalistic and literary modes in writing, I have also learned to be grateful when I can observe artists demonstrating a process of critical self-reflection, deciding on ways to upgrade their output accordingly, and sharing with the rest of society the fruits of what is necessarily difficult-yet-invisible labor.

11011One needs the benefit of time as well as resources to be able to reveal such evidence of constant reflection and innovation. Artists capable of intensive critical processing would be those whose output can be mapped out over several years, providing any evaluator with periods where their concerns remained consistently remarkable, followed by succeeding periods where their approaches shifted, generally for the better. An artist’s initial success in her or his early strategies would be the means by which she or he could be able to harness whatever elements may be necessary for inspiration or execution.

11011This is the reason why in Lee’s case, I would advise evaluators to look beyond his record in film, just as Bernal once participated in theater, television, and journalism, and Aunor has crossed over into theater, television, the recording arts, and now new media. After demonstrating, early enough in his career, an ability to pull off the most challenging literary applications in film scriptwriting, Lee continued providing occasionally rewarding material, but also allowed people who completed his scriptwriting workshops to make names for themselves.

11011Instead of opting to rest on his laurels, he resumed published writing and drew in techniques, insights, even personalities from local cinema, in an impressive array of journalistic and fiction pieces. Hence to list the “best Ricky Lee writing” would involve a dizzying crisscross of genres and formats: Ishmael Bernal’s Himala, Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s Moral, and Lino Brocka’s Gumapang Ka sa Lusak, among several others, for screenplay; Si Tatang at mga Himala ng Ating Panahon, for book anthology; Pitik-Bulag sa Buwan ng Pebrero, for published stage play; Trip to Quiapo, for writing manual; Sa Puso ng Himala, for commemorative volume; Para Kay B and Si Amapola sa 65 na Kabanata, for the novel (admittedly I still have to read his more recent work); “Kabilang sa mga Nawawala,” for metafiction; “Mga Batang Lansangan” series, for reportage; a clutch of short stories, interview articles, and film criticism too accomplished to subject to any kind of ranking among themselves; and so on (with biographical material – his own and others’ – announced among his forthcoming projects).

11011No other Filipino, not even Lee’s mentor Nick Joaquin, has had such a distinctive, variegated, and high-caliber record in a wide array of literary forms (although admittedly Joaquin does put up a good fight in short fiction). I have witnessed Lee occasionally being penalized by award-giving bodies for refusing to be confined to only one style, format, and/or genre. That to my mind is not how critical thinkers should think, or how genuinely creative artists should be permitted to proceed. I have always set out to warn students of criticism, including aspiring reviewers, to never set limits for the output of any artist under study, since the latter’s liberation from the boundaries set by tradition can also release us (as critic-evaluators) from fixed expectations in style and analysis.

11011There may be other significant reasons to endorse Lee for the Order. I trust that letters of endorsement from other individuals or institutions may be able to mention these, although from my own perspective, I can also maintain that excellence in artistic performance cannot be attained without a concomitant impeccability in one’s character. Lee’s personal willingness to assist in the education of children of indigent families is a little-known fact that even he might refuse to divulge or confirm, but it motivated many of his friends, myself included, to pledge to emulate his example when we attained the financial capability to do so.

11011Inasmuch as I mention little-known output, to bring our focus back to the concern of writing: Lee has an entire body of literature that he wrote or co-wrote using aliases or without credit, or ghostwrote for others (including Lino Brocka’s much-reprinted acceptance speech for the Magsaysay Award). Having the stature of a National Artist would enable friends and researchers to dig up as much of this body of work as can be salvaged for proper crediting and archiving, to add to the undiscovered gems that only a select group of people have been privy to so far.

11011I trust I have managed to articulate as much of the justification that I can formulate for Lee’s proclamation as National Artist of the Philippines. Thank you for your attention. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have further questions about this letter.

Á!

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