Ámauteurish!

August 6, 2022

A Formative Sojourn

The primary difficulty for me in writing this piece is that certain influential personalities are involved. Their ability to strike back (as they once already did) is not what gives me pause. The truth is that they’ve made a number of positive contributions, so I wouldn’t want to override the good they’ve done by providing an account of what they did wrong. I don’t have the expert fictionist’s skill in detailing moral triumph and failure in the same person, so the only claim I’ll make for now is that these were truths whose bases were definitive in my experience, but which I figured out only in retrospect, sometimes after years of doubts and after consultations with colleagues who were in a better position to clarify the issues I was pondering.

11011I’ll make my starting point the now-infamous article where I ascribed the problems of film criticism to the well-intentioned but ultimately calciferous influence of the Filipino Film Critics Circle (henceforth FFCC): it sought to provide a corrective to the corruption-ridden choices of the spurious Filipino film academy (about a half-decade before an actual film academy comprising practitioners’ guilds was formed), but could not extricate itself from the valorization that a supposedly credible awards system provided. My claim to credibility proceeds from the fact that I was once a member of this group, and attempted to redefine my membership to exclude my participation in its awards activity. I was dissuaded by the then-chair (now gone), and I realized, also in retrospect, that the group had no means of recognizing and initiating any activity – say, of advanced learning, which was my goal – that had nothing to do with its annual recognition ceremony.

11011So I strove to function as an unaffiliated critical practitioner, returning to college to pursue the country’s first undergraduate program in film, and garnering a “resident film critic” post in a short-lived weekly periodical (where my initially pseudonymous reviews led to an invitation to join the same critics’ org that I’d distanced myself from, until the group’s contact person uncovered my identity). It also led to my participation in alternative critics’ groups, with other former members as well as active critics who didn’t relish the idea of being identified with the group I left. After completing foreign graduate studies and returning to the Philippines, I was sounded out by all the existing critics groups that I’d been involved in, including (yet again) the FFCC. I decided I could operate better by maintaining distance from these orgs, which was how I was able to formulate my critique of Philippine film criticism’s troubles being derived from the backward and unproductive example set by the FFCC.

11011The members’ response was over the top, although I should not have been surprised. Many of the members were officials at the University of the Philippines Film Institute, which I had set up and led until I left in disgust over the politicking indulged in by these same FFCC members. The then-dean said outright that he preferred faculty who got their degrees locally, like he did – a major hint that he wanted other FFCC members to take over my position; when his long-time ally and writer advised me that I was bound for more trouble if I stayed on, I took advantage of the lifting of the standard two-year travel ban for US-educated scholars and accepted an offer from a Korean university, also to be able to repay my graduate-student loans.

11011When my critique lambasting the FFCC was published, the UPFI faculty organized a “roundtable” that I was unable to join because my teaching schedule had already begun. It turned out to be a Stalinist-style denunciation session where the UPFI participants cum FFCC members claimed, in so many words, that they did not deserve to be criticized – without naming me or the article I wrote. The same (now-former) dean who wanted me replaced by colleagues (who could not pass their screening committees because of alleged corruption) said that the most credible critics in the country were the ones who proved their integrity by dispensing awards “that could not be bought” (my translation of his words from the Filipino), in a transcription of a discussion that was subsequently deleted from the journal that reprinted the roundtable’s papers. What remained instead was still a carefully formulated set of specifications of “the qualifications that are necessary to be able to analyze and evaluate films well,” including “A healthy respect for other critics in order to encourage dialogue; and ¶Above all, an attitude of balance and fairness, which is free of all personal agenda and self-promotion.”

11011That of course was an intellectual fallacy premised on an extremely problematic assumption – that “other critics” are automatically worthy of respect and thereby deserve “an attitude of balance and fairness.” The more vital question in so far as my own approaches are concerned is: why was I anonymized? This is not a matter of egotism on my end, as those who know me will be able to attest; rather, it disenables the outside observer from tracking the writer’s source of annoyance and checking out the article I wrote, where I set my argument in no uncertain terms. Typically after the fact, I managed to deduce why the writer had to write that way: to put it bluntly, I’m not the one living in a glass house. In the same issue where the article came out, the lecture by that year’s Plaridel Awardee for Film was published. That awardee was Nora Aunor, who was not the first PAF; that distinction was given to Aunor’s rival, Vilma Santos, during the deanship of the same writer who responded to my critique of the FFCC.

11011In fact, the primary social-network controversy over the declaration of Aunor as recipient of the Order of the National Artist centered on why Santos did not get it at the same time, or even earlier than Aunor. Where did this conceit come from? Followers of Santos would need more than just her record as the first PAF, since Aunor was not only the first FFCC best actress winner but also the first in her batch of performers to win the FFCC life-achievement prize. The source of their clamor is: the FFCC gave more best-actress trophies to Santos, and those for Aunor were often shared with other winners. After years of going over the various historical incidents, in consultation with contemporaries who were also close observers during the period of these two performers’ emergence and rivalry, I concluded that I had enough to provide an explanatory account. It will involve exactly the same critical personality I’ve been referring to, regarded at the moment as the most senior authority among FFCC members, and it will not result in a rosy image. Even then, I’ll have to leave out a lot more supporting details just so we can follow the most basic narrative through-line.

11011Fortunately (in the ironic sense), my tenure with the FFCC covered the years when Santos won her first acting trophy, and followed it with two more in as many years – an FFCC record not equalled before or since. This specific personality I’ve been referring to, an FFCC founding member and former chair and subsequently former national university mass communication dean, was the most enthusiastic campaigner for Santos during this entire period. This caused major expressions of outrage during Santos’s first win, since Aunor was defeated for what was subsequently regarded as one of the best performances in local cinema. In fact the films of both actresses had the same director and scriptwriter, both of whom had been reliable practicing critics; not surprisingly, both expressed strong disagreement with the results. (Personal disclosure: I was the first person to make this declaration regarding Aunor’s output, in an assessment of film performances during the Second Golden Age, which I was also first to name; I subsequently qualified my upholding of both items in updates to the lead article in my first book, The National Pastime.)

11011Why did I and most other people not find anything suspicious about this member’s campaigns for Santos? Because, among other things, he had on record an article, typically old-fashioned in its reliance on dualisms in order to uphold orthodox-left principles. The article discussed a set of values in Philippine cinema, stating that then-current filmmaking practice was lacking because of its reliance on spectacle, martyr characters, optimistic narratives, but first and foremost, fair-skinned performers. The oppositions he raised would be easily deconstructible by college freshmen (though not in the Philippines, sadly) but in case we prove incapable of figuring it out, he proceeded to articulate the solutions. The first, of course, was in upholding “kayumanggi” or brown-colored actors, naming Aunor as first exemplar.

11011Fast-forward to the current millennium, after Santos earned her record-breaking FFCC trophies even for performances that were vitally flawed like the first one she won for, and Aunor losing or tying with others during the several decades when she had peaked as performer. Why would this person desist from identifying me when I never hesitated to call out his organization and colleagues for their several problematic actuations? During a casual exchange with a former FFCC member who became a successful scriptwriter with his own gripes against the group, we got to talking about this anomaly and I suddenly made a deduction, which my conversation partner said he was aware of from the beginning. Because what was playing out, specifically with the person in question, was not admiration for Santos, but hostility toward Aunor. This became evident when I thought further back, during the year I first joined the group. Aunor nearly lost her second acting prize – for a film that she had favored for the yearend film festival. The film that she disfavored was the one that the critic in question had scripted.

11011One other conversation I had boosted this new interpretation of events. It was with the only surviving Second Golden Age filmmaker who had never won an FFCC award despite his coming up with the year’s best film at least twice. “They never gave me an award,” he told me, “because of what I did with [the FFCC member’s] script.” He described it as unworkable and even improperly formatted, so much so that he needed to ask a more experienced scriptwriter to help; said veteran writer was associated with non-prestigious commercial projects, so presumably the member felt insulted. This amounted to two people whom the member wanted to penalize, and the FFCC was the means by which he could carry it out. No wonder, after asserting his association with the FFCC and their fairness in dispensing their awards, he needed to be discreet in attacking me. And for the record, I may as well provide the essential conclusion: the relative artistic accomplishments of Vilma Santos and Nora Aunor, among others, were mostly only incidental considerations when it came to the FFCC deciding on whether or not they deserved to win.

Á!

Leave a comment | tags: Commentaries | posted in Film Criticism

July 2, 2022

The Performances of Nora Aunor et al. (by Jojo Devera)

By Joel David

Click here to go directly to the list of entries.

Jojo Devera was already a highly regarded archivist, with perhaps the most comprehensive collection anywhere of Philippine film and television material on video. For processing some of the rarest significant items in his collection and making them available to the general public at no charge, he received a special prize from the Filipino Arts & Cinema International (FACINE) Film Festival in 2017. Unfortunately lawyers claiming to represent some of the country’s studios forced him to shut down his website, although academics were occasionally still able to avail from him of samples they needed for research. (Said studios posted their own collections on YouTube pages they set up during the pandemic, also for free but often in badly preserved, unprocessed, and/or censored versions.)

11011Since then, Devera focused on posting a series of remarkable reviews of remastered Filipino films on his Facebook account, evaluating the final output vis-à-vis their original celluloid properties, pointing out when necessary how the text’s signification process is enhanced, modified, or even betrayed by technological intervention. He also has an auteurist study of neglected Second Golden Age master Elwood Perez, titled Feel Beautiful, currently awaiting publication (personal disclosure: I agreed to provide a foreword for it).

11011Not long after this year’s announcement of the Order of the National Artists of the Philippines finally included Nora Cabaltera Villamayor, he embarked on a series of evaluations of Nora Aunor’s performance record, one film at a time, followed presently by performances of Aunor’s contemporaries in films made by the other National Artists for film (scriptwriter Ricky Lee and director Marilou Diaz-Abaya). Folks in my long-time critical circle immediately realized that this was one more contribution that had never been provided before in Philippine film commentary. I requested permission from Devera to upload his series in chronological order. It has been updated up to May 2023, when Devera revived his essential Sari-Saring Sineng Pinoy blog.

11011Collages and audiovisual material appearing below are all from Devera’s Facebook posts. Sidebar pic is from Pag-ibig Ko’y Awitin Mo (dir. Eddie Rodriguez, 1977), also originally uploaded on his account by Devera, who owns copyright on these visual and textual materials. To jump directly to the performance assessment of a specific title, select the appropriate category below and click on the relevant entry:

Feature films with Nora Aunor:

• Atsay (1978);
• Bad Bananas sa Puting Tabing (1983);
• Bakit May Kahapon Pa? (1996);
• Batu-bato sa Langit (1975);
• Beloved (1985);
• Bilangin ang Bituin sa Langit (1989);
• Bona (1980);
• Dalaga si Misis, Binata si Mister (1981);
• Dementia (2014);
• Greatest Performance (1989);
• Himala (1982);
• Kinabukasan (2014);
• Kung Ako’y Iiwan Mo (1980);
• Maalaala Mo Kaya? (1973);
• Magnanakaw (1995);

• ’Merika (1984);
• Minsan, May Isang Ina (1983);
• Minsa’y Isang Gamu-Gamo (1976);
• Naglalayag (2004);
• Padre de Familia (2016);
• Palengke Queen (1982);
• Sidhi (1999);
• T-Bird at Ako (1982);
• Taklub (2015);
• Tatlong Taóng Walang Diyos (1976);
• Thy Womb (2012);
• Ang Totoong Buhay ni Pacita M. (1991); and
• Mga Uod at Rosas (1982).

Non-Features with Nora Aunor:

• “Bubog na Dangal” (Lovingly Yours, Helen episode, 1983);
• “Kahit Konting Awa” (with song performance, 1985);
• La Aunor … Beyond Time (with video excerpts, 1994);
• Sa Ngalan ng Ina (2011);
• “Saan Ako Nagkamali” & “Kahit Na” (with song performances); and
• “Serye” (Star Drama Presents Nora episode, 1993).

Films that Feature Other Performers:

• Baby Tsina (2004);
• Brutal (1980);
• A Hard Day (2021);
• Imbisibol (2015);
• Itim (1976);
• Lihis (2013);
• Mahjong Nights (2023);
• May Nagmamahal sa Iyo (1996);
• Memories of a Love Story (2022);
• Ang mga Kaibigan ni Mama Susan (2023);

• Minsan Lang Kita Iibigin (1994);
• Minsan Pa Nating Hagkan ang Nakaraan (1983);
• Pamilya sa Dilim (2023);
• Raket ni Nanay (2006);
• Sensual (1986);
• Silip sa Apoy (2022);
• Somewhere (1984); and
• Write Here (1984).

POWERFUL SIMPLICITY
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, June 25, 2022)

In ’Merika (1984), director Gil M. Portes, with screenwriters Clodualdo del Mundo Jr. and Jose Gil Quito, did something quietly daring and different. The framework is refreshingly simple, but it never feels claustrophobic, boring, or lacking in anything. Probably because Nora Aunor breathes life into the plot, channeling a kind of rare and subdued power. I commend the source material for providing Aunor with a backdrop to do incredible work. Because the character of Milagros Cruz had room to be well-rounded and complex, Aunor was able to expand her character by way of an intelligent performance. She does something smart with Mila, something that aids the holistic vision of the film. Aunor imbues Mila with commanding subtlety, so that the simplification becomes an advantage. ’Merika is a film obsessed with identity, as most immigration narratives are, but if the titular character strips herself from belonging to any one place, we are certain that the woman standing before us belongs exactly where she is, onscreen.

11011In my opinion, ’Merika owes much of its success to Aunor. That’s not to say it isn’t a beautiful film, it just relies heavily on its lead to work. Aunor’s nuances, the way the whole narrative is refracted through her movements and at times what feels like just her eyes, carries the film through all its own quiet uncertainties. You can see the wheels spinning, wheels of both deliberation and trepidation, in Aunor’s eyes, as she deals with losing things and gaining others (new friends, a career, romance). It should be noted that Aunor’s chemistry with everyone in the film is palpable and that their performances are stunning. Still, I’d argue it’s only because of Aunor that ’Merika never becomes compromised by its own confinement, but rather heightened because of it. Her powerful simplicity mirrors that of the film, as she steadily grows into something much larger and more meaningful than the sum of its parts. It’s both rare and heartening to see a movie that grasps the poignancy of everyday life decisions, where to live, what job to take, who to partner with, and how to press forward when every road promises something gained and something forever lost.

MEASURED INTENSITY
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, June 25, 2022)

The heroine of Mario O’Hara’s Tatlong Taóng Walang Diyos (1976) is a woman of contradictory attributes that isn’t easy to imagine in the flesh. Rosario would seem too oversized to be embodied by any actress, even by an actress of extraordinary resourcefulness and versatility. Nora Aunor has already established herself as a performer of that caliber. She accomplishes the near-impossible, presenting Rosario in believably human terms. In a role affording every opportunity for overstatement, Aunor offers a performance of such measured intensity that the results are by turns exhilarating and heartbreaking. There is hardly an emotion that she doesn’t touch and yet we’re never aware of her straining. This is one of the most astonishing, unaffected and natural performances I can imagine. She looks more translucently beautiful and what Aunor has wrought, with O’Hara’s help, is a psychological verity for Rosario that is revealed through patterns of motion. She seems to be shunning the close scrutiny of others. Yes, she often faces people, often embraces, converses with them, but the overall impression of her movement is sidling, gently attempting to hide herself in open space. Through this kinetic concept, Aunor gives Rosario an aura of concealment. Sometimes O’Hara hands the picture over to Aunor. The camera fixes on her in medium close-up and, virtually without any change of shot, she tells a story. It’s what Ingmar Bergman has done a number of times with Liv Ullmann and it’s been done before with Aunor.

BRASSY, SOUL-STIRRING
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, June 26, 2022)

In Ang Totoong Buhay ni Pacita M. (1991), Nora Aunor created one of the most indelible heroines in Philippine cinema, a rough-around-the-edges woman who can’t quite shake her working-class ways as she does whatever it takes to give her daughter Grace (Lotlot de Leon) a better life. Aunor is terrific as Pacing, injecting much-needed humor playing her image as a gauche vulgarian to the hilt. This is melodrama in its purest, most undistilled form, ruthlessly wringing pathos from its nerve-shredding themes of class, motherhood, and self-sacrifice. Beyond the wonder of Aunor’s performance, which is simultaneously brassy and soul-stirring, the other key to Pacita M.’s magic is that only the audience truly knows her. As a viewer, it feels like a privilege to know Pacing as nobody in her world truly can and appreciate what she decides to do, however questionable or downright deluded her actions are. The other characters are in the dark as we are in the dark too, weeping. Through it all, Aunor is a miracle, pouring the just-below-the-surface vulnerability she’s got into the endearingly crude Pacing, before going in for the kill with the titanic heartbreak of the impossible-to-forget ending. Coupled with Elwood Perez’s skillful direction and Ricky Lee’s memorable screenplay, Aunor’s performance evokes copious tears.

ADAPTABILITY AND RANGE
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, June 27, 2022)

Though Lino Brocka’s Bona (1980) might seem like an unlikely place from which to launch a discussion of the craft of one the great Filipino actors, it illuminates several threads that run through Nora Aunor’s body of work. Foremost is her adaptability and range as a performer, which are unparalleled. Bona also demonstrates the centrality of collaboration to Aunor’s practice and the rigorous preparation that facilitates her singular spontaneity and openness to chance in the moment of performance. Her almost otherworldly range has generated certain tropes in reviews of her work: she is said to “disappear into the character.” But this take, which suggests an innate and natural ability for imitation or even an erasure of the self, doesn’t capture the careful calibrations of Aunor’s craft. Rather than disappearing into her characters, she deconstructs the performance process on screen. Aunor achieves layers of reflexivity, performing the character’s own fleeting performance of the self. Her ability to highlight the incongruities within a character without resolving them is one of her greatest strengths as a performer. Aunor’s face has a striking ability to embody that luminous star power while also cracking it open like brittle armor. As Bona, Aunor draws the camera to herself, seducing us like her mark, even as she tilts her face to give in to the sexual advances of Gardo (Phillip Salvador). That same face sours when she claims her bitter revenge. Indeed, across a range of characters, Aunor’s carefully tempered expressions bring to the surface an array of subtle revelations and momentary ruptures. Across many projects, Aunor has embraced different facets of her characters, resisting the temptation to explain them. One is left with the impression that for her, anything is possible, a prospect that is at once thrilling and a bit terrifying.

IMMEASURABLE BRAVERY
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, June 28, 2022)

Every once in a while, you witness a performance so brilliant that it leaves you in a state of total awe. It’s the kind of performance which really blurs the line between the actor and character being portrayed. You don’t see any trace of the actor because the latter has succeeded in fully inhabiting a character, as opposed to just playing one. An actor’s job is never easy as it looks, involving the tearing down of those layers we surround ourselves with to protect us emotionally. This requires an immeasurable amount of bravery, and if the actor succeeds in what may seem impossible, you will be left believing that no one else could have played a role as well as the actor did. After witnessing Nora Aunor as Beatrice Alcala in Laurice Guillen’s Kung Ako’y Iiwan Mo (1980), in a performance bursting with emotion, her portrayal is never less than believable. She nails every moment perfectly, never missing a beat. Watching her infinite happiness when she meets Mike (Rolly Quizon), the look in her eyes is beautiful and simply enthralling. I’m still thinking about her long after the movie ended, trying to figure out how she accomplished all of this without falling into the trap of playing a caricature. I can’t stop gushing over how phenomenal she is.

COMPELLING AND TRAGIC
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, June 29, 2022)

As good as Charito Solis and Maricel Soriano are, Minsan, May Isang Ina (1983) is Nora Aunor’s film and she owns every moment. Ruth is a repressed character, and yet Aunor makes her both compelling and tragically human. The film never attempts to explain why Ruth is the way she is, but Aunor paints her as a profoundly broken woman, someone so socially malnourished that normal simply isn’t an option for her. This is such a meaty, fascinating role. While the film isn’t especially interested in explaining where Ruth’s dysfunctions come from, it doesn’t try to judge her either, no matter how derailed her psyche becomes. Instead, director Maryo J. de los Reyes just watches, often letting scenes play out as a single shot of Aunor even when a cut might be merciful. It’s an undeniably effective approach. Aunor wears her own face like a mask. Throughout, she registers emotion with minimalist precision. Her performance is all eyes. When feelings escalate, she lets her look dart around the room. In other scenes, the willed blankness of her stare, refusing cues and context, does the same.

PRIVACY AND MYSTERY
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 1, 2022)

Despite how inextricable Nora Aunor’s personal pain is from Greatest Performance (1989), the arrival of catharsis twenty minutes in feels audaciously premature. At this point Aunor’s character, an unknown singer named Laura Villa, has been established only in broad strokes. The voice exposes interiority, the inside of a body and self, the very things that get obscured in a genre so invested in surface beauty. But if ever a narrative movie could be said to fulfill some sort of ideal of a singer’s film, Greatest Performance is it, in the way it visually mythologizes the singer in the act. Where most emotionally driven musical numbers serve as outlets for what’s being felt in the heat of a given moment, the anguish surging through “Iisa Pa Lamang” exists independent of any apparent catalyst. Aunor’s voice becomes all the more compelling for having wriggled out of contextual constraints, for stopping us in our tracks without the justifications of narrative or character development. It’s Aunor’s voice that makes it difficult to hear the song as anything other than an authentic cry of pain. And it’s their sharing of this same inimitable sound that makes actor and character impossible to disentangle. The scene assumes that, in Aunor’s hands, any sad love song is inescapably personal. Without her, such an unseemly outpouring would lack all credibility. “Iisa Pa Lamang” lingers like an aftertaste, an agonizingly short-lived moment of clarity that the rest of the film feels all the more poignant for failing to recreate.

11011It’s the self-knowing and effortfulness of the acting, the moment-to-moment decisions moving it forward, that foreground the song’s seemingly inevitable candor. In “Iisa Pa Lamang,” we catch glimpses of a shift in her acting style that becomes more pronounced. Aunor, the filmmaker, in her detached authorial power, has captured what she needs while Aunor, the performer, is left with all that emotional excess roiling inside her. It’s a brief moment, one that evokes its obsessive chronicling of the singer’s transformations in and out of performance and its cold observation of everyone else’s indifference toward the toll it must be taking on her. Greatest Performance honors the chameleonic dexterity and creative agency of the performer whose constant self-making may exist within another’s vision but is never any less her own. Laura becomes a palimpsest of the actor’s accumulated public self and because we know the beauty of the singing originates from the depths of a life lived, we are led to acknowledge an offscreen Laura who for all we know may have suffered a pain that likewise preceded the camera. Aunor’s public life sheds light on the places where her character has been granted relative privacy and mystery.

EFFORT AND ACHIEVEMENT
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 2, 2022)

Adolfo Borinaga Alix Jr.’s Kinabukasan (2014) is a film composed of gestures and glances, its delicacy a veiled promise of abandon. And it could not exist without Nora Aunor’s extraordinary performance, which summons Ernest’s entire lifetime in those eyes and in the timbre of her voice. Aunor truly comes alive in the subtle changes in her expression. She slowly, gracefully, expertly raises the corners of her lips into a soft smile as her eyes begin to pool with tears. Seeing Ernest slowly revealing her pain is like being invited into her secret world. Aunor has the ability to transform herself vocally, facially, and physically although we’ve already seen how thoroughly she can merge with other people’s bodies and voices, notably as Elsa in Ishmael Bernal’s Himala (1982). She is stellar in wordless scenes. Aunor makes unexpected choices with dialogue too, but she resists the temptation for overstatement, her delivery touching in its directness. What Aunor’s performance exposes is the duplicity intrinsic to the phenomenon of the star; no matter how precise and specific the performance, we never for a second lose sight of the actor, virtuosically performing a different person. The drama on display is the effort and achievement of the acting itself.

DISARMING AND DEFERENTIAL
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 2, 2022)

It’s always special when a director is able to create a world that shows off his unique sense of humor in a comedy. With Batu-Bato sa Langit (1975), Luciano B. Carlos has done that in spades. Taken as a whole, in the sum of its dizzy parts, Batu-Bato sa Langit showcases a disarming and deferential comic brilliance. The best comedy has its roots in the painful encumbrances of human existence, the cinema screen being the mirror that delivers to the audience its filmic reflection. It’s easy to imagine Orang’s foibles being exploited for cheap laughs. Certainly the character’s breathy demeanors are easily overplayed external factors, but Nora Aunor’s talent is in humanizing even the most minor behavioral tics. Orang, no hollow comic shell, is a full-blooded creation of the emotional interior. It would be an insult to merely laugh at her or with her and so we respond in complex kind, our hearty guffaws barely concealing winces of individual recognition. Aunor recognizes the importance of moving beyond the symbolic, of trumping hollow laughter and infusing it with depth of feeling. Her comic means are used toward humanistic ends. Despite Orang’s awkwardness, Aunor never invites the viewer to ridicule her character. It’s fantastic to see her completely unaware she is in a comedy. A cut to Aunor’s reactions is the perfect punchline and her line deliveries, masterly.

IMPERILED SOLITUDE
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 3, 2022)

Brillante Ma Mendoza’s Taklub (2015) is gripping drama based on a true story. Flinging herself, ego-free and vulnerable, into Bebeth’s shredded soul with utter conviction, Nora Aunor embodies everyday maternal heroism. Hers is a beautiful performance that couldn’t exist without access to the character’s emotional truth. Thanks to her ability in conveying empathy, courage, and motherly love, Aunor has created a moving tribute to the real-life woman she portrays and every single soul affected by the horrific natural disaster that was Typhoon Yolanda. Her utterly exhausting and convincing portrayal of a tragedy-stricken mother is enormously amazing and carries the entire film. For Aunor, it’s as if pain is a renewable resource for her characterization skills and of late, she seems to have specialized in the allure of the imperiled solitude with all the physicality and interiority required, whether or not the movies themselves are any good. Aunor brings that same full-bodied intensity to Bebeth. As survival cinema, Taklub has a certain unpredictable energy which Aunor embodies with a combination of compassion and exasperation. It’s the aftermath, however, in which we learn the root of Bebeth’s experience, that exposes Taklub for the well-intentioned film about grief that it is.

WEIGHT AND HEFT
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 4, 2022)

“Bubog na Dangal” (1983) was the 9th anniversary presentation, directed by Mario O’Hara, of the long-running weekly drama series Lovingly Yours, Helen. As the story begins, the unthinkable has already happened. Lourdes (Nora Aunor) is in emotional hell from the first second and, over the course of an hour, finds no relief. The reasons for her torment may change or deepen, but they inevitably find their source in an awful foreboding, a sense of ceaseless guilt. Every frame she shows up in demonstrates her ability to articulate emotions through undefinable facial expressions. Aunor’s presence gives a sense of yearning to accept the fate of the inevitable. Watch out for the passive straight face she makes throughout in spite of the agony and the unspeakable feeling she is undergoing. Aunor makes everything uncomplicated with her ability to explore the character in silence. On camera, she gives a tour-de-force performance, effortlessly conveying every thought racing through her character’s mind. Aunor is is not just the star, but also the larger-than-life presence that lends the episode weight and heft.

STAGGERING POWER
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 5, 2022)

Himala (1982), directed by Ishmael Bernal, is a powerful and successful experiment in minimalism. Ricardo Lee’s screenplay takes on a documentary aesthetic, following characters as seemingly nothing of consequence is happening. There is great emotional resonance to the film, particularly in a handful of immensely powerful key scenes. Nora Aunor’s detractors claimed that she did nothing and played a bland character. While these claims are utterly unfounded, it’s not hard to see where they stem from. Elsa spends most of the film being swayed by the currents of other characters’ desires. She almost doesn’t feel like a protagonist due to her passivity. Yet Aunor plays her with immense authenticity. Perhaps it’s because of the similarities between actress and character. Her role as Elsa is a perfect example of an actress not being given the credit she deserves because of quietude. Aunor’s acting is almost masked by her naturalness in the role. It is the best performance Bernal has ever directed. Elsa speaks more than a sentence or two at a time and says nothing at all about life in the village or her childhood. But Elsa remains a cipher, her interests and experiences, her inner life remain inaccessible to Bernal. The spoken word is not cinema’s most powerful tool. As anyone in the field knows all too well, cinema developed originally as a mute medium, dependent on images and editing to convey meaning. Himala is entirely structured around Elsa’s point of view and this is the narrative paradigm that drives the film. I therefore have a hard time accepting the view that it silences Elsa, despite her demeanor. Aunor’s lack of pretense, the naturalism with which she embodies this character is astounding. Elsa is a stoic but complex woman who witnessed hardship largely silently, but when she speaks, she is resplendent. Her final monologue showed she’s reflexive, more aware about her motives and mixed emotions than all the other characters. There are those who diminished the turn as a non-performance, but they are sorely mistaken. Aunor’s work is of staggering power and it is, without question, one of her best.

INSECURITY AND GRIEF
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 5, 2022)

A memorably bitter highlight in Adolf Alix Jr.’s Padre de Familia (2016) is the coruscating funeral scene. The tone of this disastrous wake is set by Noel (Coco Martin), whose resentment against his mother, Aida (Nora Aunor), as well as against various others near and dear, gets a thorough and unhinged airing. There’s too much potential in Noel’s outbursts and the revelations they unleash. The last act is a series of gobsmacking handbrake turns practically sending the entire cast off packing. Aida, mother of the family, is probably the most interesting character in the film, played to perfection by Aunor. She stubbornly resists any external show of the emotional turmoil she undoubtedly feels. Aida inexplicably gives priority to keeping up appearances and wants to give no one outside the family any inkling of their troubles. But her pretense extends within the family as well, where she comes across as disconnected, her brittle surface barely concealing the depth of insecurity and grief that lie underneath. The strain between Aida and Noel is written with raw truth, it becomes achingly apparent. In one of the most finely wrought scenes in the film, Aida attempts to bridge the gap, but she possesses neither the energy nor the skill to break through the emotional carapace with which her son has armored himself. When Aida reaches the point where she is ready to confront the issues that have created a wall between them, Noel pushes her away, by obliquely criticizing her relationship with Job (Joem Bascon). Padre de Familia artfully affirms a universal truth about the human condition. It epitomizes what a Filipino independent film can be when the director is willing to abandon the safety net.

AMBIGUOUS VOLATILITY
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 6, 2022)

Afflicted with anxiety attacks as well as trust and intimacy problems, Delia (Nora Aunor) is a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She’s helpless and Danny Holmsen’s Maalaala Mo Kaya? (1973) is utterly drenched in the feeling of helplessness. Aunor embodies the depths and contradictions of psychological trauma and the hidden strengths it can uncover. Aunor’s performance sears into my being as Delia’s frustration and desperation build. The emotions coursing through the film are palpable. What keeps us rooting for Delia is the quicksilver complexity Aunor brings to every aspect of her performance. A jangle of nerves and manic energy, she infuses Delia with realness and easily invites sympathy as she endures the horrors of confinement in a mental institution. Throughout, Aunor inhabits all the breakdowns necessitated by her role. The revelations are heart-stopping. Aunor’s performance is so rich that she turns her character’s ambiguous volatility into a virtue.

UTTERLY CAPTIVATING
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 8, 2022)

Magnanakaw (1995) is built around a towering performance by Nora Aunor that is itself about giving. Not only is she mind-blowingly terrific, her delivery’s a spectacle of facial expressions, primal screams, and howling monologues. Rosing is a mess of hurt trying to find a form of rapture that permits others to transcend loss. As the story moves along, Aunor’s character slowly descends into madness, leaving the viewer, like Rosing, not fully knowing what is going on. As brilliant as Aunor is at suggesting a rapidly compartmentalizing consciousness, her directors Nick Lizaso and Soxie Topacio aren’t taking any chances. Aunor plays Rosing with absolute perfection, alarm, and terror that she embodies from within, an inner commitment to the refusing of anything close to compromise. The stares are another reoccurring ideation, whether it is Rosing facing off against Oca (William Lorenzo) or the detailed monologues in the presence of her best friend (Tetchie Agbayani). There are always two from either gender using their persuasive influence on her. Aunor isn’t afraid to fully commit herself to the madness that’s unfolding within Rosing as well as delve into the very necessary side of acting that captures the impetus of the scene at hand. Her performance is utterly captivating. Aunor’s face can quickly transform into a mask of rage, horror or pain. She also always understands what her directors are up to.

SWEEPING AND ELEGIAC
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 9, 2022)

Most great singers, from Billie Holiday to Frank Sinatra to Edith Piaf, tell part of their story in music. The key is to let the song do the work. Nora Aunor did that with her opener, “The Windmills of Your Mind.” Her voice has lost nothing and she seems to understand songs better. Continuing with the classics “What Now My Love?,” “In My Life,” “Kapantay ay Langit,” she delivers beloved songs all night. Watching Aunor perform her “Alpha Hits Medley,” singing “Yesterday When I Was Young,” sounding heart-stopping, tear-jerking, or whatever superlatives you want to throw at it, is a reminder that some legends are legendary for a reason. When she steps up to the microphone and opens her mouth, Aunor’s breezy stage manner, her ability to be silly and sexy within the course of a lyric, to bring you in with a whisper and to belt out a crescendo, are so magnetizing, you can’t look away. For the next hour, Aunor commands the stage, singing and telling jokes. Then she brings out her voice teacher, Louie Reyes, to duet for the first time ever on a live stage, performing a mashup of Seawind’s “Follow Your Road” and The Beatles’s “Let It Be.” Later on, she takes the stage with the Side A Band, singing “Foolish Heart,” before Asia’s Songbird, Regine Velasquez, gets the biggest cheer of the night with their duet of “People.” Aunor’s version of George Canseco’s “Paano Kita Mapasasalamatan” is tender and beautiful. La Aunor … Beyond Time (1994) concludes with her well-known low-key, melancholic take on Florante’s anthem “Handog,” now sweeping and elegiac.

VERSATILITY, VULNERABILITY, VALIANCE
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 9, 2022)

Nora Aunor is one of the strongest vocalists of her generation, imbuing her reality into the several songs that littered her life and lit our stages. The songs embody a certain level of engagement and adulation, so her vocals are always committed to the cause they have engaged with. In a career that has lasted decades, she has emerged as one of the most important artists of her generation. The singer has embellished her body of work with a series of striking vocals that show growth and development as a person and as a woman. Aunor shows her versatility, vulnerability and valiance as a person of great composure and poise. Such is the vastness of the work, it goes beyond the restrictions and trappings of mere padding.

“Saan Ako Nagkamali”

There’s a lot more depth and density to her work in this shimmering ballad by George Canseco. Aunor was strong enough to capture an entirely new form of music. It’s a vocal performance of integrity and assurance, a malleable voice that only grows grander with every passing verse.

“Kahit Na”

Notable for putting emphasis on the words in question, as the feelings that cement the song are what lead to such a strong vocal. She’s strident and singular in her resolve, capturing the propensity and proclivities of Willy Cruz’s words to bring her truth to the forefront. Emotion soaks through the vocal, veering into more intellectual territory, as the song creates a new pathway for the singer to express herself, both as a musician and, more important, as a woman.

FUNNY AND DIMINUTIVE
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 10, 2022)

Many of the most memorable appearances in cinema history have also been among the briefest, as big-name stars take the opportunity to steal the show with a small but perfectly formed cameo. In fact, cameos can sometimes be more memorable than full-length roles. Sometimes cameos enhance a story, at other times they’re just there to make you laugh. In 1983, Nora Aunor had a brief role in Peque Gallaga’s Metro Manila Film Festival entry, Bad Bananas sa Puting Tabing, which was most notable for Aunor’s funny character, diminutive Secret Agent Maria Clara Cayugyug. Her performance was the perfect blend of energy and comedy, without being too over-the-top. Aunor is a great example of a comedic performer making a lot out of very little. Bigger than her tiny frame might suggest, she’s driven and has perfect comic timing. We can only wish there were more of her.

SYMPATHETIC AND AGNOSTIC
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 10, 2022)

There is something so enthralling about watching a woman who has gone off the rails. In Joel Lamangan’s Bakit May Kahapon Pa? (1996), Karina Salvacion (Nora Aunor) is training viewers to recognize the sudden changes in her personality to help them understand the real meaning behind her words. Karina is definitely a memorable character not because she’s mixed up. What’s really interesting is how, ultimately, she’s just trying to piece her life together but lacks the mental stability and social understanding to do so. She ends up being a sympathetic character, despite her overbearing and obsessive traits, and the things she’s capable of. Karina is complex. There’s a mixture of her being someone who has snapped yet basically knows what she’s doing. Her need to regain composure and appear normal after she overreacts makes her a unique, tortured character. Karina creates most of her problems, and is aware of it. It’s a chilling portrayal. Aunor interchangeably makes the viewer feel both sympathetic and agnostic about her character. When the narrative careens into pulp territory, she anchors the conflict. Situations become increasingly far-fetched, but Karina reacts to the outrageous circumstances in a true and reasoned way.

FAMILIARITY AND EMPATHY
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 11, 2022)

Beautifully written and performed, Mga Uod at Rosas (1982) goes far beyond stereotyping, never patronizing. The film has a static look with many shots of characters talking or sitting and waiting. Ingmar Bergman, one of the greatest filmmakers, used to say he believed the real subject of cinema is the human face. Nora Aunor has an astonishing face that can hold a close-up. The tiny inflections in her face open an overwhelming blend of frustration, patience, determination, her own kind of unpretentious clarity, and above all deep sadness. Tremendously played by Aunor, Socorro is a woman who generally likes to keep her emotions in check. Director Romy V. Suzara makes her face the center of the movie. Many films refer to a lead character’s face – the reaction shot is not a new technique, but here, it’s about as well as it can be done. The real highlight of the film, though, is Aunor. Socorro’s complexity is phenomenally conveyed by Aunor, who is able to portray her character’s internal struggle with a few simple facial gestures. Socorro feels lived in, and it’s the kind of performance that evokes a sense of familiarity and empathy with the audience. Aunor commands the proceedings, and Suzara lets you know it with lingering close-ups of her face, underscoring her beauty and boundless ability to make us care deeply no matter what role she undertakes. Aunor is always good, but performances like this suggest that for all her acclaim, she might actually be underrated.

VERVE AND FLAIR
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 12, 2022)

The center in Leroy Salvador’s Beloved (1985) is provided by the finely woven portrait of relationships with all their attendant joy and pain. The screenplay by Orlando Nadres (based on Nerissa G. Cabral’s King Komiks serial) also offers an ending that seems perfectly in tune with the balance of the film. Salvador lets the camera linger on how Adora Bernal (Nora Aunor) looks at her boyfriend of five years, Dindo Tuason (Christopher de Leon). Aunor communicates with her body and face in ways that speak volumes. Adora is a performance of herself, crafted from necessity. Played with raw vulnerability that’s contained by a kind of performative hauteur, Aunor’s Adora makes her sacrifice wrenching, gilded with gestures that give her verve and flair that prove irresistible. She’s packaging herself to be unavailable, protecting herself against rejection should her instincts prove wrong. Aunor’s marvelous performance lets us watch Adora fall in love from the inside out. Her eyes, set close in her achingly open face, register every shock of feeling. Aunor performs with the same precision and masterly calibration as demonstrated by her director. Beloved is a sophisticated and complex drama that stays with its audience long after it cuts to black.

FRONT AND CENTER
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 13, 2022)

Loneliness and independence aren’t opposites but twins of each other, gemini states of being that can give even the shyest among us, courage to stride forth. Yet Maryo J. de los Reyes and Nora Aunor, paired as director and lead actor for Naglalayag (2004), capture this not-really-a-paradox in a cerebral pas de deux, as if each has found an unspoken understanding in each other. Their seemingly disparate sensibilities – de los Reyes’s attention to craft and sense of decorum, Aunor’s forthright crispiness, which serves as a fortress for her eggshell fragility – merge in this odd-couple picture. Naglalayag is about how fear of living is more paralyzing than fear of death. Its ending should seem sad, yet it’s piercingly jubilant, like a celebratory cocktail with a complex, bittersweet finish. De los Reyes heightens the film’s tragedy by actively empathizing with all of his subjects, especially Dorinda, whose mild restlessness is treated with profound sensitivity. Aunor beautifully imbues Dorinda with a recognizable sense of discontent (she’s not unhappy per se, but she’s quietly weary of middle-aged life’s doldrums), and de los Reyes supports her performance with warm compositions and delicate close-ups, placing her perspective front and center. Aunor’s eyes always seem to be giving her feelings away, and so every time she widens, lowers, or shifts them, there is a great deal of suspense.

11011Naglalayag is a romance between Dorinda and Noah (Yul Servo), two people in search of an unnameable connection, and we warm to the way they find solace in each other. But the fleeting nature of this affair is its most golden element; it is romantic precisely because it can’t last. In the end, Naglalayag is really a romance of the self, a celebration of the person you can become when someone else touches you deeply. We’re all souvenirs of our own experiences, and what we take away from love affairs is sometimes of more value than what we gain when we try to wrest them into some ill-fitting frame of permanence. A kept memento is a sad thing, but a memory remains alive and supple forever. It’s the flower you don’t catch, the one you never crush by pressing it into a book. Dorinda’s triumph in Naglalayag isn’t a conquering of loneliness – some form of that will always be with her. Dorinda’s victory is that she has said yes – not just to a younger man but to herself. Loneliness can’t be cured, but it can change shape. What appealed to me in the idea of Naglalayag? Loneliness – a more common emotion than love, but we speak less about it. We are ashamed of it. We think perhaps that it shows a deficiency in ourselves. That if we were more attractive, more entertaining, and less ordinary, we would not be lonely.

COMPLEX AND REVELATORY
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 14, 2022)

The luminescent tryst between Baby (Vilma Santos) and Roy (Phillip Salvador) in Baby Tsina (1984) remains to be Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s most complex and revelatory examination of unfulfilled love. She doesn’t solely rely on the flashier aspects of her patented style to convey a character’s fated desires or failures. She positions individuals as pieces of a larger mosaic, one populated by burgeoning and disintegrating relationships that reach beyond the frame. This construct produces subtext-heavy conversations containing real conflict and tension at their core. As Baby Tsina turns into a masterly dissection of loyalty, Ricardo Lee’s dialogue expresses the characters’ way of maneuvering around emotional responsibility, of circumventing the betrayals that are lingering in plain sight. This conflict builds for long sequences before erupting in stunning moments of physical violence. In this very banal-looking world, unfulfilled desire turns sour from all the repression and guilt. Baby and Roy’s conversations grow shorter and more kinetic, jumping past traditional banter. The unique ways emotional expression shifts mid-moment really distinguishes the film as an organic work, a morphing cinematic experience that changes with the years to fit our individual perspective of unrequited love. Unlike the showy emotional relationships in Abaya’s other films, the connection between Baby and Roy feels bonded in actual human emotion. Baby Tsina centers on the title character – played with gusto by an always illuminating Santos. Her tremendous poise is visible at once in the opening credit sequence introducing the tone and protagonist of this very different film. The precisely edited sequence serves Santos exceedingly well. Baby Tsina is perhaps one of the most successful protagonists Lee has crafted. Her desires and motivations are clear, her thought process shown in full. And best of all, she feels real.

STRENGTH AND CONFIDENCE
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 14, 2022)

Lino Brocka finds the right tone in Dalaga si Misis, Binata si Mister (1981), and it’s not always very easy because he wants to make his film both true and funny, not sacrificing laughs for the truth. But what was the right tone? It gives us the release we need, and sets Nora Aunor’s personality for the movie’s second act, with scenes of loneliness and the beginning of emotional recovery. Brocka isn’t afraid to pull out all the romantic stops at the right moment. He wants to record the exact textures and ways of speech and emotional complexities of his characters. There are scenes so well written and acted that our laughter is unsettling. Aunor takes chances here, never seems concerned about protecting herself, and reveals as much in a character as anyone ever has. Doria Navarro is out on an emotional limb. Aunor is letting us see and experience things that many actresses simply couldn’t reveal. It’s a lesson for critics on the dangers of assessing performance in a movie, a medium in which the actors may be more at the mercy of the other craftspersons than we can readily realize. Rather than solely embodying the strength and confidence of a single protagonist, Dalaga si Misis, Binata si Mister mobilizes Doria’s arc as a signifier of feminist freedom without becoming didactic or trite. Brocka perfects the ending by de-centering his perspective and the audience-centric satisfaction of a nihilistic open-ended conclusion, allowing the protagonist the final say regarding her personal satisfaction.

BROAD STROKES
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 15, 2022)

For writers Ricky Lee and Shaira Mella-Salvador, May Nagmamahal sa Iyo (1996) seems like an occasion to tweak familiar formulas, as they exhibit a compulsive need to distance themselves from the story’s intrinsic sentimentality. For director Marilou Diaz-Abaya, it’s a chance to play up that same sentimentality, underscoring emotional moments with excessive bathetic flourishes. Working at cross purposes, these two sides make for a fractious movie whose internal conflicts mirror those experienced by its lead character. Lorna Tolentino stars as Louella, a woman who gave up her son for adoption. Years later, still wrestling with that part of her past, she has become curious about her son’s whereabouts. Louella confides in Nestor (Ariel Rivera), who offers to help, as she begins the journey of discovery. May Nagmamahal sa Iyo features a deeply felt and gripping performance from Tolentino and a supporting performance from Jaclyn Jose, equally brilliant as Edith, that reminds us just how wonderful this actress has been throughout her career. Just a momentary gaze is enough to convey what many actors spend whole hours in a film not-conveying. While the movie sets up the plot catering to our need for nice, neat, and orderly boxes, the story weaves in and out of them, upending our conventional views and presenting us with more questions that drive us further into the narrative. This perfectly mirrors Louella’s frustration as she encounters roadblocks in her journey to find her son. In fact, this arc is the one most powerfully portrayed in the film by Tolentino as she vacillates within the pain she feels. It is the driving force behind her search, and the means by which she finds resolution. The fact that we all have weaknesses and identify in the struggles, hopes, and journeys of others is more indicative of the need for such stories so that we might find the strength to rise up and pursue life’s greater aims. These are the film’s broad strokes, and they are all true. They will make you angry, and tear your heart to pieces.

INTERIORITY AND COMPLEXITY
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 15, 2022)

Sa Ngalan ng Ina (2011) was a TV soap opera in which melodrama peers into the public and private lives of political adversaries in the fictional province of Verano. Nora Aunor has long-captivated audiences with her portrayals of complex women. Needless to say, it was hardly surprising to see Aunor deliver a performance that felt as though it had been lived in for decades. Governor Elena Deogracias is a stoic, reliable presence in most episodes, and absolutely dominant when she needs to be. Beyond convincing and unafraid to let things get a little messy if that’s what the moment calls for – Aunor allows Elena to hold her own against biggest rival Lucia (Rosanna Roces), scheming wife of Pepe Ilustre (Christopher de Leon). It’s a wrenching transformation to watch, and one that Aunor turns into the central crux of the story by sheer force of will. She gives the drama a commanding center as a determined woman keen on taking control of her surroundings even as they slowly close in on her. Aunor exudes desperation but never takes it to histrionic extremes; much about the success of the performance extends from frustrated glances and baffled reactions as her stepchildren Andrea (Nadine Samonte) and Alfonso (Alwyn Uytingco) continue to heap discomfort on her life. Her resilience adds a transcendent dimension to the role. It would be even more accurate to say that Aunor’s face becomes the narrative’s primary location. Directors Mario O’Hara and Jon Red set the most pivotal scenes in the actress’s desolate eyes, or in the blank face that’s had all of its expression siphoned out of it. Aunor’s commitment to the part allows the performance to assume the intimacy of watching a loved one confront death. She rises to that challenge with extraordinary interiority and complexity. Aunor weaves joy, sadness and rage all on her quiet face, and with astonishing ease – an effortlessness that turns more suspenseful with each scene.

SILENCE AS VIRTUE
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 16, 2022)

Depending on how you look at it, silence can be either a virtue or a weakness. To remain quiet, to not covet attention might seem admirable. This type of silence has been co-opted and leveled at people as a means of oppression. The implication is that those who are silent have nothing of value to say, rather than valuing what they do not say. Silence of this kind is less about what is said and more about who is heard. Choosing to be quiet is different from being made to be so. When silence is used as a tool of oppression, it stamps out the voices of those most in need of being heard. In Joel C. Lamangan’s Sidhi (1999), the issue of when to be silent and when to speak is central. Ana (Nora Aunor) finds pleasure in a situation that looks, initially, to be problematic. Yet she plays a role in defining the parameters of her interactions. She pushes back against the advances of Miguel (Albert Martinez) and draws lines on what she will or won’t do. Lacking dialogue, Aunor has to rely on expression through movement. She captures Ana’s vulnerability while avoiding mawkishness. It’s impossible not to be captivated by the climactic scene between her and Martinez – Lamangan’s camera lingers on Aunor’s face to capture the pain and betrayal in her eyes, then follows the way she stumbles away from his grasp like a wounded deer. Ricardo Lee’s adaptation of Rolando S. Tinio’s teleplay, Ang Kwento ni A, is measured by the quality of the characters and their relationships. Aunor has an austere, powerful presence, like that of the great silent-film actresses, but there’s nothing at all genteel about her face. It’s rough and drawn and it has a hypnotic severity, the features so starkly focused, but Aunor handles it beautifully. She knows how to subtly convey emotion at each moment. We can read what she is feeling or how she interprets a certain situation. Being robbed of her wonderfully expressive voice – not to mention being displaced from the sorts of modern settings in which she shines – turned out more liberating than limiting.

PAST AND PRESENT
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 17, 2022)

Textured by the substance of humanity, Brutal (1980) dwells on the inelegance of real-life interactions. Written by Ricardo Lee and directed by Marilou Diaz-Abaya, the film’s capacity for vulnerability bonds its audience to the material. Typically, filmmakers will segue into a flashback in an obvious way so that viewers can instantly make the distinction between past and present. In the case of Brutal, Abaya chose to use unannounced flashbacks. Amy Austria’s interminable numbness draws dimension from flashbacks to Monica’s past, the film’s enduring tragedy that the director never washes over with some artificial, cathartic resolution. Austria carries her wounds under the surface, and in the face of the internalized performance, she manages to evoke incredible emotion through her walled exterior. Rare expressions accompany Monica’s long silences, lending a sense of hope that the character may still heal, but Abaya seems more interested in exploring the pain of someone fully broken. Gina Alajar’s Cynthia eviscerates in her scenes, particularly during an unexpected reunion with Monica that shows the wounds both characters have been carrying around. Monica can barely speak and refuses to connect, while Cynthia falls apart from regret. It’s an exchange where almost nothing of substance is said between them, with both characters seemingly incapable of communicating their pain in any graceful way. So much is touched by the actors in this moment, feeling their way through what will become the film’s most memorable scene.

11011Clara (Charo Santos) brings the same degree of sympathy to Monica’s mother, Aling Charing, working alongside a brief appearance by Perla Bautista. Jay Ilagan also delivers a strong turn as Monica’s abusive husband Tato, though his scenes are mostly in flashback. Brutal is a movie that pays careful attention to detail: note how Cynthia quickly registers as a very different kind of woman from Monica. And watch, through Austria’s ravishingly honest performance, how Monica becomes a shadow in the flashback scenes, wanting to reach out, but unable to take that step. The observations, nuances, and revelations all add up to a masterly narrative structure. Rather than following characters through their day-to-day transactions, Brutal interrupts the flow with its flashback structure. These flashbacks are interestingly integrated with a visual consistency and sharp delineation of actors in middle-distance, beautifully shot by Manolo R. Abaya. The associations that link the past and the present are controlled by Monica’s distant stares. Abaya keeps our minds constantly in gear by making us fill in the blanks the character leaves behind. It is the epitome of what makes film a unique medium: the ability to tell stories through moving pictures.

GENUINELY HEROIC
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 18, 2022)

The tricot of cinematography, mise-en-scène and modern narrative style makes Elwood Perez’s Bilangin ang Bituin sa Langit (1989) a powerful film. This time, rapturous moments overcome the traditional flow of time, preserved by desire and accessed when longing calls upon the experience. The experience is phenomenological, rooted in consciousness and quieted yearning, an intangible immersion into the nimbus of emotion. The film’s lovers never realize their affections, at least not in the customary manner of cinematic representation, reinforcing Perez’s emphasis on plotting which would not be too pointed to describe as a mood piece. Bilangin contains depth and sophistication beyond other films, a masterly interweaving of texts, including a complex formal approach and historical references. It demands investigation and, like the most venerable works, teases its meaning even as it invites the viewer back to obsess over its intimations. No plot summary could adequately capture the information withheld by Perez, which he communicates in subtle motions and impressions that must be observed and interpreted.

11011Nora Aunor lights up the movie like the polar star lights up the winter sky. She is one actress who understands her own physical beauty as an expressive instrument, and who also has the smarts and intuition to take it somewhere substantial. There have been plenty of portraits of repression in Filipino movies, but they have rarely been as filled-out or as radiant as this one. Aunor understands that the machinery of repression can’t reveal itself too readily, but can only be divined through the character’s strenuous efforts to keep it up and running. She understands the inherent sadness of being a good person. It’s a portrait of beauty in the service of a thankless goal – to draw a veil over a heart that’s sacrificed itself to the happiness of others. Aunor’s is a genuinely heroic piece of acting. Perez develops an interiority to his style, where everything onscreen seems to come from within his characters, specifically Noli. This represents a sharp contrast to his other, more outward displays in films such as Till We Meet Again or I Can’t Stop Loving You, which adopt an uninhibited expressivity. Bilangin operates on instinct and intuition, engendering a tender sensation that is ultimately transient but creates the illusion of permanency. It’s a love story about love itself and how it lingers in the minds of its subjects far longer than any one relationship ever can.

NATIONAL TREASURE
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 19, 2022)

Lupita A. Concio’s Minsa’y Isang Gamu-Gamo (1976) is one of those films whose great qualities put its elements in sharp relief. Proof is in Nora Aunor’s performance, a chameleonic disappearance into the role. The way she inhabits Corazon de la Cruz with wounded grace is overwhelming work. Concio employs long takes that let her breathe, and uses close-ups sparingly, but with tremendous effectiveness. A shot of Corazon near the window, watching a funeral pass by, ranks among the best moments in the careers of all those involved. Additionally, Marina Feleo Gonzalez’s dialogue is natural and smart, delivered by Aunor with masterly authenticity. Aunor achieves an outstanding height in this performance. Her voice is tender, lilting, mellifluous. She carefully unravels her character almost with a surgical precision that seems to elevate such a character, one which could easily be written off if done by actresses of lesser talent. Aunor has shown throughout her career that she can do anything. Her face, a mobile canvas onto which she paints angst, confusion, and deep melancholy, is masterly. Minsa’y Isang Gamu-Gamo features what still remains Aunor’s most complex film performance, solidifying her as an actress of tremendous faculties and overall technical prowess. Aunor is not just a superstar, she’s a super-artist. Her range evokes envy and her presence is indomitable. Aunor’s moving treatment of the material is some of the finest screen time she has ever occupied. It established her reputation for tugging at the heartstrings in a film’s final moments with a unique kind of emotional control. In 1976, Nora Aunor was already a national treasure.

DELICACY AND PERCEPTION
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 19, 2022)

Most romantic movies are so determined to chart the course of a love story that they miss the intensity and import of beginnings. Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s Minsan Pa Nating Hagkan ang Nakaraan (1983) lingers on the initial sparks of an emotional connection. The film captures a truth most others only imply. It’s not an exaggeration to say that almost every scene in the film feels pivotal, momentous. Split-second decisions carry enormous weight, small gestures mean the world. Character-driven dramas are not supposed to make a show of backstory, but in the genre of romance focused on Helen (Vilma Santos) and Rod (Christopher de Leon), there is nothing more natural than exposition. Much of MPNHN is devoted to defining these characters, watching in turn how they define themselves in streams of free-flowing but perfectly calibrated talk. With an ear for naturalistic dialogue, Abaya embeds several discoveries along the way most crucially, the catch that immediately lends its meandering conversations a heightened urgency. Working within a traditional romance of missed opportunity, she uses certain tropes to contain moments that are anything but traditional. We know that Abaya and her actors are working in a more intimate emotional realm than usual from the first conversation Helen and Rod share. This conversation is so specific and so unapologetically personal that even progressive audiences may feel uncomfortable.

11011The writing and acting aren’t stylized in a manner that’s inappropriate to the context. Helen knows she’s pushed something in Rod, that they’ve done something with a level of intensity that challenges Rod’s comfortable, casual disengagement. This scene is Helen’s show, at least it is at first, as she’s stunned when she sees that Rod is willing to match her combative form. Rod startles Helen, allowing the real dance to begin. MPNHN would be worth seeing for the delicacy and perception of the opening ten minutes alone, but Abaya never allows the tone to falter. Every moment advances the push and pull between Helen and Rod, which represents the classic argument between two romantics who repress that romanticism in differing fashion. The film’s biggest triumph is a scene that begins as a wide shot and then slowly zooms into a tightly framed close-up. It signals an important moment of character development and delivers a powerful emotional surge. Tia Salud (Mona Lisa), offscreen, yells an invective at Helen’s husband Cenon (Eddie Garcia) that is almost directed straight at the audience. In a brilliant masterstroke, Abaya drowns out a piece of key dialogue with onscreen noise. It results in a moment so private not even the viewer gets to fully share it. Abaya’s unadorned observational style means entrusting her actors with the sustained ebb and flow of scenes that are highly dependent on minutely calibrated nuances, and the payoff is enormous.

A VOICE FOR EVERY SONG
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 21, 2022)

Nora Aunor has sustained an auspicious career as a popular singer for more than four decades. While most of her fame is inextricably linked to her film work, she also has a large and faithful following when it comes to record sales. Her success in the music world is remarkable considering the unusual path she has taken, having had record-breaking singles and live concert exposure. But her repertoire is far from undifferentiated. She clearly prefers songs that tell a story or show a character in development. Attention to the dramatization of narratives points to her acting even when the focus is on her singing: the subtext of the lyric, the multiple layers, the character’s tentativeness while feeling great inner passion. The lyrics of “Kahit Konting Awa” (1995), composed by Vehnee Saturno, illustrate this point. Aunor frequently sings songs characterized by a melody requiring a more advanced singing technique than most popular songs. She has many voices, a voice for every song. Aunor has a remarkable ability to hold notes with solid breath control, and this skill is among her most potent. As compared with earlier performances, in the accompanying music video, Aunor has developed a more standard vocal posture. Her tone is naturally much brighter, projecting a more regal carriage, and greater physical relaxation. Aunor possesses a fine-tuned sense of timbre and dynamic control for word painting. Her ability to meet the interpretive needs of a text or even a single word is exceptional. On the other hand, her style is not dependent on constant variation or mere surface effect. She consistently exhibits strong vocal production throughout, approaching diction from a natural point of view. Still, Aunor indulges a few idiosyncrasies that mark many of her recordings, some even dating back to her teen years. Her vocal success can be summarized briefly by stating that she sings compellingly, and her acting enhances her singing. Many of her faithful long-time fans seem to be drawn to her effortless style and instinctive abilities, both technical and dramatic. Even during the years that only non-visual recordings were available, the listener could still hear the acting in her singing.

PAIN AND HOPE
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 22, 2022)

Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s impressionistic, radiant, and feverish romance Sensual (1986), is anchored by the remarkable performances of the film’s two leads. At its heart is an incandescent performance by Barbra Benitez, who captures the mood swings of late adolescence with a wonderfully spontaneous fluency. She conveys not only the intelligence and willpower of a young woman bursting out of her chrysalis like a butterfly, but also the vestigial shyness of a child in the throes of self-discovery, playing the character with honesty and restraint. Benitez brings a sweetness and naïveté to Niña that makes her struggle more compelling. She is introduced in the first scene of the film with her best friend Elsa. In Lara Jacinto, Abaya finds a woman without many a facial feature to note, a blank canvas on which to paint the story, the mise-en-scène and the management of her inevitably intelligent performance. This suggests that Sensual will be exploring an exotic subcultural space, but in fact Niña’s story shares the most basic concerns of coming-of-age narratives: affirming burgeoning sexual identities, negotiating friendships, and learning how to be in the world. It’s also refreshing to see these stories take center stage. The girls’ relationship moves from sisterly to sexual and beyond, into the kind of all-consuming intimacy that makes everything else seem insubstantial. Curiosity quickly develops into an intoxicating infatuation after Niña visits Ariel (Lito Gruet). Abaya’s treatment of the love scene is refreshingly natural, free of any tinge of discomfort with sexuality – in many ways theirs could be an adult relationship. Ariel’s seduction of Niña leads her to believe that she has at last found true love. Sensual closes on a bittersweet note, one that sees Niña transformed, establishing herself not just bound by sexual identity, but by shared pain and hope. Although Abaya reimagines the love story as a tale of evocative romance, she stays true to its fleeting essence.

WARM AND VULNERABLE
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 24, 2022)

While ostensibly unassuming, Palengke Queen (1982) is affecting where it counts. Directors Arman Reyes and Freddie Sarrol (who co-wrote the screenplay with Ricky Dalu, based on Pat V. Reyes’s Bondying Weekly Movie Special Komiks serial), tap into the experience of expressing the inexpressible. The resulting confusion creates an infectious form of humor that percolates throughout and leads nicely into the unexpected outbursts of emotions in the closing scenes. It helps that Palengke Queen never distracts from these strengths with overt stylistic indulgences. The swiftness with which the film can swing between funny and serious is astounding. The shifts feel seamless and fitting. By finding this balance, Reyes and Sarrol makes sure their film is affecting but not morose. With her expert comic timing and nuanced dramatic shading, Nora Aunor is, quite simply, astonishing. Tibang is an empathetic personality whose assertiveness is a form of habitual overcompensation for personal issues. All of that can be felt in Aunor’s performance, which navigates these tricky emotional straits with confidence. She keeps things in focus with her innately natural portrayal of Tibang as a woman of integrity and resolve. Aunor doesn’t just sell Tibang’s exterior, she nails the unspoken elements, giving an incredibly multidimensional lead character. It’s easy to like Tibang for the good that she does, but Aunor adds another layer through her naturally commanding and mesmerizing screen presence. Nobody seizes the spotlight quite like Aunor. It’s a beautiful star performance. Palengke Queen is complex without feeling contrived. What could have easily become overwrought or melodramatic is instead warm and vulnerable. There are different ways the ending can make you cry. I’ll settle for one: the bittersweet feeling of having watched someone become a different and in some ways improved version of herself, which is the reason we need movies.

UNWORLDLY GLAMOUR
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, July 26, 2022)

At its simplest, Chito Roño’s “Serye” (1993), an episode of Star Drama Presents Nora, is an account focused on the relationship between television director Vera (Nora Aunor) and her husband Emil (Cesar Montano). Written by Gina Marissa Tagasa, it’s also about the TV industry, with observations about the process of making television dramas. Roño relishes the clash between the sublime and the banal. Scenes of Vera and Emil bickering could come straight from any soap opera, but instead the characters take on an unworldly glamour. The startling point is that none of the aesthetic sensations matter, within the face of emotional devastation where no cultural bauble will distract you from the uncomfortable sight of your deepest interior realms. Our first real introduction to Vera is integral to the story. It gives Aunor such an immediate moment to dig her claws into our sympathies. She acts with all the wound-up fury of a workaholic. Throughout the story, you can see the emotion bubble up inside of her to the point where she can’t do anything else but expel it. Aunor takes the episode by the throat in the dramatic sequences, yet she’s equally compelling in the story’s smaller moments. She flawlessly channels Vera’s open and exposed self, as well as her extraordinary intensity. It is not a self-conscious performance. The story is dependent on the woman at the holding center, compulsively enacted through raw nerves made flesh, powerfully embodied by Aunor’s efforts. Vera thinks she can compartmentalize her emotional needs like she does everything else in her life. She further breaks down potentially frustrating tropes that career women often fall into. Vera immediately inhabits capability and professional talent. These emotional expulsions give background to her character. Vera is aggressively self-assured, but she never becomes the typical workplace harpy dealing exclusively in internalized misogyny. Her self-assuredness is backed up by hard work and striving proficiency, even as her private emotional baggage supplies context.

THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, August 9, 2022)

Minsan Lang Kita Iibigin (1994) represents the best of both worlds. It excites the emotions the way a good melodrama should, but it also stirs the quieter feelings of pity and helplessness associated with tragedy. Director Chito S. Roño gives MLKI much more than surface elegance. The choice of angles and colors, his mastery of editing all work to create a unified psychological texture. He’s aided by an unusually honest and perceptive script by Ricky Lee, and by Maricel Soriano, Gabby Concepcion, and Zsa Zsa Padilla, whose performances go to a place of complete emotional nakedness. If the movie allows Padilla to give her best performance to date, it also provides Soriano with a chance to do more. The play of degradation and guilt on her face is the movie’s real story. Soriano’s work in the film’s intriguing second half, however, wouldn’t be possible without Concepcion’s own understated duplicity. As these two circle each other, their marriage held together by the very cycle of forbidden act that’s also tearing it apart, MLKI becomes a thriller myth of the perils of adultery, which few filmmakers can heighten like Roño.

REVEALING AND HEARTBREAKING
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, August 16, 2022)

Rooted in deep emotions and life-altering decisions, Thy Womb (2012), under Brillante Ma Mendoza’s skilled guidance, is a mesmerizing, engrossing, and beautifully realized cinematic experience. Nora Aunor is hypnotic as Shaleha. We see the plot develop from her perspective and the story unfold from vantage points close to her face. Ensuing choices and consequences rife with tension and heartache, extreme close-ups convey Shaleha’s internal woes with an earnestness few working actors can match. In her most wrenching scenes, Aunor presents Shaleha as a woman drowning in waves of longing. Still, you feel for her because there’s no way to look into her eyes and dismiss the sorrow that has made a home there. Aunor is at the peak of her acting powers here, conveying incredible depths of emotion with a stare. Thy Womb clearly belongs to Shaleha and Aunor, who does career-best work here as the aging village midwife, whose every expression, every gesture is revealing and heartbreaking. Her body language speaks volumes. Mendoza knows how to use visual and dramatic means to make a milieu palpable to an audience by providing an introduction to the complex blend of emotion that permeates the film. Feel and think through Thy Womb and it will never leave you.

UNSETTLING, AMBIGUOUS, AND UNUSUAL
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, August 20, 2022)

The final image of Mara (Nora Aunor) in Dementia (2014), Perci Intalan’s arresting horror debut, isn’t particularly scary. But it’s easily one of the most unsettling, ambiguous, and unusual movie tableaus I’ve seen in some time. From its ominous opening, the movie proves successful, even wrenching, in how it considers dementia as a bedrock of horror. What is more horrifying than losing your own sense of self, or watching a loved one on such a depressing journey? Intalan demonstrates a strong handle on tone as he carefully charts Mara’s emotions with tension going unsaid, but remaining evident in Aunor’s moving performance. Mara oscillates between moments of sharp clarity, fuzziness, and sudden rage as her failing memory begins to outpace her; Aunor deftly carries all of Mara’s swinging moods and her heartbreaking desperation as the lights of her mind begin to burn out. Dementia as the bedrock for a horror film is an intriguing idea given the ways it’s primed to explore dramatically shifting moods, the loss of self, and the heartbreak of witnessing someone you love become a stranger. Intalan and his collaborators – writer Renei Dimla, cinematographer Mackie Galvez, and editor Lawrence Ang – are cunning in their ability to craft the dread that is instilled from the very beginning. But if you’re looking for answers to the film’s ambiguities, you won’t find them. In its place are a surpassingly creepy atmosphere and a patiently ratcheting unease as the movie deftly merges the familiar bumps and groans with a potent allegory for the devastation of dementia.

SLICK AND SILVERY
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, August 23, 2022)

A hit-and-run incident lands a detective in more trouble than he could have ever imagined in A Hard Day (Viva Films, 2021), a thriller that finds director Law Fajardo handling a taut yet elaborately plotted narrative with control and near-faultless technical execution. The resourcefulness and resistance to intimidation of Edmund Villon (Dingdog Dantes) makes us root for him, despite his professional conduct and lack of moral fiber. In a morbid example of necessity being the mother of invention, Villon hits upon a novel way of disposing of the victim’s body in an extraordinary stunt sequence. With increasing freneticism, Fajardo moves Villon relentlessly forward in the face of an obstacle course filled with pop-up hurdles and an occasional kick in the gut. Dantes’s disciplined performance ties all of A Hard Day’s inventivenesses together, investing the film with visceral panic. He plays Villon as a henpecked nice guy, this delusion serving as self-fulfilling prophecy.

11011At just about the time it seems Fajardo should soon be running on empty, he introduces a new threat, Lieutenant Ace Franco. Played by a spectacular John Arcilla adding a bespoke dash to the villainous picture, he slips into the story and soon engulfs it. Arcilla has a face that can freeze into a stone-cold slab of pure malice, even as Fajardo keeps the chaos moving at a breathless tempo. He’s a remarkably fluid orchestrator of action kinetics, always springing his surprises a beat faster than one expects, only to occasionally slow things down to prevent the viewer from acclimating to his quicksilver timing. An explosion is timed with nightmarish precision perhaps because Fajardo caps a phenomenal, self-consciously Hitchcockian set piece with an unexpected commonplace payoff. Throughout, the images are sleek and silvery, informing the debauchery with an aura of impersonality. A Hard Day is ultimately a parody of self-entitlement, though the carnage dramatically registers. The filmmaker walks as many tightropes as Arcilla does, and one gratefully submits to both artists’ dexterity.

AUTHENTIC, STIRRING, HEARTFELT
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, August 24, 2022)

In Joselito Altarejos’s Memories of a Love Story (Viva Films, 2076Kolektib, 2022), love paves the way to personal growth, creating a keen sense of one’s self-worth. Altarejos presents the romance between Eric (Oliver Aquino) and Jericho (Migs Almendras) within a frame of Eric’s memories of it. Despite notable differences in background and interests, Eric and Jericho bring out something in each other both emotionally and physically. Great partners teach us new things about ourselves, and MLS really gets that element of human relationship without overplaying it. Altarejos’s approach is tactile without feeling exploitative or manipulative. Actually, one could argue that parts of MLS are too low-register, but that’s reflective of its protagonists’ personality in a way that keeps this love story from devolving into melodrama when it could do so at several points. Almendras is very good here, but the movie really belongs to Aquino, who reminds us how incredible he can be with the right material. He avoids every single trap into which his character could have tumbled. There’s so much grace and nuance in this performance that it could be studied to consider all the decisions that Aquino makes in each scene. He conveys an overwhelming amount of inner conflict. It’s never once forced or manufactured. And Almendras matches him beat for beat, especially in the second half of the film. He too has been changed, but responds to that change differently. Newcomers Awin Valencia and James Ramada convey so much in discrete movements and muted words, lending their characters dimension in their every scene. Altarejos allows awkward moments and intimacies to unfold naturally, as if we’re watching them in real time, undetected and yet somehow invited to observe. MLS is authentic, stirring, heartfelt. As the camera closes in on Eric crying, we find ourselves profoundly moved. MLS offers enduring images not just of longing – Eric suffers, but he also exults, and this is why we watch movies.

INTRACTABLE ATTRACTION
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, September 19, 2022)

McArthur C. Alejandre, in Silip sa Apoy (2022), knows how much we enjoy seeing a character work boldly outside the rules. We keep waiting for the movie to lose its nerve and it never does. Working with Viva Films, which also produced My Husband, My Lover the year before, Alejandre cast Angeli Khang, who had scuttled about in various projects, most notably as Alexa in Lawrence Fajardo’s Mahjong Nights. In a marvelous opening punctuated by Khang’s face, Emma is an obstinate seductress of classic noir displaced in an erotic thriller. She’s adept at thinking on her feet, weaponizing sexuality and manipulating simple-minded men. However, throughout the story, the motive for this woman’s life-changing evasion is traced back to the violence of her husband Ben (Sid Lucero). He hits her, she acts shocked and hurt, but the surprise quickly melts into performative quiet. Khang keeps us at a distance, letting us guess how much the domestic altercation’s indignancy shook her character. In any case, her following actions are swift and oriented around a straightforward impulse. It’s difficult to parse out what actions are organic and what behaviors are calculated measures.

11011Emma makes love for Ben’s horny amusement. She’s in a moment of intimate pause that’s only for us, the camera and the audience. There’s no similar instant for contemplation in the ensuing narrative, seeing as Emma is constantly on the alert, seducing and setting the pieces on her mental chessboard that will result in an astonishing checkmate. For her part, Khang is brilliant at this kind of opaque character construction. That’s what attracts men in the film to her Emma. She feels impenetrable, a challenging impossibility that harkens back to how audiences regarded bigger-than-life movie stars. She’s out of this world, but instead of alienation, this personal quality produces intractable attraction. Consider the seduction of her lover, Alfred (Paolo Gumabao). Cocksure and touched by a hint of self-aggrandizing intoxication, he never quite catches on to the full depth of Emma’s deception. The way she does it is effortless – she tosses off her commands, aloof but never completely uninvested. The femme fatale never hides her contempt for the lesser creatures at her feet, becoming all the more eager to get a sign of unattainable approval. All that, and there’s the way she moves as well. Khang embodies a physical demeanor characterized by such great confidence that it’s difficult to regard her as a sexual object. Alejandre deserves plenty of plaudits too. Ricky Lee’s screenplay is taut and gripping, revealing devastating surprises along the way.

UNRELENTING MOMENTUM
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, October 10, 2022)

A thriller conjured out of suppressed fears, Joselito Altarejos’ Pamilya sa Dilim (2023) is a concentration of ecstasy and violence devised in a perfect union of ideological paradox and existential instability. Through a combination of headstrong ambition and opportunistic abandon, Altarejos managed to tap this mother lode of disquietude. The basic premise is so thunderously resonant that it’s easy to overlook the skill with which Altarejos has gotten to its dramatic turning point. With simmering tensions and fractured psyches, Altarejos presented an ideal platform for his cast to deliver some of the finest work of their careers. Allen Dizon is fascinating yet vulnerable as Eddie Boy, but it’s Laurice Guillen’s complex portrayal of Mamang Anita, the matriarch of the Medialdea family, that remains to be the film’s most captivating element. Her ability to mine gravitas may have brought her closer to the core of the movie than her celebrated co-stars could reach. Guillen’s and the film’s showcase scene comes when she recalls how her husband met his fate, then all of a sudden the figures in her story appear and begin speaking their parts. From watching her past unfold, Mamang Anita exits the shot and then joins the ghostly tableau: she has come unstuck in time. Memory is a selection of images, some elusive, others imprinted indelibly on the brain. In this spectral pageant, Mamang Anita shows us the pain of her memories and misfortune. This moment of attenuated stillness is pure cinema, and so is the eruption that follows. It takes a formidable talent to play mother to Allen Dizon (at his most magnetic here), but Guillen upstages him. She has a way of gliding into a room as though on a dolly and her reaction shots are so acute that the film uses them as punctuation. Her unsettlingly wide eyes flicker between emotions outsize and minute. Pamilya sa Dilim is about trauma and the way it surreptitiously weaves its way into the lives of every member of the Medialdeas, even Minda (Sunshine Cruz) and Marie (Therese Malvar), who are emotionally volatile despite being in the dark about the abuse that happened. Altarejos is not shy about suggesting parallels with current politics. The narrative pushes forward through a parade of digressions and asides with unrelenting momentum. Pamilya sa Dilim never stops breaking rules, creating an intentionally tremulous tone, implications of incest making us pause. Rarely in such drama is there a no-turning-back moment like the truth-telling that anchors Pamilya sa Dilim. Altarejos is a filmmaker who demonstrates both an energetic technical style and a keen interest in people reckoning with emotional trauma. For Mamang Anita, trauma is not so easily overcome. The effect is overwhelming, the final indignity from a family that has so long turned a blind eye. As with all great melodrama, there is catharsis here but it seems clear it is just a temporary balm for wounds that may never heal.

QUIRKY, OFFBEAT
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, January 15, 2023)

Much like Kapag Tumabang ang Asin (1976), T-Bird at Ako (Film Ventures, 1982) peeks into the creative and sometimes delusional nature of desire. Director Danny L. Zialcita plays the characters’ pettiness for some great laughs but at its core, the film expresses something true about love’s power to obliterate all other considerations, including close friendship. TBaA may be a little too neatly drawn, but Zialcita’s enthusiasm and vitality compensate for more than they rationally should. This is a film easier to love than to like. Zialcita has not only a great feel for hip sophisticates in deep conversations, he also has a great eye. With cinematographer Felizardo Bailen, he managed to turn TBaA into a stylish affair. There is cleverness in the film’s many tight shots that do double duty, playing to the intimacy of the piece as well as eliminating the need for elaborate sets. There are risky plot choices along the way, but the risks are what keep the pot boiling as the complexities of the relationship between lady lawyer Sylvia Salazar (Nora Aunor) and nightclub dancer Isabel Mongcal (Vilma Santos) heat up and cool down. It all serves to make TBaA a delightful romance charged with fierce intelligence. As Sylvia, Aunor is the picture of watchful uncertainty whose mixture of physical presence and self-mockery contributes to the film’s quirky, offbeat mood. Her performance is the best reason to see the movie. Santos manages to convey much sensuality, infusing Isabel with complexity.

11011This new high-definition transfer reveals the movie like never before, yielding a picture so pristine that watching it is practically like seeing the film for the first time. It’s clean yet filmic. Obvious elements like skin and clothing textures reveal some of the most innately complex details imaginable, down to the most nuanced fabrics. The biggest improvements however, are in the area of color reproduction. There are completely new color tonalities and image saturation is far better. As a result, the entire film looks richer and lusher. Interiors are beautiful, yielding an inviting warmth that’s substantially more nuanced and exacting. Unfortunately, the film’s two-channel track is woefully dull and uninspired. Dialogue is often poorly prioritized, effects are typically brazen and weak. None of it strangles the presentation, at least not entirely, but it all takes a significant toll. In an earlier scene, Isabel dances to the tune of Queen’s Body Language. The song was replaced with a mediocre version of the original, ruining the punchline to the greatest joke near the end of the movie. The audio mix is frustrating at worst, but for the viewer who just wants to watch, it’s not a bad little endeavor.

A TRIUMPH TO SAVOR
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, January 18, 2023)

Romy Suzara’s Somewhere (Viva Films, 1984) achieves thematic unity through its theme, that people are victims of circumstances. Silvio Logarte (Rudy Fernandez) is imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. Similarly, his attack on Logan (Johnny Delgado) is as much a product of fear for his own life as it is revenge for the death of his best friend Tengteng (Dencio Padilla). In a sense, Silvio is guiltless, both legally and morally. Despite his innocence, he is convicted, discriminated against, and finally killed. Somewhere succeeds by putting violence in its rightful place: it is violent because the film can only end in violence. In a powerful performance, Fernandez is able to show Silvio’s charm as well as his violent side. He navigates every nuance of Silvio’s soul, showing the haunted logic of a man shut out of society. Somewhere has a blunt, repetitive structure – essentially, it’s one victimization scene after another. Yet the movie’s paradox is embodied by singing sensation Shirley Morena (Lorna Tolentino). As she slips into her role as Silvio’s obsession, Shirley begins to come alive as a character. Tolentino has an emotional presence that brings out her tremulous vulnerability. To break free, Shirley has to look into Silvio’s eyes, and when she finally does, it’s a triumph to savor.

11011This high-definition release is sourced from a preexisting master. The majority of the well-lit close-ups, for instance, boast decent depth. Shadow definition could be better managed. A fuller restoration would undoubtedly produce an overall balanced image. Contrast levels remain stable. Fluidity is good, but occasionally some light unevenness pops up. Grain is present throughout the entire film, but it could have been better resolved. Still, despite some very small fluctuations, there are no troubling anomalies. Colors are stable and natural although some small nuances are missing. There are no large bits of debris, cuts, stains, damage marks, or warped frames. There is some room for improvement and a brand-new master would have certainly given the film a fresher appearance, but this is a fine organic presentation, making it easy to enjoy even on fairly large screens. The audio has not been remastered – though in fact, in segments where George Canseco’s score has a prominent role, depth and balance are surprisingly good. The dialog is clean, stable, and easy to follow. Somewhere is a story of pain and courage, uncommonly honest and unflinching.

ON EVEN GROUND
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, January 29, 2023)

Lawrence Fajardo’s Raket ni Nanay (Creative Programs, Indiopendence, & National Commission for Culture and the Arts, 2006) is the best film I have seen about the physical creation of art and the painful bond between an artist and his muse. Mimosa arrives at Badong’s studio where unpleasantries give way to a sense of nervous social obligation. The reminder of his artistic stasis makes Badong prickly toward Mimosa. He scraps a piece of paper before his drawing takes shape, even the pages look so abstract and nondescript that one wonders what exactly makes Mimosa so special to him. Badong also takes an interest in Joy (Tess Jamias) though not in a particularly lustful way. Badong is played by Mark Gil, whose eyes can bore through other actors. With his high forehead and sculpted profile, he looks intelligent but it is a formidable, threatening intelligence. He never plays the fall-guy, he always knows the story. Sarsi Emmanuelle is Mimosa, the woman who inspires him, startingly beautiful with sensuous lips and deep eyes under arched brows. The artist will attempt to seduce her but he wants more than that. Badong wants to possess her. And he wants to draw from Mimosa’s irritating willfulness the inspiration for his rebirth. He must have an abrasive in order to create. The great central passage of the film involves creation: Fajardo, using a static camera and long takes, rarely cuts away. We see a blank sheet of paper and the drawing taking shape, Badong’s fingers and thumb smearing the washes into rough shapes.

11011Of the performances, there is nothing to be said about Mark Gil except that he communicates exactly what Badong needs from his art and doesn’t need many words to do it. Sarsi Emmanuelle has an ethereal beauty, but it is her talent that has made her a leading actress of her generation. We quickly feel, without any dialog or behavior to spell it out, Mimosa’s nuisance quality. Tess Jamias finds the perfect and difficult note for Joy. Fajardo’s use of long takes gives his actors the freedom to modulate their interactions, capturing the incremental steps by which people become more familiar with one another and give themselves over to more bold actions. Close-ups show Mimosa trembling from a combination of embarrassment and exhaustion. Yet it’s in her resistance, not her compliance, that Badong seems to get the most inspiration as he builds toward his intended masterpiece. Mimosa’s willingness to confront the painter has the effect of gradually eroding the distinction between the creation of the painting and what it represents. The studio scenes correspondingly progress from the naturalistic to the impressionistic, with Mimosa lit luminously against backgrounds that collapse the distance between the real woman and Badong’s sketches. That fusion of subject and form eventually expands to include the artist himself, most visibly in a scene where both Badong and Mimosa break down, undermining the tacit power of artists over their models by placing them on even ground. It’s a direct, cathartic illustration of the film’s deconstruction of accepted artist and muse roles.

ANGUISHED LOVE
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, February 21, 2023)

The political landscape that seeps through Joel C. Lamangan’s Lihis (Film Development Council of the Philippines, BG Films International, 2013) is as deep as the movie’s heartbreaking story of two idealistic young men who fall in love almost by accident. It is embedded in this landscape where their idyll begins and ends. The same mood of acute desolation permeates Ricardo Lee’s screenplay. Their intimacy just happens to unfold in ways that bring tragedy to the surface while keeping the viewer at a certain remove. What happens between Cesar (Jake Cuenca) and Ador (Joem Bascon) builds slowly then explodes, after which they retire to opposite corners. Their rough, impulsive coupling could have been a fight, as it almost is. In fact Lamangan filmed it with the frankness of a boxing match. Both Cuenca and Bascon make this anguished love story physically palpable. Cuenca disappears beneath the skin of his sinewy character. The pain and disappointment felt by Cesar, who is more self-aware and self-accepting, continually registers in his sad, expectant eyes. Cesar is able to accept a little more willingly that he is inescapably gay. Lihis is ultimately not about sex (there is very little of it in the film) but about love – love stumbled into, love thwarted, love held sorrowfully. What Ador craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was when Cesar pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared hunger. One tender moment’s reprieve from loneliness can illuminate a life. In the end, this is Jake Cuenca’s picture, the final scenes allowing him to unequivocally and credibly express Cesar’s sorrow. Joem Bascon plays the more callow of the two men; coincidentally or not, his performance doesn’t dig as deep as you might want it to. Lovi Poe as Cecilia, whose youth and spiritedness slowly drain away in the face of an infidelity she can’t encompass, adds a beautiful low-rent weariness to the performances.

11011The grading brings a sense of brilliance to the color spectrum, an accuracy and nuance that befits the film and the high-definition format. It offers depth and tonal detail where natural greens delight, clothes pop, and earthy tones around the frame enjoy a sense of pinpoint accuracy bringing the film to life. Bright outdoor scenes are delightful, the contrast between sun-drenched portions and shadowy elements lifelike. Skin tones are perfect, black level is remarkable, whites are intense. The image is razor-sharp, bringing out refined details on faces and complex environments. The soundtrack delivers crisply defined support elements. Richly realized environmental atmospherics add bursts of heightened activity capable of handling every core element with commendable ease, enriching scene-shaping and mood-enhancing clarity. Though it’s mostly front-heavy, dialogue is perfectly prioritized, positioned and detailed. Lihis is extraordinarily well done from a technical and emotional perspective, though potential viewers must tread carefully.

THROUGH UNFAMILIAR EYES
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, March 5, 2023)

Making a virtue of simplicity and a vice of melodrama, Imbisibol (Sinag Maynila, 2015) is a well-intentioned low-income drama. This is a genre in which work – exhausting, repetitive, unreliable – is the story’s engine and the characters’ sole means of survival. Holding on to a job or finding a better one takes precedence over anything life can throw at them. Without a doubt, Imbisibol forms Lawrence Fajardo’s most assured work, owing a lot of its initial momentum to John Bedia and Herlyn Gail Alegre’s unhurried screenplay. The film doesn’t lack for integrity, educating the audience on the desperation of living as an illegal entirely from the perspective of its characters. Carefully buried in a wealth of gesture and speech, from Linda (the perennially underutilized Ces Quesada) and Benjie’s (Bernardo Bernardo) plaintiveness to Manuel (Allen Dizon) and Rodel’s (JM de Guzman) wistfulness, the actors in Imbisibol are remarkable. De Guzman’s superb slow simmer of a performance as a pleading, recessive man is a silent striver who embodies a humanity that is ultimately heartbreaking. Dizon brings a crafty venality to his character that we suspect people must actually possess in a trade such as his. Bernardo Bernardo conveys decency, enthusiasm, and self-restraint. Quesada creates a character that is sensitive and vulnerable. Who among us can say that pragmatism is less virtuous than innocence? Jane Austen, Anton Chekhov are artists who come to mind when we confront a story told through such tactful revelations of temperament and states of mind. Fajardo often shows a room before people enter and lingers a second after they leave. Every single shot is intended to have a perfect composition of its own. If a character is speaking, he presents the entire speech. He is comfortable with silences, insisting that every person has the right to be heard in full. In his other films, Fajardo deploys his distinctive techniques more playfully, but here he seems chiefly concerned with creating a quiet world in which his characters’ personalities can stand out. In some cases they speak little and imply much.

11011An elegantly refined style places people in the foreground, Fajardo focusing on the nuances of everyday life. His is the most humanistic of styles, choosing to touch the viewer with feeling rather than workshop storytelling technique. By having established the rhythm of his characters’ lives with such precision, Fajardo’s presentation is not conventionally melodramatic or histrionic. From one part of the world to another, Imbisibol stirs with its torrents of feeling. Dramas about illegal immigrants have often focused on the journey, an odyssey pocked with exploitation and fear, but one that ends on a note of road-weary triumph. In Imbisibol, the focus is on the plight of undocumented immigrants who are already ensconced in Japan, and how they live in constant fear of immigration officials who want to deport them even though a modern Western economy could not function without these shadow workers. Imbisibol walks a delicate line between visceral cinema and complex emotional trauma, yet it never seems to struggle at balancing the two; and if my description of precisely why seems vague, that’s purely because it deserves to be experienced through unfamiliar eyes. The adroit Fajardo doesn’t overemphasize the acrid, fetid atmosphere of hard-working immigrants clambering from one job to the next. The spartan, bleary-eyed plainness of the urban landscape of immigrant Japan makes Imbisibol more arresting. Fajardo’s low-key curiosity toward what drives outsiders is a crucial element that lubricates the tough, noirish melodramatics of the narrative engine. As businesslike as the immigrants who work several jobs to stay afloat, Imbisibol grows more compelling as it builds a head of steam.

A TRANSCENDENT HOWL OF HOPE
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, March 27, 2023)

The main focus of Eddie Garcia’s 1978 feature, Atsay (Ian Film Productions), is Nelia de Leon’s odyssey, and its emotional core is provided by Nora Aunor’s intense, gestural performance, which is strengthened further by Romeo Vitug’s quietly observant camera. The whole drama is revealed through quotidian details. Atsay features a direct storytelling style, and depicts working-class people struggling against bleak social conditions and human foibles. Garcia subsumes this wellspring of complexity into the form of his central character, Nelia. Mostly silent with her employers, Nelia nonetheless speaks volumes through her expressive face – not that they would notice. She is treated with brusque tolerance, which soon gives way to hostility, from Mrs. Tulio (Armida Siguion-Reyna). In one of the film’s most upsetting moments, Garcia’s camera remains distant as the husband, Mr. Tulio (Renato Robles), stares at Nelia’s behind while she is dusting. Atsay is especially sharply observant of the corrupted social contracts, and Garcia roots these observations most effectively in the relationship between Nelia and Mrs. Tulio. One solitary, charged glance between Nelia and the husband, midway through the film, is enough to suggest that a similar psychosexual panic has taken root in the wife’s mind, precipitating her increasingly heinous behavior. Nelia is a victim, it’s true, but she is also a refreshingly multidimensional character. A succession of scenes illustrates her romance with construction worker Pol (Ronald Corveau). Nelia’s situation is obviously tragic, but Garcia’s ability to match his contempt for society’s failings with a non-judgmental eye toward all his characters defuses any danger of the movie slipping into polemics. For the most part, Garcia keeps us at a distance, but when he judiciously cuts to huge close-ups of Aunor’s doleful, open face – tears in her eyes – her anguish registers like an uppercut to the solar plexus. In Atsay’s closing moments, a desperately sad saga is transformed into a transcendent howl of hope. Garcia was congenitally incapable of making indifferent films, and everything that marked him out – his skill, compassion, and vision – is fully present in this startling, unforgettable return to filmmaking.

11011The new digital transfer, undertaken by the Film Development Council of the Philippines and the Philippine Film Archive, was created in 4K resolution by the Korean Film Archive, with preliminary fixes to the image and sound from seven reels of 35mm color prints provided by the Philippine Information Agency. Central Digital Lab performed extensive digital restoration on a dry-scanned transfer to minimize visible scratches and spots that were the results of processing errors and that had been aggravated by time. I do not know exactly what type of improvements were made during the restoration process, but I am convinced that this is the very best Atsay has ever looked in any format. Excluding a few light blemishes that can be spotted during the opening, the film looks spotless. Detail and clarity are excellent with the outdoor footage looking particularly fresh. Depth is optimal, though it appears that some careful rebalancing adjustments were made to ensure that in a couple of areas where some traces of aging might have impacted fluidity, the end result is as pleasing as it could be. The color grading is convincing. There is a good range of solid blacks and healthy whites with no traces of compromising sharpening adjustments. Image stability is very good. There is only one standard audio track on this presentation. English subtitles are provided for the main feature. Dialogue is clean, stable, nicely balanced, and easy to follow. Dynamic intensity is modest, but given the nature of the film and the manner in which it was shot, this is hardly surprising. Eddie Garcia’s Atsay’s recent restoration in 4K looks impressive indeed in high-definition.

DEEPLY SATISFYING
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, April 13, 2023)

Mike de Leon’s Itim (Cinema Artists Philippines, 1976) is a quiet, delicate piece, one aching with loss and regret. It’s the kind of film which demands patience, not least because of the static photography and the largely wordless storytelling de Leon employs. The characters are established with quick, subtle strokes. Perhaps more than anything, it is Charo Santos’ presence (in her feature film appearance) that really stands out. There are few actresses who can quite match the way in which she is able to exude an ethereal beauty while simmering something below the surface, and her performance here as the beautiful and independent Teresa is a superb early example of just that. There are prolonged stretches which unfold without dialogue with only the flourishes of a score. De Leon’s tendency as a director is to privilege images over dialogue. Sometimes he hangs on an image for minutes more than we’re conditioned to expect by most Filipino films, forcing us to contemplate what we’re seeing. The storytelling is conveyed through style over narrative, both in Ely Cruz and Rody Lacap’s lingering visuals and Ike Jarlego Jr.’s editing. You have to watch, feel and experience what’s onscreen in order to follow the story, which begins to play with our expectations in ways that are deeply satisfying, almost cathartic. De Leon repurposes elements of horror and makes them melancholic.

11011Itim is presented on blu-ray courtesy of Carlotta Films with an AVC-encoded 1080p transfer in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1. As with all of the films in the set, there are some preliminary text cards describing the restoration. Itim has been digitally restored by L’Immagine Ritrovata. The original 35mm camera negative was scanned in 4K resolution and the audio remastered from the optical soundtrack negatives preserved at the British Film Institute. The transfer was supervised by director of photography Rody Lacap and approved by de Leon. This is an impressive-looking presentation from just about every angle, with a gorgeously suffused palette. The release is noticeably less flushed, something that I personally found preferable. There are still some very minor and inconsequential nicks and blemishes. Grain is tightly and organically resolved throughout the presentation. The mono track presented in DTS-HD offers more than capable support for the film’s sound design, offering a more spacious account of Max Jocson’s haunting score. There are no issues with regard to damage, dropouts or distortion. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional French subtitles are available. In Itim, Mike de Leon gave us a film to rewatch and remember.

PROVOCATIVE & SATISFYING
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, May 22, 2023)

Stylized and visually arresting, Lawrence Fajardo’s Mahjong Nights (Viva Films, 2021) complicates and perverts the simplest of interactions. It unfolds at a languorous pace, ultimately leaving viewers with a haunted feeling, an uneasy sense of always having something to worry about, some constraint on expression or behavior. The perversion of natural impulse begins with Angeli Khang, whose achievement ultimately comes from how she renders Alexa. We’ve all seen the film where an actor chooses to dramatize the relationship between a performative character and the role they’ve taken on by underlining skill and barely contained nerves. Khang avoids this route entirely and instead shows us a performer with an intuitive, bodily understanding of who she’s playing. When we first see Alexa we don’t get the sense of a technically immaculate interpreter but of an instinctive, in-the-moment performer committed to the goal she’s been given. In the rare moments she looks distracted, we get the sense of a performer stuck in her own head. We never forget the stakes that inform her ever-evolving crisis, yet Khang communicates all of this cleanly and dexterously. Jay Manalo’s Leo is stern and forbidding, rarely letting the cold mask drop. Fajardo’s cast (which also features Mickey Ferriols as Leo’s wife Esther) is exceptional and Tad Tadioan gives an impassioned performance as Big Boy. Like Fajardo’s other films, Mahjong Nights grows out of a tension between essence and form – between a person’s emotions and the role he or she must play.

11011What made the second half so mesmerizing was the interplay of glances between Alexa and Sean de Guzman’s Gaspar. Much of the appreciation of the choreography of looks has to do with understanding the history of electric eyes. There’s a specific moment when the battle of the stares begins. It’s at a mahjong table where the characters communicate on two levels: through speech as they exchange pleasantries and talk about the game, but whose true intentions are spoken with their eyes. Some may find the film excruciatingly dull, but pay close attention – beneath the surface, there’s usually more going on. The underlying plot gradually reveals itself. We do not see Leo at work, but Manalo is able to project the man’s capability for menace and begins to do that in bed with Alexa. Mahjong Nights is a film of deceptive subtlety that springs shut in its final moments like a steel trap. Fajardo is clearly having fun with audience preconceptions of a mahjong game that reveals plenty about the milieu we’re about to move in while balancing all sorts of layers effortlessly. Mahjong and Fajardo are a good fit – which I don’t mean remotely as an insult. The game is elegant, formal, and deliberate, but with a hint of repressed violence. As the story unfolds, Leo’s cruelty stops being simply vile and starts to become fascinating and even paradoxical, infusing a potentially two-dimensional villain with humanity and pathos, leading to a terrific, unexpectedly amusing scene when Alexa’s conflicting emotions finally boil over and when her facade eventually breaks down, Fajardo’s story finally jerking into focus. It may seem like a long time getting there, but when Mahjong Nights finally reels you in, the payoff is both provocative and satisfying.

SKILLED FOOTING
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, May 26, 2023)

It’s a testament to director Chito S. Roño’s Ang mga Kaibigan ni Mama Susan (Regal Entertainment, Inc., CSR Films.Ph, Black Sheep, 2023) that it manages to incorporate so many of the visual and storytelling elements from lesser movies to create something compelling. Roño has executed the most effective, most rewarding horror film by exploring a demanding scenario that is all the scarier because he has constructed a dramatically tense situation to draw out our emotional involvement. What’s more, the experience is grueling because the imposing imagery employed is truly the stuff of nightmares. There’s an emotional cause behind every horrible turn. Joshua Garcia plays Galo Manansala with amazing intensity – the kind that makes you wonder how the filmmakers incited the volatile performance, making his character’s state so believable. Garcia’s slow transformation leaves room for Bob Ong’s screenplay to find new ways of highlighting Galo’s uneasiness in relinquishing the past. Most viewers, if they’re honest with themselves, will probably hate Mama Susan (Angie Ferro) and they’ll be uncomfortable with the extent of their hatred and what that says about their capacity for empathy. This discomfort is conditioned by the shrill soundtrack dreading Mama Susan’s whimpering or all-around act of invasion. Roño’s treatment is masterly in how he uses our imagination to build up Mama Susan’s “friends” and delivers them in expert cinematic reality.

11011Moreover, he creates a highly stylized mise-en-scène constructed as a contained environment from which Galo, Niko (Yñigo Delen), and Jezel (Jewel Milag) are exposed to a frightening blend of psychological and real horror. Equally vital are cinematographer Eli Balce’s shadowy interiors, as well as Roño’s enveloping sense of mood and attention to detail. Every piece of furniture has a deliberate placement. Best of all, the treatment avoids strict adherence to genre rules; he refuses to make this a typical supernatural yarn and instead uses his supporting cast – Aling Delia, played by Vangie Labalan and church caretaker Mang Narcing (Soliman Cruz) – to deepen his central characters. AKMS takes great care to sharpen the details in Galo’s life so that when trouble comes along, it magnifies his anxiety. Perhaps the only elements that compare to Roño’s approach are Ferro’s and Garcia’s performances, especially the latter, since the young actor fully commits to his role with a mercurial presence, sending us further into the story. But it’s how Roño balances the film’s unnerving quality, genuine scares, and its deep-rooted psychological impetus that leave us in full awe of how well AKMS has been assembled and how it walks the fine line between reality and nightmare with skilled footing. The unexpected ending finds a rare emotional realism in what could have been a run-of-the-mill creepshow.

UNRESTRAINED TENDERNESS
by Jojo Devera
(Facebook, May 26, 2023)

It’s rare to see a cinematic drama executed with such consistent care as Write Here (Seiga Productions, 2022), written and directed by Jake Muñoz Consing, starring Bodjie Pascua and Rolando Inocencio. And that care pays off to devastating effect. Write Here is marked by that kind of knowing restraint that delineates the difference between sentiment (true, earned emotion) and sentimentality (the cheap, manipulative attempt to tug at our heartstrings). Movies about the decay of the human mind can be unrelenting or, worse, sentimental, but Write Here is spare and understated. Consing places the fate of his film on the shoulders of his two leads. Emotional vulnerability has always been Inocencio’s strength as a performer and Bernie grants him the space to do the tenderest, most moving work of his career. Pascua is masterfully understated, turning in a modulated performance that ranks with his work in Pan de Salawal (2018). For an actor who has made a career of being the memorable support, he soars in the lead role as Eddie, a man who is acutely aware of his mind’s erosion. Pascua underplays accordingly, registering the outward signs of encroaching dementia – a forgotten word, a misplaced memory – and then quietly minimizing those very signs.

11011Once you’ve seen Write Here, that fact will be hard to wrap your head around, as the actors seem so well-suited to their respective characters. They likely would have proved just as capable at capturing the intimacy that Eddie and Bernie shared, but it’s hard to imagine that they found the small, individual grace notes they do here – wordless moments that express an understated delight in what they had. But as we watch Eddie’s control slowly slip through his grasp, we realize that we’re watching a man mourn what he once was. Consing approaches the reality of letting go with measured sorrow, unrestrained tenderness, and even moments of joy. This in many ways lends itself to Write Here’s singular strength: the sense of knowing history between these men and, with it, the things that need not be said for our benefit, because they’ve already been said.

Leave a comment | tags: Auteurs | posted in Film Criticism

June 26, 2022

A Season of Comebacks

By Joel David

The glaring lack in the last two batches announcing recipients of the Order of the National Artists of the Philippines was that the most deserving candidate in her field was missing (essential disclosure: halfway around the globe, The FilAm made sure I could come up with the first article denouncing the snub by then-President PNoy Aquino, who has since died). This time around, Nora Aunor leads the pack, and seemingly never forgot to string along some controversies in her recent actuations.

11011Primarily, this had to do with the candidate she endorsed for President – none other than the scion of the family that ran roughshod over the country’s tentative attempts to attain developed status and left it in tatters. Paradoxically, no other regime has paid culture as much importance as the Marcoses did (the National Artist award was in fact one of their many innovations), and they were sharp enough to realize that the then-young aspirant from the rural South had the potential to become one of the biggest stars the Philippines would ever witness even before film producers took action.

11011So it was not just Aunor, but Bongbong Marcos (BBM) as well, who effected a comeback. The implications are as profound as they are complex, so those of us who maintain a social-media foothold, openly or otherwise, are privileged with firsthand access to responses from people whose opinions will be shaping discursive responses in the long run. The other, more painful implication, cannot be denied either: traditional media, including once-venerable newspaper and magazine publications, can no longer sustain this function, especially regarding culture issues. You can pick the ones that claim to have the most credibility, submit a nonsensical review article bolstered by buzzwords and a string of impressive-sounding qualifications, and see it come out sooner or later, without a sweat.

11011From innumerable Facebook posts, I’d venture to mention two of the more crucial ones: professor and book publisher Katrina Stuart Santiago decried the absence of any honoree in the visual arts – film and TV not necessarily fulfilling this requisite, since the nature of and access to fine artworks function according to entirely different premises; critic and festival director Mauro Feria Tumbocon Jr., meanwhile, asked the updated equivalent of “where’s the beef?” when a rival artist’s followers demanded that their idol be given the same recognition simultaneously or (if they had their way) beforehand. Writings on Aunor in fact can be traced to the very start of regular film-book publications in 1971, as I discovered entirely by accident when I made a comprehensive list of Pinas film books. Of the other Philippine movie stars, Fernando Poe Jr. and Dolphy share a significant-enough fraction of what Aunor has commanded; of the female ones, only Sharon Cuneta has been consistently written about in books and journal articles – in a still-continuing cycle of scholarly attention that she somehow manages to cultivate.

11011The other charge, raised by an author who had his own skeletons to hide, turned on Aunor’s endorsement of BBM. In fact, all three film winners, by virtue of thriving during the Marcos regime, could be faulted for working on projects that were either fully funded or subsidized by the Imee Marcos-run Experimental Cinema of the Philippines. Even if we set aside the typical counter-argument that they turned in exceptional work, we also see that they encountered censorship and repression (even political detention, in Ricky Lee’s case). Historians of the period should also be obliged to point out how they labored under an entirely unnecessary critical downgrading from then-contemporaneous and self-declared progressive experts, who had covert (though now easily confirmable) reasons to disfavor these three at some point or other. Needless to add, it is these experts who should be pressed to articulate their reasons for upholding the alternative choices they made when the current National Artist winners were coming up with their most significant output and were cold-shouldered for it.

11011Otherwise, we can see how Aunor’s sympathies become understandable, even though most of us would rather be caught dead than articulating anything along the same line. In the meanwhile, we can and should move on from recognizing past artistic achievements to anticipating future ones. The only entity for whom this holds no irony is the Marcos family: their revision of history can now claim partial validation via the triumph of several members of this batch of National Artists, including even the winners for theater and fashion. But what about the film personalities who handled the BBM campaign and maintained their belligerence in the face of incontrovertible evidence of the harm that the late patriarch had perpetrated during his reign?

11011For argument’s sake, we can take at face value one mainstream couple’s explanation that they happened to belong to the clan of Marcos in-laws, although Mary L. Trump and, yes, Sharon Cuneta, prove that loyalty to one’s country should take precedence over familial duty, and deserve future honors for the difficult stance they made when it counted. The more popular frontliner also happens to be younger as well as a viral Facebook presence: Darryl Yap, who directed Cuneta’s last film, was previously known for his initially edgy though eventually reactionary video uploads on his Vincentiments blog, along with his occasional fits of pique when more sophisticated netizens trolled him. He parlayed the box-office success of his first full-length film, #Jowable (2019), into a series of potboilers mostly for the Vivamax streaming service, at an average rate of a new film every other month. Many of these, including the Cuneta-starrer Revirginized (2021), are punishingly dreadful to watch.

11011From the last Filipino film monograph worth reading, Epoy Deyto’s Post-Dilawan Cinema and the Pandemic (downloadable for free at his Missing Codec blog), I stumbled across an endorsement of Sarap Mong Patayin [Love to Kill You], one of Yap’s ten 2021 releases, not counting a TV series. It’s a frankly jaw-dropping discovery; I don’t think it would be precipitate to say that it’s one of the local films maudits whose numbers dwindled to nearly nothing since the death of Celso Ad. Castillo. As to whether it will attain the stature of Elwood Perez’s Silip [Daughters of Eve] (1985) or Mario O’Hara’s Pangarap ng Puso [Demons] (2000), we’ll have to check in every half-decade or so to find out. What concerns me at the moment is how such a seemingly accomplished expression of sexual anarchy proceeded from someone who could never be mistaken for, say, one of the gifted artists and philosophers implicated in the Nazi dictatorship of Adolf Hitler or in the Soviet-era socialist bloc or even in the dominant phase of American imperialism.

11011What’s instructive at this point is that I didn’t see netizens attempting to engage Yap, by way of encouraging him further in this direction. The prevailing consensus is that he’s pathetically incapable of rising above the small-though-profitable platform he raised for himself, so Sarap Mong Patayin might only be the equivalent of an autistic savant’s scribbles, brilliant by accident, a broken clock getting the time right for once. But what if we’re reading Yap wrong? What if just maybe he intends on having the last laugh when his Maid in Malacañang gets released a few weeks from now? One only hopes for his sake that he’d assimilated the lessons of our National Artists for film, who learned how to survive tyranny with dignity by taking what one hand could while flinging useful mud with the other.

Á!

Leave a comment | tags: Auteurs | posted in Politics

June 3, 2022

What Lies Above: A Mini-Commentary

By Joel David

Several global and national changes have been so pervasively eventful that people in positions of responsibility will be devoting part or all of the rest of their lives to tackling the problems raised by these developments. Which is why any publishing milestone will seem understandably insignificant, unless it purported to address one or more of these central issues of our time. It won’t seem to be terribly earth-shaking, for instance, if the worst review ever written of a local film appeared in a national publication – but that’s precisely what just happened, and to my regret, I feel I’d be remiss if I didn’t point it out.

11011For an idea of how awful this situation is, when a far milder bit of irresponsible commentary came out in the 1980s, Lino Brocka went on national TV to denounce the writer. The present-day sample focused on the filmmaker’s personality as well as the cirumstances of the screening, with the reviewer not watching more than once to give the text an opportunity to redefine itself if that were possible – in fact the said reviewer didn’t even finish the premiere screening! Several other psychoanalytic complications can be read from the commentary, starting with the reviewer’s charge that the filmmaker was egotistic: the defense mechanism of projection becomes evident when we look at the writer’s other output.

11011As for the film itself, it may be appreciated as a reasonably competent sophomore effort, with the filmmaker’s extensive stage experience and record in historical allegory providing some plus factors. The biggest gamble was in his directing himself as lead actor; only rarely has this attempt succeeded anywhere, and nothing would have been spoiled if one of our many excellent character actors were hired to play the role instead. Far from a stone masterpiece, all in all, but a worthy endeavor nevertheless, with the promise of better work clearly in store for all of us.

11011The real complication revolves on the venue used for this piece of critical embarrassment. It came out in an outlet that has been projecting an image of valor in its contretemps with the outgoing (and presumably the incoming) administration, which is why I’d risk being tagged illiberal or worse, if I were to name it here. Publications of this stature used to be picky even with cultural submissions – critical of criticism, to be smart-alecky about it.

11011It may not be evident from my early record, but the act of my constantly having to revise according to the specifications of editors, eventually enabled me to find my voice and attune it to a variety of publication requirements. Even today, the outlets I consistently agree to write for have editors who read through my text and try to read or watch the products I write about, or have their own system of peer reviews, both of which result, when necessary, in suggestions for revisions that I have to work on.

11011What happened between the period when I could freelance for editors who worried over submissions, and the carelessly inconsiderate present? Nothing less momentous than the overthrow of a dictatorship, the fulfillment of an aspiration shared by the best of our generation. Only to be replaced by a regime whose first declaration, regarding culture, was that it had no interest in it whatsoever. This disdain for cultural production (including cultural commentary) spread throughout the body politic and persisted close to the here and now: I kept in touch over the past decade with a circle of faculty who expended every effort to introduce contemporary literary, cultural, and media studies to secondary education, finding their efforts thwarted by government administrators who had other priorities in mind.

11011And now, when the family whose members were (among other things) Pinas history’s evergreen culture aficionados, whose attitude was rejected by successive regimes because of the association with said family’s rapacity – now that they’re back in power and turning the heat once more on culture, now we find ourselves in a tizzy about what should have been done to preempt the destruction they’re about to wreak.

11011Live and learn, is the one depressing lesson to garner from this mess. Start with the careful oversight of cultural commentary, since that requires nothing more than basic intelligence.

Á!

Leave a comment | tags: History | posted in Film Criticism

May 27, 2022

The Studio System’s Final Movie Queen

By Joel David

Susan Roces’s recent passing made me realize at first how she could have been a star in Philippine politics as well, as the best First Lady and First Mother we never had. I’d voted for her late husband, actor-producer and National Artist Fernando Poe Jr., and later for her daughter, Grace Poe, during the presidential runs where they placed first and second respectively, according to their most ardent supporters (in spite of what official tallies announced). The studio that launched her, Sampaguita Pictures, had claims to another aspirant on a similar level: Imelda Marcos, who had screen-tested for them, and whose sudden marriage to the man who would be dictator probably spared them a lot of embarrassment after the couple was deposed by a popular uprising.

11011I went over my files and was surprised to find that I had written her a letter, though not as a fan. The book I edited, Huwaran/Hulmahan Atbp.: The Film Writings of Johven Velasco, was being launched at the University of the Philippines; Johven was such a Susanian that he requested, if his collection were to be published, that he appear on the cover along with her. His most important scholarly essays were about her films, but he also wrote an admirable account of his fandom, invoking Jacques Lacan, Laura Mulvey, and most intensively Jackie Stacey, in order to explain his identification: “not based on pretending to be something one is not but rather selecting something which establishes a link … based on a pre-existing part of the spectator’s identity.”

11011Roces became a star ahead of the generation that finally allowed women to dominate Philippine film production, relegating men to equal status at best, secondary positions more often. The two top movie figures around her time were FPJ (whom she married) and Joseph Estrada, now footnoted as one more deposed Philippine ex-president, although better remembered for his populist antihero roles and empathetic (earlier) performances. Yet again, when I went over the First Golden Age films that were listed by a research team in a forthcoming all-time canon project for Summit Media, two Swanie films were cited: Armando Garces’s Sino ang Maysala? [Who’s at Fault?] and Tony Cayado’s Mga Ligaw na Bulaklak [The Wild Flowers], both from 1957. The latter, in fact, is also figuring strongly in the short study I’m finalizing on working women (the equivalent of the Korean “hostess movie”) in local cinema.

11011I’m sure Johven would have been able to explain how the best movie stars wind up affecting serious students of popular culture, whether they know it or not. During the launch of his book, one reader was an actor he had trained and who was at that time on his way to becoming the biggest independent-to-mainstream crossover star of the moment. Before reading his assigned excerpt, Coco Martin remarked how he made sure to impress Johven by playing up his resemblance to Susan Roces. That was how Johven knew that Coco would also make it big: he had a “face that refreshes,” as Susan was once described. The lady born Jesusa Sonora has gone, reminding us how so much preferable it would be to live with as much dignity and productivity as we could leave to posterity.

[First published May 24, 2022, as “Jesusa Sonora Is Gone; Long Live Susan Roces” in The FilAm]

Leave a comment | tags: Star texts | posted in Golden Ages

May 20, 2022

Canon Decampment: Canon Fire!

By Joel David

Film canons in the Philippines are recent enough so that some elderly Filipinos might be able to remember a time when none had been available. As far as anyone can tell, the first local film canons were, perhaps unintentionally, initiated by award-giving institutions—and so the most well-known ones are still those created and propagated by local academies, organizations, and festivals.

11011Are canons then synonymous with the lists of winners selected by award-giving bodies? Put another way, when an award-giving body is formed, do its jurors envision their selections as “best” choices, not just of the period in question—whether festival, quarter, year, decade, etc.—but also among all other possible all-time choices? As a rule, yes, although there may be significant exceptions: for one, the awards bodies that never persisted long enough to make a long-term impact; and for another, the canons drawn up by individuals and more recently, groups provisionally formed by these individuals.

11011As concrete historical examples, we can point to lost classics—in ancient Greek drama, especially—that we now only remember because they were considered worthy of formal recognition during their time. Sadly, this is reminiscent of how a number of Filipino films can only be recollected but never screened again, because of how they were celebrated during their time, whether via rave reviews or through awards. Also, in the present, we have the spectacle of winners of different awards claiming that their specific awards are better than those won by others, similar to how graduates of certain schools claim to be superior to the alumni of other schools by virtue of their association with their own institutions.

11011Hence if we were to inspect the strengths and weaknesses of film canons, we should begin by looking at film awards. As a distinctly modern phenomenon, film activity bears with it the contemporary notion of awards. Most people who look closely at both phenomena (films and awards) might be unaware of the fact that the first awards acknowledged as modern arrived almost at the same time that films emerged. James F. English, in his in-depth sociological study published in 2005 by Harvard University Press, The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value, traces the idea of the contemporary award—as opposed to classical prizes—to the Nobel Prize, introduced during the late 19th century, when film was also striving to create its now-permanent long-term impact.

11011A few other insights in J. F. English’s book might help us better understand the condition of film awards, and what we might call the institutional film canon, in the Philippines. For one thing, “prestige,” as we understand it nowadays, often functions ironically. During the Cold War era (roughly the 1950s through the 1980s), people could still believe in the authority of institutions; evidence of irregularities in, say, the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS) Awards were aberrations that could be corrected internally—as in 1974-75 as well as in recent years, when critics and academics were invited to conduct the awards process—or externally, when critics formed their own organization in 1976 as a counterweight to the older institution. Nowadays, when we think of the most highly coveted global awards—the Oscars, the A-list European festivals of Cannes, Berlin, and Venice, even (to step outside of film) the Magsaysay, Pulitzer, Booker, or Nobel prizes—controversy tends to be associated with these institutions’ decisions so often that it becomes the rule more than the exception. J. F. English, in fact, winds up concluding that “the most prestigious awards draw the most intensely critical sniping,” something that any close observer of Filipino movie prize-giving will readily recognize.

11011Another fraught question might appear to be a recent development for us, although it has long become a matter of course for Western countries: the proliferation of award-giving bodies. The primary reason why the number of award-givers stabilized for a long while in the Philippines is the same reason that production of quality film projects also stabilized: while more films may have been produced during the 1960s, the ratio of prestige productions to total output was far lower than during the martial-law regime. Precisely, and ironically, because of the authoritarian intervention by the dictatorship of Ferdinand E. Marcos, film’s status as a favored medium was cemented. Permits for new projects would be granted only upon presentation of written screenplays, thus requiring the services of some of the country’s best writers, and the scandalous proliferation of award-giving bodies could be discouraged. As an example, during that period, schisms in government bodies, notably within the local film academy, were carefully mediated by the presidential daughter, Ma. Imelda (Imee) R. Marcos. Her father would eventually consolidate her influence in her capacity as Director-General of the industry’s support group, the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines. How the state of existing Philippine film awards contended with dictatorial influence should be worth a close recounting.

Academic Controversies

The main focus of local award-giving controversy was the aforementioned FAMAS, which was evidently falling under the sway of too-influential producers and actors. For its first decade of existence, its choices could be counted on as the result of careful comparative assessment, regardless of the status of its nominees within the industry or in society and politics. Gerardo de Leon was a consistent awardee, with his Daigdig ng mga Api (World of the Oppressed) even defeating the biographical movie of the newly elected President, Iginuhit ng Tadhana: The Ferdinand E. Marcos Story (Determined by Destiny, dir. Conrado Conde, Jose de Villa, and Mar S. Torres), for the 1965 competition. By the time Marcos ran for re-election, the tables had been reversed: Pinagbuklod ng Langit (Heaven’s Fate, 1969, dir. Eddie Garcia), the sequel to Iginuhit ng Tadhana, bypassed at least one superior canonical title, Leroy Salvador’s Badlis sa Kinabuhi (Course of Life, 1968, released in Manila in 1969). The next year, Armando de Guzman’s Mga Anghel na Walang Langit (Angels without a Heaven, produced and written by a future presidential candidate, Fernando Poe Jr. or FPJ), won over three of Lino Brocka’s early films, specifically Wanted: Perfect Mother (his blockbuster debut), Santiago! (his major-budget FPJ starrer), and Tubog sa Ginto (Gold-Plated, included in the present canon listing). The year after, Gerardo de Leon’s less-than-competent Lilet defeated Celso Ad. Castillo’s Asedillo, while Ishmael Bernal’s Pagdating sa Dulo (Reaching the Top) was not even a best-film nominee. Incidentally, the Salvador, Castillo, and Bernal “loser” films are also included in the current listing.

11011Hence for the then-approaching mid-1970s years, the FAMAS strove to recover its lost credibility by relinquishing its awards decisions to media experts, with Gloria D. Feliciano, the founding Dean of the University of the Philippines’s College of Mass Communication (then an institute) acting as chair of its board of jurors. These years coincided with Brocka’s independently produced sleeper hit, Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (Weighed but Found Wanting, 1974), as well as his most widely acclaimed production, Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila: In the Claws of Light, 1975), both of which swept the prizes during their respective years. The recovery of the FAMAS’s reputation was short-lived, however. In 1976, a few members of its “credible” jurors formed the first local film critics’ circle, the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, implicitly continuing its members’ occasionally explicit critiquing of the FAMAS, but this time as an independent outfit competing for public attention by conducting its own award-giving activities.

11011The FAMAS’s travails did not end just yet. By the start of the 1980s, an actual Film Academy of the Philippines (FAP) comprising workers’ guilds was founded by presidential decree and mandated to hand out awards selected by the guild members themselves, again as a corrective to the FAMAS claim that it constituted, per its name, an “academy,” when in fact it had mainly comprised movie writers, including scriptwriters and reporters, rather than filmmakers, performers, and technicians. A year after the FAP’s first awards (covering 1983), the Philippine Movie Press Club announced its Star Awards in two events, one for film and another for television. Thus all the claims of the FAMAS—that it was an academy, that its members were capable of criticism, that these same members were movie press practitioners—were contested by the emergence of various groups that arrogated these functions unto themselves, one by one.

11011The most direct challenge, the formation of the FAP—which carried the term “academy” in its name, just like the FAMAS—was overseen by the eldest Marcos daughter Imee, who was preparing to wrest control of the still-to-be-launched Experimental Cinema of the Philippines away from her mother, Imelda.[1] To minimize the tension between the two award-giving groups, Imee declared that the FAMAS would have to be dissolved to make way for the FAP. Only the intervention of the FAMAS multiple winners, led by Joseph Estrada, then the powerful mayor of San Juan City, resulted in the anomaly of having two “academy” awards in the same year.

Canons to the Left and Right

With the ouster of the Marcoses after the people-power uprising in 1986, critical film activity underwent a ferment that replicated the several developments that it realized in Western academia. Several now-forgotten local debates raged regarding the function and value of film and other critical discourses in popular culture; inevitably, a few breakaway groups comprising former and would-have-been members of the original film critics’ circle, the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino (MPP), were founded. Personal disclosure, part 1: I was involved with all the organized critics’ groups.

11011Hence after the academy, the critics were the film participants contending with one another for visibility in the national culture. A difference, however, has to be pointed out: in the case of the FAP vs. the FAMAS, only one group, the former, was technically an academy. In the case of the MPP and its breakaway group, the Young Critics Circle, most members of either group could be considered practicing critics at best, inactive dilettantes at worst. In terms of my personal experience, the challenge was to reconcile the advantage of organizing with colleagues with the requisite of conducting responsible and effective criticism. In 1990, I and a colleague, Mauro Feria Tumbocon, Jr. (currently the festival director of the Filipino Arts & Cinema International or FACINE, the most successful Filipino-American annual film event), contacted other active film critics who shared our differences with the MPP, in order to found the YCC.

11011In short order, further differences arose within the new group, this time regarding ideology and strategy: do we reject the task of providing intermediate (though limited) educational lessons in favor of complete and radical deconstruction?[2] As a concrete example, if we know that creating canons like the present Top-100+ listing might be a futile, potentially misleading, and necessarily open-ended exercise, should we skip this stage and proceed with reading films for their radical cultural-studies value, without worrying about their contribution to a discourse of significance and excellence? This would mean opting for critical exercises, the more intensive the better, leading whenever possible to book-length or multivolume scholarship. Another way of stating this is: when we begin with the basic, immediate critical response to a new movie (called the film review), we may push it in the direction of further critique-based activity: film criticism, scholarship, long-term studies, etc., instead of consumerist recommendations. This is meant to challenge the present direction of most institutional reviewing, which leads to periodic assessments, ending with annual awards results, sometimes extended with longer-period declarations like best of the decade, best of the quarter-century, etc.—until we reach something like the present exercise, which is best of all time. My personal position was, and remains, that both options are not necessarily in conflict with each other, although then again, critics who are organized will find themselves having to uphold one at the expense of the other.

11011After helping found still another critics’ group called Kritika, I found my next direction determined by circumstance: I had to leave for foreign graduate studies, while the other members similarly found themselves having to take overseas trips for similar or related reasons. Since then I’ve written about further disturbing trends in award-giving groups, notably the MPP’s consistent abandonment of providing critical output coupled with its current tendency to recruit new members mainly from the media and communication programs of the country’s major academic institutions. This strategy has apparently ensured that the group’s orthodox orientation—where film is regarded as a technical challenge whose form may be evaluated according to discrete categories—can be maintained in educational programs and will continue to enhance and promote the group’s annual award-giving agenda.[3] Hopes for the emergence of dissent with the MPP’s current hegemony lie in the recent proliferation of unaffiliated, though occasionally also inadequately prepared, blogger-critics. The period after the 1980s had seen similar breakaway attempts within the industry and movie press circles, but an even bigger motive for the formation of more award-giving bodies was to emerge after the present millennium arrived.

11011The turning point for film criticism was provided by the sudden technological transition in film production, from exceedingly expensive celluloid to the extraordinarily democratic (because affordable) digital format—including its outlet, the World Wide Web. Seemingly overnight, anyone who wanted to create a movie did not have to shell out millions and arrange for studio-controlled distribution, waiting for decades while slaving away at menial production tasks for just this kind of break; merely whipping out, say, a mobile phone, finalizing the file on a computer, and posting the result on YouTube would suffice to complete the process.

11011This revolution in technology may be qualified because it actually strengthened the position of certain companies and countries and government-surveillance agencies: it provided profits for manufacturers of miniaturized technologies and owners of successful websites; it ensured Western dominance while redefining the global sphere of development to include East Asia; and it enabled security-conscious countries led by the US to eavesdrop into the private affairs of local and even foreign citizens. Nevertheless, several once-near-impossible functions became everyday activities: not just in terms of media production, as already mentioned, but also in the realm of media consumption. For the Philippines, the crucial stepping-stone was the so-called illegal piracy-disc sales center, wonderfully dubbed (by scholar Jasmine Nadua Trice, among others) the Quiapo Cinematheque and defended by every major filmmaker and scholar who had closely studied the situation and who was not receiving some form of largesse from government bodies influenced or pressured by the US’s International Intellectual Property Alliance.

11011Via the Quiapo Cinematheque’s “pirated”—or, from the perspective of cultural education, fairly priced—discs, and later via internet outlets including YouTube, observers of Philippine cinema could gain increasing access to movies from most historical periods, as long as they could understand the language(s) being spoken and forgive uneven surface qualities. Not surprisingly, several blogs that specialized in film commentaries sprouted during the past couple of decades—and here is where the idea of the canon took its latest and, as always, still-controversial turn.

Scattered Shots

Although the organized, award-giving critics maintained their own websites—an example followed by other award-giving institutions—individual bloggers had the advantage of maintaining independence from the ideological pressures that organizations impose, overtly or otherwise, on their members. More important, by having their own ready outlets, they had the means to maintain steady, even voluminous, output, according to how the spirit of commentary moved them.

11011Hence although the organized groups continued their annual declarations, the new, decidedly more numerous online critics managed to out-perform their career predecessors in terms of critical output, albeit with far less media fanfare. Individual top-round-number listings, from ten to a hundred, started appearing, and at least three enterprising internet and social-network aggregators announced and conducted extensive surveys. Two of these were completed, one for the Facebook Cinephiles! group and another for the Pinoy Rebyu group blog, both in 2013. The Cinephiles! “Top 100 Favorite Films Poll” included foreign films, with only nine local titles figuring in the total, and the highest, Mike de Leon’s Bayaning 3rd World (Third World Hero, 2000), ranked 22nd. Pinoy Rebyu’s “100 Greatest Pinoy Films of All Time” focused exclusively on Filipino movies, including documentaries, but included already-unavailable choices such as Manuel Conde’s Juan Tamad Goes to Congress and Gerardo de Leon’s Huwag Mo Akong Limutin (Forget Me Not), both 1960 releases. Both provided ranked listings from 1st to 100th, with the Pinoy Rebyu’s first half (1 to 50) accentuated by short paragraphic citations.

11011Although late in monitoring social network activity—forced into it, in fact, by a cyberculture teaching assignment—I managed to observe this peak in internet-based canon-forming frenzy. Personal disclosure, part 2: both surveys acknowledged the groundwork I laid in my earlier stint as resident film critic in National Midweek, with the output, titled “Ten Best Filipino Films Up to 1990,” anthologized in my second volume, Fields of Vision: Critical Applications in Recent Philippine Cinema (published in 1995 by the Ateneo de Manila University Press), and the updated version posted on my archival blog, Amauteurish. The original National Midweek exercise was a survey of local critics and practitioners that I and my students conducted, in which the respondents were asked to submit their list of ten-best films, with the results tabulated and fine-tuned to yield variations on canonical presentations: films most cited as number one, films most cited regardless of ranking, and films most cited according to ranking provided by the respondents.[4]

11011Even that early, for the “ten-best” activity, I already noted certain problems. For one thing, although the number of respondents was the largest in any film survey up to that point (1990), their individual competence could not be determined. I had planned a second phase—which unfortunately did not materialize due to lack of time—where the complete list of all films cited would be returned to the respondents, who would then be asked to indicate which ones they had seen and rank those further, as assiduously as they could. For another thing, the results were not generated according to a group consensus facilitated by exchanges of opinions and ideas; consequently, no justification (in the form of citations or mini-reviews) could be articulated for the specific films that showed up in the results.

11011The most serious lack, to my mind, was the absence of the only useful guarantee I could make about comparative film evaluations: despite the differences between me and the MPP that eventually proved irreconcilable, I managed to pick up a lesson that has proved to be the surest means of determining comparative value. That is, in an instance when two films appear to have equally strong value, repeated viewings will almost always lead to a point where the evaluator can rationalize, however provisionally, the preference for one over the other. Having outlasted the conflictive period I mentioned, when critics with opposed ideological opinions insisted on the correctness of their pet theories, the practice of rescreening films—or, in a larger cultural sense, resampling entries—has turned out to be a far more reliable measure of a text’s worth than conformity to any predetermined framework.

Artillery

From this critique of the ten-best exercise I conducted, applicable to the other, more recent exercises as well, I managed to formulate a more ideal form of canon-formation: convene a group committed to the project, instead of listing survey respondents who might be unfamiliar with one another and who would be contacted only a few times; source all available films, using pre-existing canons (i.e., awards listings or surveys) as well as strong word-of-mouth recommendations; watch the films, rewatching those that appear to have so-far indeterminate value, especially when it comes to filling out the remaining slots in a fixed-number list—and be prepared to be flexible about “fixing” the said number; conduct informed deliberations about what films should be preferred and why; list the films without bringing up the further and ultimately frustrating hair-splitting complication of ranking them relative to one another; and articulate, to the best of one’s critical ability, why each specific film was selected.

11011I would have preferred a less-definite, or more mutable, set of guidelines that allow for no limits in terms of year of release and running time and total number of choices—as in, far less or far greater than the target number (over one hundred, in this case), depending on how the finalization of the list turns out. The digital era might make this wider goal easier to accomplish, particularly through the use of a periodically updated website where the results may be uploaded for further future revisions. But for purposes of setting the results of the project in a commemorative volume, more constrictive rules will always be more useful … as long as the project’s proponents foreground enough humility to admit to every possible limitation and commit to any opportunity to do better in future. At this point, for example, I could point out one major advantage in having a for-now “final” canon, rather than relying on the annual critics’ choices that I mentioned earlier: if we arrange the films chronologically, we would notice that “excellent” films do not get released once every year, the way that an annual awards listing would suggest. Rather, noteworthy projects tend to cluster during certain periods, and the talents and audiences that support these projects also subsequently tend to take time off to recuperate, usually after a wearying spell of excessive seriousness or box-office traumas.

11011Hence it would make more sense for any recognition body to note each “deserving” title as it comes along, rather than forcibly compiling a list of, say, five nominees and declaring one of them the year’s only possible winner. Like all the other canonical listings before it, the current listing suggests that certain years might have no release worthy of attention, although most years may yield maybe one or two, and a few fortunate years have gifted the culture with armloads of works to cherish. Given this reality, why should we insist that audiences keep focusing on always-only one “best” film every year, when the honest thing to do would be to admit that the award-givers might need annual public attention in order to, among other things, collect on the publicity benefits of awards ceremonies?

11011Any enthusiast would not find it difficult to locate starting points for future attempts that might seek to improve on the present canon project, although attempting a coverage of expanded canons might take far longer than the five-plus years it took for the present project to be finalized. Short films can be sourced from the early workshop output of the Mowelfund Film Institute [5] and the thesis projects of the country’s film-degree programs: the University of the Philippines Film Institute’s, De La Salle—College of Saint Benilde’s, and University of San Carlos’s in Cebu City. A documentary collection can be compiled from the output of the now-defunct Asia Visions, featuring the works of the now-forgotten Lito Tiongson; the several film-producing non-government organizations—Ditsi Carolino and Sari Dalena would be the names to start with; and the outstanding TV magazine programs, specifically the output of Howie Severino’s I-Witness (2008-14). Television itself promises to be a gold mine—or a mine field, depending on one’s preference—with a whole range of genres to pick from. Just as enticing would be the entire range of now mostly lost regional cinema, a realm of practice that might help us acquire a better understanding not just of Manila-centered production but also of our neighboring countries’ own regional issues.[6]

11011A similarly ambitious film-research project, with its own canon as by-product, can be made of the hundreds of non-Filipino and non-Filipino-hyphenated (e.g. Fil-Am) productions, whether or not shot in the Philippines, that deal with the country in some way or other—as a nation’s or people’s name, as deliberate or accidental linguistic crutch, as anonymous or non-Filipino (especially Vietnam) locale, as overseas presences, or even just as a globally recognizable entity; a corollary, sadder but just as essential, would be studies of films that are lost, or practitioners who have died.[7] One final area worth exploring would be films that may be apparently mainstream feature releases, but which partake of certain marginalized qualities because of their subject matter: queer films, for example, or diasporic projects, or some other still-to-emerge specialized categories. Some of these groups have entries in the present canon list, but their modes of production, talent hierarchies, distribution strategies, and the audience responses they induce will need to be teased out as distinct phenomena vis-à-vis what passes for “regular” Philippine cinema.

11011One of the hopes I expressed when I conducted my earlier batch of canon projects during the early 1990s, including the ten-best films survey, was that the existence of sturdier, more credible options will satisfy the curiosity of critics and audiences and enable us to advance to the more urgent questions of how to achieve a presence in the global cultural community, or how to use popular culture to productively intervene in issues of national identity and development. That is, instead of obsessing over finalizing canons and revising them every so often, we might be able to begin with a fairly acceptable listing and simply keep adding to it as more significant films get released. However, as it turned out since then, even more award-giving groups were to be formed, several of them overlapping in functions, and more canon projects were conducted.

11011A stable system of canon-formation, if that can be achieved for Philippine film culture, will enable scholars and audiences to devote attention to the wider issues surrounding cinema, where the question of quality can be set aside whenever necessary. James F. English, whom I referenced earlier, provides no further assurance when he states, still in The Economy of Prestige, that “each new prize that fills a gap or void in the system of awards defines at the same time a lack that will justify and indeed produce another prize…. There are not only more prospective founders and sponsors of awards than ever before, but also, and less intuitively, more positions on the fields of culture where new prizes can be installed” (emphasis in the original). If any new canons that emerge after this project can claim the same qualities of patient and multiple re-screenings, earnest deliberations, informed rationales, and minimal reliance on institutional influences, then they might yield similar results. That prospect alone ought to suggest that, with a project such as the present one, the biggest future advantage might be ironic in nature: our eventual liberation from obsessive canonizing, with a stronger interest in in-depth and non-comparative film criticism as an ideal by-product.

Postscript: Since this piece was drafted, the Covid-19 global health crisis intervened and made media streaming the only safe means of consumption for the general public for two years (and counting). A few short works premised on online interaction, mostly so-called Boys Love teleseries but also including the instant-classic Lola Doc (directed and performed by Nora Aunor from the short “monovlog” written by Layeta Bucoy), functioned as reflexive experiences, with actors directly addressing supposed webcam viewers. The claustrophobic effect of having the performer confined within a limited space, along with the frustration of lacking an audience to interact with, ensures that theater attendance will not be permanently supplanted by this particular new-media trend. But the middle way between movie-going and online learning is being claimed and redefined by the streaming—of media, not just of film.

11011It may be possible to stream a film-viewing audience as well, similar to how participants appear in Zoom classes; even more excitingly, the interactive aspects of live theater attendance (ritualistic call and response, for example, or maverick activities in cult screenings) may just be around the bend. And since digitalization lends itself to a level of flexibility whose fuller potential can be seen in the more advanced games that anticipate the just-announced metaverse, “film” as we know it will once more have to confront the question of whether the medium has ended, to make way for a further stage of development, or reiteration, or devolution.

Notes

[1] Millennials whose familiarity with the Marcos family has been defined by the strong and affectionate alliance between Imelda and her daughter might be surprised to know that the two women used to have a conflictive relationship. Psychoanalysis would traditionally ascribe this to their competition for the attention of the patriarch, Ferdinand Sr. This division between mother and daughter would explain how artists—including progressive figures, initially led by Lino Brocka—gravitated toward the ECP after Imee succeeded in taking charge of the agency. It also lends credibility to the belief that Imee’s parents were responsible for the “kidnapping” and subsequent “rescue” of their daughter’s paramour Tommy Manotoc—a sportsman, identified with an opposition family, who had then just divorced his wife, 1970 Miss International Aurora Pijuan; the “Communist terrorists” allegedly responsible for the crime were of course killed, supposedly in a firefight with Manotoc’s rescuers.

[2] At that time a new buzzword, deconstruction is a philosophically prescribed critical procedure that attempts to uncover the possible hidden meaning(s) in a text, whether a written or uttered statement, an audiovisual presentation, or any seemingly innocuous cultural product. Based on the theoretical output of Jacques Derrida, among several other authors, it proceeds from the premise that certain individuals and institutions may have vested interests in maintaining or influencing power imbalances in their favor. In order to attain this condition, they create, promote, favor, and/or standardize texts that uphold their points of view. Popular culture is a productive area for deconstructive exercises, because the texts in this field have to address, and consequently uphold, the interests of the audience—which provides opportunities for certain texts to oppose, repress, or question the advocacies of the ruling class.

[3] I have written elsewhere about the MPP’s contribution to Philippine film awareness, as well as its limitations. Since my criticisms clustered around the group’s awards activities, most of the MPP officials tended to take offense and voiced their disapprobation in several outlets and forums. The positive lessons I learned from the MPP are the ones I recount in this article, techniques of viewing and comparative analyses that have proved useful in drawing up a film canon.

11011Re the awards (called the Urian), my remarks merely rounded up already existing comments from various sources, and cover three aspects. First, the Urian uses a form-vs.-content approach, with their best-film criterion stating: “In the case of two films which are equally well-made, the film with the more significant subject matter is to be preferred” (“MPP Criteria” in The Urian Anthology 1970-1979). This separation between technique and “subject matter” is in fact more useful for the film practitioner, rather than the critic; when the work is completed, form is inseparable from content, and the other dynamics—social, political, industrial, financial, global, etc.—that impact the film and influence people’s perceptions should become part of its evaluation. Second, the awards format is misleading because it makes people think that films, after their completion, can still be reduced to distinct categories such as technical, performative, and creative ones, when in fact the work is already functioning as an organic whole. Third, the awards activity’s effect belies its claim: it supposedly supports the community of film artists by recognizing their best output on a regular basis, but in practice, it always insists on singular winners in artificial categories, thus having a divisive effect on colleagues by forcing them to compete with one another and finding ways to lobby for their respective entries. As the present canon listing implies, certain years may be more fruitful than others, while other years may yield no canon-worthy titles. The awards practice therefore of recognizing one film, or one practitioner, per year leads to the problematic impression that each year’s winner fulfills the Urian’s criteria and that all the annual winners are equivalent to one another.

[4] This was intended to rectify the incognizance of individual rankings practiced by the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound survey of film critics, regarded as the definitive canon for global cinema and claimed, in a 2012 article by Michael Atkinson, as the originator of published film canons. The results have been announced decadally starting in 1952, with the next one expected around this time, in 2022. Vittorio de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948) was the 1952 first-placer, with all the succeeding decades dominated by Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) except for the last: the 2012 top winner was Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). Since 1992, film directors were also consulted, with the top results mirroring the critics’ choices except for 2012, when the directors selected Yasujirō Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953) as their all-time best. Final personal disclosure: I participated once, during the 2002 survey, and received responses from all over—including commentaries from the Observer, Slate magazine, and Roger Ebert—for my offbeat choices as well as my questioning of Citizen Kane’s worthiness.

[5] A series of mostly self-produced super-8mm. films by Noel F. Lim is still awaiting rediscovery, along with the short-film entries of various independent film festivals as well as those produced for the Cine Rehiyon festival of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts—not to mention the material commissioned by the hundreds of non-government organizations that proliferated since the collapse of the martial-law regime of Ferdinand E. Marcos.

[6] While the present canon project was fortunate enough to rediscover Leroy Salvador’s Badlis sa Kinabuhi (Hand of Fate, 1968), the impressive showing of contemporary digital-era regional cinema suggests that more celluloid samples of Cebuano movies should be unearthed, if they still exist. The reputed all-time best, Natalio Bacalso’s Salingsing sa Kasakit (Consequence of Pain, 1955) shares the same depressing fate of Gerardo de Leon’s Ang Daigdig ng mga Api (The World of the Oppressed, 1965), both masterpieces that in all likelihood have been lost to posterity. Even several other well-received entries by the likes of Emmanuel H. Borlaza, better known for his Manila-based work; Gene Labella, who never made films outside the region; Leroy Salvador, acknowledged in Manila as an actor; and Amado Cortez, remembered today as Gloria Sevilla’s husband—are nowhere to be found. Scholarly attention being paid to regional cinema would be better late than never, with Paul Grant and Misha Boris Anissimov’s 2016 volume Lilas: An Illustrated History of the Golden Ages of Cebuano Cinema (published by the University of San Carlos Press) as an outstanding sample of a pioneering study.

[7] Preliminary studies, with extensive listings, of non-Filipino productions dealing with the Philippines and/or Filipinos can be found in the “Media and the Diaspora” special issue, dated August 2014, of the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication journal Plaridel, as well as in the “OFWs and Foreign Cinema” monograph of the August 2013/February 2014 issue of Ateneo de Manila University’s cultural studies journal Kritika Kultura. Clodualdo del Mundo Jr.’s Daigdig ng mga Api: Remembering a Lost Film (De La Salle University Press & Film Development Council of the Philippines, 2022) constitutes a valiant attempt at reconstructing a long-lost film classic based on the traces it left behind, while Pro Bernal Anti Bio (ABS-CBN Publishing, 2017), initiated by Ishmael Bernal, continued by Jorge Arago, and completed by Angela Stuart Santiago, may be the most impressive Filipino biography ever written.

Leave a comment | tags: History | posted in Book

May 20, 2022

Bringing Theater to the Home

By Joel David

Click here to jump to the following sections: The First Medium; The Transition to Film; Brocka’s Children; Enter Broadcast & Film Inc.; Specialized Training, Awards and Demise; Note.

The Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) was a momentarily anachronistic entity when it first arrived. Productions by so-called legitimate Philippine theater companies had never been performed in any local language before. After the Spanish era, “serious” Philippine theater had always been done in the English language, with the occasional original productions in Spanish.

11011The advantage was that the English-language productions introduced dramatic realism, in contrast with the Spanish-language forms of the sinakulo, komedya, and sarswela. The only scripts that would ever include Filipino words would be those for the social-realist dramas of Alberto Florentino, where impoverished characters would speak fluent English and an occasional Tagalog or mispronounced English word.

11011Not surprisingly, when PETA announced a search for Philippine literary classics to be adapted into teleplays for its groundbreaking weekly anthology titled Balintataw, Florentino was among the earliest responders. Nick Joaquin, whose Portrait of the Artist as Filipino was filmed in the original English by Lamberto V. Avellana for Diadem Pictures, agreed to have his globally acclaimed short fiction to be adapted. In fact, it was via Balintataw that the public realized that the local language could be an entirely sufficient vehicle for delivering serious dramatic discourse.

11011Movies, of course, had already resolved the national language issue by the time PETA was founded, with Tagalog winning over English and Spanish, and Cebuano lording it over in the southern regions. Meanwhile, English-language Philippine theater had its last valiant gasp the same year, 1967, that PETA was formed. PETA’s same-age sibling, Repertory Philippines, had its own walk in the sun during the late 1980s when several of its performers, led by Lea Salonga, were cast for the original West End and subsequent Broadway runs of Miss Saigon.

11011Hence from the beginning, PETA had set for itself an ambition that would have sounded quixotic if it had been formulated in a different place and time. In her master’s thesis titled “A Prospectus for the National Theater of the Philippines” (published as Theatre for the Nation in 2003), PETA founder Cecile Guidote Alvarez described how “theater does not solely refer to the legitimate stage, which has been a powerful influence on human civilization for 2,500 years, but also includes its amazing twentieth-century offspring – film, radio, and television.”

11011If PETA was the first Philippine theater group to feature plays in local languages, Repertory Philippines turned out to be the last English-language local theater guild. Teatro Pilipino, for example, endeavored to present plays in both English and contemporary Filipino (translated by its founder, Rolando Tinio) – something that was regarded as “best practice” among local theater groups, notably those in the University of the Philippines, where bachelor’s and master’s degrees in theater are being offered.

11011The only logical explanation for the persistence of what we may call the PETA spirit is that its founders were attuned to then-emergent social ferment: various interest groups, not all of them selflessly motivated, were invoking love of country as a means to lay claim to public patronage. What is remarkable about PETA, additionally, is that its early movers and shakers did not let patriotic fervor overcome their realistic assessment of what type of media could best provide the association with a foothold in the public consciousness.

11011Although pioneering among local media in its use of Filipino languages, film had just freed itself from the genteel and monopolistic strictures of the 1950s studio system – romanticized, problematically, as the First Golden Age – and was deliriously (and profitably) looking for barriers to demolish, hitting triple-digit annual output for the first time and building up to the taboo-busting bomba era by the turn of the 1970s. Radio acted as the support medium for film and print, providing news as well as entertainment series that would occasionally be adapted for the big screen.

The First Medium

Like PETA, television was the Johnny-come-lately in Philippine mass media. Most observers attributed the success of Balintataw, PETA’s first mass-media effort, to serendipity. But it was more clearly a result of a well-considered survey of the field and an extremely sensible judgment of the local audience’s emerging preferences. Since film was in the throes of what film critic Bienvenido Lumbera described in his essay Problems in Philippine Film History as “rampant commercialism and artistic decline,” any well-intentioned newcomer would have easily been figuratively swallowed whole by the system.

11011On the other hand, the audience had been sufficiently modernized and would likely refuse to return to the wholesome patriarchal values at work during the First Golden Age. As written in A Continuing Narrative on Philippine Theater: The Story of PETA (edited by Laura Samson, Brenda Fajardo, Cecile Garrucho, Lutgardo Labad, and Malou G. Santos-Cabangon), Balintataw provided the middle ground from 1967 to 1971, with its adaptations of contemporary literary classics, handled with expert emphasis on performances, with a willingness and ability to innovate within budgetary constraints:

One unique aspect of this drama anthology was the use of a full teleplay script (15-20 mimeographed pages) to replace the former practice of working from a synopsis or sequential notes. Another was the scheduling of a separate day for rehearsals before the actual taping day. Of the many TV drama anthologies of the time, Balintataw was the only one that consistently followed the above practice. (Samson et al., 2008)

11011Resounding acclaim and a string of Citizens Awards for Television (then, ultimately, a CAT Hall of Fame recognition) affirmed the soundness of the PETA strategy and imprinted on the minds of attentive viewers the names to watch out for: Lino Brocka, Lupita Kashiwahara (then Lupita Aquino), Joey Gosiengfiao, Elwood Perez, Mario O’Hara, Nick Lizaso, Tony Perez, Frank Rivera, Lutgardo Labad, Orlando Nadres, Laurice Guillen, and several others. The newbies were not lacking in film-trained mentors, most prominent among them Pierre Salas, a veteran scriptwriter who was starting to venture into directing, and who was also known for his association with master filmmaker Gerardo de Leon.

11011Balintataw brought to the TV screen stories written by the outstanding authors of the time, starting with Nick Joaquin, N.V.M. Gonzalez, Jose Garcia Villa, Edith Tiempo, Narciso Reyes Jr., Sinai Hamada, Alberto Florentino, and so on. It also adapted material from authors who were barely known in classrooms for being too recent (Ernest Hemingway), non-Euro-American (Anton Chekhov), or sexually frank (D.H. Lawrence).

11011Although overwhelmed by the subsequent triumph of PETA talents in film, the story of Balintataw provides interesting angles that challenge existing assumptions. Nora Aunor, for instance, is celebrated for her seamless transition from film to theater via early 1990s PETA productions, specifically Minsa’y Isang Gamugamo and DH (Domestic Helper). Her friendly rival, Vilma Santos, is regarded as a runner-up in this regard – yet it was Santos who preceded Aunor at PETA, via Balintataw.[1] The spectacle of other highly regarded film performers like Vic Silayan, Robert Arevalo, Charito Solis, Rosa Rosal, and Barbara Perez lending their hard-earned prestige to the show, together with younger talents like Santos and Hilda Koronel – all this made it easier for even the most successful film performers (like Aunor, Lolita Rodriguez, and Chanda Romero) to consider invitations to appear in PETA stage productions.

The Transition to Film

Brocka may have been the first PETA talent to land a movie credit, with his adaptation of Mars Ravelo’s Wanted: Perfect Mother in 1970. He started as a stagehand at the UP Dramatic Club and embarked on a stint as a Mormon missionary and California migrant before returning to the Philippines in time for the founding of PETA. With his emergence in Philippine cinema, he immediately set the template for the serious talents who would follow in his footsteps, including his close friend (who was also regarded as his rival), the stage- and film-trained Ishmael Bernal. The two would compete in completing city movies (Brocka with Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag in 1975, and Bernal with Manila by Night in 1980) and would stake their advocacies in different areas (Brocka in politics, Bernal in film form). Each one would, however, exhibit the influences of the other in their later output. Brocka and Bernal also periodically returned to TV and the stage, with Brocka, who was already a celebrated filmmaker, acting in Hanggang Dito Na Lamang at Maraming Salamat (PETA’s longest-running production) and directing Larawan, the Filipino translation of Joaquin’s Portrait of the Artist. Tragically, both of them died early – Brocka in a vehicular accident in 1991 and Bernal from health complications five years later.

11011It was through Brocka and Bernal that PETA members found their footing in Philippine cinema, with Bernal also recruiting talents from the other repertory groups. Like Brocka, Bernal carried a theater background from the University of the Philippines, where he was to return after his effective retirement from film practice. Several PETA talents, specifically Joel Lamangan, Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil, and Mae Quesada, worked in Bernal’s media projects, with Ongkeko-Marfil later recruiting him to train the members for film and TV.

11011While Bernal’s impact may have been more medium-specific, introducing the multiple-character format by reconfiguring the earlier “smorgasbord” gimmick of Sampaguita Pictures and insisting on a societal analogy where no single character could claim to be the center of the narrative, Brocka’s industrial innovations were no less crucial. After Brocka’s own debut in 1970 (with Bernal following the year after), he had a flurry of film outputs, writing three scripts for his own projects and one script, a comedy, for a popular comedian. Contracted to work exclusively for a major studio, he slogged through a period action vehicle (Santiago!) with the top local actor Fernando Poe Jr., and had two hits in a row. Critics hemmed and hawed over these works, but by Christmas Day, Brocka provided a present that would resound through the rest of his career and prove himself to be equal to the best practitioners of the then-raging bomba (soft-core pornographic) trend.

11011Still considered a vital text in Philippine queer cinema, Tubog sa Ginto also provided Eddie Garcia, an extremely capable actor already being relegated to villain roles, with an opportunity to foreground a conflicted, obsessed, lustful-yet-closeted gay family man. Garcia responded by turning in what has since become a benchmark for Filipino male performance. Although Brocka would eventually suffer from creative burnout a few years later, the example he set with accepting a few commercial impositions before insisting on a project that enabled him some creative leeway (which he demonstrated again the following year with Stardoom) became a pattern that he and Bernal, together with several of the talents they mentored, would observe in their big-studio careers.

11011More impressively, Brocka ushered in a renewed Golden Age after his studio stint by taking time off to organize an independent production company and coming up with a personal project based on his small-town experience, with the assistance of a talent he introduced in Tubog, Mario O’Hara. Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang was not just a sleeper hit; with its audience primed by Brocka’s campus and office tours to discuss the movie, it also swept the industry awards and enabled Brocka to come up with his city movie, Maynila, which is possibly the most well-known Filipino movie among foreign film enthusiasts and also the first Filipino movie to be made available in Blu-ray, through a remastering by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project. The year after Maynila, 1976, was considered a milestone in Philippine cinema, with local financiers seeking to replicate Brocka’s one-two punch by producing their own anti-formulaic film projects.

Brocka’s Children

Brocka’s impact on Philippine cinema was so all-encompassing that his name has become a virtual shibboleth for most contemporary “indie” practitioners who declare his example as their ideal and who aspire, in their own way, to be “the next Brocka.” In fact, if Bernal and a few other filmmakers did not emerge, it would be possible to define the Second Golden Age as Philippine cinema’s Brocka period. Since he effectively remained the custodian of PETA during Guidote-Alvarez’s political exile in the US, eventually being appointed its executive director, the public was inclined to perceive PETA through him.

11011On a personal note, I was surprised to realize that several film talents associated with PETA productions were actually fielded by Brocka, and that a few filmmakers associated with Brocka films (notably Mike de Leon, cinematographer and co-producer of Maynila; and Laurice Guillen, performer in several titles including Tinimbang Ka) were not from PETA either. After he made a name in European film festivals, starting with Cannes, a number of other personnel from Brocka Productions – notably Orlando Nadres, Bey Vito, Lito Tiongson, Soxie Topacio, Jeric Soriano, and Joel Lamangan (all deceased except for the last two) – were also able to initiate their directorial careers. Except for Soriano, all were PETA personnel. Tiongson, Lamangan, and Topacio were mentored by Brocka (along with Balintataw veterans O’Hara and Nadres) via another drama anthology, Tanghalan, which aired for only one season in 1977, as well as via a follow-up program, Lino Brocka Presents.

11011O’Hara (also deceased), de Leon, Guillen, and Lamangan established significant directorial careers. Nadres focused on writing (both scripts and plays), Topacio continued directing and occasionally performing mainly for theater. He took over PETA’s executive directorship after Brocka. Tiongson forged a still-to-be-rediscovered career as political documentarian via an NGO, AsiaVisions. Another PETA talent, recruited by Lutgardo Labad, was Maryo J. de los Reyes, who became a member of the theater’s pool of directors. When Labad was assistant director for Lupita Kashiwahara’s Alkitrang Dugo, Labad endorsed de los Reyes as acting coach. Since then, de los Reyes (also recently deceased) became a successful blockbuster director and the festival director of To Farm Film Festival.

11011Finally, one of the strangest career turns is that of Labad, who is musically gifted and is also an all-around PETA hand and cultural-policy expert with a solid foundation in people’s aesthetics. He directed, among others, May-i May-i, Dupluhang Bayan, Nasa Puso ang Amerika, and Radiya Mangandiri, and has been spearheading cultural tourism in Bohol, his home province. In film, Labad is known almost exclusively as a music director (Tinimbang Ka Nguni’t Kulang, Ganito Kami Noon… Paano Kayo Ngayon, Magnifico, Independencia). If closer attention were to be paid to the overlooked aspect of production, he would arguably be the country’s finest film scorer since Bayan Ko composer Constancio C. de Guzman.

11011Looking at the larger picture of PETA’s participation, it would be possible to conclude that the theater group would have found itself in film, via television, even if Brocka had not come along. But inasmuch as Brocka embodied PETA’s ideals and visions, it would be more appropriate to assert that Philippine cinema has distinct characteristics that may be traced to PETA itself: the concern for issues of national and global significance, the drive to reach the widest possible sector of the public at large, the willingness to work within industrial limitations, and the readiness to introduce formal and thematic innovations that have the potential of advancing audience appreciation of both medium and material. Even in the face of shifts in presidential regimes, industrial dynamics and technologies, these ideals have persisted, a testament to the theater group’s solid grounding and adaptability.

11011Evidence of this persistence may be seen in PETA’s handling of Balintataw. The declaration of martial law in 1972 resulted in the closure of Channel 5, which aired the program. By then, Brocka already had a solid foothold in the Philippine movie industry. As PETA was witness to the dismantling of the Marcos regime in 1986, as well as to the mass media’s power to mobilize participants in the people power uprising, PETA endeavored to revive the program in its original medium – it initially reappeared as Radyo Balintataw, under Guidote Alvarez’s tutelage, on DZRH. With Soxie Topacio overseeing the process, the TV program was reintroduced in 1988. From the start, Balintataw was never envisioned as a profit-generating venture; this time around, it was primarily intended to demonstrate PETA’s aim to upgrade the media literacy of its audience within politically progressive terms. Because of the then-novel atmosphere of democratic space, the program was able to assume a more confrontational tack, telling stories “of marginalized sectors in Philippine society – peasants, workers, urban poor, indigenous peoples, women, and others” (Samson et al.).

Enter Broadcast & Film Inc.

In order to facilitate the orderly transition of talents from stage to mass media, PETA set up in 1987 a unit called Broadcast & Film Inc., or PETA-BFI, under the supervision of Soxie Topacio. It was, according to Joel Lamangan, “a continuation of Lino’s desire to bring to TV and film PETA’s commitment to truth” – Balintataw was, in effect, its laboratory. When Brocka’s commitment to the Concerned Artists of the Philippines heightened following the assassination of Senator Benigno S. Aquino Jr., PETA was, in turn, guided by Soxie Topacio. One controversial detail that slowly came to light during that time pertained to Brocka’s political journey: he had not always been what you may call a fully formed social radical. In fact, at separate points during his tenure as executive director, he discouraged queer behavior and later denounced members who were allegedly Communist-underground partisans using their PETA membership as legal cover (see Johven Velasco’s “Brocka’s Theater: Something for the Heart,” in Lino Brocka: The Artist and His Times, ed. Mario A. Hernando). PETA stalwarts like Topacio and Labad were the ones organizing general assemblies so members could collectively articulate the organization’s position.

11011Funds for the PETA-BFI program had to be sourced from abroad and were solicited on the basis of a Community Media Education Program facilitated by trained theater counterparts. The program brought episodes to various rural communities using videocassette technology. Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil, who had become the most active film director among the PETA-BFI trainees, was in charge of the PETA-BFI following her participation in the directing workshop. Her first directorial output was an early episode for Handog ng PETA series. She was originally assigned to assist Marilou Diaz-Abaya, who eventually declined because the deadline was too tight. Ongkeko-Marfil organized a PETA-BFI directing workshop with Ishmael Bernal as main facilitator, in cooperation with the Mowelfund Film Institute. The MFI students, including renowned cinematographer Neil Daza, attended the workshop. Topacio brought in Brocka to lecture on lighting and provide feedback on the participants’ output. Lamangan was requested to mentor individual students. Finally, as if to provide contrast between the series’ pilot program and Brocka’s less politically pointed TV series Lino Brocka Presents, Topacio set the tone for Handog ng PETA by tackling the long-standing yet always controversial agrarian conflict between landholders and tenants – the basis for over half a century of resistance and armed rebellion reflected in his teleplay, “Si Panyong at ang Hatol ng Guhit na Bilog,” an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

11011Unlike its earlier incarnation, which garnered the enthusiastic support of its home TV station, the revival of Balintataw confronted a situation where the media technology was about to transition from film to TV, and then with other media and the internet. Hence, the rampaging commercialism that marked Philippine cinema during the 1960s was starting to make its presence felt in TV, culminating in the current scenario where TV studios have taken over mainstream film production. But unlike the commercial cinema predicament where several independent studios could occasionally challenge the major producers – which they continue to do at present – TV can only count on a limited number of players and has to contend with stricter censorship centered on family values, not to mention competing for advertisers based on the results of hotly contested audience surveys.

11011As a result, the new Balintataw’s reliance on grants could not be sustained. The realities of commercial production – where name stars, for example, get the bulk of the budget – made the PETA-BFI members realize that all the attention they devoted to production and creativity would be for naught if they continued to overlook the business and management aspects of their undertaking. The most successful PETA-associated filmmakers since Brocka’s demise were Mario O’Hara and Joel Lamangan, with O’Hara (who died in 2012) dealing with box-office traumas during his debut year (1976) by incorporating happy endings even in his darkest material. Lamangan rose to prominence as the mainstay director of Viva Films (to which he was introduced by Brocka), a major studio during the Second Golden Age. Lamangan succeeded by fostering a reputation for swiftness and budgetary discipline. He ended up with an extensive filmography, nearly the equal of the combined number of films by Brocka and Bernal, and managed to embark on an ongoing legacy project of telling the overlooked stories of the struggles against the martial-law dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.

11011From the perspective of PETA-BFI insiders, however, the unit was still a part of PETA. Brocka and the practitioners who followed may have come from PETA but they were shared with the rest of the country and the world, given media’s universal appeal and accessibility. Hence, on the basis of the outpouring of sadness and the wealth of recollections that followed his recent death, Soxie Topacio has remained foremost in PETA-BFI members’ remembrances. He was almost literally a PETA mainstay, starting out at 17 and never leaving until death claimed him nearly 50 years later. Topacio also had a string of some of the most memorable PETA productions to his name as director: Pilipinas Circa 1907, Canuplin, Macli-ing Dulag, Kung Paano Ko Pinatay si Diana Ross, DH (Domestic Helper), and Minsa’y Isang Gamugamo. His devotion to PETA was so complete that he managed to make himself known in Philippine media in only one instance each time. For TV, his role as Neneng in Duplex was regarded as too groundbreaking so that RPN-9 executives, probably worried that the censors might inspect their programming, decided to dissuade all other depictions of gay characters so they could focus on upholding Neneng – and like a true trouper, Topacio delivered. Interestingly, when the Directors Guild of the Philippines Inc. got funding for “indie” productions, Topacio came up with Ded Na si Lolo, adjudged not only the best in the series, but as the Filipino movie worthy of sending to the Oscar competition for Best Foreign Language Film. Based on Topacio’s experience of family wakes, Ded Na si Lolo necessarily had a gay character, played by Neneng’s successor, Roderick Paulate.

11011In a real sense, PETA-BFI provided its own set of lessons for members who started out as talents trained for the people’s theater. Even those who had passed on left indelible marks – Soxie Topacio with his fluid, cinematically staged plays and rambunctious characters in various performing arts media; and Johven Velasco, with a long list of trainees including award-winning performers, and an impressive record of scholarship on theater, film, and TV at the University of the Philippines. Those who passed on in a different sense, by migrating abroad, continue to demonstrate the lessons they accumulated. Evelyn Vargas-Knaebel supplements the efforts of her husband in promoting Philippine indie films in foreign venues. Her husband, Martial Knaebel, is Director of the Fribourg International Film Festival, formerly the Third-World Film Festival, in Switzerland. Beth Mondragon Williams brought her experience in CMEP (as grants-person and video director) to her job as large-scale show producer and fundraiser in Australia. Louie Pascasio left for the US and is now pursuing a Ph.D. in mass communication while teaching mass communication theory and production and participating in Circa Pintig, Chicago’s Fil-Am theater company.

11011The members who remain Philippine-based followed and expanded on the lessons and examples bequeathed by their predecessors and mentors. Mae Quesada-Medina joined PETA-BFI while doing a stint for another TV drama anthology, Dear Teacher, directed by Ishmael Bernal. Her participation peaked as the executive producer of Petabisyon. Avic Ilagan branched out to audiovisual productions for various activist NGOs, along with a stint, like Johven Velasco’s, at a local university’s film scholarship and instruction program. Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil responded to PETA-BFI’s traumatic experience with funding shortages by resolving to explore mainstream TV and film setups, with the objective of disseminating the PETA-BFI ideal to wider audiences. This while confronting the media industry’s limitations and exploiting their potentials, which she managed as director for Maalaala Mo Kaya and Pira-Pirasong Pangarap and as manager for Star Cinema’s children’s films and GMA-7’s News and Public Affairs programs. When digital technology arrived and enabled everyone to create and distribute content more easily, financially and technically speaking, she opted to venture into self-produced independent filmmaking – the first PETA talent to immerse actively in this mode of practice. The only effort by another PETA member that came close to a “personal” production outfit would be Brocka’s Cinemanila, which only managed to put out four films during the director’s mid-1970s comeback. Ongkeko-Marfil’s Erasto Productions and Erasto Films have the same number of titles, with more projects in the pipeline. An even newer area of exploration is new media, which Ongkeko-Marfil is also exploring as PETA pioneer, via her recently launched website Pelikulove (https://www.pelikulove.com/).

Specialized Training, Awards and Demise

The first scriptwriting workshop was held at the Philippine High School for the Arts in Mount Makiling, Los Baños, Laguna. Ricardo Lee acted as facilitator for the original materials, while Rene Villanueva and Velasco took on the materials adapted from the stage. There were participants from various theater groups and regional partners, including George de Jesus and Bundo Deoma from Negros, and PETA’s Liza Magtoto. The second Writing for Television Workshop was supported by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and was facilitated by Rene Villanueva. Avic Ilagan also re-collected a season-long TV anthology titled Handog ng PETA, directed by the PETA-BFI members plus PETA veterans. This TV anthology was essentially composed of televisual adaptations of past PETA productions. This became the culminating activity of the BFI workshop participants who, in effect, added TV production skills to their stage expertise.

11011The first major directing workshop was held at the UP Film Center in cooperation with the Cultural Center of the Philippines through the office of Rowena Concepcion. Soxie Topacio and Lito Tiongson participated, while Lino Brocka, Joel Lamangan, Lutgardo Labad, and Peque Gallaga were invited as guest lecturers. The second batch of workshops was held in cooperation with the Mowelfund Film Institute, with Ishmael Bernal lecturing on directing, Amado Lacuesta on scriptwriting, Manolo Abaya on cinematography, Jaime Fabregas on musical scoring, Peque Gallaga on production design, Noel Clemente on sound, and Nick Deocampo on film theory.

11011PETA-BFI’s Handog ng Peta and Petabisyon series, its Children’s Television Program Sige Sali Ka Na, and its Telesine specials won awards from various recognition bodies. By the end of the millennium, however, PETA-BFI stopped producing any more programs. Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil explains:

While we were all focused on this newfound creativity, we found the managerial and financial requirements to survive the industry too daunting. We couldn’t break the rules because, in fact, we disagreed with the rules. Perhaps another time, a new strategy could be found to conquer the medium…. For this particular period, victory was giving birth to programs that fulfilled the needs of that particular time as well as in giving birth to another generation of practitioners who would carry and implement the vision at their own time and place and hopefully pass it on to others as well. (Samson, et al.)

11011The call for PETA-BFI would be to recognize the ongoing transformation of mass media, with TV merely as the transitional medium and the internet as an even more challenging option and, so far, the ultimate destination. The internet promises to be the next major area of confluence and contention, directly responsible for the decrease in profitability of the so-called analogue media: print, film and TV – although these have been undergoing digital transformations as well. Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil, who had stints in Second Golden Age film projects as well as the TV-dominated digital-era productions, took to heart the lesson learned from the revival of Balintataw and made sure to develop a CMEP-type marketing strategy for her projects, starting with Boses (2008) and continuing through Lakbay2Love (2016). She kept away from new film productions in order to set up Pelikulove, still at its initial stage but aiming to be a women-centered website that provides content resembling the PETA package: films, trainings, coverage, and, as a tribute to theater, plays on video, starting with its coverage of the political play Indigo Child, a story based on martial law, written by Rody Vera and staged by Jose Estrella. Unlike previous approaches (e.g., Avellana’s Portrait of the Artist as Filipino), the ideal represented by Indigo Child retains the integrity of the play while simultaneously maximizing the strength of cinema, such as its ability to tear down the fourth wall to facilitate intimacy with its audience. Online distribution is also part of Indigo Child’s future trajectory.

11011The democratic nature of new media (the academic term for the internet) is its strength, since those without financial resources could register and post their material and have the same chance as major corporate players at attracting public attention. But the same democratic nature is also its weakness, since it would be relatively easy for the malicious minded, including hackers, to spoil people’s interactions to push whatever motive they might have. In this case, Joel Lamangan’s insight on performance comes to mind:

11011Acting is not the monopoly of so-called stars or actors in the industry. For ordinary citizens – as long as it’s their personal stories and they’re familiar with the emotions, the conflicts, that are being narrated, even more if they’re the main characters of the story and if they’re convinced by the resolution that the story wishes to uphold, because they experienced it – like the material I directed for Petabisyon, a story from Davao about urban-poor folk who fought back, got killed or arrested – all the actors were Davaoeños – they knew the story, the life, so it was so easy for them. I didn’t have the heart to teach them. I could only adjust what they were doing, for the medium. (Phone interview translated to English, conducted by E.O. Marfil, September 4, 2017)

11011Perhaps the most useful insight, as far as the broadcast and film training and application unit within a theater association is concerned, would be the concept of reciprocal integration. Mass media possess the technological advantages of streamlining human exertion (one only needs a single staging of a filmed event), perfecting the presentation even after production via editing, graphic enhancement, and sound and music effects, and then providing reproducible material that could be marketed everywhere simultaneously, even abroad, to ensure bigger returns for the equivalent investment in a stage play. On the other hand, theater is capable of harnessing individuals and challenging them to perform at their peak capacity, usually with an unpredictable ensemble and an approach that resists atomizing or focusing on only one specialized element to the exclusion of everything else. So it makes perfect sense for PETA to start with the stage, then move on to mass media, especially considering that at both ends of the process are the people. They provide the raw material for the research that gets turned into plays, which are then refined and presented in media, and then returned back also to the people, as the audience this time. PETA-BFI, during its existence, performed as the conduit by which a nation was able to witness, assess, and critique itself. The ending of the PETA-BFI narrative is open, and a passage from A Continuing Narrative on Philippine Theatre might provide us with some realistic insights for moving forward:

…the vision to use “theater’s offsprings” of television and film to bring forth a national theater of cultural and social significance to the people, to give a country a name and a soul through the stories of its children,… would find fruition… for a time, but sadly thwarted as well in the end, first by the dictates of one man, later through the dictates of an industry. But it would be far from the truth to say that these efforts were in vain. PETA has also grown and learned through these difficult and trying years, undaunted in making its voice heard, uncompromising in its conviction and principles. Many Filipinos from the city to remote barrios have seen and heard the stories and been touched by the fire of this vision (Samson, et al.)

Note

[1] I must clarify that I have not found any definitive first-hand proof of this claim, beyond the account of old-timers.

Leave a comment | tags: History | posted in Book

March 22, 2022

Appendix: An Archival Summary of the Gregorio Fernandez Filmography

By Joel David

This stand-alone entry is intended to provide additional information for the draft of an article titled “A Missing Installation in the Philippine Pantheon.” Barring further discoveries or corrections, the Internet Movie Database record on Gregorio Fernandez provides entries in three categories: as director, as actor, and as writer. The website’s information on the productions of LVN Pictures is fairly accurate, possibly a result of the close supervision by filmmaker Mike de Leon, grandson of the founder Narcisa vda. de Leon, over the family studio’s legacy. Since the lists are grouped according to decreasing number of output, we find only two credits for Fernandez’s writing (one of which, Higit sa Lahat, is still available), and several credits as actor. Nearly half of his acting credits, in fact, were for his own films: in one instance, despite his name appearing after those of the other stars, he was actually one of the lead actors in Kontrabando. One of the films, Carmen (1941, uncredited in IMDb but confirmed in June 2023 by James de la Rosa), was also Fernandez-directed. In all, Fernandez participated in over 60 film projects, with 15 of them in dual capacity as either actor or writer.

11011Malvarosa (my transcription here) may be the closest to a complete Fernandez film, although several others do not suffer significantly from missing portions. The following are the IMDb-listed works attributed to Fernandez, arranged in chronological order, with additional information on his other roles in the projects as well as their availability and state of completion (where no directorial credit is indicated, the entry should be understood as made by Fernandez):

As actor (all pre-1937 films were directed by Jose Nepomuceno for Malayan Movies, with Hot Kisses, Ang Lumang Simbahan, and Ligaw na Bulaklak listed as silent): Hot Kisses and The Filipino Woman (1927); Ang Lumang Simbahan [The Old Church] (1928); Ang Anak sa Ligaw [Child Out of Wedlock] (1930); Ang Lihim ni Bathala [The Secret of the Pagan God] and Moro Pirates (1931); Ligaw na Bulaklak [Wild Flowers] (1932); Ang Kumpisalan at ang Batas [The Confessional and the Law] (dir. Rod Avlas, Filippine Productions, 1937); Taong Demonyo [Demonic Person] (dir. Tor Villano, Filippine Productions, 1937).

As actor and/or director: Asahar at Kabaong [Wreath and Coffin] (also as actor, Filippine Productions, 1937); Celia at Balagtas [Celia and Balagtas] (Excelsior Films, 1938); Ang Magsasampaguita [The Sampaguita Vendor] (Sampaguita Pictures, 1939); Tatlong Pagkabirhen [Three Virgins] (X’Otic Films, 1939); Palaboy ng Dios [God’s Vagrant] (as actor, dir. Eduardo de Castro, X’Otic Films, 1939); Takip-Silim [Nightfall] (as actor, dir. Don Dano, Sampaguita Pictures, 1939); Colegiala [Female Coed] (as actor, dir. Eduardo de Castro, Sampaguita Pictures, 1940); Katarungan [Justice] and Señorita [Mademoiselle] (also as actor, both Sampaguita Pictures, 1940); Princesita [Little Princess] and Carmen (also as actor, Sampaguita Pictures, 1941); Principeng Hindi Tumatawa [The Prince Who Never Laughed] (as actor, dir. Manuel Conde, LVN Pictures, 1946).

11011All films in the preceding lists are considered lost. The following lists will indicate Fernandez’s participation (aside from directing) and will also indicate whether copies, or excerpts, are available:

LVN Pictures productions

• Dalawang Daigdig [Two Worlds] (also as actor; 1946)
• Garrison 13 (also as actor; 1946)
• Ang Lalaki [The Man] (1947)
• Miss Philippines (also as actor; 1947) – video transfer available
• Krus na Bituin [Cross-Shaped Star] (1948)
• P 1,000 Kagandahan [Thousand-Peso Beauty] (also as actor; 1948) – short entry; video transfer available
• Puting Bantayog [White Monument] (also as actor; 1948)
• Capas (also as actor; 1949) – video transfer available
• Florante at Laura [Florante and Laura] (as actor; dir. Vicente Salumbides, 1949) – video transfer available
• Hen. Gregorio del Pilar [General Gregorio del Pilar] (1949)
• Kampanang Ginto [Golden Bell] (1949)
• Candaba (1950)
• Kontrabando [Contraband] (also as actor; 1950) – video transfer available
• Pagtutuus [Reckoning] (1950)
• Bayan o Pag-ibig [Country or Love] (1951)
• Dugo sa Dugo [Blood to Blood] (1951)
• Bohemyo [Bohemian] (1952)
• Rodrigo de Villa (also as story writer; 1952) – video transfer available
• Dagohoy (1953) – video excerpt available
• Philippine Navy (1953)
• Squatters (1953) – video transfer available
• Prinsipe Teñoso [Prince Teñoso] (1954) – remastered copy available
• Singsing na Tanso [Silver Ring] (1954) – video excerpt available
• Dalagang Taring [Cranky Maiden] (1955)
• Higit sa Lahat [Most of All] (also as scriptwriter; 1955) – video transfer available
• Gintong Pangarap [Golden Dream] (1956)
• Luksang Tagumpay [Mournful Victory] (1956) – video transfer available, missing final sequences
• Medalyong Perlas [Pearl Necklace] (segment “Kapalaran” [“Fate”]; other segments dir. Lamberto V. Avellana & F.H. Constantino; 1956)
• Hukom Roldan [Judge Roldan] (1957) – video transfer available
• Sampung Libong Pisong Pag-ibig [Ten Thousand-Peso Romance] (1957) – video transfer available
• Ana Maria (1958)
• Ay Pepita! [Oh Pepita!] (1958)
• Casa Grande [Grand Dwelling] (segment “Gerilyang Patpat” [“Skinny Guerrilla”]; other segments dir. Manuel Conde & F.H. Constantino; 1958)
• Malvarosa [Geranium] (1958) – remastered copy available
• Panagimpan [Daydream] (1959)
• Awit ng mga Dukha [Song of the Dispossessed] (1960)
• Emily (1960) – video excerpt available
• Kung Ako’y Mahal Mo [If You Love Me] (1960) – video transfer available

Post-LVN Pictures productions

• Dugo at Luha [Blood and Tears] (Premiere Productions, 1961)
• The Macapagal Story (MML Productions, 1963)
• Ang Nasasakdal! [The Defendant!] (Kamagong Films, 1966)
• Daing [Dried Fish] (Tower Productions, 1971)

Availability and contact info: A summary of the available works of Fernandez, all from LVN, is as follows: Miss Philippines (1947); Isang Libong Pisong Kagandahan (1948); Capas (1949); Kontrabando (1950); Rodrigo de Villa (1952); Dagohoy (1953, excerpted along with Singsing na Tanso & Lou Salvador Sr.’s Doce Pares [both 1954]); Squatters (1953); Singsing na Tanso (1954, excerpted along with Dagohoy [1953] & Lou Salvador Sr.’s Doce Pares [1954]); Prinsipe Teñoso (1954); Higit sa Lahat (1955); Luksang Tagumpay (1956, missing final sequences); 10,000 Pisong Pag-ibig (1957); Hukom Roldan (1957); Malvarosa (1958); Emily (1960, excerpts); and Kung Ako’y Mahal Mo (1960). Video material may be found at Mike de Leon’s Citizen Jake pages (on either YouTube or Vimeo). Remastered and subtitled copies of Prinsipe Teñoso and Malvarosa may be ordered from the Facebook page of ABS-CBN Film Restoration, while the YouTube page of ABS-CBN Star Cinema occasionally posts censored copies of the organization’s collection.

End of Appendix

Leave a comment | tags: Auteurs | posted in Golden Ages

March 10, 2022

The Political Is Personal

By Joel David

“Marcos and Memory: The Past in Our Future”
Sheila Coronel
2022 Adrian E. Cristobal Lecture

One curious development, still within the first quarter of the third year of a history-changing global pandemic, is that the audiovisual material which most Filipino netizens are burring over at the moment is expectedly streaming, but it’s neither a film nor a TV series. It’s the latest installment of the decade-plus Adrian E. Cristobal Lecture Series, sponsored by the Writers Union of the Philippines. Titled “Marcos and Memory: The Past in Our Future,” the material promised topical urgency in the wake of the so-far certain possibility of the Marcos family recapturing the seat of power that their patriarch, Ferdinand Sr., occupied for over two decades and refused to let go until he was expelled by a popular uprising.

11011The Marcos strategy – proffering the only son instead of his smarter sisters – resonates with the Catholicized culture’s belief in a messiah sent by a stern father to point the way to salvation; it also dodges the gender association with the still-alive and possibly already-daft Imelda, notorious during her heyday for her tackily excessive shopping sprees and hatred of anything that reminded her of how dirt-poor she used to be. This is enhanced by the likelihood that the sisters may be in charge of their father’s plundered billions, with Imee exposed when her grandchildren’s names were listed as beneficiaries in the Pandora Papers leakage in 2021, and side reports of the ongoing Credit Suisse scandal reminding readers that the Marcos couple were some of the bank’s most infamous confidential depositors.

Portions of the pseudonymous contracts drawn up with Credit Suisse by the Marcos couple. From Raissa Robles, “How the Law Caught Up with the Philippines’ Imelda Marcos and Her Stolen Millions,” South China Morning Post (November 17, 2018).

11011The Marcos campaign has proved particularly divisive for the generation that was able to participate in the anti-dictatorship movement that became an inexorable force when oppositionist-in-exile Benigno S. Aquino Jr. was assassinated upon his return to the country in August 1983. Those who count themselves as keepers of the democratic flame lament that later generations have been miseducated and incapable of the intelligence and strength of character to resist the Marcoses’ brazen attempt to launder their ill-gotten wealth, if not add a few billions more. A number of people who reversed course point to the post-Marcos administrations’ failure in preventing the reassumption of political influence of sectors that Marcos had started to marginalize, specifically the old oligarchy and the church (exempting pro-US neocolonial compradors, of which even Marcos strove to depict himself as one).

The Marcos regime: at the start (1965 presidential campaign) and at the end (1986 people-power uprising). From “Marcos and Memory,” courtesy of Sheila Coronel.

11011Most people invested in the issue would have picked one or the other position to uphold; a select few would have rejected both. Sheila Coronel, Toni Stabile Professor of Professional Practice in Investigative Journalism at Columbia University, performed the most unexpected act of deconstruction imaginable, by placing herself in both camps in order to explain why the Marcosist phenomenon is more deeply entrenched than we think, and why in order to confront it, we must begin by confronting ourselves. The premise of her lecture turns inside-out the self-righteous tendency to regard the support for the Marcoses as our Other, a monstrosity that only needs to be identified so it can be successfully resisted.

Sheila Coronel with her father, lawyer Antonio Coronel. From “Marcos and Memory,” courtesy of Sheila Coronel.

11011“If Marcos has such a hold on our collective imagination, it is in part because of the lies and half-truths he and his courtiers have told over and over again until they were accepted as fact,” Coronel leads off. “The Marcoses have been at this since 1935…. The rewriting of history didn’t begin after the fall [of the regime in 1986].”[1] Coronel then proceeds to recall how her own father, a well-known lawyer, defended individuals accused of acting on behalf of the martial-law administration. “He teased me about my objections to his clients but not to the shoes and dresses his lawyer’s fees bought me.”

11011The level of familiarity with which Coronel spells out her argument paradoxically provides her with an authority missing in those of us who profess to stand apart from the loyalty and devotion that the Marcoses inspire. (Essential disclosure: Coronel was a classmate and campus-journalism colleague during my first undergraduate program at the national university – and those of us who closely observed her could already see her capacity for ambitious, reflexive, research-based writing; her many global distinctions since then confirmed her determination to use her gifts in the service of the least-privileged among us.)

11011Toward the end of her narrative-driven account, she shared her recurrent nightmare of repeatedly attempting to write but with her pen failing to generate any ink. This is the point where she prescribes a call to action. Accepting the worst qualities that the Marcoses represent as an essential component of the Philippine character could easily result in our quiescence, if not despair. On the contrary, Coronel maintains, “resisting normalization means resisting disempowering narratives.”

11011It would be pointless to continue finding fault with whoever we believe should have been responsible for ensuring that the Marcoses’ record of atrocities and abominations be inscribed in the country’s educational curriculum, but just to make our terms clear (and affirm Coronel’s point): our historians and popular-culture artists have done everything they could to set the record down, even when the Marcos patriarch was still around. Coronel’s text (available both as a live recording and as a published transcription [2]) suggests ways in refining, if not redefining, the Marcos narrative, and if the present trend persists, it will soon be time to designate our younger subjects to take charge of fixing the mess that their elders left them in.

Notes

First published March 6, 2022, in The FilAm; reprinted in May 2022 issue ofThe FilAm: Newsmagazine Serving Filipino Americans in New York.

[1] I thought of going over Roland Barthes’s 1957 text Mythologies (trans. Annette Lavers, New York: Noonday, 1972) to check if he had any suggestions on how to “read” the delivery of a lecture. He didn’t cover the topic, but I came up with something more useful: “Myth on the Right” (150-56), which for some reason I completely forgot after thinking it would be applicable in discussing the then-recently deposed Marcos dictatorship. As part of a section titled Myth Today (as opposed to the book’s eponymous primary section), Barthes describes myth as being “statistically” on the right, and enumerates seven rhetorical forms that typify bourgeois myth, all fascinating but too complicated to bring up here. The first property he mentions, for example, is inoculation, “which consists in admitting the accidental evil of a class-bound institution the better to conceal its principal evil” (151). The succeeding figures are: the privation of History; identification; tautology; neither-norism; the quantification of quality; and the statement of fact.

[2] Still on the matter of approaches to evaluating a lecture, all the academic discussions I could find dealt with transcriptions rather than with audiovisual material; I look forward to more balanced coverage now that streaming websites have made available some of the more famous recordings by prominent thinkers of the recent past. Regarding “Marcos and Memory,” which was delivered live at the Facebook page of the Unyon ng mga Manunulat ng Pilipinas, the recording has been uploaded on the organization’s YouTube page, along with preliminary material and subsequent Q&A exchanges. Coronel’s draft, on the other hand, was reprinted in Rappler as well as in Positively Filipino, MindaNews (with a Cebuano translation), and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (which Coronel founded). The audio recording of the lecture has also been posted on the PCIJ’s Spotify channel.

Leave a comment | tags: Commentaries | posted in Politics

November 28, 2021

Addendum for “Critic in Academe”

By Joel David

Professor Lumbera died in September 2021, a few months before he could turn 90. The whole country mourned for him, if we were to go by the combined simulacra of traditional and new media. That ought to be more than enough for anyone’s legacy, and before everything else, I ought to acknowledge that he deserved all the accolades pertaining to his role as teacher of literature, through which he influenced several generations of national university students. I cannot pretend to have full competence in evaluating the musical librettos and books of poetry on which part of his literary legacy rested, but I do have a passing acquaintance with his critical output as well as his exploits as film administrator, scholar, and critic.

11011While I was pursuing my graduate studies in the US, he was declared a Magsaysay Award winner. A few acquaintances tried ribbing me by claiming that the interview I conducted contributed significantly to a favorable evaluation by the jurors of his nomination. I had no way of finding out for sure, but I felt that even without it, he would have won anyway because of his prior record as author and activist.

11011I was foreign-based again, this time in the country where I was striving for tenure via the more rigorous global process, when I found out he was declared a recipient of the Order of National Artists of the Philippines. I had a longish personal short list of fellow citizens who I expected to place way before he did, and when Carlo J. Caparas, who was being excluded by previous winners led by Lumbera, complained that the decision-making process was dominated by an academic in-group, I felt that Caparas’s points deserved to be addressed, even if he did not deserve the Order.

11011I will raise just two related issues, one regarding Lumbera’s administration of the University of the Philippines Film Center (the springboard for the aforementioned interview) and the other regarding his role as academic adviser. Upon my return from US graduate school, I was appointed to the same position Lumbera held – also the position that was being prepared beforehand for Ishmael Bernal if only the latter had not suddenly been cut down by an aneurysm. Why was Lumbera replaced if he had certain sufficient qualifications, specifically as founding member of the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino and as author of books honored for their film scholarship?

11011Because he refused to recognize the attachment of the center to an academic program, effectively depriving the national university’s film students of access to facilities and equipment, not to mention a sizable collection of funds from film screenings and theater rentals. He parroted the canard that only the UPFC deserved to offer film courses and thereby allowed the institution to operate independently, with a lot of controversial practices by its officials, duly noted in the records of the university administration’s human resources office. Even when I was in charge, it attempted to solicit a million-dollar donation of equipment from the Japanese government on its own – which finally provided the singular opportunity for university officials to advocate for its abolition and irrevocable merger with the film program.

11011To his credit, Lumbera supported the merger, but this indicated a larger problem by then, one where he claimed to be either bird or beast depending not on whose side he was interacting with, but on which side was gaining the upper hand. I saw him only once since my return to Pinas in the early aughts, and thought that my disquietude that time came from his inability to recognize me. Which was unlikely, however, since I was forewarned by my faculty mentor, then also my supervisor, that he’d been suffering from memory loss. An acquaintance whose parent was coping with dementia taught me to watch for signs where the sufferer performs the markers of recognition but only comes alive when she encounters someone she actually recognizes.

11011The mentor I mentioned, Ellen J. Paglinauan, mapped out a strategy for graduate studies for me around the time I interviewed Lumbera. Since all that UP had then was a limited collection of grad-level film subjects mostly at the College of Mass Communication, I could major in the interdisciplinary Philippine Studies program and declare film as one of my areas. With MA in hand, I could proceed to a PhD also in film, in an American university via the Fulbright grant. Upon fast-tracking myself and reaching all-but-thesis status, I applied for and got the Fulbright grant, and applied for and got accepted to all the universities I listed as my preference. I necessarily had to specify MA-level studies since I still had to complete my degree, but Ellen assured me I could apply for a change in status before the scholarship commenced.

11011I’d also focused on a specific narratological interest (with inherent sociological potential) throughout my Pinas program. Lumbera was the only member of the faculty that the Phil. Studies coordinator endorsed as thesis adviser for film material, and I of course looked forward to an overlap between my study and his specialization in literature and society. He said he could not understand the first draft of the study proposal I submitted, so I prepared a second. After the third one, he said he’d prefer that I undertake the study of a Pinoy auteur or studio, and I had to explain that I was unprepared for that kind of project; take a few more courses, he said, but I said my coursework was complete and my US grad study program was looming up. Finish your MA there then, he went.

11011I still refused to give up and requested a deferment of my Fulbright program, which the sponsor approved for no more than one sem. Lumbera wouldn’t budge. I finally started the foreign-studies grant as a master’s student, and subsequently got accepted to the doctoral program, with CMC officials instructing me to stay put and apply for a work-study arrangement. This was the most expensive school in the most expensive city in the US, so I had to take out student loans via a guarantor, aside from working for a pittance. The pressures building up in that corner of the world came to a head with twin sets of explosions at the World Trade Center – the first one when I arrived in 1993, and the second one demolishing the structures during the 9/11 attacks. The study proposal that got me accepted to the PhD program (as one of four out of a few hundred applicants) and invited by Robert Sklar to be his dissertation advisee was exactly the same submission that Lumbera insisted on turning down. It formed the basis of several articles and a book that film scholars from all over seemed capable of comprehending.

11011I knew I was suffering from some potentially serious psychological issues during my foreign grad studies but I wagered that these were linked to the locale, and for the most part I was right: they dissipated when I finally departed from the school, office, city, and country that dominated my existence for nearly a decade. That was how I knew, after seeing Lumbera again, that I would be adding to my list of must-avoids. I’d already resolved early on to reject his prescription of writing criticism sans style and disposition – flaunt it if you got it, is my stance. I made sure during my UPFC term that film students should have better opportunities via access to heretofore unavailable resources, before I sought overseas employment to repay my grad-student loans. I also have been making every effort since then to accommodate the topics in which my advisees express interest and demonstrate expertise; I’d conduct any necessary self-study to ensure sufficient competence on my end, and recommend other experts when I feel that the students’ selected materials exceed my grasp. Whatever Bien Lumbera was in these areas of film criticism, policy, and mentorship, I found myself functioning more productively by doing exactly what he would have avoided or refused in the same situation.

11011He was the last to die among my academic advisers, and I hope I’ll never need to point out again that he served as my antipodean figure, the one who showed me what not to do by demonstrating in actual practice how wrong it was. Ellen was diagnosed with cancer after being savagely pilloried for months by faculty whom she had accused of corruption; she told me she was mistaken in asking me to return to Pinas and, as her final counsel, urged me to seek tenure abroad. While Ellen was undergoing treatment, Bob Sklar perished in a vehicular accident while on vacation. Ellen followed my example in resigning, without any prodding from me, from the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, and succumbed to her illness around the same time that my tenure status in Korea was being decided. I may have been first among Pinas profs to clinch the distinction (and maintained for a dozen years before another Pinas citizen finally also acquired tenure in her university), but it was still too late for me to express my gratitude to these two for their letters of recommendation, among other more-essential matters. I was also on the verge of convincing myself that my grad-school traumas were entirely my fault, until the news about Lumbera’s passing enabled me, in his final inadvertent act of kindness, to be less harsh on myself.

Á!

Leave a comment | tags: Profession | posted in Education

SUGGESTED FEATURES

TROUBLE in PARADISE!

⇒ Pinas political film criticism in 3 nasty uploads! – Part 1, “The Problem of Our Critical Approaches”; Part 2, “Toward a More Responsive Critical Practice”; and Appendix, “‘Category E’ Samples” (whatever that means).

Psychology Today

SPECIAL GUEST FEATURE:
The Performances of Nora Aunor
(Order of the National Artist, 2022)
& Her Contemporaries

by Jojo Devera
(Facebook posts to May 2023;
click pic to access)

⇒ My only millennial-era review of an Aunor film: Adolfo Borinaga Alix Jr.’s Kontrabida (so far unreleased!)
⇒ Read as well my Nora Aunor obituary (definitely not the last time she’ll be mentioned!)

STILL AVAILABLE!
(Click pic to order)

Read the script @ Kritika Kultura
or the storyline here.
Here’s a review in Jump Cut,
another in Plaridel, and
the latest (translated) in Pelikula.

“Many of [JD’s] writings explore transgressive or subversive cinema, such as his tribute to Manila by Night, a film banned by the Marcos regime for its vivid depiction of the city’s underworld” – “8 Scholars & Critics Expanding Our Understanding of Culture” (Ezvid Wiki editorial, Aug. 25, 2020).

REALLY NOW
• Who can we blame for dislodging Citizen Kane from its #1 perch? (or I wish better trolls could find me)
(Click pic to open)

⇒ More fascinating shit in this Fil(m)ipiniana listing

SPECIAL LISTS
• Film auteurs, play directors, & book authors
• Experimental Cinema of the Philippines (article format)
• CCP Encyclopedia entries
• National Midweek articles

BOOKS exclusively ON THIS BLOG
(Click pic to open)

⇒ Did I say “books”? All right: Writing Pinas Film Commentary

FUN READ
• Barretto family scandal (ca. 2019)
(Click pic to open)

ABS-CBNNews

⇒ More titillations in Remarks section

COMMEMORATION
• Anita Linda (1942-2020) – with never-before-known anecdotes!
(Click pic to open)

GONE TOO SOON (both at 60)….
• Sisters-in-law & gifted performers – Jaclyn Jose (“Bold in Heaven”); Cherie Gil (“Artist in a Hurry”)

From MaCherieAmour page

⇒ More tributes in Remembrances

REVIEW
• “2 Guys,” an originally censored commentary on Avatar!
(Click pic to open)

⇒ More reviews in, where else, Reviews

CATFIGHTS
• “Are you just another Noranian / Marcosian / gossip writer / anti-left basher / smut peddler in intellectual disguise?”

⇒ More scrapes in Selected Exchanges

ANOTHER BOOK exclusively ON THIS BLOG
(Click pic to open)

⇒ More titles in Books

THIS BLOG (& Me)
• How to Use Ámauteurish!
• Reviews & Recommendations
• Joel Who?
• Marcos & the Movies
• Movie Labor

OMG call the CHASTITY POLICE!
• Review of Erotica Manila: Foursome (as if one weren’t enough) – with no complaints about its subject matter, SMHx4
(Click pic nervously to open)

IN a JIFFY (or 2 or –)
• Longest and shortest films reviewed: 6+ hours – Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012); vs. 1.5 minutes – “Balot” (2023), Gigil Agency’s viral cola ad (with English subs!)
(Click pic to open)

⇒ More recent reviews in Remarks

THESE BLOGS (for Me)
• Recommended blogs, Facebook pages & groups, video channels, and historical websites

⇒ The complete list has been moved to the blogpost that was originally an introduction to this sidebar feature.

DOVIE BEAMS LOVE CHILD Exists!
• An intro to her raunchy Marcos’ Lovey Dovie performance, with jaw-dropping updates!
(Click pic to open – then pray for forgiveness, you incorrigible you)

⇒ More clickbait in Extras

BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW…
• That Ámauteurish! is pronounced “\ám-\o-′tərish” (says I);
• That it’s a coinage that mashes up auteur & amateur; and
• That if you misspell the blog name, you get something else.

⇒ More useless info in the Abouts section.

Á!