Category Archives: Book

January 10, 2017

Times Journal interview

In 1991, a few months after The National Pastime was published and a few weeks after it was launched, I was interviewed for a now-defunct daily, the Times Journal. The session was a one-shot two-hour exchange that took place at the office of what was then the Film Department (now the Film Institute) of the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication. Not all the points I wished to raise about film criticism came out, but then the purpose of the exercise (arranged by Anvil Publishing) was to publicize the book rather than raise issues.

tj-interview

Distinguishing the Film Critic from the Reviewer
Vanessa B. Ira

Since I grew up reading film reviews before the much-endorsed literary classics, it became my lifelong obsession to find out just what “film reviewers” are. They analyze current movies, fine, but if this were so, where do the “film critics” come in? What is a film “reviewer” and what is a film “critic”?

11011A call from Joel David, University of the Philippines film professor and author of a new book of “over 50 reviews” called The National Pastime, allowed for either the validation or demolition of personal guesses, observations, and biases. Since I was sure I’d never be the same after an authority set straight my thinking on the matter, I scribbled some of these views, as they say, for posterity.

11011I repeat, the following definitions are “pre-Joel David,” and do not at all reflect his views or opinions:

11011Film reviewers use the “I” more than the film critic – draw your own conclusions from here. The word for film critics is “intense,” the words for film reviewers are “casually passionate” (especially when they’re doing the worst of the worst Regal movies).

11011The film critics’ language takes some getting used to (“putative,” “proferred,” “decontextualizes”) while the film reviewers’ is like, well, ya know, like this. Film critics are name-droppers, film reviewers are “phrase-coiners.”

11011Film critics are long-distance runners, film reviewers are quick-writes. Film reviewers have more fun and it shows, film critics may have fun doing what they’re doing but refuse to show it. Film reviewers write for moviegoers while film critics write for film critics and film students. Film critics are “teacher-types” while film reviewers are “student-types.”

11011To be sure, I read the distinguished professor’s (there, I sound like a critic) book before the interview. I did not wish to go out there in UP territory lambasting film “critics” or “reviewers” only to find out that Joel David was one or the other. To be sure too, I asked him point-blank what he calls himself.

11011“I prefer the badge of honor [to be called a] film critic,” David answered my question.

11011From there, he distinguished the reviewer from the critic.

11011“The more serious of film students would probably appreciate critics’ writings more,” David said. “Then again, reviews and criticisms serve different purposes. Reviews show how a person responded to a film so there is this tendency to become personalistic. There is also the tendency for reviewers to get known.”

11011A critic, on the other hand, owes it to himself to be critical of his own subjectivity. Ideas matter more than any reference to the personal. As a critic, one has the option to “defer judgment.” In a way, one must humble oneself.

11011If one were to draw two extremes, David, explained, reviewing is to journalism as criticism is to film theory and the application thereof. So it is that there are more expectations for film critics to have some sort of a film education.

11011The last point was particularly intriguing. I had always wondered how local film critics felt about treating in all seriousness an industry which generally refuses to take itself seriously. In short, isn’t a painstakingly written critique of Pido Dida much ado about nothing? Absurd?

11011Joel David came alive and caused us to unexpectedly veer away from the original topic of the interview. From thereon, we talked about the film critics in our society. The professor lamented that some local reviewers make their analyses using Hollywood standards. This isn’t practical in a nation that cannot afford slick-looking movies.

11011“We’re asking Filipino reviewers not to question in the traditional way,” David said. “Because if you do, you’ll wind up condemning the taste of the masses. We cannot rely purely on aesthetics.”

11011The goal is to understand Filipino culture and society even better by turning to different approaches in evaluating our films. It works this way: You don’t, for instance, write that “Maging Sino Ka Man is a commercial film that teams up the komiks queen Sharon [Cuneta] with the number one action star Robin [Padilla]. She screams, he hardly talks, just grunts.”

11011The way of the (local) critic is to take note of the last few box-office hits and compare them with this latest one. What do they have in common?

11011The way of the critic is to note that Maging Sino Ka Man and Pido Dida have leading men who are poles apart from their leading ladies in character and in looks. That they have politicians’ kids – Kris Aquino and Sharon Cuneta – carrying the films. What does this say then about showbiz and politics in this country? How do these affect the moviegoing habits of the Pinoy?

11011“Then too, critics should be aware of the aesthetics of poverty,” David said. “It’s a matter of their compensating in other areas such as storytelling, subject matter, and treatment.”

11011Readers of Joel David’s collection of reviews will recognize the critic’s standards. The reviews in The National Pastime: Contemporary Cinema were written over a ten-year period, since the time David was graduated from UP with a second degree in Film.

11011“I was supposed to cover film press previews,” he recalled his earlier days. “But because I was usually late for the events, I’d end up reviewing the movies.”

11011The officers of the Manunuri [ng Pelikulang Pilipino, or the Filipino Film Critics Circle] liked David’s reviews so much that they invited him to join.

11011“Of all the local critics,” David said, “I admire Bien Lumbera the most. He came at a time culture, not to mention film, was not taken seriously. He came at a time when the criteria for judging cultural pieces were Western-oriented. But Lumbera rose above that.

11011“He came up with the insight that one way of understanding Tagalog films is by relating them to traditional forms of Pinoy entertainment such as the zarzuela and bodabil.”

11011Whenever he thinks of Lumbera, David realizes that his own struggle wasn’t as momentous. David and his colleagues from the recently formed Young Critics Circle come at a time when Filipinos are conscious of defining their identity.

11011Said David: “We may be semi-confused, but we also have to accept that we are still young culturally. It’s really a matter of determining who we are.”

11011Isn’t it ironic, I asked, that as the rest of the world is gearing itself for life in the so-called Global Village, here we are, turning inward, and perhaps even defensive about anything not Filipino?

11011“Not really,” David said. “If we were to compete in international film festivals, for example, we would stand out by showing what makes us unique from the rest of the world. You become interesting to the foreign crowd that way.”

11011Speaking of filmmaking, does a good critic necessarily make a good movie maker?

11011“We owe it to ourselves to at least know how to make films, and to actually make them, so we don’t just tear other people’s films apart in our reviews.”

11011But does this hold true for that other kind of film judge – the film “reviewer”? Find out as soon as we discover ones willing to speak for their sort.

[First published March 12, 1991, in Times Journal]

Comments Off on Times Journal interview | tags: Profession | posted in Book

March 25, 2016

Grains & Flickers

By Joel David

Article (with updates and corrections – see endnotes) that appeared in the “Revolution across Generations” section of Remembering/Rethinking EDSA (ed. JPaul S. Manzanilla and Caroline S. Hau, Mandaluyong City: Anvil, 2016), pp. 172-87. The book itself won the Best Anthology prize of the National Book Awards from the Manila Critics Circle, administered by the National Book Development Board. Kindly purchase your full copy via Amazon or the Anvil Publishing website. To jump to later sections, please click here for:

• Personal as Political;
• Cultural Politics;
• Daughter Rising;
• ECP in Focus: Alternative Screenings;
• ECP in Focus: Archives;
• ECP in Focus: Education;
• ECP in Focus: Funding;
• ECP in Focus: International Film Festival;
• ECP in Focus: Production;
• ECP in Focus: Ratings for Tax Rebates;
• ECP in Focus: Support Activities;
• Way of All Flesh; and
• Sources, Dedication, & Notes.

Remembering - Rethinking EDSA

No sane academic would argue against the prevailing consensus that the Marcos dictatorship, as a socio-economic experiment, had proved unsuccessful, if not downright catastrophic. The irony is that among other major Asian countries, the Philippines had been alone in effectively suffering for nothing. All the other ASEAN members, more or less following the example of Korea, emerged as fast-developing economies during or immediately after their authoritarian ordeals. Koreans, in fact, have proved so grateful for the legacy of Park Chung-hee, Ferdinand Marcos’s counterpart, that they enabled his daughter to become the first female President in their own still mostly patriarchal system. Lee Kuan Yew, for his part, has remained influential decades after the restoration of democracy to Singapore, and has taken upon himself the task of criticizing the Philippines for its refusal to return to an authoritarian arrangement as a developmental strategy.

11011Over a quarter-century since the ouster of the Marcoses, the present has brought what many commentators worryingly describe as a mellowing of the Filipinos’ perception of the havoc the couple had wreaked on the country. Per this logic, Pinoys supposedly have short memories, or are inherently masochistic or manipulable, or are simply incapable of determining what would be best or worst for them. The same critics would also be the first to acknowledge that most presidencies since that of Ferdinand Marcos have ranged from unexceptional to awful, and therefore these observers unknowingly trip over themselves in the pro-people march they believe they are in step with: if we hold, for our people’s sake, that most post-Marcos Pinoy presidents have similarly betrayed the people’s trust, would it not be possible to accept that the people are just as capable of perceiving this and exercising their judgment by way of voting back to power the same entities that they had earlier spurned, in effect telling the succeeding oligarchs that the latter are no better, if not outright worse, than the Marcoses?

11011I certainly would be horrified at the prospect of Imelda Marcos or her son being installed as Chief Executive – yet she was precisely the person I voted for, during the only time she ran as President (and the last time I exercised my right to vote). She certainly had a snowball in hell’s chance of winning, but since the satirically motivated University of the Philippines professors’ attempt to nominate perennial nuisance candidate Pascual Racuyal had fizzled during the snap elections that ousted her husband, I figured that no other nuisance would be as flamboyant and annoying as our own Iron Butterfly; and if no one else ever voted for her, then my own ballot would serve, however quixotically, as a voice in the wilderness, heralding not the arrival of any savior, but the impossibility (since confirmed, to my mind) of finding one.

11011My own mellowness toward the martial-law years has evolved differently. When I ultimately felt myself caught up in the wave of diasporic Pinoy labor, I thought this was the very worst long-term economic legacy bequeathed by the Marcos presidency. What had been intended as a stop-gap measure (the same way it was deployed in Korea – where, aptly enough, my OFW-ness eventually led me) had become the Philippines’ primary source of income and growth. Then I started seeing first-hand how overseas employers were being won over by whatever specific package of social skills and work ethic that Filipinos had grown up with, and I found myself grateful that the home country remained a nicer place to return to than if it had been ravaged by the type of industrialization that would have boosted standard-issue national development. That plus our taken-for-granted near-total press freedom would ensure for us (assuming our luck holds out) that, however belatedly we embark on the path of growth, we would never be subject to the machinations that require sufficient obfuscation in order for dictatorships, transnational interests, foreign-based religions, and other self-interested parties to implement their agenda.

Personal as Political

The manner in which I arrived at this latter-day position vis-à-vis the Marcos dictatorship was foreshadowed by the lessons I drew from my direct interaction with the period. As a high-school and subsequently a college student at the University of the Philippines, I had early on admired and later emulated the senior students who were committed to the activist cause of criticizing and mobilizing against the Marcos presidency, later the martial-law regime. Momentous events such as the First Quarter Storm and the Diliman Commune filtered down to my level of awareness not via my disapproving though sympathetic parents, but through my firebrand uncle, a scholar at the elite Ateneo de Manila University, for whom they were acting as guardians. I’d had enough of an early association with activist organizations so that when martial law was declared, my mother woke me up to inform me that she had buried my Little Red Book and other paraphernalia in the backyard, and wanted to ensure that I had no other seditious materials tucked away elsewhere.

11011An intense dalliance with evangelical conversion and missionary preparation made me feel then that I had wasted my early college years, but my return to activism provided me with the readiness to recognize that full orthodox-Marxist commitment entailed a similar suspension of critical and humane judgment, a reliance on faith – in leaders, in organizations, in Machiavellian methods, in a promised form of government, and in an unchanging conception of progressivity. When I realized that such a volatile combination of ideals could result in unwelcome tragedy (described by an elderly colleague as “necessary sacrifices” toward the attainment of revolutionary triumph), I determined that I would never be able to abide such a cost. A bus full of solicitous and comradely soldiers, on a provincial trip I took, drove the point home even more urgently: I would not want these people coming to harm, and I would be unable to refuse mourning them as intensely as I had mourned the death-in-action of an activist acquaintance of mine. The people being served, the working class being upheld, would include the soldier, the jailer, the policeman, the executioner, even if they had been tasked to carry out the basest interests of the state. How that principle can be realized I had no clue about – my introduction to Michel Foucault’s ideas would arrive later – although I had to contend with the fact that the institutional Left as I knew it would never stand for it, just as organized religion would never allow for the possibility of an otherwise undeniably godless universe.

11011The requisites of everyday survival bore down on me almost immediately afterward, circa the late 1970s. Armed with a bachelor’s degree and an extensive record in what is still known as committed journalism, I found that the only doors that I could open were those of publications willing to accept freelance contributions for little better than a hundred pesos or so each. To play safe, I avoided the political and economic analyses that I had focused on as a student journalist, and turned to cultural reportage. Eventually one of these periodicals, a monthly magazine, hired me, but the media grind of observing deadlines, negotiating with data sources, jockeying with editors, and jostling with fellow writers took its toll. In two years I resigned and was again in search of employment, and the only media-related institution actively seeking interested applicants happened to be the newly launched Marcos film institution, the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines.

11011The phenomenon of anti-Marcos individuals eventually working for a government institution was such a distinctive commonplace that most activists then were convinced that, if they succeeded as underground figures and survived the dangers of incarceration, they would eventually be “rehabilitated” in one of the several government think-tanks of the period, starting with the University of the Philippines-based Presidential Center for Advanced Studies, and might even be deployed to one of the more people-oriented agencies such as the the one for housing (where my uncle, among others, wound up); they could attempt to maintain their integrity by teaching at the national university instead – which again was in fact still just one more government entity. If not then to death or arrest in armed struggle, or to opting out and climbing the corporate ladder or migrating abroad or living off an inheritance or wealthy spouse, all remaining anti-government roads led to the same profoundly ironic destination: government service.

ecp-id

Cultural Politics

I was most fully aware of the paradox I had allowed myself to stumble into, despite the fact that I never reached the point of being arrested and forced to join government, when I was scheduled to be interviewed for my security clearance. I had just by then met the late Maita Gomez, a former socialite and beauty queen who had joined the Philippine underground and who years later agreed to undergo interrogation as part of the condition for her resurfacing. I would probably never be able to mimic the authority and confidence with which she responded, but I certainly could make use of the sharp logic she used. So when the same question, “Can you identify some of the people you associated with?” came up, I paraphrased her answer as best as I could: “Everyone, including me – we all used aliases that we regularly changed for our mutual protection. If I recall any of those names right now, they would no longer be the same as they were when I knew them.” Although Maita said that that answer had sufficed in her case, I was still surprised when my own interviewers nodded right afterward and signed my clearance forthwith. For an institution being run by the Marcoses’ eldest child! (By the time an acquaintance told me he believed I had sold him and his friends out, I was capable of formulating my own useful reply: “The fact that you’re still around [and unstoppable in your idiocy, I wanted to add] is proof that you weren’t that important to me or anybody else.”)

11011Right upon reporting for work, I was introduced to the major fissure that would define how we would function and why the institution (from the perspective of outsiders) would take such weird directions. The institution was the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, formally defined as an umbrella organization that would function as a support agency for the local film industry. The activity we were preparing for was the Manila International Film Festival, which the ECP would support but would refuse to be affiliated with. The personnel of the ECP’s public relations department, where I was head writer, were on detail from the National Media Production Center, just as a few other personnel were from the dreaded National Intelligence Security Agency. The key to our understanding of how the different forces interacted was in observing Marcos family politics, primarily the tumultuous relationship between the two Imeldas (mother and daughter, the latter nicknamed Imee) and the claims they made on Ferdinand Senior, the omniscient and omnipotent martial-law patriarch.

11011Hence the ECP’s repudiation of the MIFF reflected Imee’s refusal to be associated with the vulgarities and excesses of her mother, although as NMPC employees under the directorship of Gregorio Cendaña (an Imelda protégé), we had not much of an option except to work as much for the international film festival as for the ECP itself. MIFF work, in fact, was more intensive, requiring several late-night and occasionally overnight sessions. During one of these all-nighters, a strong tremor hit the city, and everyone instinctively rushed to the windows of the Philippine International Convention Center to see what had happened at the nearby construction project, the Manila Film Center. By then we were used to unusual spectacles such as full-grown coconut trees materializing overnight at the vast parking lot that both buildings shared. The post-tremor vision, however, was something that anyone who had seen it would remember for the rest of her life: workers were scrambling down the ladders leaning on the Parthenon-inspired structure as well as scurrying down the Odessa-like steps surrounding it, like panic-stricken insects pouring out of an abruptly distressed anthill.[1]

11011The notoriety of the government’s response would thereafter epitomize the Marcos regime’s gross mishandling of workers’ welfare, with victims of the collapsed scaffolding paying the highest price for the construction’s timely completion. Those trapped but still alive in the quick-drying cement had their limbs amputated, while those who had died were buried under further layers. Up to the present, certain pro-Marcos apologists occasionally affirm the official line that the tragedy could not have been as extensive as the few hundreds alleged by the opposition. Yet the visual evidence that we had witnessed, confirmed by the account of an elderly security guard (who later inexplicably disappeared), was apparently sufficient to alarm Imee Marcos, who was easing into her role as Director-General of the ECP. Prior to moving our offices from the convention center to the new building, she (not Imelda, as erroneously and illogically reported in book accounts) insisted on performing a cañao, a native exorcism ritual.[2]

11011Urban legends abounded regarding the building. Various staff members reported uncanny sightings of men who looked like construction-site peons – not unexpected from the excitable youthful minds of star-struck theater and office assistants. But when the Imelda associate in charge of the project was driving in Tagaytay and died upon crashing into a tree, conversation dwelled not so much on the fact that she was with her alleged paramour (another prominent and married Marcos official), but rather that she supposedly swerved to avoid colliding with a sudden apparition of spectral laborers. The account first surfaced as a report in Veritas, a now-defunct opposition newsmagazine published by the Catholic Church; the article was anonymously written, but some of us in the public relations department recognized the style as belonging to Eddie Pacheco, Imee’s then-recently resigned (and now recently deceased) speech writer.

Daughter Rising

The Experimental Cinema of the Philippines flourished for over two years. It had been earlier launched, with much fanfare, in bare form and with a different name as one of the several agencies to be run by Imelda Romualdez Marcos. In a surprise twist, on January 29, 1982, Ferdinand Marcos signed Executive Order 770 creating the ECP, effectively overriding the earlier institution and handing over its functions to his daughter, Imee. The process of its formation was transparent enough, so that the most prominent film artists (who were opposition in association and practice) provided advice; the most vocal Marcos critic among them, Lino Brocka, hailed the choice of Imee in one of his rare local interviews.

11011The ECP thrived for the nearly three years that Imee Marcos took active charge of its operations. The intra-familial intrigue that centered on her – the kidnapping and rescue of her then-boyfriend, the man who had married and subsequently separated from Aurora Pijuan, a Miss International title-holder much admired for her exceptional beauty – was followed closely within the organization, with a concomitant celebration when Tommy Manotoc finally came out, as it were, with her in an official function. Imee’s insistence on her personal preferences, even to the point of contravening her parents, was consistent with her lifestyle, which could be best described as bohemian – at least as far as her understandably harassed security circle could accommodate it, and which has most likely never been seen before or since in any Philippine presidential family circle.

11011Her participation in small theater productions and enrollment at the University of the Philippines, circa late ’70s, were socially acceptable enough to be covered in media. (She and I in fact were classmates once, although as a then-aspiring activist I had no inkling that I would eventually be working for her.) Among the several first-hand accounts I remember from friends, her late-night food trips to gang-ridden Chinatown and closed-door pot sessions with artists made her a fascinating subject. She would occasionally walk around in extremely informal garb and spout the semi-obscene lingo exclusively associated that time with gay men (who were its acknowledged source), sex workers, and transgressive artists. Her reputation for intelligent discourse has not diminished through the years, and in fact was enhanced upon her post-EDSA return to public official duties, sharply contrasting with the behavior and character of subsequent presidential children.

11011At this point I venture to interject a further measure of the loss suffered by the country’s failed authoritarian experiment. Again the basis for comparison is Korea, whose dictator, Park Chung-hee, had a meet-and-greet with Ferdinand Marcos during the 1966 convention of the SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, predecessor of the ASEAN), where Park allegedly felt slighted by Marcos’s condescending attitude. Park’s assassination in 1979, preceding Marcos’s ignominious death in exile by a decade, was followed by even more rapid economic development for his already highly industrialized country, in contrast with the several traumatic years of negative growth that immediately succeeded the Marcos era in the Philippines. Hence while Park Geun Hye, Chung-hee’s daughter, eventually emerged as the strongest contender to her country’s highest elective position, Imee Marcos could only hope to ride as far as the discontent of the Filipino population with successive regimes could propel her and the other surviving Marcoses back to power.

11011Yet the irony in this situation is that, while Park Geun Hye could only maintain (and succeed with) a conservative political position, the Marcoses, probably to their own surprise, found themselves taking an increasingly open anti-US position once American officials withdrew support for them and cast their lot with the local opposition. Ferdinand Sr. was a virtual prisoner in Hawaii, refusing treatment for the disease that he knew would eventually kill him; Imelda was hauled off to court and mocked severely enough in public to win sympathy from her jurors; Imee, after returning to the Philippines and upon her election to Congress, sided with a Leftist bloc in criticizing such prevalent US interests as joint military exercises and intellectual property issues.[3] If not for the association with her parents (marked by her upholding of her family’s material interests and exacerbated by her reconciliation with her eccentric, possibly borderline-insane mother), we could probably do worse with the recent turn toward dynasticism in presidential choices than selecting someone with the intelligence of Ferdinand, the charisma of Imelda, the experience of decades in Malacañang, an exposure to global realpolitik, an appreciation of the potency of culture, and a willingness to challenge figures of authority, ranging from her parents to the country’s neocolonial bullies.[4] I would definitely not lift at hand if this, by some fantastic turn of events, were to come to pass; but I would also be unable to look away.

ECP in Focus

A count-our-blessings principle would behoove us to acknowledge the only definite area where Marcos-era government intervention was more positive than otherwise. And once more, the object lesson remains: what a priceless heritage we could have had if the energy, creativity, integrity, and resources of these types of contributions were bestowed on more essential areas of the economy – where future generations could take the cue from their elders and seek, not foreign employment opportunities, but profitable and globally cutting-edge ventures that would position the country as the major Asian player that its pre-Marcos past had promised.

11011Unlike the Marcos regime’s state- or crony-owned monopolies that debilitated the national economy and depleted the dictatorship’s reserves of goodwill, the ECP sought simultaneously to lead by example and provide the necessary material support for local producers to follow suit. It would conduct an annual scriptwriting contest and produce the winning entries; subsidize productions by providing loans for meritorious projects; grant tax rebates on the basis of quality; screen significant local and foreign films in censorship-exempt venues; conduct extensive education and training programs; and preserve existing productions, restoring endangered ones if necessary.

11011The obvious connection of such a conglomeration of functions with the present lies in an occasionally acknowledged point made by historically inclined observers: that when Philippine movie production, along with the country’s few remaining minor industries, collapsed from the pressures of neoliberal globalization during the late-’90s Asian crisis induced by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank’s interventions, the only means by which film was revived was via a close observance, mostly by the private sector, of the ECP strategy. In fact one could provide a checklist (herewith alphabetically arranged) of the aforementioned ECP functions and easily find one or more contemporary counterparts:

Alternative screenings. The ECP’s Alternative Cinema Department was the organization’s most active arm (more impressive considering that videocassettes had not yet proliferated), scheduling daily screenings at the Manila Film Center’s main theater and twin regular theaters, and occasionally at the several classroom-sized screening rooms, where workshops would also be conducted. These venues’ exemption from censorship reached a point where the government revised its film-censorship arm to one that purportedly reviewed films and left the task of regulation up to the producer or distributor. Nevertheless, film artists were able to find sufficient inspiration and organization to mobilize protests, openly supported by the ECP, against the Board of Review for Motion Pictures and Television as an incompatible and conflictive government entity; its chair, Maria Kalaw Katigbak, retaliated by asserting her stature as a direct appointee of the Office of the President, thereby declaring that her office could be abolished only by the President himself. The contemporary venues that partake of the MFC’s censorship-free status would be the two far-less-active government film-exhibition outlets, at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the University of the Philippines Film Institute’s Adarna Theater.

Archives. Then as now, this has been the most difficult operation to maintain, owing to the combustible nature of early celluloid and the deteriorative properties of latter-day stocks. The problem extends to other original forms of media (newsprint and video), all of which conspire to turn Philippine media (and mediated Philippine) history into an increasingly urgent race against the ravages of time and weather. After my personal copies of the ECP’s extensive annual reports (which I had written, aptly in coordination with the Film Archives of the Philippines) were lost to the elements, for example, I could not find copies stored anywhere else. A reconstruction of these basic documents would entail a close surveying of the mostly now-defunct newspapers active during the period – incomplete copies of which were stored in disarray. The other, more vital sources, those of tabloids, were in far worse condition for those attempting to conduct research into the period. The media industry’s recent digital turn has fostered a false sense of archival security among practitioners; they witness the permanence of print or audiovisual material on drives and the electronic cloud and believe that these could outlast analogue versions, when in fact data degradation and corruption occur faster than properly stored celluloid or paper. With increasingly unpredictable global climate conditions, electromagnetic disturbances could conceivably endanger entire swaths of vulnerable data repositories. Whenever possible, analogue storage ought always to be the preferred means, with digital versions serving only as backup and disseminative material.

Education. The ECP envisioned an expansion of its Film Education Department’s workshops to eventually include accreditable college courses, with bachelor’s and graduate degrees to follow. During ECP’s last year, the University of the Philippines announced the country’s first undergraduate degree program in film, a fortuitous preemption of the ECP’s plans, considering how transitory the agency turned out to be. A measure of how innovative the ECP’s officials were can be seen in their response to this development: since I already held a degree from not just the same university but from the mass-communication institute (now college) that offered it, the Director-General’s office granted me the privilege to pursue a second degree in the new major while drawing salary for fulfilling specific assignments – in effect, becoming a working scholar of the agency. Two years later, when I had completed the requirements, I was the country’s first (and only) film degree-holder, with a few other academic distinctions to show for it … but by then the Marcos regime was no longer around, having been ousted by the people-power revolt of February 1986. Another plan, that of introducing film appreciation at earlier school levels, has since then similarly become run-of-the-mill enough to be taken for granted in the country.[5]

Funding. The ECP’s Film Fund Department, responsible for granting subsidies for private producers, suffered from the political favoritism that characterized areas in the organization that were dominated by Marcos’s wife, represented in this case by a Blue Lady whose studio-mogul parents had been associated during the 1960s with the hagiographic film-bios of the Marcos couple’s electoral campaigns. The department’s process of evaluating proposals in terms of their combination of merit plus profitability was honored more in the breach than in the observance, resulting in films that were mostly critically ignored if not panned, and even worse, that failed to recover their producers’ (and ECP’s) investments. The solution, as practiced by contemporary institutions such as Cinemalaya and CinemaOne, was to determine choices on the bases of the results of open scriptwriting contests (see film production listing below), and to subsidize significantly inexpensive (and potentially more profitable) digital productions.

International film festival. The Manila International Film Festival’s editions started with the MFC’s construction disaster and ended with pornographic film screenings – a reprise of the bread-and-circuses tactic exploited by the Marcos presidency during the early-’70s Leftist unrest that preceded the declaration of martial law; just as the earlier sex-film trend bore a term, bomba, drawn from the period, so did the later MIFF editions and post-Imee screenings generate their own descriptor, penekula (a portmanteau comprising “penetration” plus “pelikula”). Even at over a decade old, the privately funded contemporary counterpart, the Cinemanila International Film Festival, cannot hope to attain the MIFF’s top ranking with the global film festival federation – a distinction that, outside of Europe, only Manila had shared with the major film festivals of Cannes, Venice, and Berlin. The current stop-gap solution, already generating its own set of problems, is to enable outstanding local films to join foreign festivals, to the problematic point where local filmmakers can already completely dispense with the need to court the patronage of the Philippine audience. A more noteworthy achievement, showcased in the final still-named MIFF of 1983, was a module of a few dozen Philippine movies selected by a group of experts, of which new 35-mm. prints were processed and subtitled; a few of these entries now stand as the only remaining integral copies available, despite their expected color-fade and vinegar syndrome. A contemporary institutional counterpart effort still has to be realized on the same scale, notwithstanding the significantly more affordable availability of digital technology.[6]

Production. Like the ECP Film Fund, the Film Production function, this one directly under the Office of the Director-General, proved to be unsustainable after two years. However, the impact of this activity continues to be felt to the present. The ECP’s announcement of a scriptwriting contest to determine the choices for full production support created a model that has been regarded since as best practice for institutions with interest in and the capacity for implementing prestige projects and introducing new talent. As proof, its first batch of films, Ishmael Bernal’s Himala and Peque Gallaga’s Oro, Plata, Mata (both from 1982), continue being hailed as successful samples of epic-scale cinema with contrasting values (one current and the other period, one by a veteran and the other by a debuting director, one with the country’s top star and the other with a number of new performers, one socially critical and the other celebratory, etc.). The lessons here may be cautionary in nature: in order to sustain this type of activity (which faltered during its second year of operations and folded up afterward), the ECP should have paced itself more slowly until it had been able to accumulate a pool of sufficiently trained talent, the way that today’s prestige-festival producers draw from the countless film programs and workshops of various universities and academies. On the other hand, the current emphasis on relatively affordable digital media yields to mainstream outfits the privilege of producing big-budget celluloid projects, in effect preempting any possibility for Philippine cinema to return to alternative epic-scale productions.[7]

Ratings for tax rebates. By far the most exemplary and least controversial of the ECP’s departments, the Film Ratings Board only needed to be revived, title and all, and implemented in the present in order to continue servicing local cinema without calling attention to itself, in the exact area, taxation, where the industry has been experiencing greater burden than most other major film capitals around the world. By calibrating the level of tax relief according to a select group’s perception of a film product’s quality, the FRB encourages at least a token measure of production values, and implicitly critiques the proliferation of award-giving bodies by appending a practical advantage to the recognition it provides. Like any workable type of merit-based government support, it remains susceptible to influence-peddling and ideological containment, typically of conservative and middle-brow persuasion. Constant media attention and occasional extensive revaluations may be the best possible way of maintaining the optimal performance – not just of the FRB but of other self-serious canon-building bodies.

Support activities. The MFC provided rental space for several film agencies, not all of them commercially oriented. The Movie Workers Welfare Fund’s Film Institute held office at a basement floor, where it would conduct workshops for super-8mm. production, then screen the results at the ECP Annual Short Film Festival. Upon the ECP’s closure, the “parent” institution, the Cultural Center of the Philippines (the MFC was located in what is still known as the CCP Complex), continued the short-film competition, in what has turned out to be the closest to an unbroken ECP activity. The ECP’s Public Relations Division published Sinemanila, while the Film Ratings Board came up with Filipino Film Review – both of them outlets for articles, reviews, and criticism. Even in mainstream film activity, several titles all the way to 1986, after the ouster of the Marcoses, were ECP-related, either as winners or as finalists in the scriptwriting contest, subsidized projects of the Film Fund, and/or graded productions by the FRB. Personalities associated with the agency made bigger names in various industry, media, and educational capacities after their stint in government.

Way of All Flesh

The ECP was fairly fortunate in not having had to endure the disgrace of being formally shut down or privatized along with the rest of the Marcos-era government agencies and corporations. This occurred through a technicality: upon her election to the Batasang Pambansa (the Marcos-era National Assembly), Imee Marcos decided to focus more intently on her legislative responsibilities and resigned from her ECP position. In order to effect changes in accordance with a different set of interests (mostly associated with international-festival plans, uncensored film screenings, and co-productions with foreign financiers), the ECP was dissolved by presidential decree on September 30, 1985, and a new institution, called the Film Development Foundation of the Philippines, set up in its stead.[8]

11011The same set of core personnel were given the option to remain with the FDFP, although for some of us at the National Media Production Center, production work for the government’s TV station suddenly seemed more attractive after all. How implicated was the NMPC in the raging controversy of the decade – the assassination of Benigno S. Aquino, Jr.? It was responsible for the airport security cameras, which suspiciously turned out blank during the precise date and time that the event took place. A few key personnel, also initially involved with the ECP, resigned during the period between the assassination and the 1986 snap presidential elections. No one doubted the close links between the First Lady and the NMPC director, particularly during periods when Mrs. Marcos would embark on her foreign shopping sprees and we the employees would find our salaries delayed by a few days, sometimes up to a week.

11011Not surprisingly, several familiar faces from the Manila Film Center offices materialized at the people-power barricades of February 1986. The dictatorship, which had continued in practice even after its formal lifting around the time that the ECP was founded, was finally genuinely vanquished. My dreams as student activist had been suddenly realized, with the symbolically afflicted Manila Film Center initially abandoned and presently condemned. I had thought the price to be paid, a suspension of my other set of dreams, this time as cultural activist, might be set down as an updated category of necessary sacrifices. I set out to write the first article declaring the closure of a filmic Golden Age, endeavored to cover the intervening period as its most active film critic, and attempted some continuity with the ECP’s ideals via the UP film program. I had to give up on these aspirations one after another at some later point, but that tale awaits a further telling.

A Note on Sources

Several materials on the Marcos dictatorship, plus a few on the Marcos family’s interventions in Philippine film culture, can now be accessed from online material. A few of this article’s other sources are in Korean-language books and websites, researched and translated for me by Lee Kumchong of the University of Queensland. The article was not intended as a comprehensive summary or a definitive history; such a task needs to be accomplished, but could not be accommodated within the terms of the subjective tone that I’d opted to deploy. I wish to acknowledge the assistance provided by Jo-Ann Q. Maglipon, who had originally directed me to her ECP contacts in addition to freelance opportunities; Nena C. Benigno and Guia P. Yonzon, my ECP supervisors; an online circle comprising Bayani Santos, Jr., Flor Caagusan, Oona Thommes Paredes, Daisy Catherine Mandap, Antonio VA Hilario, Frank Cimatu, Marian Pastor Roces, Ronald Rios, and Gigi de Beaupré, who helped me thresh out the difficulty of being Ma. Imelda “Imee” Marcos; Bliss Cua Lim, who alerted me to the “revival” of the ECP in the so-called contemporary Pinoy indie movement; Ernie de Pedro, Director of the Film Archives section, and Theo Pie, who assisted me with the ECP’s annual reports; and Toby Miller, who introduced me to and instructed me in the concept of cultural policy. To Marilou Diaz-Abaya, who sought to reconcile polarized forces in her work, always aiming true and often succeeding beautifully, this article is dedicated.

Notes since the publication process
of Remembering/Rethinking EDSA

[1] In Marcos Martial Law: Never Again (Mandaluyong City: Anvil, 2016), Raïssa Robles quotes “Abdon Balde Jr., who supplied ready-mix concrete for this project. He suspected that in the rush to complete [sic], cement was poured in sections with insufficient shorings and scaffolding, causing these to collapse in the early morning hours of November 17, 1981” (159). Balde’s explanation overlooks the tremor that hit the city during the said date. The most intensive film coverage of the MIFF, Elliott Stein’s “Manila’s Angels” in Film Comment 19.5 (Sept.-Oct. 1983): pp. 48-55, is also unaware of the cause of the tragedy.

[2] In an interview, Nena C. Benigno, then the Director of the Public Relations Division, said that “Imee refused to occupy the building. ‘Ayokong pumasok diyan! [I don’t want to enter that place!]’ She ordered all these exorcism rites. Or else we would never step in there” (Tats Manahan, “What Lies Beneath,” Rogue [November 2015]: 86-93). For added information on the origins of the Manila Film Center and the agency that would eventually reside in it, see “The Manila National Film Centre,” a 1981 UNESCO Technical Report.

[3] Ruben Carranza, former commissioner with the Presidential Commission on Good Government, explained why the surviving Marcoses harbored resentment toward the US: “they [refused] to pay the $2 billion judgment against them won by 10,000 victims of human-rights violations during the Marcos dictatorship. They were cited in contempt by a US court. [In addition] they were ordered to pay a fine of $100,000 per day for the 10 years between 1995 and 2005 – and counting – that they refused to pay that judgment” (Facebook post, April 10, 2016).

[4] The April 3, 2016, report of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists identified Imee Marcos and her three sons by Tommy Manotoc as associated with offshore shell companies listed in the leaked documents of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. This was in addition to an earlier ICIJ exposé, the 2013 Offshore Leaks Probe, which also revealed Imee Marcos as the beneficiary of a secret trust, Sintra, formed in the British Virgin Islands. The apparent Marcos family strategy was to maintain a clean name for Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in order to enable him to restore the family to political power.

[5] Ward Luarca, Officer-in-Charge of the Film Education Department, took charge of film appreciation and scriptwriting workshops jointly conducted by Rolando Tinio and Pio de Castro III. In a Facebook account, he stated that he “took over the organizing of the Short Film Festival…. Then the series of acting workshops conducted by Laurice Guillen and her group from Actors Company. And also the Film School Board which [Agustin] Hammy Sotto and I organized whose members were from the academe or actual film practitioners who included Gigi [Javier Alfonso] (of the UP film program)…; Manny [Reyes] of the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino [Filipino Film Critics Circle] and De La Salle University; Marilou Diaz-Abaya; Eddie Romero; Fr. [Nicasio] Cruz, SJ; and reps from St. Paul University, Philippine Women’s University, and other schools and institutions. We brought film appreciation sessions to students, of which the ECP Cine Club was the agency to reach them…. To be fair, the bomba [sex-themed] films also benefited us for our salaries and occasional bonuses, when funding stopped after Ninoy’s assassination, and ECP had to be self-funding” (Response to Facebook post of Edward delos Santos Cabagnot, Sept. 26, 2018, 8:40 p.m.).

[6] Since this article was drafted, three types of restoration activities have taken place, all digital in nature. In increasing prolificacy, these would be: international, as typified by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project’s efforts (in coordination with the Film Development Council of the Philippines) for Lino Brocka’s Cannes Film Festival entries; institutional, undertaken mainly by the “Sagip Pelikula” [Save Our Films] program of ABS-CBN Film Archives and Central Digital Lab, for a large proportion of their products as well as works they consider classics; and private initiative, exemplified in the Magsine Tayo! (now-defunct) postings of video collector Jojo Devera and the Citizen Jake collection of Mike de Leon, comprising mostly LVN titles.

[7] While I would hesitate recommending non-commercial blockbuster budgets as a matter of principle, I would recognize that creativity may now extend to the realm of financial sourcing – e.g., foreign co-productions or festival-circuit distributions have proved to be feasible options even in the past, and may be enhanced with more new-millennium options such as internet-based fund-raising or alternative video distribution strategies.

[8] Corrigendum: The print version of this article mistakenly cites the name “Film Development Council of the Philippines,” which is the contemporary incarnation of the FDFP. Many thanks to Ramon Sixto C. Nocon for reminding me of the difference.

Comments Off on Grains & Flickers | tags: Golden Age | posted in Book

January 26, 2016

Book Texts – Manay Revisits Manila by Night

By Joel David

As part of a research project on Ishmael Bernal’s Manila by Night (1980), I drew up a questionnaire for the movie’s lead performer, Bernardo Bernardo. To put it more accurately, Bernardo was one of the movie’s dozen-plus lead performers, since the movie was (and remains) an outstanding achievement in multiple-character film storytelling. I dug deep into what I remembered of the film as a new member of the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino (Filipino film critics circle), which decided to reward the movie with multiple prizes, including best film and, for Bernardo, best actor. Bernardo provided answers that carefully qualified certain long-held assumptions about the film, and shared insights into how groundbreaking his characterization was by triangulating the relationships among the character (Manay), the actor (Bernardo), and the director-scriptwriter (Bernal). Ironically, as he would expound at length in the interview, the stereotyping he faced as a result of his depiction of Manay resulted in his decision to take a break from Philippine theater and media arts. Philippine performing arts endured a long spell without its most successful theater-to-film crossover actor when Bernardo decamped for the US in 2002; there he continued to reap accolades and awards for his stage activities, notably for his direction of and performance in The Romance of Magno Rubio. Also exceptional is Bernardo’s ability to be frank, gregarious, and playful in his interview responses – a throwback to his years as a journalism major and Varsitarian editor-in-chief at the University of Santo Tomas, as well as his later specialization in witticism-laden dinner-theater blockbusters. Since his return he has kept busy onstage and onscreen, with theater roles (including Shakespeare’s Haring Lear) and prominent film projects (last year’s multi-awarded Imbisibol, dir. Lawrence Fajardo); his latest film, Lav Diaz’s Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis, will be competing at the Berlin International Film Festival – where Manila by Night was also originally slated to participate, until it was banned from export by the martial-law censors. He has also been neck-deep in what we might recognize as “legacy” projects, including teaching (at the new MINT College and the University of the Philippines Film Institute) as well as memoir-writing.

Manay, Bea, and mystic

You mentioned on your Facebook page that you and Ricky Lee were consulted by Ishmael Bernal regarding the plotline of Manila by Night (MbN). The final film also includes Ricky, Peque Gallaga, Mel Chionglo, Jorge Arago, Joe Carreon, Toto Belano, and George Sison as “script consultants.” Were you the only MbN performer who participated in conceptualizing the film at this (pre-production) or any other stage?

I was among the last actors to be cast in Manila by Night and, consequently, was not privy to the pre-production discussions regarding the script of the film. However, I did have a meeting prior to the first day of shooting with the film’s production designer Peque Gallaga and film director Ishmael Bernal to discuss the character’s look and to clarify the character arc of Manay Sharon, the gay couturier I was cast to play.

11011Manay, I soon found out, was a self-confessed neurotic and well-intentioned meddler (with a “Rosa Rosal” social-worker complex) who also happens to have a penchant for juggling multiple lovers on the side; and, as written in the script, Manay would not only link the lives of several key denizens of the seamy underbelly of Manila’s nightlife, he would also function in the narrative, in Bernal’s own words, as “the conscience of the city.”

11011Curious, I asked Bernal, “Why a gay character as the conscience of the city?” And Bernal’s breathtakingly direct response was: “Why not?”

11011Queer vision at work; unblinkingly defiant. Spoken like the true conscience of a country in turmoil, during the Martial Law years. (I am now reminded of an article written by Pablo Tariman years later, after the demise of Ishmael Bernal and Lino Brocka, where he quotes Marilou Diaz-Abaya on the artistically incisive roles that two great Filipino film directors Brocka and Bernal had played in Philippine cinema and history. As Diaz-Abaya succinctly stated: “They both made films in the most challenging times and they responded with valor. Their kind of artistic nobility is now dead.” And, of course, they both happened to be gay.)

11011Additionally, Bernal explained that his approach to filming MbN was going to be ensemble-focused and improvisation-driven. And in so many words, Bernal pointed out that Manay Sharon was not going to be a variation of the stereotypical flaming queen then in vogue in Filipino movies. The tenor of the discussion suggested rather strongly that Manay’s character was going to be complex and that a certain gravitas was going to be required.

11011The closest I came to being consulted directly regarding the MbN narrative was during an informal post-production meeting convened by Bernal. He wanted to weigh the pros and cons of scenes that could be “sacrificed” in order to trim MbN to a more suitable running time (eventually, around 2 hours and 30 minutes). Bernal found the film a bit long.

11011Bernal invited script consultant Ricky Lee and I to the informal assessment of the film over coffee at the lobby of the Manila Garden Hotel. I felt so flattered and honored to be sitting with these creative geniuses in a group discussion, I did not dare ask why I was even invited. Still, I have to take some credit for saving one of the crucial scenes of William Martinez. At one point, Bernal announced that he was thinking about editing out the monologue of William Martinez (Alex) – an intoxicated Ode to Manila, delivered during an All Soul’s Day midnight swim along the breakwater of Manila Bay. It was evident on Bernal’s face that he was not particularly fond of William’s acting in that scene.

11011I reminded Bernal that other key characters in the film share their personal “Ode to Manila”; and, that since William’s journey, that of a young man losing his innocence in the dark streets of Manila, was central to the story – it would be important to hear William/Alex’s voice (regardless of the fact that it was dubbed by character actor Dante Castro to give it more, uh, character).

11011Bernal thought about it for a while, with that signature “inscrutable Bernie” expression on his face, and then calmly decided that he would instead trim the scene of Charito Solis with Johnny Wilson. The one he obviously liked – where the loving parents tearfully worry about their troubled son. It provides stark contrast to the scene where Charito and Johnny go on a moral rampage and nearly beat their son Alex to death for taking drugs.

11011Bernal announced he would trim to the quick Charito Solis’s tender but longish monologue about the birth of Alex that concludes that scene. And then, with a dramatic Bernal sigh, he said, “I will deal with Chato [Charito Solis] later.”

Bernal once mentioned that because of the absence of a shooting script, all the scenes in the film were to be improvised, a method he first attempted in Aliw. To what extent did he enact this improvisation? For example – did he provide you with lines or were you allowed to propose dialogue before or during the shoot?

Although it is true that there were no conventional shooting scripts provided, there were definitely scraps of paper on the set with key dialogue for the film character’s objectives for the day. On a typical shoot, with Bernal’s approval, I would ad lib during blocking rehearsals to bookend the philosophical riffs of Manay that Bernal wrote. Bernal understood that this process helped me to give the dialogue a more conversational, spontaneous feel.

11011A striking example of this collaborative improvisation method at work can be seen in the Misericordia Street scene. This was an ambitious, visually complicated tracking shot with long dialogue between the characters as Manay walked Bea (Rio Locsin) and Gaying (Sharon Manabat) home. The movement of the characters and their dialogue had to be timed accurately for continuity. My rehearsed ad libs allowed for timing adjustments as the camera followed us down the Binondo street lined with prostitutes, beggars, funeral parlors, funeral-wreath shops and delivery services, a real-life curbside altar for Catholic streetwalkers, and for a touch of humor, Virgie’s friend Miriam (Aida Carmona), an aging prostitute, haggling with a prospective client about the price of a blowjob while munching on a fried banana.

11011I am convinced that even with the absence of an actual shooting script, all the film’s sequences and key dialogues were very well thought-out in advance. There must have been a lot of pre-prod work because many of the setups tended to be complicated, and the visuals layered with societal references. Consequently, with the meticulous preparation, we were provided with a solid structure that allowed room for improvisation on location.

Was his level of improvisation consistent in the case of the other actors? Meaning, for example, was everyone allowed or encouraged to provide lines or modify their characters’ behavior?

I was not involved in many of the shooting days and may have missed out on some improvisations on the set. But on the other location shoots of MbN that I did visit, the actors stuck pretty much to what was rehearsed, hewing close to the words that Bernal would “feed” the actors. There was hardly any improvisation, although occasional paraphrasing would occur. Usually the adjustments were contextual, depending on the location, situation, or who among the characters were involved.

11011I am inclined to think that Bernal gave me more leeway in improvising lines because of my background in theater and scriptwriting.

The exchanges you had with Kano (Cherie Gil) at Sauna Turko, with Bea (Rio Locsin) in Misericordia, and with Febrero (Orestes Ojeda) in Luneta were detailed, witty, and occasionally philosophical. The standard expectation is for the writer (in this case also the director) to provide some pages for the actors to memorize before the shooting schedule. Was this the case for these specific scenes?

The core elements of the dialogue came from Bernal. Without question, all of the philosophical forays in the MbN scenes were entirely Bernal’s. However, I will shamelessly admit that most of the punchlines in the scenes I was involved with were mine – resulting from my improvisations under the director’s watchful eyes. Sometimes, Bernal would even come up with a “topper” to end a scene that he was already editing in his mind; like, for instance, the Sauna Turko scene.

11011The accidental first encounter of Kano (Cherie Gil) and Manay somehow evolved into something reminiscent of an ironic vaudeville routine with Kano as the “feeder”/straight man and Manay as the comic who delivers the punch lines. What previously began as an exploratory repartee led to a philosophical discussion about “True Love,” done in a single long take; and then, for Bernal’s cherry of a philosophical “topper,” a tighter medium shot favoring Manay saying: “Alam mo yan, ilusyones lang yan. Ang sey nila pag natu-true love daw, gumaganda ang buhay. Pero ako pag umiibig ako, nagkakaputa-puta!” [“You know, it’s all an illusion. They say when you fall in love, life becomes beautiful. But me, when I fall in love, life gets all fucked up!”].

Among the rest of the major characters, only Evita Suarez (Mitch Valdes) was the closest, circumstantially speaking, to Manay. They moved in the same milieu, shared some friends, and displayed literate references in their lines of dialogue. Yet MbN also positions Evita differently. She disparages the working-class men that Manay and his friends prefer, and name-drops the rich and powerful – the types of people that Manay presumably avoids. In the Luneta scene with Febrero, we see a different circle of friends, also non-upper crust but mystics or bohemians. This invests Manay with the ability (not available to any other character) to cross class boundaries. What type of “character background” did Manay possess, and was this background provided by you or by Bernal? For example, was he born rich, did he migrate to the city, and so on; was he intended to resemble people in the Malate circle – Ernest Santiago, for example?

You’re right in saying that Manay has the ability (not available to any other character in the story) to cross class boundaries. Indeed, apart from the fun company of the 1970s “fag hag” Evita, Manay appears to avoid the rich and powerful. I had no scenes with the “sosyal” types even if these moneyed folks would logically be the clientele of Manay’s spacious Malate atelier. As written, Manay was more at home with the people of the streets, the working class, and night creatures.

11011In a telling manner, Bernal did not provide me with a character background. All I had was the sketchiest overview of the plotline. On our first meeting, I was expecting that I would at least be given a complete script for text analysis and character study. There was none. Other than some notes about coloring my hair a lighter tone, shaping my eyebrows, and wearing casually stylish outfits that had to be white, I was pretty much left on my own. It was like “that’s it, we’re done.” I was “It”: As Is, Where Is. Things basically evolved in real time, unfolding as we moved forward.

11011Significantly, Bernal gave me the freedom to cast my personal friends to play my “barkada” [entourage cum confidantes] in the movie. He knew I would be myself, feeling more at home and relaxed in my ensemble scenes with people I really knew. Heeding the director’s orders, I chose longtime friends who weren’t “butch types,” whom a couturier like Manay wouldn’t mind hanging out with, namely choreographer Bobby Ongkiko, character actor Manny Castañeda, and designer Ube Abeleda. Additionally, Bernal threw in a bit player, whose name escapes me,[1] as the designated “alalay” [gofer] – a logical choice since this character also works for Manay as a seamstress in his Malate shop.

11011Now, why would Bernal give me so much freedom? At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I feel it’s because Bernal really knew me. Before Bernal cast me in MbN, we’d been friends for seven years, sharing jokes and drinks and the company of eccentric friends at bohemian watering holes and gay bars (Indios Bravos, Dutch Inn, Coco Banana) and at the Luneta Park – all considered notoriously gay hangouts during the Martial Law years.

11011Maybe Bernal saw in me a reflection of his own or Manay’s personality. That we were actually sisters under the skin, so to speak, with a shared capacity to display barbed “taray” [bitchiness], droll humor, reckless promiscuity, bullheadedness, and irrational distrust of love relationships. Or, maybe he realized I was what he had in mind all along. Maybe. I am reminded of what Hollywood acting coach Larry Moss once said, “90 percent of directing is casting. So, if you cast someone that you believe can do the role, then get out of their way…. Trust your actor” (“Acting Coach Larry Moss,” posted April 13, 2010 on YouTube).

11011I felt Bernal trusted me. I noticed that he was very sparing with words when he was directing me. He only said what was needed; with a lit cigarette between his fingers, he would flick his wrist, to punctuate a directorial phrase such as: “Bernie, too macho” (regarding the New Year scene where I angrily attack Alex outside the Sumpak Gay Bar); or, with arms akimbo while thinking deeply, “it has to be a cathartic cry – of Greek Tragedy proportions” (as a preparation for my nervous breakdown scene outside the funeral parlor).

11011The only time I think I disappointed Bernal as an actor was in my final scene at my atelier when he asked me to go crazy while carrying a small image of the Sto. Niño as a prop. Manay finds religion, I asked myself. This coda follows my climactic breakdown scene at the funeral parlor. I didn’t know where to go from there. Being a fairly well-adjusted queer person at that time, my range of crazy was rather limited. All I could give Bernal was a tired “Sisa” moment with the wild eyes. I heard Bernal mutter: “Ay, hindi siya marunong maloka!” [He does not know how to act crazy!]. I couldn’t. And since the short scene was being shot in a rush, we had to settle for depression.

11011Of course, since that time, my spectrum of crazy has expanded considerably.

Because of your character’s intensive interaction with certain key characters, a few friends suggested to Bernal that Manay might be MbN’s central character (“author’s mouthpiece,” according to one critic during the Urian deliberations). Bernal insisted however that all the characters were of equal importance. Yet there’s also the background story of Bernal picking you out from theater, unlike the other lead actors who were part of the Regal stable – plus possibly a shared nickname (Bernie, for both Bernardo and Bernal). What is your take on this issue of Manay’s centrality in the narrative?

In a sense, I would agree with Bernal’s insistence that “all the characters were of equal importance” because to me, I see all of the characters in MbN as his “mouthpieces” – all aspects of Bernal, if you will, with each character verbalizing Bernal’s varied thoughts on what is seductive and repellent about life in Manila.

11011However, by insisting on the equal importance of all the characters, Bernal could have been deflecting attention from Manay’s role as central character in MbN precisely because he did not want people to perceive Manay as “Bernal’s alter ego.”

11011I must confess that up to now I am convinced that Manay is the alter ego of Bernal – the director/scriptwriter. Bernal was very specific. He told me directly during our first production meeting that this gay character is “the conscience of the city.”

11011Out of all the characters in MbN, Bernal chose Manay to be his inner voice. In the film, Manay chooses to be a guide for the people he cared enough for, ostensibly to lead them toward a sense of what is morally right or wrong. As fleshed out, Manay became a hopeful, helpful, but ultimately helpless guide doomed by his own hubris – blind to his own flaws, he betrays those who fail to meet his expectations, while he himself is eaten up by his own addiction, promiscuity, and lies.

11011Manay was a flawed conscience. But more (Robert) Altmanesque than I expected. Beyond the celebrated Hollywood director’s influence on Bernal’s ensemble-focused and improvisation-driven films, it seems like the two directors share the same thoughts about human behavior. In a tribute to Altman in 2007, a telling insight shared by Robert’s son Michael seemed to resonate strongly with Bernal’s conflicted creation: Manay, the hater of lies. Michael revealed that his father was “not so much a lover of truth as a hater of lies” (David Carr, “A Very Altmanesque Tribute to Altman,” New York Times, February 21, 2007).

11011This Altmanesque thought echoes in Bernal’s Luneta Park scene where Manay betrays the duplicitous Ade/Alma Moreno to Febrero/Orestes Ojeda: “Hoy, hindi ako nagmamalinis, ha? Sa lahat ng ayoko sa tao yung nagsisinungaling. Nanloloko! Aba the minute na magsinungaling sa ’yo kalimutan mo na. Ano ka, loka?… Ano bang klaseng babae yang kabit mo? Saang impyerno mo bang napulot yang putang demonyitang yan?… Talagang sa panahong ito, wala kang mapagkakatiwalaan” [I’m not saying like I’m Mr. Clean, okay? If there’s anything I hate, it’s a two-faced hustler! A liar! The minute a person lies to you, get rid of her. Are you crazy?… What kind of tramp is your lover?… From what hellhole did you dig up that devil of a whore?… I’m pretty sure, these days, there’s no one you can trust].

11011Manay’s lines here practically mirror his more playful caveat to Alex/William during their first tryst: “Alam mo naman ako, nyurotika at tensyonada. Sa lahat ng hindi ko ma-take yung nanloloko at nandadaya, eh. Marami nang masasamang tao sa mundo, huwag na nating dagdagan pa” [You should know that I am neurotic and intense. Of all the things I hate in this world, what I really can’t stand are cheaters and liars. The number of evil people in this world has multiplied, let’s not add ourselves to their numbers].

11011It is tempting to oversimplify and simply risk calling Manay a gay jiminy cricket who is tragically blind to the errors of his own ways. But I think it is more telling of Bernal than Manay that the character seems above reproach and blind to his own flaws. Bernal makes Manay’s promiscuity funny and attractive; his drug addiction unexposed (although Bernal had me behaving more neurotic and looking “increasingly wasted” on screen as my relationship with Alex soured, Manay’s addiction was never shown; by contrast, Virgie, Alex, and even Vanessa were shown indulging in drugs); and, his innate distrust of people coupled with his penchant to manipulate relationships as almost acceptable quirks of a neurotic.

11011Thus, in the Binondo scene, it was as if the blind was leading the blind. When Manay walks Bea and Gaying home, Manay professes in Bernal’s words: “That is the tragedy of my life: lahat nakikita ko. Mga hindi ko dapat makita, nakikita ko. Maski wala namang dapat makita, nakikita ko pa rin. Loka…. Lahat ng tao sa mundo luko-luko, ’di ba? Ang mga mukhang inihaharap nila sa atin, hindi naman yan ang tunay nilang mukha eh, ’di ba?… Maraming mukha ‘yang mga tao…iba yan ng iba, ’di ba? Patong-patong” [I see everything. Things that I shouldn’t see, I see. Even when there’s nothing to see, I see something. Crazy…. All the people in the world are crazy, aren’t they? The faces they confront us with, those aren’t their real faces, right?… People have lots of faces…they keep changing, don’t they?… One on top of the other].

11011Was life overlapping with art? Was Bernal in denial? Only his friends who lived with him would know.

Some critical commentary noted how Bernal was an effective director of women mainly because he insisted that they mimic him (notably in the case of Elizabeth Oropesa). This could have accounted for a critic’s “author’s mouthpiece” comment. Considering that you had played a range of roles, this depiction of a dominant campy character, which hewed close to Bernal’s personality – was this something you consciously modeled on him? For example, did Bernal say outright “I want you to play someone like me?”

There may be some truth in the story that Bernal insisted that his actresses mimic him. I can see Bernal in Charito Solis’s movements (the comically aborted lovemaking with Johnny Wilson), her stage business (the Bernal twist on the Joan Crawford fetish for cleanliness), and the rat-a-tat delivery of her lines, broken by sudden shifts of mood.

11011In my case, Bernal did not say outright, “I want you to play someone like me.” To begin with, we were both “butch” types who have a flair for camping things up for fun. And so that part was a no-brainer. I just intuited that maybe I should copy some of his mannerisms, such as the way he smoked cigarettes and used his arms when making a point. Bernal’s body language was that of an educated person who was proud and sophisticated, controlled; but, during unguarded moments he tended to be effeminate, and a few notches short of verging on the hysterical. I could see me in him.

11011You see, when Bernal gave me his favorite white shirt to wear in the movie, I did not see it as just a kind gesture. Somehow, I thought Bernal wanted me to be him.

Manay came out, as it were, during a time when these types of characters were considered objects of ridicule (dominated by Dolphy, with Roderick Paulate starting to emerge with his Rhoda persona). Manay’s predecessors in film would be two gay characters in Lino Brocka’s films, Eddie Garcia’s character in Tubog sa Ginto and Dolphy’s in Ang Tatay Kong Nanay [My Mother the Father] (plus peripheral characters like Soxie Topacio’s in Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa [Three, Two, One] and Orlando Nadres’s in Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang [Weighed But Found Wanting]). Did you sense anything in Bernal and his friendly rivalry with Lino, where he set out to “improve” on these weak/tragic predecessors by presenting a strong, out gay character for a change?

No idea on this one. It would have been interesting to hear Bernal’s views on Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag [Manila: In the Talons of Light] or even Tubog sa Ginto [Dipped in Gold].

Manay’s most intense non-sexual bonding was with the lesbian couple (Kano and Bea). It’s probably easier to argue from these two, plus Manay’s relationships with straight men (Febrero and Alex), that queerness is the central gender position of MbN. As far as you could tell, did Bernal set out deliberately to create a queer text, or did MbN turn out that way simply because that was the nature of underworld late-night denizens in Philippine urban culture?

When asked whether or not I consider queerness is the central gender position of MbN, I am tempted to echo Bernal’s testy blanket rejoinder about the virtues of queerness: “Why not?”

11011In Bernal’s Manila by night, gay rules. And in this queer world, you can’t take the gay out of the city and you can’t take the city out of the gay. Queerness propels the narrative of MbN. It is Manay – Bernal’s designated conscience of the city – whose queer interests drive him to insinuate himself into people’s lives as the city’s well-intentioned meddler, who takes it upon himself to guide people toward bettering their lives. Ultimately, however, Manay reveals himself to be a flawed conscience, a duplicitous do-gooder who betrays the people he supposedly cares for because they failed to meet his moral standards (from which he appears to be exempt).

11011For the Queen of Denial, drug addiction and infidelity are unforgivable, but the worst sin of all is deceitfulness. After all, Manay does not lie; he just does not tell the truth.

Manay (the character) was also observed – or criticized, by conservative sectors – as promiscuous. Were these elements in the character (a preference for casual sex and straight-identified men, for example) part of Bernal’s personal character?

I was not witness to Bernal’s promiscuity, although I heard interesting stories. We both caught the tail-end of the Free Love Movement of the 1960s and in the relative innocence of the 1970s we weren’t quite ready to give up being Flower Children. I was 33 years old when we filmed MbN. It was the pre-AIDS/HIV period, and we were fearless. And from what I heard, yes, we both liked our straight-identified men.

Your success in performing Manay might have also delimited your prospects in film assignments (as it did Roderick Paulate’s), since a lot of your future significant roles demanded that you use a similar persona. Did this predictability and media stereotyping contribute to your decision to take an extended leave from Philippine performing arts?

For some time, I was doing mostly “macho” straight roles in plays and musicals on stage for theater companies such as Julie Borromeo’s TOP Productions, Lamberto V. Avellana’s Barangay Theater Guild and Zeneida Amador’s Repertory Philippines. After essaying back-to- back butch parts in The King and I, Tatarin [Fertility Ritual], and They’re Playing Our Song, I took on a couple of high-profile gay roles because I felt left out when Lino Brocka cast some of my friends (Soxie Topacio, Larry Leviste, and Orlando Nadres) with Dolphy in Ang Tatay Kong Nanay in 1978.

11011I appeared as Fidel in Orlando Nadres’s Hanggang Dito na Lamang at Maraming Salamat [Only Up to Here and Thank You] with Dennis Roldan (Efren) and Fanny Serrano (Julie) at the Metropolitan Theater under the direction of Mario O’Hara. And, close on its heel, as the outrageous lead role in Boys in the Band Part II, at the Century Park Sheraton – a performance that Bernal caught, where I was flaming enough to burn the ballroom down. My decision to change camps, as it were, proved to be propitious. Within the week, he had MbN’s project coordinator Douglas Quijano call me to tell me that the role of Manay was mine if I was interested. And, after some drama with a take-it-or-leave-it pittance-of-a-talent fee and a subsequent heart-to-heart with Bernal, I took the role.

11011At about this time, some of my theater friends were already expressing their concern that I might get typecast, which was a threat I had avoided for the past six years in theater. I was aware that public perception by the larger mass audience can delimit my prospects for a variety of roles in films, especially after the tabloid brouhaha about my torrid kissing scenes with Orestes Ojeda and William Martinez. Soon after the initial previews of MbN, I sensed stereotyping was rearing its head when film director Maryo J. de los Reyes and scriptwriter Jake Tordesillas kept wooing me to essay another controversial gay role in their next film, Pag-Ibig Ko, Hatiin Niyo [My Love, Please Share]. Not wanting to dip in the same pool twice in a row, I said “No” and the role went to Orlando Nadres. I did not mind. I felt Bernal and I had created something truly special in the queerness of Manay, and I did not want to compete with myself.

11011After I won the Urian Award for Best Actor in the role of Manay, I found myself stereotyped for good. Although Bernal was set on casting me in a complete turnaround role as a macho butcher in Belyas [Belles], a passion project for Jesse Ejercito’s “seven belles” for Seven Star Productions (Chanda Romero, Alma Moreno, Lorna Tolentino, Amy Austria, Daria Ramirez, Beth Bautista, and Elizabeth Oropesa), the film was shelved. Instead, Bernal cast me in a cameo in his next movie, Pabling [Playboy], as a ditzy gay couturier. Other offers for TV and film were predictably for the same persona.

11011Luckily, the era of dinner theater comedies had begun and I appeared in a succession of “sex comedy” hits with Chanda Romero, Gloria Diaz, Pinky de Leon and Cherie Gil. For legit theater, I ended the decade with lead roles in the musical Katy! for Musical Theater Philippines, and La Cage aux Folles for Repertory Philippines. However, due to the economic crisis in the Philippines in the late 1980s, I had to migrate to Singapore to work as artistic project manager for Singapore’s Haw Par Villa Theme Park and lived in the city-state for two years.

11011Upon my return to the Philippines, I found that my gay persona was still in demand. I was cast as the comic nemesis of the Philippines’ Charlie Chaplin, the iconic Dolphy, in the TV sitcom Home along da Riles [Home along the Rails], which was a major hit that ran for 11 years on ABS-CBN Channel 2. This outstanding and profitable partnering with the King of Comedy subsidized my low-paying theater work in Tagalog with Tanghalang Pilipino of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, where I appeared in landmark productions of Noli Me Tangere [Touch Me Not], El Filibusterismo [The Subversive], Kalantiyaw, Mac Malicsi, and Ang Balkonahe [The Balcony], among others.

11011I thought I finally found the formula for a balanced life. Unfortunately, showbiz was assuming a corporate face and it was increasingly being run by suits; and, as a result, overall decisions for productions were being turned over to “creative committees.” Dissatisfied, I left for the US and lived there for twelve years.

The usual motherhood-statement questions: First, would Bernal, in your opinion, still have any importance in today’s digital-independent scene? Why or why not?

Bernal was brilliant. A gifted director and scriptwriter like Bernal would have been awesome in today’s digital-independent scene, liberated from antediluvian constraints. Unstoppable! For me, Bernal’s breathtaking talent for storytelling and creating compelling characters remains unsurpassed. I feel like life simply overtook him. He was going through a low period but he could have bounced back. Easily.

Second, is MbN still significant in a future (which is our present) where there has been increasing acceptance of non-normative lifestyles?

I will sound biased but I remain unapologetic. I believe MbN will remain significant because it is a classic that showcases the formidable creative talents of a film director at his peak. Film may be a product of its time, but MbN is more than just about a city or a particular time. It is more than just queerness. I saw it recently and it still looks and feels contemporary, unlike other films of the ’70s that haven’t aged well. With MbN, Bernal has woven timeless cinematic magic with his unique gift for storytelling and an uncanny ability to create believable, flat-out fascinating characters.

Note

[1] Identified as Jun Macapinlac in Bernardo Bernardo’s July 4, 2016, Facebook query.

Comments Off on Book Texts – Manay Revisits Manila by Night | tags: Book Texts | posted in Book

August 10, 2015

Book Texts: A Pinoy Film Course

By Joel David

Original Digital Edition (2016)
Cover design by Paolo Miguel G. Tiausas
“Bomba” © 2019 by Mina Saha
[Click on pic to enlarge]

The books I’d written as sole author were meant to be read chronologically (according to date of original publication). However, as several undergraduate students and laypersons made clear to me, that kind of effort would require an investment in which they did not (yet?) have the time or effort to commit. Hence I thought of providing Book Texts: A Pinoy Film Course, essentially a select list of recommended articles – not so much a “best of” and more of an appetizer course, pardon the semi-academic pun. This should not be construed as an introduction to Philippine cinema (although I do have a forthcoming book, SINÉ, that attempts to fulfill that function). Neither should it be considered an introduction to Philippine film criticism, or even that evasive creature that we may call “Joel David’s film criticism.” I provided a descriptor in the subtitle, and that ought to sum it up, with emphasis on the first word (cum letter) in “a Pinoy film course.”

11011Each entry is followed by the originating book title, abbreviated as follows: “NP” for The National Pastime (1990), “FV” for Fields of Vision (1995), “WC” for Wages of Cinema (1998), “MT1” for Part I of Millennial Traversals (2015), “MT2” for Part II of Millennial Traversals (2016) [click here for the unified blog entry containing both parts], “MbN” for Manila by Night: A Queer Film Classic (2017), and “AP” for Amauteurish Publishing (current); journal credits include “AJWS” for the Asian Journal of Women’s Studies and “HD” for Humanities Diliman. After the source is the year of publication – not of the collection, but of the article. A short annotation, which may or may not overtly indicate the urgency of reading the article, ends each entry.

11011To access sections without having to scroll downward, please click on any of the following:

• Discourses;
• Autobio;
• Local Reviews (Pre-1990s);
• Local Reviews (1990s);
• Local Reviews (Digital Era);
• Foreign Reviews;

• Non-Film Reviews;
• Commentaries: Pinas;
• Commentaries: Elsewheres;
• Features;
• Interviews; and
• Metacriticism.

National Library of the Philippines CIP Data

David, Joel.
11011Book texts : a Pinoy film course / Joel David. — Original Digital Edition. — Quezon City : Amauteurish Publishing, [2016], © 2016.
11011N/A pages ; N/A cm

11011ISBN 978-621-96191-5-8
110111. Motion pictures — Reviews. 2. Motion pictures — Philippines. III. Philippine essays (English). I. Title.

791.43095991101111011PN1993.71101111011P020200162

US Copyright Office Certificate of Registration:
TXu 2-255-103

Discourses

Essays that look intensively at specific films or at film-intensive issues.

A Second Golden Age (NP 1989). The unexpectedly influential opener of my series of books.
Auteur Criticism: A Non‑Recuperative Reappraisal (WC 1998). A densely involved consideration of the most valuable (or destructive) Western-sourced concept in local film practice; recommended for those who intend to try out production.
Womanliness as (Masculine) Masquerade in Psychoanalytic Film‑Texts (WC 1998). A comparative evaluation of Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980) and Raising Cain (1992) that might be useful for those who intend to look closely into issues of genders and sexualities.
The Multiple‑Character Film Format (WC 1998). An inspection of the complex narrative pattern utilized by Robert Altman in Nashville (1975), a film that set the template not just for similar local texts but also for studio talent-presentation strategies.
The Golden Ages of Philippine Cinema: A Critical Reassessment (MT1 2010). An effort – the first, as far as I can surmise – to critique attempts to valorize filmic Golden Ages, including the one I had written (“A Second Golden Age” – see above).

Autobio

Personal write-ups that could help people understand the writer’s psychology, to dispel any lingering illusion of objectivity.

World’s Shortest Prequel (NP 1990). Or why my writing turned out the way it did, if childhood experience were ever capable of explaining anything.
The Last of Lino (FV 1995). What the death of a major local practitioner signified to someone (like me) who had always regarded his output with some reservation and ambivalence.
Ordinary People: Movie Worker (MT2 1987). A second stint at media freelancing, with the same meager income and a status adjustment from writer to laborer.
A Cultural Policy Experience in Philippine Cinema (WC 1998). In the slipstream of a distinctive degree of cultural patronage, that of a film “support” agency mandated by the Marcos dictatorship.
Small Worm, Big Apple (MT2 2005). Graduate studies (and survival) in New York City, during the eve of 9/11.

Pinoy Film Reviews I – Celluloid (Pre-1990s) Era

The core of any critical practitioner derives from the active consumption of cultural output within an extensive time frame – never an easy or affordable option. This was the period when local film flourished, then floundered, because of the instability wrought by the defeat of the Marcos dictatorship.

Exceptions (NP 1981). A comparative review of Eddie Romero’s Kamakalawa and Mike de Leon’s Kisapmata (both 1981), that still relied on the style-vs.-substance approach.
Down but Not Out (NP 1988). Another comparative review, this time of Francis “Jun” Posadas’s Nektar and Jose “Pepe” Marcos’s Tubusin Mo ng Dugo (both 1988), that looks at genre products with still a nod to issues of formal quality.
Chauvinist’s Nightmare (NP 1987). Mike Relon Makiling’s Kumander Gringa (1987) and why its under-the-radar commercialism allowed it to get away with potshots aimed at a few sacred cows of the time.
O’Hara Strikes Again (NP 1987). Mario O’Hara’s Tatlong Ina, Isang Anak (1987) as a demonstration of its director’s capacity to draw pleasure from formulaic material.
Mellow Drama (NP 1987). An attempt to draw from literary history in reviewing Mel Chionglo’s Paano Kung Wala Ka Na (1987).
Campout (NP 1988). Camp (actually campiness) as a determinant of preference in evaluating Lino Brocka’s Natutulog Pa ang Diyos, Emmanuel H. Borlaza’s Paano Tatakasan ang Bukas?, and Artemio Marquez’s Sa Puso Ko Hahalik ang Mundo (all released in 1988).
After the Revolution (NP 1989). Lino Brocka’s Orapronobis (1989) engendered controversial responses among, predictably, conservative sectors, but even members of the intelligentsia had their misgivings; this review seeks to bridge the differences between the film and its better-intentioned interlocutors.

Pinoy Film Reviews II – Late Celluloid Era (The 1990s)

The film industry recovered after the people-power uprising, enough to recall the Marcos-era glory years and still unaware of the forthcoming storms to be induced by globalization trends, specifically the late-’90s Asian economic crisis and the digital turn in film production.

Persistence of Vision (FV 1990). The culmination of my attempt to describe and uphold an operatic sensibility in cinema, via Chito Roño’s Bakit Kay Tagal ng Sandali? (1990).
Indigenous Ingenuity (FV 1990). My effort at foregrounding my personal participation in Gil Portes’s Andrea, Paano Ba ang Maging Isang Ina? (1990) resulted in censorship by an editor who should have known better, and in expulsion from the publication (without the courtesy of a letter informing me of the decision).
Head Held High (FV 1990). A review that welcomed a successful turn in Lino Brocka’s Gumapang Ka sa Lusak (1990), from his usual separation of box-office projects from political statements, to a film that demonstrated that contradictory elements need not be jettisoned from one’s intended undertaking.
Family Affairs (FV 1990). The emergence of a politically sponsored star and her genuinely talented sidekick is interrogated in this review of Tony Cruz’s Pido Dida (Sabay Tayo) (1990).
Men and Myths (FV 1990). A state-of-the-genre look at the action film (with dramatic and comedic elements adding extra spice) as embodied in Pepe Marcos’s Bala at Rosaryo (1990).
I.O.U. (FV 1990). One of the occasional progressive trends that emerged in Pinoy action cinema (see “Head Held High” earlier), evaluated alongside the movie’s director-star persona, in Jesus Jose’s (a.k.a. Lito Lapid’s) Kahit Singko Hindi Ko Babayaran ang Buhay Mo (1990).
Movable Fists (FV 1990). Further possible twists in the treatment of action material, in Junn P. Cabreira’s Walang Awa Kung Pumatay (1990), Francis (Jun) Posadas’s Iisa-Isahin Ko Kayo (1990), and Mauro Gia Samonte’s Apoy sa Lupang Hinirang (1990).
Sedulously Cebuano (FV 1990). The last pre-digital Cebuano-language movie, Junn P. Cabreira’s Eh … Kasi … Bisaya! (1990), deserved a commemoration all its own.
Black & Blue & Red (MT1 1992). In the tradition of short-format filmmakers who graduate to full-length projects, Raymond Red’s Bayani (1992) acquired the additional cache of representing a movement with messianic-artist claims.

Pinoy Film Reviews III – Digital Era

By the end of the first decade of the new millennium, local production had gone totally digital – unknowingly foreshadowing what more developed countries would eventually be doing.

Heaven in Mind (MT1 2004). The new Pinay and her journey, tracked and celebrated in Joel Lamangan’s Sabel (2004).
Survivor’s Guilt (MT1 2009). Why the personal is social, and how a filmic discourse on trauma such as Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil’s Boses (2009) can provide insight and entertainment without compromising one for the other.
Sighs and Whispers (MT1 2009). The fullness of the aesthetic potential of the debut film, as emblematized by Armando Lao’s Biyaheng Lupa (2009).
On the Edge (MT1 2013). Pinoy action cinema redux, featuring Erik Matti’s On the Job (2013).
A Desire Named Oscar (MT1 2013). Among other distinctions, 2013 was the year that three countries submitted films featuring Filipino characters for Oscar consideration: Singapore with Anthony Chen’s Ilo Ilo, UK with Sean Ellis’s Metro Manila, and the Philippines with Hannah Espia’s Transit.
Antonio Luna’s Fall and Rise (MT1 2015). The historical epic, and a misunderstood (anti)hero, are recuperated in Jerrold Tarog’s Heneral Luna (2015).
Ice with a Face (MT1 2016). Jaclyn Jose’s Cannes-winning performance provides (among many other things) a starting point in assessing Brillante Ma. Mendoza’s new level of achievement in Ma’ Rosa (2016).

Foreign Film Reviews

I maintain that an appreciation of foreign cinema should mainly assist in understanding local products, not the other way around; my grad-school exposure to a wide array of world cinema and film styles further affirmed this conviction.

Form and Function (MT1 1987). Mike Newell’s Silent Voice (a.k.a. Amazing Grace and Chuck) and Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (both 1987) provide insights on the necessary specificities of war themes in contemporary cinema.
…And the First Shall Be the Last (MT1 1990). A typically Catholic neurosis in pop culture, where an allegedly heretical text turns out to be ultimately pro-religion (though not always pro-Church), obtains in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).
Wet Noodles (MT1 2009). Orientalism by a fellow Oriental? Something to ponder in Trần Anh Hùng’s I Come with the Rain (2009).
Two Guys, While Watching Avatar (MT1 2009). Plato as stand-up comedian, an approach that once more horrified square print editors, in my review of James Cameron’s all-time money-maker Avatar (2009).
Hit in the (Multi)Plexus (MT1 2011). A Korean blockbuster, Lee Han’s Wan-deuk-i [Punch] (2011), based on a novel with a Vietnamese migrant-wife character, whose nationality in the movie was changed to Pinay.

Non-Film Reviews

Film is a language, as are all other forms of cultural expression. Appreciating one specific form while rejecting all others is a sign that the critic urgently needs to move forward.

Home Sweet Home (NP 1987). A theater presentation, Elsa Martinez Coscolluela’s In My Father’s House (1987), which was originally submitted as a film proposal.
Time and Again (AJWS 2009). Feminism as a means of engaging with salient philosophical debates on time and imagination, via Bliss Cua Lim’s essential volume Translating Time (2009).
Disorder & Constant Sorrow (MT2 2012). The martial-law era recounted as family saga, from the experiences of the Quimpo clan, in Subversive Lives (2012).
The Novel Pinoy Novel (MT2 2011). Language, memory, imagination, identity – all deliriously blended into an unforgettable experience, in Ricky Lee’s Si Amapola sa 65 na Kabanata (2011).
Seeds in the Garden of Letters (HD 2017). The once and future prospects for Philippine film studies, compiled in Patrick F. Campos’s monumental volume The End of National Cinema (2016).

Commentaries: Pinas

Film is culture, and therefore culture impinges on film, directly or otherwise. I originally envisioned these types of mini-editorials, breathers from the frankly debilitating rigors of film reviewing, as potential frameworks for future studies, and I’ve in fact managed to expand some of them in later material.

People-Power Cinema (NP 1987). A year after the February 1986 uprising that restored democratic processes, the film industry had yet to fully recover – the films that commemorated the event were paradoxically unpopular.
Studious Studios (NP 1988). A short (numerological) reconsideration of the political economy of the Philippine studio system.
Shooting Crap (FV 1990). The controversial toilet-humor trend and its alleged purveyor, Joey de Leon; or why the carnivalesque can’t always be dismissed out of hand.
Fleshmongering (FV 1990). Just shallow proof that some amateurish film “authority” wasn’t first at historicizing these trends, and even then misnaming them left and right despite the proliferation of available texts and witnesses.
Firmament Occupation (FV 1990). A redefinition of the much-maligned star system, to take into account the implication of the word “system.”
Blues Hit Parade (FV 1990). A pathologization of producers’ obsession with blockbusters.

Commentaries: Elsewheres

No film issues get raised in these “non-Pinas” articles, which I guess buttresses the point I’m making; but it also helps any kind of reader to know that the writer proceeds from a specialization in cinema.

A New Role for Korea (MT2 2009). Or how the Philippines could have turned out, given a different set of historical circumstances.
Crescent Tense (MT2 2009). The massacre in Maguindanao as an index of long-simmering Muslim-Christian tensions.
Asian Casanovas (MT2 2010). “Cablinasian” Tiger Woods, Korean Lee Byung-hun, and Pinoy Manny Pacquiao as randy celebs, positioned at the intersection of race and gender.
The Sins of the Fathers (MT2 2010). The ending of innocence, courtesy of duly certified shepherds of the flock.

Features

Pinoy film people, all in the mainstream. No apologies on my end.

Love Was the Drug (MT2 2009). The introduction to the anthology left behind by the genuinely beautiful Johven Velasco.
The Dolphy Conundrum (MT2 2012). The difficulty of ascertaining whether the country’s top comedian deserved to be honored as a National Artist.
Manoy Takes His Leave (AP 2019). The sudden departure of another extremely productive talent and the many treasurable samples he left behind.
The Carnal Moral of a Brutal Miracle (MT2 2012). The insufficiently appreciated Marilou Diaz-Abaya, thoroughly prepared (as always) for the end of life.
A National Artist We Deserve (MT2 2014). Nora Aunor, deprived of an honor that belonged to her before anyone else.

Interviews

A more intensive type of feature, where the voice of the subject is foregrounded.

Perseverance in a Neglected Dimension (MT2 1984). The best soundperson by most accounts, Ramon Reyes, in an originally projected first of a series on film craftspeople.
The Critic as Creator (MT2 1984). Pio de Castro III on the set of Soltero (1984).
The Fantasy World of Rey de la Cruz (MT2 1986). The campy, taste-defiant star builder in his element.
Critic in Academe (MT2 1990). Pioneering Pinoy film critic Bienvenido Lumbera, holding forth on style, sensibility, and ethics. With an update: Addendum for “Critic in Academe” (Ama 2021)
Manay Revisits Manila by Night (Ama 2017). Bernardo Bernardo pondering his life in theater and film, and the movie that shifted his artistic and professional participation to global high-gear.

Metacriticism

The criticism of film criticism, from “scientific” to “social” approaches.

Film Critics Speak (FV 1990). A statement on the condition of film criticism in the country.
Ten Best Filipino Films Up to 1990 (FV 1990). An exercise in canon-building, too successful for its own good.
One-Shot Awards Ceremony (FV 1991). A declaration of all-time achievements in specific categories – an idle exercise, admittedly, but also one that immerses in the pleasures of film evaluation.
Levels of Independence (MT2 1990). The genealogy of what might actually constitute “independent” local cinema.
Pinoy Filmfests ca. 2013 (MT1 2013). A look at the sudden proliferation of film festivals during the era of digital film production, with focus on the first Sineng Pambansa entries (specifically Peque Gallaga & Lore Reyes’s Sonata, Joel Lamangan’s Lihis, and Elwood Perez’s Otso).
A Lover’s Polemic (MT2 2013). Film criticism in the Philippines.

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July 3, 2015

Millennial Traversals – Foreign Film Reviews II (Exertions)

By Joel David

Thank you for your interest in Millennial Traversals, my fourth sole-authored book. In addition to its distinction as, to my knowledge, the Philippines’s first complete open-access (non-journal) volume, it has reappeared as a print edition of UNITAS, the semi-annual peer-reviewed journal of the University of Santo Tomas – which has also reposted it online. Please click on this link to open Part I: Traversals within Cinema, where the article you are seeking can be found. You may also find more information on the blog page of Millennial Traversals.

Á!

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July 1, 2015

Millennial Traversals: Outliers, Juvenilia, & Quondam Popcult Blabbery

By Joel David

Original Digital Edition (2015);
click on pic to enlarge.

Millennial Traversals: Outliers, Juvenilia, & Quondam Popcult Blabbery is my first book of the new millennium, and like most contemporary claims, that one can be deconstructed at every point: the millennium’s no longer that new, I’ve done other books since 2000 (mostly as editor, but also as dissertation author), and…the present volume is not, or not yet, a book, at least in the printed dead-tree sense that my previous solo-authored ones were. Moreover, aside from my diss, I’ve never really written, much less published, an extensive monograph, which would be the type of book I’d prefer to uphold.[1] Although I expended conscious efforts to ensure that my previously published compilations had as much internal consistency as they could handle, they were still essentially anthologies, as this current one is; and maybe the distinction of Millennial Traversals is that its pretensions reside elsewhere, no longer in trying to appear like a deliberately planned and duly parsed product. My rationale for insisting that the present exercise is still part of the continuum provided by my previous volumes is simple (shaky maybe, but simple): The National Pastime, Fields of Vision, and Wages of Cinema all exist in revised and updated form on my archival blog, so Millennial Traversals merely skipped the paper-and-ink stage and got to be introduced to its readership in digital format.[2] (I’m still planning to have “publishable” PDF versions of all the texts I’ve mentioned here, but I can’t foresee right now how soon I’ll be able to work that out.) In this manner, virtually all my non-academic (and a few academic) film and culture articles will have been compiled in book form.

11011The positive aspects of creating a strictly open-access book revealed themselves in separate stages. I knew that I wouldn’t have to deal with publishers’ and editors’ and readers’ quirks, which for some reason assume creative dimensions when they confront popular culture material; that included the corollary advantage of having the longest manuscript text I ever compiled, nearly double (in terms of number of articles) that of The National Pastime, my previous longest book. When I cooked up a title, I realized I could formulate something that any sensible publisher (or her accountant) might faint upon hearing, and I could lump together anything I wanted without worrying about possible objections like why foreign films? why incomplete period coverage? why the shifts to other media and even to non-media? why the wide divergence in analytical approaches? I could improve on the texts at any time and place, although I do hope to minimize my tinkering once the manuscripts go public. I won’t need to strengthen an opening essay that I knew was too lame by my standards, since I felt when I was writing it that it just needed to be placed out there in order to temper, if not overturn, my very first book’s unexpectedly influential first essay. The foreign-film reviews still seem rather perfunctory, which was why I had no problem eliminating them from my earlier books – but they somehow assumed increasing usefulness the longer I kept at them. The local film reviews similarly dropped out from the pre-millennial books because of their uncertain significance in relation to the rest of my output, although they still could function as markers of an era; in Millennial Traversals they serve to indicate my interest in as wide a variety of film types as Philippine cinema makes available.

11011Thanks are owed to my previous book publishers (Ma. Karina A. Bolasco, Esther M. Pacheco, Laura L. Samson), my previous editors (Lulu Torres Reyes, Jo-Ann Maglipon, Patrick Campos, Clarissa David, Violeda A. Umali, Cristina del Carmen Pastor, Daisy Catherine L. Mandap, Benjamin Pimentel, Leloy Claudio, Bienvenido Lumbera, the late Raul Ingles, Caroline Hau, Flor Caagusan, Cristina S. Cristobal, Cathy Rose Garcia, Ricky Lo, Berroth Medenilla), and my current editorial assistant, Theo Pie. I had early associations with two still-thriving critics organizations, the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino (Filipino Film Critics Circle) and the Young Critics Circle; despite my sometimes passionate declarations of differences with them, I will also be unable to deny that I drew some foundational strengths, sometimes by resisting their methods but also from following some of their then-sensible practices. To them I dedicate this “book,” such as it is, and for what it may be worth. [Cover design: Karl Fredrick M. Castro; cover pic: Tiyanak publicity still (dir. Peque Gallaga & Lorenzo A. Reyes; Regal Films, 1988); author’s pic: Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil. For larger image, please click on picture above.]

Notes

To read the book lecture “The Millennial Traversals of Millennial Traversals,” please click here.

[1] Two years after this volume came out, a monograph I drafted for Arsenal Pulp Press’s Queer Film Classics, on Ishmael Bernal’s Manila by Night, was published.

[2] Another twist in the publication saga of Millennial Traversals is that it has come out in print form, via the University of Sto. Tomas’s UNITAS: Semi-Annual Peer-Reviewed International Online Journal of Advanced Research in Literature, Culture, and Society. Part I is listed as Volume 88, No. 1 (May 2015), while Part II is Volume 89, No. 1 (May 2016). The links below will take you to the UNITAS open-access website, where the volumes have been uploaded. Addendum: A further twist proceeds from the fact that the printed journal versions were limited in number and not for purchase. Ámauteurish Publishing therefore arranged to reprint these journal issues as a single-volume book edition, out in 2019.

Book Edition (2019), based on Journal Editions (2015-16);
click on pic to enlarge.

National Library of the Philippines CIP Data

David, Joel.
11011Millenial traversals : outliers, juvenilia, & quondam popcult blabbery : part I: traversals within cinema ; Millenial traversals : outliers, juvenilia, & quondam popcult blabbery : part II: expanded perspectives / Joel David. — Book Edition. — Quezon City : Amauteurish Publishing, [2019], ©2019.
11011172+xxiv (part I) / 180+xxii (part II) pages ; 15×23 cm

Bound dos-a-dos; book opens to the right from both the front cover and the back cover.
ISBN 978-621-96191-0-3 (part I)
ISBN 978-621-96191-1-0 (part II)

110111. Motion pictures – Philippines – Reviews. 2. Film criticism – Philippines. 3. Philippine literature – Reviews. I. Title.

11011791.4375110111101111011PN1995110111101111011P920190153

Please click on image for enlargement.

US Copyright Office Certificate of Registration:
TXu 2-405-406

PRELIMINARIES

Half Title; Also by Joel David; Title Page; Copyright; Description, History & Coverage, Editorial & Ethical Policies; International Editorial Board; Editorial Staff; Dedication:

To the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, the Young Critics Circle, and Kritika –
“…người ta thôi nghĩ về sự may mắn trong hạnh phúc.” (from a Vietnamese proverb)

Table of Contents; Introduction to the UNITAS Print Edition; Introduction to the Original Digital Edition (i-xxiii)

BODY TEXT

First Closure (1-15)

The Golden Ages of Philippine Cinema: A Critical Reassessment

Period-Enders (16-41)

Local Cinema 1980-89
Foreign Cinema 1980-89
Metro Manila Film Festival 1976-86
LGBTQ Filmfests
Pinoy Filmfests ca. 2013
• Sonata (2013)
• Lihis (2013)
• Otso (2013)

Old-Millennium Pinoy Film Reviews I (Various Sources) (42-61)

Birds of Omen
• Pagputi ng Uwak, Pag-itim ng Tagak (1978)
Commercialism Triumphs Again
• Bongga Ka ’Day (1980)
Effective Satire
• Kontrobersyal (1981)
Oversimplifying Class Conflicts
• Burgis (1981)
Naked Debut
• Hubad na Gubat (1982)
A Halfway Sample
• Maestro Bandido (1983)
Repression and Rebellion
• Pedro Tunasan (1984)
Missed Opportunities
• Dope Godfather (1984)
Mysterious Pleasure
• Misteryo sa Tuwa (1984)
Historical Lessons
• Virgin Forest (1985)

Old-Millennium Pinoy Film Reviews II (National Midweek & After) (62-82)

Secret Love
• Mga Lihim ng Kalapati (1987)
Grave Burden
• Pasan Ko ang Daigdig (1987)
Earthbound
• Pinulot Ka Lang sa Lupa (1987)
Image-Building
• Huwag Mong Itanong Kung Bakit (1987)
Komiks without Pain
• Saan Nagtatago ang Pag-ibig? (1987)
Balancing Acts
• Hati Tayo sa Magdamag (1989)
Roño’s Rondos
• Itanong Mo sa Buwan (1988)
• Si Baleleng at ang Gintong Sirena (1989)
Film on Film
• Big Flick in the Sky (1990)
Black & Blue & Red
• Bayani (1992)

New-Millennium Pinoy Film Reviews (83-119)

Heaven in Mind
• Sabel (2004)
Domestic Worth
• Serbis (2009)
Survivor’s Guilt
• Boses (2009)
Sighs and Whispers
• Biyaheng Lupa (2009)
On the Edge
• On the Job (2013)
A Desire Named Oscar
• Ilo Ilo (2013)
• Metro Manila (2013)
• Transit (2013)
Beyond Borders
• Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan (2014)
Antonio Luna’s Fall and Rise
• Heneral Luna (2015)
Roads Less Traveled
• Lakbay2Love (2016)
Ice with a Face
• Ma’ Rosa (2016)

Foreign-Film Reviews I (Warm-Ups) (120-137)

A Clockwork Yellow
• The China Syndrome (1979)
Kramer vs. Women
• Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
Star-Crossed
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
Brainless Love
• Endless Love (1981)
Manila Event Short Take I
• Ragtime (1981)
Manila Event Short Take II
• Man of Iron (1981)
Epic Soapbox
• The Mission (1986)
The Stuff of Dreams
• Dreamscape (1984)
Bloody Fine
• The Untouchables (1987)
The Devil to Pay
• The Witches of Eastwick (1987)

Foreign-Film Reviews II (Exertions) (138-160)

Form and Function
• Silent Voice (a.k.a. Amazing Grace and Chuck; 1987)
• Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Life after Life
• Mississippi Burning (1989)
• They Live (1988)
…And the First Shall Be the Last
• The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Soldier Blues
• Casualties of War (1989)
Gloria in Excessus
• Glory (1989)
Frontline
• Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
Wet Noodles
• I Come with the Rain (2009)
Two Guys, While Watching Avatar
• Avatar (2009)
Hit in the (Multi)Plexus
• Wan-deuk-i [Punch] (2011)

END MATTER

Acknowledgments (From the Original Digital Edition; For the UNITAS Print Edition; First Publication Credits); Index; About the Author (161-171)

Please click on image for enlargement.

US Copyright Office Certificate of Registration:
TXu 2-409-153

PRELIMINARIES

Half Title; Also by Joel David; Title Page; Copyright; Description, History & Coverage, Editorial & Ethical Policies; International Editorial Board; Editorial Staff; Dedication:

To the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, the Young Critics Circle, and Kritika –
“…người ta thôi nghĩ về sự may mắn trong hạnh phúc.” (from a Vietnamese proverb)

Table of Contents; Introduction to the UNITAS Print Edition; Introduction to the Original Digital Edition (i-xxii)

BODY TEXT

Non-Film Reviews (1-12)

Adaptation Comes of Age
• La Bohéme (1992)
Disorder & Constant Sorrow
• Subversive Lives (2012)
The Novel Pinoy Novel
• Si Amapola sa 65 na Kabanata (2011)
High Five
• Gang of 5: Tales, Cuentos, Sanaysay (2012)

First Persons (13-31)

Movie Worker
Love Was the Drug
The Dolphy Conundrum
The Carnal Moral of a Brutal Miracle
A National Artist We Deserve

Interviews (32-74)

Star Builders on Parade
The Fantasy World of Rey de la Cruz
Perseverance in a Neglected Dimension
The Critic as Creator
Critic in Academe

Commentaries (75-94)

Cinemasex
Big Hopes for Short Films
Levels of Independence
Sight & Sound 2002

Culture at Large (95-109)

Kim Dae-jung & the Aquinos
Crescent Tense
Asian Casanovas
The Sins of the Fathers
A Benediction in the Offing

Foreign Scenes (110-130)

Tarriance in Thailand
Empire of the (Risen) Sun
Small Worm, Big Apple
Unease in the Morning Calm

Metacriticism (131-159)

How to Become a Film Critic
Some Words on Film Awards
A Lover’s Polemic

Last Closure (160-169)

Reflections on a National Pastime

END MATTER

Acknowledgments (From the Original Digital Edition; For the UNITAS Print Edition; First Publication Credits); Index; About the Author (170-180; 170-179 in book edition)

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July 1, 2015

Millennial Traversals – A Lover’s Polemic

By Joel David

Thank you for your interest in Millennial Traversals, my fourth sole-authored book. In addition to its distinction as, to my knowledge, the Philippines’s first complete open-access (non-journal) volume, it has reappeared as a print edition of UNITAS, the semi-annual peer-reviewed journal of the University of Santo Tomas – which has also reposted it online. Please click on this link to open Part II: Expanded Perspectives, where the article you are seeking can be found. You may also find more information on the blog page of Millennial Traversals.

Á!

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June 30, 2015

Millennial Traversals – Old-Millennium Pinoy Film Reviews II (National Midweek & After)

By Joel David

Á!

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June 30, 2015

Millennial Traversals – New-Millennium Filmfest Report

By Joel David

Á!

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June 23, 2015

Millennial Traversals – Interviews

By Joel David

Thank you for your interest in Millennial Traversals, my fourth sole-authored book. In addition to its distinction as, to my knowledge, the Philippines’s first complete open-access (non-journal) volume, it has reappeared as a print edition of UNITAS, the semi-annual peer-reviewed journal of the University of Santo Tomas – which has also reposted it online. Please click on this link to open Part II: Expanded Perspectives, where the article you are seeking can be found. You may also find more information on the blog page of Millennial Traversals.

Á!

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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” – 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
• Canon list (in progress)
• 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!