[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

Ang Paglalakbay ng mga Bituin sa Gabing Madilim

English Title: The Journey of Stars into the Dark Night
Year of Release: 2012
Director & screenwriter: Arnel Mardoquio
Producers: Cinema One Originals, Skyweaver Productions, Red Motion Media

Cast: Fe Ginging Hyde, Glorypearl Dy, Irish Karl Monsanto, Roger Gonzales, Perry Dizon, Christine Lim

Forthcoming.

Forthcoming.

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

Á!

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

The Boy Foretold by the Stars

Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 2020
Director & Screenwriter: Dolly Dulu
Producers: Clever Minds, The Dolly Collection, & Brainstormers Lab

Cast: Adrian Lindayag, Keann Johnson, Iyah Mina, Rissey Reyes, John Leinard Ramos, Jan Rey Escaño, Victor Robinson III, Jemuel Satumba, Renshi de Guzman, Kalil Almonte, Jethro Tenorio

Dominic, an out gay student in a boys’ high school, asks a fortune-teller, Baby R, about his still-nonexistent love life. Baby R tells him to watch out for three signs in a forthcoming relationship. Dominic then makes the acquaintance of Luke, a basketball player who feels dejected because he just broke up with his girlfriend. He invites Luke to participate in the school retreat and conducts himself properly as a religious counselor. That includes providing Luke with the necessary emotional support that his newfound friend needs.

A beacon of hope and grace amid calamitous devastation, The Boy Foretold by the Stars arrived at the end of the year when the Covid-19 global pandemic succeeded in stalling development projects and personal pursuits alike, and forced film audiences to watch all kinds of material on their mobile devices. One of the unexpected novelties was the proliferation of so-called Boys Love series, originating in Japan and arriving in Pinas via Thai versions uploaded to streaming websites including YouTube. Originally a subversive innovation in manga culture, BL addressed itself to women consumers who would have otherwise been alienated by the overtly normalized (and occasionally violent) sexism in Japanese comics. TBFBTS (an abbreviation sanctioned by the film’s gender-fluid director-writer[1]) recuperates the butch-femme and woman-positive terms of Japanese yaoi, providing its own resistance to the queer-cinema standardized exclusion of femininity via mutually conventional masculinities (as exemplified in works like Ang Lee’s 2005 film Brokeback Mountain). In fact, as pointed out by BL scholar Jerrick Josue David, TBFBTS hews closer to the romantic-comedy genre. Dolly Dulu also provides certain further departures, one in which their narrative’s religious-retreat setting is reconfigured as nurturing rather than oppressive, and in which their characters’ final kiss is not really their first one. The cast members also display a facility for switching between English and Filipino that harks back to the glory days of the Second Golden Age, affirming that the film, with all its intimate awareness and seemingly casual handling of craft, is essentially an autobiographical recollection of intently observed and intensely cherished private-school experience. It may be an unrealistically rose-colored way of moving on from the trauma of Covid-19, but since the world that TBFBTS represents is rooted in a past, then all that we may need to do, as the film proposes, is look back at the best that we all once used to be. For their part, Dulu announced that their film will be extended in the format that gave rise to it: a BL series, not exactly foretold by the stars, but still a way of living through their unusual, insistent, and newly resistive vision of a better future.

Note

[1] Dolly Dulu’s pronoun preference is for the singular they.

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

Á!

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

Ang Lihim ni Antonio

English Title: Antonio’s Secret
Year of Release: 2008
Director: Joselito Altarejos
Screenwriter: Lex Bonife
From a story by Lex Bonife & Joselito Altarejos
Producers: Digital Viva & BeyondtheBox

Cast: Kenjie Garcia, Jiro Manio, Nino Fernandez, Honey Grace Capili, Shamaine Buencamino, Ricky Ibe, Kurt Martinez, Jay Perillo, Ajit Hardasani, A.A. Fernandez, Aimee Fernandez, Agatha Behar, Josh Ivan Morales, Lui Manansala, Ernie Zarate, May-i Fabros, Annelle Durano, Wilfredo Quejencio, Franklin Junbic, Lex Bonife, Almhir Rahib, Marvin Reyes, Arkee Tunisia, Liza Bergencillo, Gamaica Mel Pilar, Wilma Lusanta, Mirafe dela Cruz, Dindo Flores, JM Cobarrubias, Nick Pichay, Brent Fernandez, Cel Santiago

Antonio, 15, discusses the rudiments of budding sexuality with his contemporary Nathan and their much younger friend Mike. Living with his mother who works at the community health center, he’s typically hesitant about admitting his same-sex attractions. After a bout of drinks, when Nathan spends the night in his bed, Antonio starts caressing his friend—who reciprocates his advances. Although they wind up having sex, Nathan starts avoiding him afterward. Mike asks Antonio about Nathan’s distance so he’s forced to confess what happened. One day, his father’s parents drop off his uncle Jonbert, who plans to join Antonio’s father in Dubai but has to work on his documents first. The irresponsible and sexually active Jonbert hangs out nightly with his friends, drinking and carousing, and occasionally agrees to have sex with gay men for extra cash. Jonbert finds his uncle irresistible and sees an opportunity to expand his range of experience.

Headlined by a youtful-looking lead actor who was of age when the film was produced (just in case anyone might wonder), Ang Lihim ni Antonio emblematizes the peak of Joselito Altarejos’s explorations of queer-male erotics in the present millennium, right before social media would intensify experimentations with sexualities of all types. Even with an openness to various possibilities, negotiations with oneself and others would still always be a mightily involved and conflictive process, akin to traversing an emotional and psychological minefield. Altarejos is careful enough to withhold judgment on his male characters’ actuations, so that Antonio’s queer curiosity, his childhood friend’s homophobia, and his uncle’s machismo-induced horniness are all arrayed for those who wish to inspect each one more closely. In fact, he endows the most empathy in the plight of Antonio’s mother—and for good reason beyond standard feminist commitment, considering the plot twist assigned to her. Throughout a nearly three-decade career, he has also been able to develop into a topnotch soft-core filmmaker, far and away the country’s best when it comes to MSM scenes. This enables him to invest his work with a unique tension between erotic fascination and social anxiety, evocative of the cherished values of film noir even when all the other elements of noir are missing.

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

Unfriend

Year of Release: 2014
Director: Joselito Altarejos [as J Altarejos]
Screenwriter: Zig Madamba Dulay
Producers: Center Stage Productions & Solar Entertainment

Cast: Sandino Martin, Angelo Ilagan, Boots Anson-Roa, Shamaine Buencamino, Jay Enriquez, Maichel Fideles, Jill Singson Urdaneta, Angeli Bayani, Richard Quan, Arlene Pilapil, Philippine Drag-Ons, Lex Bonife

On Christmas Eve, David has breakup sex with his older partner Jonathan but has difficulty letting go. He lives with his grandma Ester because his mother works overseas. The tolerant but distracted Ester asks David to observe their family rituals and bring along Jonathan but David makes excuses for his ex. On Christmas Day, David finds that Jonathan has announced his new relationship on his internet account. Despondent, David wanders the streets and enters a bar, where he leaves with a stranger with whom he has a one-night stand in an unfinished building. Since Jonathan seems intent on shutting him out, David begins indulging in self-harm activities while maintaining a semblance of normality.

Responding to an actual news report about an internet-obsessed teen shooting his same-sex ex-lover as well as himself in a shopping mall, Joselito Altarejos devised a feature that departs from the typical cautionary tale in subtle but effective aspects. The expected condemnation of constant social-media usage is avoided; everyone in the film, as in real life, shares as much of their lives as they can with the worldwide web, although the fact that several of us do so as public figures, where even strangers can partake of events in our personal affairs, may be cause for concern for those who wish to draw lessons from the film. The one point where Altarejos makes known his partiality is in his depiction of David’s mounting instability. Unfriend makes its postqueer position clear when the tender and sentimental lovemaking between the lovers at the start becomes, in retrospect, more harmful for David’s disposition than the rough and carelessly mounted anonymous sex he has with a bar stranger later on. Altarejos wisely refuses to replicate all the specifics of the real-life incident that inspired the movie (transplanting the action to a working-class milieu in Manila instead of a provincial capital), possibly from the recognition that in the age of the internet, socially impactful events tend to occur only once before they acquire the potential for parody. He carefully inscribes the visible marks of inner turmoil on the face and body of his intrepid lead actor, Sandino Martin, who upholds the indie spirit of pursuing histrionic truth regardless of how far he may have to depart from himself.

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

Jino to Mari

English Title: Gino and Marie
Alternate Title: Death by Gokkun
Additional Languages: Japanese, English
Year of Release: 2019
Director: Joselito Altarejos
Screenwriters: John Paul Bedia & Joselito Altarejos
From a story by Brillante Mendoza
Producers: Solar Entertainment, Center Stage Productions, Beyond the Box

Cast: Oliver Aquino, Angela Cortez, Ruby Ruiz, Sherry Lara, Perry Escaño, Mitsuaki Morishita, Aubrhie Carpio, Sophie Warne, Maureen Mauricio, Emmanuel De la Cruz

Unknown to each other, Gino and Marie perform casual sex work in order to support their respective families—i.e., Gino’s younger sister and Marie’s daughter respectively. Both are instructed by Eric, their mutual procurer, to board a bus for an out-of-town resort, where a film crew is ready to record their sex-work performance, this time (and for the first and last time) as a couple.

Jino to Mari is best viewed minus spoilers, but the sensational material makes that a nearly impossible condition. Joselito Altarejos, however, has been the country’s most prominent mainstream queer pioneer, his leftist orientation evolving alongside his critiques of genders and sexualities. Jino to Mari finds his fervency at the fullest passionate level, questions of sociohistorical nuances be damned. We find working-class characters who enable the two frankly attractive innocents, but the narrative refuses to condemn folks who merely recognize and appreciate when others of their kind are able to fulfill what potential they’ve been gifted with. This sets us up for an encounter that’s best left for audiences to discover, as Gino and Marie do as well. The terrible paradox at this juncture is that one may regret the turnout of events, having sympathized with the couple up to this point; but in addition, one could also be grateful for having seen, from the safe distance that film art provides, the monstrous reach of global privilege.

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

Á!

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

Meet Me in St. Gallen

Year of Release: 2018
Director & Screenwriter: Irene Villamor
Producers: Spring Films & Viva Films

Cast: Bela Padilla, Carlo Aquino, Angelica Panganiban, Nonie Buencamino, Lilet Esteban, Kat Galang, Sean Padlan, Happy Laderas, Joel Vitor, Joseph Manuel Hernandez, Wenah Nagales, Eljhay Gonzales, Nino Aquino, Welwel Silvestre, Arvin Trinidad, Paeng Sudayan, Barry Gonzales, Xyrus Rodriguez, Edwin Serrano, Kevin Almodiente, Kian Dionisio, Nicole Johanntgen, Sputnik, Chanel, Rhedd de Guzman, Jonathan Bausas, Patricia Tan, Sarah Ereneo, Mark Cai

After being asked to return to office for an urgent last-minute revision of her advertising design, Celeste leaves when her computer breaks down and informs her boss of her resignation. Jesse, on the other hand, performs with his band on an open-air stage and gets scolded by his parents, who want him to review for a med-school exam. Stranded by the rain, the two converse and find enough in common but pledge to keep apart after a farewell kiss, so as not to ruin the memory of their acquaintance. Four years later, Jesse encounters Celeste in a coffee shop and attends her exhibit; she shares how she realized he was getting married from his social-network post, but they decide on having a one-time fling. A few more years later Jesse, having heard that Celeste was in Switzerland, flies to St. Gallen to see her.

Meet Me in St. Gallen manages several tricky maneuvers that apparently escaped the appreciation of local evaluators when it came out. It was an indie production that had enough commercial potential to be distributed by a mainstream studio; it presented a variation on the manic pixie dream girl rom-com familiar, but somehow managed to reverse gender expectations; finally it presented the aspirational lifestyles (a no-no for the original critics group) of millennial kids, but provided its characters with enough exceptionality to make their status credible as rebellious struggling citizens. Ironically the jurors of the Filipino Arts & Cinema International’s annual film competition, comprising foreigners including a Fil-Am, were sufficiently impressed with the film to even explain why they gave it top prize. The passage of time has proved which critical perspective fell short. MMSG still manages to sustain enough interest in its interpersonal intrigues and pack its final mixed-feelings jolt even with the viewer aware of its plot twists. Lesson for serious appreciators: listen to elderly critics at your own risk. The auteurial voice announced by MMSG will be among the strongest in global cinema for some time to come.

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

Ulan

English Translation: Rain
Year of Release: 2019
Director & Screenwriter: Irene Villamor
Producers: Viva Films, N² Productions, Hooq

Cast: Nadine Lustre, Carlo Aquino, Ella Ilano, Perla Bautista, AJ Muhlach, Marco Gumabao, Josef Elizalde, Limer Veloso, Andrea del Rosario, William Martinez, Leo Martinez, Angeli Bayani, Meghan Dee, Kylie Verzosa, Keagan de Jesus, Dingdong Dantes, Mercedes Cabral, John Roe Apolis, Antonette Garcia, Lotlot Bustamante, Hazel Valera, Lauren Rei, Nathan Khatibi, Jourdanne Castillo, Vangie Martelle, Kristine Mangle, Daniela Carolino, Aries Go, Aerone Mendoza, Tim Macardle, Gayle Maxine Villamor, Dennah Bautista, Jeremiah Cruz, Andy Kunz, Olan Chan, Irene Celebre, Jenny Silvino, Fhayeng Alarcon, Marlyvic Suavillo, Bruce Venida, Joshua Cillo, Aldrin Pababero, Mitch de Guzman, Reynalyn Bermejo, Jimmy Tesorero, Kiko Paglilauan, Christian Pianar, Peter Gabrielle, Archie Ventosa

Bright and impressionable, Maya thrives on her grandmother’s tales of native mythological creatures, particularly fascinated by sunshowers, which supposedly occur when kapres, or horse-headed tree giants, are getting married. Her imagination is strong enough to steer her through the mockery of her contemporaries and elders, but then she grows up an attractive but socially awkward woman, her closest confidant a gay best friend. She becomes the girlfriend of a sportsman, but he dumps her when she asks him about a trip he’ll be taking with a female athlete without informing her beforehand. She takes on a writing assignment and covers an educational program for indigent children, where Peter, the teacher, explains the premises and dynamics of the setup. Maya and Peter find their mutual respect and attraction growing, upon which Peter informs her that he’s a seminarian under regency, meaning he’s allowed to circulate in civil society but only until he has to fully commit to the priesthood.

The filmic fairy tale unadopted from preexisting sources is such a rare occurrence that Ulan will seem even more exceptional in having been produced and released as a mainstream-studio entry. The narrative moreover apprises adult audiences, with the central character’s childhood scenes only serving to provide backstory when necessary. The presentation turns on the contributions of authoritative performers, who deliver the goods—specifically Perla Bautista as the eccentric granny doing what she thinks is best to protect her now-orphaned charge from the harsh realities of life; and Carlo Aquino as the reserved but smitten admirer who recognizes in Maya the ability to appreciate metaphysical concepts since he’d been trained along a similar line for years. But the film’s crown jewel is Nadine Lustre, who succeeds in the highwire challenge of embodying weirdness without being offputting and without soliciting audience sympathy either. Like all responsible realist dramas, Ulan allows the so-called real world to supersede the fantastic, but its triumph remains visionary, enabling audiences to glimpse an existence that would be counted as intolerable (queer in the nonsexual sense) in anyone’s experience of contemporary normality.

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

On Vodka, Beers, and Regrets

Year of Release: 2020
Director & Screenwriter: Irene Villamor
Producer: Viva Films

Cast: Bela Padilla, JC Santos, Matteo Guidicelli, Rio Locsin, Kean Cipriano, Jasmine Hollingworth, Danita Paner, Kathleen Paton, Phoebe Villamor, Lucho Beech, Jiad Arroyo, Bridge Martin, Brian Sombero, Timothy Abbott, Jeffrey Castro, Carrie Lopez, Clay Mercado, Ronald Regala, Candy Arcangel, Carmela Faye Viray, Edwin Serrano, Meryl Margaux Bunyi, Rod Marmol

An actress declining in popularity and saddled with a colorful past that marks her as a target for abusive men, Jane relies on alcohol more heavily than she used to. She even forgets how Francis, an aspiring band member, once dedicated a song number to her. Realizing that Francis’s romantic motives are genuine, she starts hanging out with him although her violent steady, Ronnie, insists on his privileges with her. Friends and family insist that she needs rehab intervention in order to solve her addiction, but she keeps finding ways to evade their influence, even Francis’s. When she loses a minor role in a plum assignment, she meets a former flame who also burned out like she did, and they go on a drinking binge which lands her in jail. Francis tells her that he’s unlike the privileged crowd she hangs with and feels helpless about handling her problem.

Non-Filipino audiences (including members of the native bourgeoisie alienated by their own culture) might need some historical preparation for the variation that On Vodka, Beers, and Regrets performs on the standard alcohol-addiction treatment emblematized by such Hollywood samples as Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend (1945). That is, one of the distinctions of the Second Golden Age of Philippine cinema was not just the emergence of previously marginalized racial types (i.e. everyone who failed to conform to the Euro-mestizo preference of the fresh-off-the-ark elite) but also the predominance of women actors as top stars, in contrast with men in all preceding eras. Hence what might appear to be a masochistic male persona is really nothing more than an adjustment to contemporary realities that span across a wide swath of local experience, including even overseas work. In fact, what might count as a weakness of OVBR would be its unavoidable reliance on quotidian exchanges between the dominant-but-dissipated celebrity and her committed-but-frustrated fan. The film mitigates this situation via the twin-pronged strategy of utilizing a near-documentary level of credibility in its range of options, as well as casting a mature and equally matched acting pair well-versed in each other’s capabilities and responses.

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

Á!

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

Tu Pug Imatuy

English Translation: The Right to Kill
Language: Manobo
Additional Languages: Cebuano, Filipino
Year of Release: 2017
Director: Arnel Barbarona
Screenwriter: Arnel Mardoquio
Producers: Red Motion Media, Kilab Multimedia, Yellow Kite Productions, Skyweaver Productions, Sine Mindanaw

Cast: Malona Sulatan, Jongmonzon, Luis Georlin Banaag III, Jamee Rivera, Jillian Khayle Barbarona, Henyo Ehem, Mentroso Malibato, Nona Ruth Sarmiento, Bhong del Rosario, Roweno Caballes, Charisse Lisondra, Louie Logronio, Barry Ohaylan, Buggy Ampalayo, Bong Artil

After Obunay and Dawin’s son Awit dies, Dawin leaves with his children to ask for mungbeans from their village datu. On their way back, Dawin is accosted by a group of soldiers, who also bring Obunay when she meets up with her family. The couple are tortured and humiliated, and forced to walk roped and naked through the forest. Lt. Olivar befriends them, dresses and feeds them, and promises to free them once they point out the hideout of Communist rebels. Dawin brings them to a solitary schoolhouse, where the soldiers hold the teacher, mothers, and their children prisoner. The cost of the struggle between the two contending forces, represented by the Manobo couple and the soldiers, will exact a toll that can only lead to losses all around.

The simple, almost fabular narrative of Tu Pug Imatuy may resonate as one of the many instances of abject cruelty visited on Filipino lumad or the ethnic non-Muslim populace of Mindanao. When events take an even more horrifically inhumane turn and the Manobo abductees (including the women and children peacefully attending to their education) have no other choice except survive by their wits and intimate knowledge of the local terrain, it may help to keep in mind the opening disclaimer, as well as documentary evidence during the end credits, that these events actually occurred. The movie makes no pretense about taking the side of the people caught in the crossfire between rebels and government soldiers, and acknowledges via a modicum of visual clues that, whereas the Communist fighters uphold the lumad’s right to uphold their ancestral territory, the government shamelessly enforces the interests of foreign mining companies, bent on extracting valuable minerals at the cost of displacing first peoples. The struggle is extremely dangerous for only one side, as it had always been through the years of colonizations, wars, and dictatorships, with the potential of genocidal extermination always present. Hence a film that provides a measure of hope in people’s determination and ingenuity may be a desperate gesture at denying historical reality; or it may be, as Tu Pug Imatuy suggests, a long-overdue call to arms, a challenge to a neglectful nation to recognize the most Filipino among us. The movie’s expert attention to pace, performance, costume, cast, and language ensure that it is a message we can no longer afford to overlook.

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

Á!

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

Respeto

English Translation: Respect
Additional Language: Cebuano
Year of Release: 2017
Director: Treb Monteras II
Screenwriters: Njel de Mesa & Treb Monteras II
Producers: Dogzilla, Arkeofilms, Cinemalaya, CMB Film Services, This Side Up

Cast: Abra, Dido de la Paz, Loonie, Kate Alejandrino, Chai Fonacier, Ybes Bagadiong, Brian Arda, Thea Yrastorza, Nor Domingo, Vim Nadera, OG Birador, Negatibo

Inspired by the success of his idol, Breezy G, Hendrix plans to join FlipTop Battle League, a rap competition that has also become a YouTube sensation. His unruly behavior during a street showdown gets him and his homies, Payaso and Betchai, into trouble with another rap gang. While running away from the gang they encounter Doc, an elderly bookstore owner who’s fond of an older form of improvisational poetry, the balagtasan. Facing his own problems with his son Fuentes, a corrupt policeman, Doc tries to mentor Hendrix to enable him to surmount the world of drugs, crime, and moral decadence that poverty had plunged him into.

Like its counterpart in US pop culture, Pinoy rap has barely been able to attain the kind of respectability accorded to “finer” forms like the musical, art songs, and even pop and rock numbers. Even the proposal of a few academic experts to consider it the modern-day equivalent of the early twentieth-century verbal joust, the balagtasan, has met with resistance from more conservative sectors, owing to rap’s use of strong language and violent imagery. In this manner, Respeto goes beyond referring to the striving for self-fulfillment of its lead character, a young man of the slums. The movie weaves into its complex narrative several problematic issues that arise from the populist administration of Rodrigo R. Duterte, from his support for the Heroes’ Cemetery burial of martial-law dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, to the deadly and scientifically contested war on illegal drugs. Yet Respeto formulates its critique without the trollish arguments that typify social-media exchanges. The issues get raised as part of the characters’ struggle with their slum environment and with the administration that seeks to wrest control of it, often at their expense. Authentic personalities in local hiphop culture, including the director himself, ensure that the viewing experience will be highly realistic—even when the movie overturns its realistic premise and introduces poetic and dream imagery. More unexpectedly, Respeto handles the slum situation with as much titular respect as any local movie has ever mustered. In the process, it reveals how people in the midst of poverty and social degradation manage to survive and even embrace their situation: their sense of community and their hope to better their condition provide the means of binding everyone together, as well as the rage with which they meet values that run counter to their cherished ideals.

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

Á!

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

1—Ang Pamilyang Kumakain ng Lupa

English Title: The Family That Eats Soil
Year of Release: 2005 / Color with Sepia
Director & Screenwriter: Khavn
Video Documentary: Eric Jose Pancho
Animation: Ulysses Veloso & Jan Sarmiento
Producers: Filmless Films, Be Movies Productions, Hubert Bals Fund

Cast: Carlo Catap, Hamid Eton, Elizabeth Marin, Gil Mendoza, Hazel Magno, Edward Vitto, Gigi Duque, Christian Guzman, Jocelyn Sibayan, Khavn, Flortecante Dayao, Ariel Mamburan, Jaymar Valenciano, Cris Villanueva, Kristine Kintana, Maricel Gajasan, Israel “Oblax” Balignasay, Adonis de la Cruz, Tasyo Caubalejo, Eric Jose Pancho, Joy Domingo, Vincent “Enteng” Viray, Pedro San Goku, Elmo Redrico, Marc Mendoza, Roy Mark “Omar” Gerez, Marlon dela Cruz, Merv Espina, Erenesto Garcia, Jessie L. Liwanag, Mario R. Monte, Salvador C. Ticman Jr., Norman Wilwayco, Narding de la Cruz, Kelly de la Cruz, Eva Bagao, Jansen Bagao

A family, comprising father, mother, brother, sister, and baby, converge at the dining table to partake of their meals, with their dead grandfather at the head. In the course of a whole day’s consumption, the various members also attend to their other concerns. The father poisons babies in a hospital, the brother tortures Chinese-Filipino entrepreneurs, the daughter gives vent to her lustful imagination, the baby, who objects to the serving of soil, is a bookie during cockfight sessions. Occasionally the grandfather gets up, recites poetic passages, and wanders around the city on foot, oblivious to the amusement of bystanders, while the mother, who has two doctoral degrees, is described as the family’s housemaid; later she narrates a documentary on city life, lapsing into Spanish, with her speech translated into German subtitles.

2—Ang Napakaigsing Buhay ng Alipato

English Title: Alipato: The Very Brief Life of an Ember
Year of Release: 2016 / Color with B&W
Director: Khavn
Animation: Rox Lee & Khavn
Screenwriters: Khavn & Achinette Villamor
From a story by Brillante Mendoza
Producers: Kamias Overground & Rapid Eye Movies

Cast: Dido de la Paz, Khavn, Daniel Palisa, Bing Austria, Marti San Juan, Robin Palmes, Felix Opena, Danny Capawa, Champ, Rey Cardines, Wendell Mata, Marco Omana, Christian Mata, Clarence Sumalinog, King James Banaag, John Paul Langcas, Rodel Hate, Jimboy Layson, John Felix Tumarong, John Mark Ogarinola, Joanna Roselio, Angelo Brillo, Katrina Lacodini, Khavn, Ali Doron, Beth Chai, Girly Alvarez, Rina Doron, Othela, PJ Garcia, Lorein Garcia, Rosie, Wilson Quintero, Gina Balahibo, Justine Hipolito, Rolly Montivis, Maria Vasinopa, Fausta Celtino, Rosita Macabenta, Ariane Canonoy, Monaliza Layson, Perla Bichanino, Milagros lacodini, Ivory Alajar, Caezar Acol, Kristine Kintana, Charita Castinlag, Manuel Abejano, Danny Banaag, Ferdinand Diaz, Ric Resuello, Jet Nunez, Marco Polo, Santie Navarro, Rolando Salem, Joseph Pelaez, Bartolome Nati, Danny Dominera, Brigitte Salvatore, Rey Paraon, Grace Soriano, Eliza Mendoza

In Ulingan, a slum territory where residents scrape by through coal production, street kids form a group and call themselves D’Gang Kostka. They make spending money by robbery, even invading a grocery, engage in shootouts with police officers, and kill at will. After one of their members is rubbed out, their leader, called Bossing, decides that they should focus on only bigtime jobs. They target the Central Bank but Bossing is caught and lands in jail for close to three decades. Upon his release, his gangmates request that they divide the loot but Bossing claims that the police took it. The gang members start getting killed, starting with Porkchop, who impregnated Bossing’s girlfriend Diding while he was in jail. A mentally unstable grandmother reports the events to the police, and their involvement strains relations within the community.

Ang Pamilyang Kumakain ng Lupa was barely noticed in the Philippines and would have been completely forgotten had its director not thought of commemorating its 20th anniversary with a modest rescreening. Asian Movie Pulse ran a reappraisal by Epoy Deyto that remarked how its digital video technology invests it with “both datedness and foresight that makes it more exciting to see today.” The implication is that its original exhibition in foreign film festivals bewildered its audiences—an effect that Khavn may have aimed for. No other local filmmaker has dared to be as thematically unruly and formally audacious, with a visionary reimagining of the metropolis as “Mondomanila” (an infernal counterparting of William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County). APKnL serves its three-square-meals structure with a helping of surrealist abjection in excessive degrees. The medium could only bear so much at this stage in its development, so at one point the screen yields to swirling abstractions; those willing to savor the experience will be rewarded with provocative insights and barbed humor, sometimes with extended payoffs: the family’s meals may not look like they literally contain soil, but the final treat prepared by the mother plays on the baby’s cockfight role, which is colloquially called “Kristo” because of the way that bookies extend their arms to signal the bettors. About a decade later, Ang Napakaigsing Buhay ng Alipato had a limited theatrical run, boosted by the triumph of Balangiga: Howling Wilderness. ANBnA partakes of many of the same elements of its predecessor, with several crucial twists. Digital media had advanced to the point where it could supplant celluloid film, and Khavn attained enough rapport with local talents and skill in offbeat storytelling. Proof of this might require either attentive viewing or a second screening, since the surface details occasionally refuse to be restrained by realist principles, and the historical past remains imbricated as well: “Alipato” was the well-known alias of Luis Taruc, who led the Philippines’s mid-century resistance to Japanese occupation as well as the postwar peasant rebellion. The film’s strategic shift might be more definitely marked with its narrative ellipsis, when the young hoodlums transition into wasted grownups who welcome their leader’s release from prison. At this point their decisions understandably become more deliberate and their actions more carefully planned, with the narrative becoming more naturally focalized (even when a black goat’s head assumes an omniscient-observer function at one point); the movie’s genre roots thereby become apparent, but rather than looking for ways to hide them or resist them, the film embraces and nurtures these elements and extends this same generosity of spirit to characters who were introduced as too callow and intractable in their early years to worry over. An impressive achievement by any standard, worth one’s attention especially during moments when daring and sophistication are in short measure anywhere else.

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

Pusong Wazak: Isa Na Namang Kwento ng Pag-ibig sa Pagitan ng Kriminal at Puta

English Title: Ruined Heart: Another Lovestory Between a Criminal & a Whore
Additional Languages: German, Japanese, Spanish, French (in song lyrics)
Year of Release: 2014
Director & Screenwriter: Khavn
Producer: Kamias Road & Rapid Eye Movies

Cast: Tadanobu Asano, Nathalia Acevedo, Elena Kazan, Brenda Mage, Mico Madrid, Vim Nadera, Long, Jocas Ortiz, Mark Anthony Robrigado, Lhie Santos, Marvin Muñoz, Andre Puertollano, Khavn, Ymi Kris, Edgar Noble, Daizuki Laxa, Vincent Cando, Cristy Atienza, Christoff Ken, Allen Fuertes Lopez

The Criminal, apparently a Japanese living in the slums of Manila, contends with the conflicts among various gangs without hesitating to resort to violence. He maintains a Lover but falls in love with a Prostitute, while a “GodFather” hovers in their presence, reciting verses. Their lives of crime, betrayal, and reprisal proceed apace as expected in the underworld, intercalated with desperately lighthearted musical celebrations, until one day the Criminal finds and follows an unusual winged figure wandering in a cemetery.

The breakout works of Khavn, periodizable at about a decade in the past, remain suspended because of a predicament peculiar to his stature as a globally recognized indie-cinema figure: he may be able to solicit funding from overseas sources, but the material he works with is so insistently and specifically culture-based that foreign evaluators, even those receptive to his output, never truly get what they’re about. Hence the positive responses to Pusong Wazak predictably ascribe its triumph to Christopher Doyle (famed for his association with Wong Kar-Wai), with snide remarks on the order that he’d done better work in the past. The misgivings do have a foundation in Pusong Wazak’s approach to narrative storytelling, although it typifies Khavn’s strategic reliance on genre elements and fierce affection for Pinoy lumpenproles; it may be more accurate to maintain that Doyle has rarely had the cinematographic opportunities that he realized in this undertaking. For a more definitive basis of comparison, one could consider Tropical Manila, made in 2008 by Lee Sang-woo, an associate of Kim Ki-duk: the spectacle of a Korean gangster trying to blend in a local slum raises too many verisimilitudinous issues that defeat the film even after it has fully explicated his presence. In contrast, Tadanobu Asano only needs to insinuate, via his presence, the hundred-plus features where he played variations on his character (for example in Miike Takashi’s Ichi the Killer, 2001), then openly revel in the circumstances that even locals might find too anarchic for everyday survival; he may sport a broken arm, for example, but he uses it to paint, and later flees from gangsters while taking a video selfie with the same appendage. Nothing is too wild or strange for this assemblage of people, and their casual acceptance of copulation and bloodletting, accompanied by expertly wrought tunes that range from tacky to discordant to sublime, build up to a vision that might be the fulfillment of Celso Ad. Castillo’s carnivalesque fabulations but stakes its own claim on the national imaginary nevertheless.

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

Desaparadiso: Corrido at Buhay na Pinagdaanan nang Tatlong Principeng Magcacapatid na Anac nang Haring Fernando at nang Reina Valeriana sa Cahariang Berbania

English Title: Desaparadiso: Corrido and the Lives Lived of the Three Prince Brothers, Children of King Fernando and Queen Valeriana of the Kingdom of Berbania
Year of Release: 2015 / Color with B&W and Sepia
Director & Screenwriter: Khavn
Adopted from the folk tale Ibong Adarna: Corrido at Buhay na Pinagdaanan nang Tatlong Principeng Magcacapatid na Anac nang Haring Fernando at nang Reina Valeriana sa Cahariang Berbania and from Jose F. Lacaba’s “Ang mga Nawawala (The Disappeared)” from Sa Panahon ng Ligalig: Tula, Awit, Halaw (In a Time of Turmoil: Poems, Songs, Adaptations (Anvil, 1991); title from a poem by Frank Cimatu; translations by Jose F. Lacaba & Dodo Dayao
Producer: Kamias Overground & Hubert Bals Fund

Cast: Dante Perez, Chris Pasturan, Raye Lucero, Ian Lomongo, Albert Valencia, Kayla Miller, Laiza Solasco, Abby Poblador, Alex Crisologo, Luis de Belen, Albert Valencia, Shun Villalobos, Wilson Quintero, Padeys Revilleza Cojano, Clarence Joy de Guzman, Renz Marie Nollase, Pinky Lamasan, Dan Palacpac

During the era of enforced peace and order imposed by Ferdinand E. Marcos’s declaration of martial law in 1972, a working-class family endures the news of the disappearance of their eldest son by conducting as much normality as they could endure. Titles tell the story, since the family members maintain absolute silence: Pedro, eldest son of Fernando and Valeriana, disappears on the date that Executive Order 1081 is announced; on the first anniversary of his disappearance, the second son, Diego, leaves home to search for his brother; two more years afterward, the youngest, Juan, does the same. Dressed as a wandering prince, Juan finds himself in an enchanted forest where he continues to seek his brothers, encountering along the way a leprous hunchback as well as his mother as Queen Adarna, who sings a string of well-known kundimans (folk-music ballads).

The authenticity of lived experience during a period of fascist rule in a culture like the Philippines’s rests with a steadily depleting number of survivors. The regime’s panoptic reach, for one thing, could make use of advances in surveillance technology as well the old standbys of informers and eavesdroppers. Along with the trauma of losing a loved one to a possibly indeterminate fate, the response of silence as a means of coping with heartbreak has never been depicted before or since in the few local treatments of the era, but its veracity can be affirmed in several accounts, notably the Quimpo family’s Subversive Lives: A Family Memoir of the Marcos Years (Anvil, 2012). Desaparadiso operates as an ambitious intertextual attempt to interweave recent history with the Adarna Bird folktale, familiar to all schooled Filipinos, with several adjustments and reversals, then laces the narrative overreach with popular music from the intervening decades. The effect would be absurd and laughable to viewers clueless about Philippine history and structures of feeling, but proof of how well it works lies in what is far and away the most effective cinematic rendition of the well-known protest warhorse “Bayan Ko” (“My Country,” Constancio de Guzmán & José Corazón de Jesús, 1929).

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

Balangiga: Howling Wilderness

Language: Waray
Additional Languages: Cebuano, English
Year of Release: 2017
Director: Khavn
Screenwriters: Jerry Gracio, Khavn, Achinette Villamor
Producer: Kamias Overground

Cast: Justine Samson, Pio del Rio, Althea Vega, Warren Tuaño, Daniel Palisa, Jun Sabayton, Lourd de Veyra, Roxlee

Kulas and his grandfather flee the US Army’s retaliation for the Filipino revolutionaries’ attack on their camp at Balangiga. They aim to go to Kulas’s parents at Quinapondan, avoiding even worse conflict at Borlongan. Along the way, Kulas takes along a toddler, Bola, the only survivor of a village massacred by the Americans. Kulas takes upon himself the challenge of keeping together Bola (whom he calls his brother), his grandfather, his pet chicken, and his water buffalo Melchora, but the ravages of war insist on drawing his attention to the reality of apocalyptic suffering and death.

Khavn had been known as one of the few Filipino directors better known outside his home country. Because of the receptiveness of foreign film festivals to his output, he managed to become the country’s most prolific auteur, with (as of 2018) over 50 feature films and 100 short films in less than a quarter-century, including the longest-ever Pinoy movie, the 13-hour Simulacrum Tremendum (2016), by his own account a “poetic documentary.” In the past few years, however, his punk aesthetic’s anarchic-yet-romantic anti-authoritarian thrust started exhibiting an accessibility to local mass audiences, duly noted by online commentators. Mondomanila: Kung Paano Ko Inayos ang Buhok Ko Matapos ang Mahaba-Haba Ring Paglalakbay (Mondomanila, or: How I Fixed My Hair after a Rather Long Journey) won major awards as a work-in-progress at the 2010 Cinemanila International Film Festival, just as Balangiga: Howling Wilderness first earned raves as a three-hour festival cut, then swept both the top prizes of the local critics and original academy award-giving bodies as a two-hour intermediate version, before finally being released as a 1.5-hour feature. Also worth watching are Pusong Wazak: Isa Na Namang Kwento ng Pag-ibig sa Pagitan ng Kriminal at Puta (Ruined Heart: Another Lovestory between a Criminal and a Whore) from 2014, and what may be the closest to an anarchist local feature, Ang Napakaigsing Buhay ng Alipato from 2016. Balangiga holds its own place in the Khavn oeuvre by providing a more accessible (though still painful and rage-filled) account of an eight-year-old’s coming-of-age during the historical moment when the US openly showed its genocidal intentions toward a local population bent on resisting its colonial agenda. Ravishing landscapes strewn with human and animal remains, dreams whose surrealist content turns nightmarish, specters of the deceased who insist on mingling with the living: these announce the unexpected emergence of a fully formed and fearless artistic intelligence, ready to take his place in the crowded (though rarely intensely gifted) field of populist filmmaking.

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

Á!

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

Vampariah

Language: English
Additional Language: Filipino
Year of Release: 2016
Director & Screenwriter: Matthew Abaya
With Lawrence Yagomour as consultant
Producer: I Don’t Care Productions

Cast: Kelly Lou Dennis, Aureen Almario, Scott Mathison, Arlene Boado, Jeffrey Lei, Roberto Divina, Desciple, Alex Benjamin, Daniel Miller, Ken Shaw, Jason Bustos, Abe Pagtama, Vin (Kaiju), Ryan Liguid, Gabi Dayer, Mahalya Kim, Jamie Nalla, Roczane Enriquez, Jordan Lacey, Will Schindler, Alan Smithee

An elite US-based secret squad of military-type hunters seek out monsters to destroy. Mahal, the most highly skilled member of her unit, wonders why her commander refuses to give her the more dangerous assignments. Bent on avenging the killing of her parents, she goes to the Philippines to hunt down the manananggal (self-segmenting viscera-sucking vampire) that she blames for the tragedy. She finds other monsters, including an East Asian jiangshi (reanimated hopping corpse), but her quest leads her back to the US, where she discovers that a particularly violent and powerful manananggal named Bampinay has been terrorizing the male population in the city where Mahal operates.

The Philippines’s still-underappreciated B-movie tradition is revived and updated for the present millennium by Matthew Abaya, in what remains an uncanny debut feature. The best output of Gerardo de Leon and Eddie Romero toyed with identity politics, a form of activism based on categories such as race, gender, age, ethnicity, etc.; another way of looking at it is by considering it an extension of Marxist principles to cover areas other than, or in addition to, social class. Vampariah (evidently a portmanteau of “vampire” and “pariah”) is stamped all over with identity consciousness, but it also administers sufficient doses of laughs, stunts, special effects, skin exposure, and synergetic myth-making to keep the pickiest fanboys satisfied. Yet Abaya brings to the table a resource that de Leon and Romero could only approximate at best: a first-hand understanding of race- and gender-based Otherness that only a Filipino-American, schooled in updated cultural and critical theories, would have the ability to process within the framework of a creative project. The standard masculine trope of hunter and hunted finding common causes between them would already be a subversive notion, but Abaya intensifies the situation by making the protagonists not just women, but also people of color, and essentially undead. The B-movie project is critically vulnerable to accusations of being too syncretic, or dependent on the fusion of disparate sources, to be genuinely original; predictable in its reliance on genre formulas; and often more fun to anticipate and discuss than to actually watch. Vampariah works out these limitations by embracing them with a vengeance and demonstrating, to both the Filipino and the American communities that Abaya straddles, how being mixed and indeterminate brings advantages and pleasures that the squarest citizens on either side will never be capable of imagining, to no one else’s misfortune but their own.

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

Á!

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

Amok

Additional Language: Cebuano
Year of Release: 2011
Director: Lawrence Fajardo
Screenwriters: John Paul Bedia & Lawrence Fajardo
From a story by Lawrence Fajardo
Producers: Cinemalaya Foundation, Pelikulaw, Wild Coyote Pictures

Cast: Mark Gil, Dido de la Paz, Garry Lim, Spanky Manikan, Nonie Buencamino, Efren Reyes Jr., Archi Adamos, Lui Manansala, Ermie Concepcion, Suzette Ranillo, John Arceo, Rolando Inocencio, Acey Aguilar, Nico Antonio, Patricia Ismael, Ku Aquino, Tuxqs Rutaquio, Akira Sapla, Wovi Villanueva, Xavi Hemady, Bryan Cabase, Ivy Rivero, Lowell Conales, Michelle Nollora, Amante Pulido, JM Bermudez, Nino Verbida, Angel Pasiderio, Noel Taylo, Annaluz Cornelio, Gary Gonzales, Dina Ofrancia

At the intersection of Metro Manila’s circumferential Epifanio de los Santos Avenue and arterial Taft Avenue, denizens who live and/or work in the vicinity or pass through it are forced to make major adjustments because of a series of gunshots. Manuel meets his son Samuel so they can return to their hometown and plan the young man’s sports plans. Belen watches over her unruly daughter Mai Mai, who’s momentarily distracted by young street rappers, while roasting and selling street food. Efren’s helping his nephew Makoy apply for a job then discovers that the latter’s application materials are forged. An elderly woman agrees to commit arson in her slum neighborhood in exchange for payment by Sarge, a corrupt police officer. A former stuntman fucks a streetwalker he picked up but when he discovers her Adam’s apple, he realizes she was transgender and refuses to pay her. A middle-aged man is driving his wealthier sister while arguing with her about his life choices. A gay pimp is taking a handsome youth he picked up to a party of wealthy queers but the cabbie refuses to drive them there because of the distance he has to cover. A former police officer takes leave from his pregnant wife, a clothes seller, to play the native variation on billiards where chips are used instead of balls; when a younger player wins the old man’s money and teases him, the latter pulls out a gun, points it at the player menacingly, and walks away. The traumatized younger man throws up, his mood darkening despite his companion comforting him, and he seeks out the ex-policeman, knife in hand.

Despite the absence of any photographic evidence of a traffic circle having once been located at the intersection, Pasay Rotonda maintains its attraction and indispensability as the juncture of tradition (the old government buildings and churches of Quiapo and Baclaran along Taft Avenue) and modernity (the business district, now city, of Makati and the Manila Bay Reclamation Project along EDSA). Featuring, among other distinctions, four barangays (districts) located at each of its four corners, the area understandably remains congested at all hours of the day and night, with nearly everyone on their way to or from major destinations. More than most films that feature multiple characters, Amok requires intensive familiarity with its circumscribed locale as well as its dramatis personae. The fact that it was made by a filmmaker who migrated from the Visayas to the metropolitan capital provides the first clue to its sharply observed yet carefully measured approach: the further the character perceives her distance from the center, the more articulate she is about the manner in which the city (via some middleperson or other) mistreats her. One might readily remark, upon an initial viewing, that the plot’s cynicism is revealed when the few characters who benefit from a happy ending do so by claiming some reward that they believe is owed them. Yet the one reflexive representative, a bitter has-been stuntman (genially embodied by Mark Gil), ironically and comically finds an opportunity for high-profile visibility in being shot. The larger impression of a community brought together by an unexpected crisis makes Amok the closest that Philippine cinema has come to replicating the achievement of Ishmael Bernal’s Manila by Night (1980), a revelation that signifies great promise in its filmmaker’s forthcoming output.

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

Posas

English Title: Shackled
Additional Language: Cebuano
Year of Release: 2012
Director: Lawrence Fajardo
Screenwriter: Zig Madamba Dulay
Producers: Quantum Films & Cinemalaya Foundation

Cast: Nico Antonio, Bangs Garcia, Arthur Acuña, Nor Domingo, Jake Macapagal, Hector Macaso, John Lapus, Wendy Valdez, Susan Africa, Jelson Bay, Raul Morit, CJ Ramos, Jonathan Tadioan, Andy Bais, Ermie Concepcion, Phillip Nolasco, Ofelia Fernandez, Nino Verbida, Honorio Santiago, Rain Robles, Michael Bautista, Raul dela Cruz, James Jaime, Cris Garrido, Ricky Tangco, Dodie Baingan, Philip John Buena

Jess is a pickpocket who works the busy lower-class district of Quiapo to support his mother and send his sister to school. When he spots a new iPhone model owned by well-off Bangs, he stalks her in a busy mall and lifts the item. After selling it to Musngi, his regular fence, and getting told off by his girlfriend because she has work to attend to, he’s spotted on the street by Bangs, who flags some police officers to chase Jess. Bangs promises to reward the police when she gets the phone back because it contains important business information, but in reality she’d recorded a fuck session with her boyfriend on it. Led by Inspector Domingo, the police take Jess to a private room to torture him until he admits to the larceny. Jess leads the police to Musngi, and they also try to convince Bangs to drop her charges because of the hassle that a trial process will entail.

Posas, in a sense, resumes the exploration of the squalid urban milieu initiated the previous year in Amok, but over a wider geographical area and with the number of major characters reduced to basics. The creative challenge consequently shifts to attaining a reality effect, especially considering how the narrative elements appear to replicate those of standard procedural thrillers. The film conditions a readily progressive perspective by focalizing the plot on the least significant entity, that of the petty thief who slips up once and pays the same price that big-time hardened criminals acquiesce to as a matter of course. In a manner of speaking, the police officials who extract a pledge from him to accept their protection (in exchange for sharing half his profits, of course) may be regarded as allies who encourage him to upgrade his hooliganism so as not to be left behind in the criminality profession. The manner in which they begin to instruct him though will prove distressing to any casual observer, more so to informed subjects: the water cure, introduced to Philippine constables and applied to anticolonial resistance fighters by the US military as part of their subjugation campaign. The variation depicted in Posas is a streamlined and less potentially fatal procedure, but (as attested by the performer) it was still traumatizing enough in efficiently rendering the drowning experience. Yet this merely constitutes the gateway to an even more terrifying process, one that crystallizes the commitment to a life of crime as a step into a point of no return. All the nonsensical commentary about how Posas sold itself short by attempting to revive a genre that had already spent itself only wound up revealing the hypocrisy of its premise: as an indie production, Posas worked out its contribution not by adopting an anti-genre stance, but by expanding on the limits of the genre’s conventions.

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

Imbisibol

English Translation: Invisible
Additional Language: Japanese
Year of Release: 2015
Director: Lawrence Fajardo
Screenwriters: Herlyn Gail Alegre & John Paul Bedia
Adapted from the play by Herlyn Gail Alegre
Producers: Sinag Maynila, Solar Entertainment

Cast: Allen Dizon, Ces Quesada, Bernardo Bernardo, JM de Guzman, JC Santos, Onyl Torres, Angelina Kanapi, Ricky Davao, Fred Lo, Naoki Takai, Shinpei Suzuki, May Alleman, Kaz Sawamura, Masaharu Imamoto, Oyee Barro, Cynthia Luster

Four Filipino migrants in Japan, acquaintaces of one another, attempt to seek more fulfilling personal and professional options while continuing to support their families back home. Linda attempts to help undocumented migrant Pinoys by providing them with loans and rented spaces despite her Japanese salaryman husband’s insistence on evicting them to avoid trouble with the government. Benjie, an illegal resident, works on two jobs to support his family at home but has been wearied down, affecting his relationship with his long-term same-sex partner. Manuel, an aging male entertainer who services elderly women and performs in pornography productions, has to face the prospect of aging as well as his addiction to gambling. Rodel, a naïve and idealistic newcomer, has been encountering friction and rivalry with his supervisor, another Filipino, at work. Their difficulties come to a head and threaten their survival strategy of remaining invisible in a foreign land.

Among the dozens of new directorial talents to have emerged since the new millennium, Lawrence Fajardo is the one who opted to specialize in multiple-protagonist narratives—a challenge so overwhelming that only a few filmmakers have been able to pull it off, much less focus on it for most of their projects. After a series of noteworthy attempts, highlighted by the impressively staged Amok (2011), where the trajectories of several bullets fired by the same gun disrupt several characters’ lives, he confronted the essentially literary challenge of the format and returned to theater, where he had trained. He utilized the same skills deployed by the local master of multicharacter filmmaking, Ishmael Bernal, in allowing for improvisation and revision in accordance with his performers’ strengths. Not surprisingly, although Imbisibol is set in wintry Japan, delineating the difficulties of overseas workers who need to make themselves inconspicuous so that government authorities would not suspect their illegal-residence status, the movie manages to luxuriate in the warmth of its charcters’ occasional camaraderie and concern for fellow expats’ well-being. It also holds the possibly unnoticed distinction of being the best local adaptation of a stage play. The movie builds up to a devastating conclusion, but allows the glow from one particular character, a gay TNT (tago-ng-tago, or constantly hiding migrant), to suffuse what would have been a chilly resolution. Bernardo Bernardo draws from his own personal history, as former US migrant and, earlier, as an actor who portrayed Bernal’s alter-ego in Manila by Night (1980), before his own career was cut short by terminal illness.

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

Á!

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

Heneral Luna

English Translation: General Luna
Additional Languages: English, Spanish
Year of Release: 2015
Director: Jerrold Tarog
Screenwriters: Henry Francia, E.A. Rocha, & Jerrold Tarog
Producer: Artikulo Uno Productions

Cast: John Arcilla, Mon Confiado, Arron Villaflor, Jeffrey Quizon, Paulo Avelino, Joem Bascon, Archie Alemania, Arthur Acuña, Alex Vincent Medina, Marc Abaya, Alvin Anson, David Bianco, Nonie Buencamino, Mylene Dizon, Edgar Ebro, Julia Enriquez, Ketchup Eusebio, Anthony Falcon, Dennis Marasigan, Leo Martinez, Allan Paule, Bing Pimentel

A generally faithful account of conflicts in the ranks of the Philippine revolutionary army, during the transition from Spanish to American colonization. President Emilio Aguinaldo and his cabinet disagree about what strategy to adopt regarding the Americans’ offer of help in routing the Spanish army. One faction is calling for trade relations with the US, but General Antonio Luna prefers to redirect against the Americans their largely successful campaign against Spain, to ensure that the country remain free from foreign occupation. When the fledgling government learns that the Americans have already started attacking major centers in the Philippines, Luna leads the charge against the new colonial aspirants. When he discovers that reinforcements from the Aguinaldo camp arrive too little and too late, Luna’s well-known hot temper leads to him to burn a few bridges with some of his former allies.

Instances—anywhere in the world, not just in the Philippines—where independent players manage to beat mainstream studios at their own game are so rare that their emergence provides filmmakers and audiences with always-welcome optimism. What adds to Heneral Luna’s significance is its historical record as a social-media phenomenon, following earlier pop-culture samples like TV’s AlDub kalyeserye (a semi-improvised courtship narrative) and prefiguring the successful run of the least conventional candidate, Rodrigo Duterte, during the 2016 presidential election. Heneral Luna distinguished itself further primarily because, a few dissenting voices notwithstanding, it delivered on its promise of providing a now-rare combination of rollicking entertainment, substantial sociopolitical insight, and that emotional intangible that today’s young Pinoys call “hugot”—roughly equivalent to the millennial generation’s “hardcore emo.” Jerrold Tarog opted to revive a formerly popular but now-moribund genre, the historical period film, and invested it with humor, magic realism, and the several loose threads that typify any controversial historical account. The movie provided an abundance of meme-worthy lines, with the pithy “Bayan o sarili?” [Nation or self?] consolidating the movie’s arguments as well as its prescription for the future. Of better subsequent import would be Tarrog’s announcement that, because of the movie’s unexpected success, two other period projects on similarly larger-than-life controversial leaders, Gregorio del Pilar and Manuel L. Quezon, have been slated for production. High-caliber production values attest to Tarog’s whiz-kid stature in taking charge of specific aspects of production, including editing and music.

Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list

Á!