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Giliw Ko

English Translation: My Beloved
English Title: Beloved
Year of Release: 1939 / B&W
Director & Screenwrtier: Carlos Vander Tolosa
Producer: LVN Pictures

Cast: Fernando Poe, Mila del Sol, Fleur de Lis (Mona Lisa), Ben Rubio, Precioso Palma, Cecilio Joaquin, Vita Ortega, Nieves Obieta, SSS Trio, Kiko and Conde, Jose Garcia

Guia, a poor but high-spirited country maiden, is entranced by the prospect of wealth and fame via radio stardom. Her devoted childhood sweetheart, Jose, is considerate about her ambition, but dismayed when she starts falling for Antonio, the son of their landlord, who sponsors her trip to audition in Manila. She makes a splash in the big city but realizes that an urban sophisticate already lays claim to Antonio’s affections. When an impressed producer offers to further her singing career, she realizes she has to choose between love and success.

Giliw Ko may appear to be lightweight entertainment, brightened by the presence of Mila del Sol in a film-debut performance that remains as luminous as when it was first screened. It features charming melodies, earnestly delighting in love and the simple life, delivered with all the pleasure that only the best popular performers can bring to musical numbers that they know will gratify audiences in need of exceptional diversions. One may resolve to forget the viewing experience as soon as it ends, but history has been careful enough to add a couple of kicks: This was the first film of LVN Pictures, possibly the quintessential First Golden Age studio, and its polished production values were to persist through a quarter century of active filmmaking. More poignantly, it came out during a time when war clouds were looming in all corners of the world, with the Philippines poised to suffer severely—again!—from foreign incursion because of the presence of a previous invader that the forthcoming masters considered their enemy. No wonder that the most famous admirer of the film, President Manuel L. Quezon, demanded that the US President grant Philippine independence immediately so the country could be spared the ruthless anger of the Japanese Imperial Army.[1] Quezon died in US exile, the Japanese forces were vanquished via nuclear annihilation in their home country, a one-sided dependency relationship with the US was enforced after independence, and the country continues to stagger toward seemingly unattainable prosperity. All the more reason to be grateful that Giliw Ko endures as a reminder that at some point in the past, the dream of a happy existence did not seem too good to be true.

Note

[1] Addressed to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Manuel L. Quezon’s correspondence said that, because the US was prioritizing its war commitments in Europe, the Philippines should be allowed to declare its neutrality as the Pacific equivalent of Switzerland. William Manchester, in his biography of Douglas MacArthur, described “this historic communication [as] the first peal of the Third World liberty bell” (American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, Dell, 1978, page 281). This insight can be related to Vivek Chibber’s provocative assessment of the Vietnam War, where he argues that, despite its pronouncement, the US did not so much fear the domino effect of the spread of Communism, but rather the specter of neutrality, where “other countries will take inspiration from a successful nationalist endeavor and decide on a neutral path” (“Not the Fall of Saigon—Its Liberation,” interview with Melissa Naschek, Jacobin, April 30, 2025, jacobin.com/2025/04/vietnam-war-communists-us-empire).

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[Forthcoming]

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Pauwi Na

English Translation: On the Way Home
English Title: Pedicab
Year of Release: 2016 / Color with B&W
Director: Paolo Villaluna
Screenwriters: Paolo Villaluna & Ellen Ramos
“Inspired by a news feature article which appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on September 7, 2003,” per opening credit title
Producer: Universal Harvester

Cast: Bembol Roco, Cherry Pie Picache, Meryll Soriano, Jerald Napoles, Jess Mendoza, Chai Fonacier, Bimbo Bautista, Jack the Dog, Shamaine Buencamino, Melinda Tan de Guzman, John Paul Dragin, Emmanuel Dela Cruz, Marichu Belarmino-Cariño, Bombi Plata, Raul Morit, Jam Nhaze Canciller

Suffering from a cough that he knows will never get better because of his smoking habit, Pepe convinces his family to ride all the way back to their rural hometown by using rickshaws. His opportunity arrives when he’s able to swipe a packet of money from one of his regular customers. His wife Remedios objects initially but agrees that their hand-to-mouth existence is no way to live. Their eldest son JP earns ocasionally from pickpocketing and stealing, nicking a smaller motorized rickshaw to complement his father’s pedal-driven pedicab. JP’s wife Isabel is blind, heavy with child, and regarded as screwy for occasionally conversing with someone she addresses as Jesus. Their younger daughter Pina is a street vendor who plans to hook an AFAM (originally “a foreigner assigned in Manila,” currently any white American male) in the red-light district; she goes along, bringing their dog Kikay, although she easily complains when she gets hungry or wants to bathe. They encounter difficulties with traffic rules on the expressway leading southward and endure bouts of hunger. When they find a hand-pumped well at the side of a street, they take the opportunity to wash and fill up their containers. A woman comes up and demands that they pay for the water, and a priest intervenes to pacify the lady and offer the family a place to rest.

Nearly a decade since its emergence, Pauwi Na has lost none of its ability to masterfully delineate a national condition thrown into stark relief by the attempt of members of a typical Philippine family, trapped in desperate straits, to better their condition. A major factor toward accomplishing this tour de force is the assemblage of what must be the most impressive ensemble of performers in the present millennium, each of them resolute in depicting the multilayered suffering of the most neglected citizens around, while ensuring that their character’s basic humanity remains perceptible. Unsurprisingly, the query that one of these players raises toward the end, whether their story will ever have a happy ending, has already been answered by the mere fact that it has to be asked in the first place. (Felicitously, the narrative’s source material appears to have a less downbeat resolution—but then the family traveled even farther, to another island in fact, becoming a national sensation as a result, so one should not begrudge them such a closure.) The means by which PN morphs into a road movie worth the trip is the standard decent-artist approach of leavening heartbreaking tragedy with irony and humor, but it distinguishes itself by refusing the sanctification which is commonly bestowed on these subjects. Fantasy passages that interrupt the plot suggest how the family members, in a better world, might have handled the challenges they confront; but in acknowledging how old-fashioned and conventional these notions are, the film executes these excerpts in early-cinema style—black and white, slow-motion, actors facing the audience, accompanied by achingly evocative native love songs. In the film’s actual world, the men of the family are not above two-timing friends and strangers alike, much as the barely mature daughter casually contemplates sex work, and the mother opts for an inhumane option in order to assuage everyone’s hunger. An even more daring move is literalizing the Jesus that the family’s blind daughter-in-law keeps addressing (no spoilers, since he shows up from the beginning): he dresses up like a well-groomed slum resident save for the crown of thorns on his head and spouts contemporary lingo. When his real-life counterpart shows up, he tells his collocutor that things will take a turn for the worse, a warning that surprises her as much as it places the audience on alert, inasmuch as the parish priest the family meets initially behaves exactly as anyone would expect. A final symbolic touch, the small plastic chamber pot from which emergency funds are drawn to save the family’s grandchild, should be no surprise since we already know from early on what it looks like; what’s remarkable is how it transforms from a light semihumorous prop into an arbiter of survival, when its contents, though impressing the character who witnesses it, will suffice in covering only one life. How long before this item, alongside even the film itself, becomes a relic of a better-forgotten past, doesn’t seem to be a possibility for both characters and viewers, which is the far less laughable tragedy.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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