[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

Talipandas

English Title: Traitor
Year of Release: 1958
Director: Conrado Conde
Screenwriter: Ding M. de Jesus
(From a serialized komiks story by Francisco V. Coching)
Producer: Sampaguita Pictures

Cast: Rita Gomez, Luis Gonzales, Van de Leon, Carlos Salazar, Rosa Mia, Bella Flores, Zeny Zabala, Bert Olivar, Ely Roque, Art Morado, Lydia Correa, Jaime Javier, Pablo Raymundo, Willie Dado, Sabas San Juan, Matimtiman Cruz, Marcela Garcia, Loida Medina, Apolonia Aguilar

Having taken the fall for his brother Andy, Bien Lopez confronts his sibling for betraying him by cohabiting with his wife Stella while he was still in prison. Although Stella insists that she was forced into the arrangement, Bien’s rejection drives her to stab Andy and commit suicide. Unaware so far of what his wife did, Bien watches a striptease number at Moonlite Cabaret; the performer, Esperanza, migrated to Manila to work at the same place where her mother once performed, to track down the man who ruined her mother’s life. Bien and Espie manage to provide comfort and support for each other and develop an alliance just when a besotted customer provides Espie with better lodging and a gang leader named George Mendez takes a prurient interest in the nightclub’s hit performer.

The fact that two komiks-sourced melodramas from the same year—this and Gregorio Fernandez’s Malvarosa—featured slum residents living by railroad tracks must have been more than coincidental. Intensely psychological where Malvarosa was sociological, Talipandas eventually abandons its expository locale when its central female character upgrades to better housing (courtesy of a loaded patron); but the opening scene’s train not only brought her to the city in the first place, it also ended the life of her would-have-been rival, the narrative hero’s wife. The plot’s twists and reversals affirm the serial nature of its origin, although it would take over a decade, with the emergence of Lino Brocka, before such irregular dramatic arcs could be tempered by an adequately prepared talent. What Talipandas provides in recompense for its directorial unevenness is a willingness to embrace material that Hollywood’s Hays Office would have rejected as extreme if not beyond-legal, from white slavery through suicide and fratricide to incest. The heroine contends with a pair of concerned surrogate mothers, one benevolent (Ely Roque) and another malignant (Bella Flores); but Rita Gomez’s sensuous and fiery reading ultimately draws the strands together in an impressive braid, while making it clear why the directors of the next Golden Age considered it a treat to work with her.

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

Á!

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

Die Beautiful

Additional Languages: English, “Swardspeak” [Philippine gay lingo]
Year of Release: 2016
Director: Jun Robles Lana
Screenwriter: Rody Vera
(From a story by Jun Robles Lana, with Fudge Silva as consultant)
Producers: The IdeaFirst Company & Octobertrain Films

Cast: Paolo Ballesteros, Christian Bables, Joel Torre, Gladys Reyes, Adrian Alandy, Albie Casiño, Inah de Belen, IC Mendoza, Cedrick Juan, Lou Veloso, Mimi Juareza, Iza Calzado, Eugene Domingo, Jade Lopez, Kokoy de Santos, Juris Ocampo, Rica Paras, Kyle Gabrielle, Adrianna So, Lui Manansala, Sue Prado, Mel Martinez, Bekimon, Patricia Ismael, Lito “Shalala” Reyes, Karen delos Reyes, Jace Flores, Erlinda Villalobos, Star Orjaliza, Lao Rodriguez, Giovanni Baldisseri, Steeve Fernandez, Khalid Ruiz, Sunshine Teodoro, Joy Desales, Perry Escaño, Ernie Enriquez, Bing Yumang, Laurence Mossman, Kenshee Montefalcon, Christine Joy de Guzman, Jordhen Suan, Faye Alhambra

Upon fulfilling her lifelong dream of winning a televised gay beauty contest, Trisha literally drops dead. Her best friend Barbs strives to fulfill her final wish, which is to be dressed and made up as a famous celebrity for each day of her week-long wake. Each costume change occasions a recollection by the people in her life, of Trisha’s struggle as a destitute transgender woman, banished from home by her homophobic father and abused (though occasionally also loved) by the straight men she falls for—though she nevertheless remains focused on the goal, difficult for someone in her station, of being recognized and celebrated as someone with beauty, wit, and chutzpah.

Most pop-culture experts might wonder about the advisability of presenting a trans person’s narrative as an epic tale, considering its intensely private dimensions and its psychoanalytic conflicts. Like its central character, Die Beautiful might come across as too loud, strong, insistent, confusing even; but like the Entwicklungsroman, or development narrative, that it actually is, it will be capable of fully rewarding those who may have resisted it initially but return to it after a while, preferably with some intervening maturity. Jun Robles Lana’s careful (sometimes overcareful) cultivation of his handling of queer material over a long period of time has resulted, with this film, in the fulfillment of the promise that the always well-patronized outings of our comedy stars, from Dolphy onward, kept pursuing: a life in full, from an always-queer awakening, through adversity in the pursuit of happiness and pleasure, to a too-early though fittingly fabulous ending (though sometimes with ill-advised—because unnatural, unlikely, and moralistic—conversion to the straight option). A structural marvel, the Die Beautiful screenplay enlightens the audience just enough to be able to “get” Trisha’s emotional placement through the various stages in her life, with the prospect of further, often painful but always well-earned insight serving as narrative cliffhanger. Paolo Ballesteros and Christian Bables, the actors who appear in nearly all the major scenes, provide the unexpected bonus of fomenting an interactive chemistry, overflowing with confidence, humor, and humanity, that effortlessly diffuses through the rest of the cast. It may sound ironic, but Trisha’s truly beautiful death betokens a life well-lived in the only way a genuinely heroic citizen could make it.

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

Á!

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

Alapaap

Additional Language: Ilocano
English Title: Clouds
Year of Release: 1984
Director: Tata Esteban
Screenwriter: Rei Nicandro
(From a story by Tata Esteban)
Producers: Aces Films International, Oro Vista Motion Pictures, Rare Breed Ltd.

Cast: William Martinez, Mark Gil, Michael de Mesa, Tanya Gomez, Isadora, Eva Rose Palma, Ed Villapol, Rosemarie Gil, Liza Lorena, Jabbar, Jose Cortez, Benny Resurreccion, Jerry O’Hara, Rez Cortez

After a present-day death certificate is filled out, we inexplicably flash forward to September 28, 1986, when Jake links up with the brothers Dave and Donald, to ask their help in completing a film that he needs to submit as his thesis project in an American university. The two suggest taking a trip to Baguio (bringing their girlfriends along), where they can search for material and possibly even shoot some footage there. After they persuade a reluctant old man to allow them to stay at his guesthouse, increasingly strange events begin to happen. When the brothers show Jake the shot they secretly filmed of him making out with a native lass outdoors, and realize that he had no one with him, they have no choice but to conclude that an otherworldly force is bent on messing up with their lives.

Anyone who can explain why 1984 was the most artistically productive year in Philippine film history might also have to account for why the critics of that time took it for granted. The yearend Metro Manila Film Festival, as an example, was so spoiled for great choices, dominated primarily by the films scripted by Ricky Lee for the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, that it could afford to toss a few token awards to an exceptionally creative debut film and forget about it for good. Directed by the fairly obscure actor Steve Paolo (who was also producer and production designer) using his actual name, Alapaap took the ECP’s name literally, ensured audience patronage by banking on sex scenes and the upper-body female nudity then-exempted by censorship for depictions of indigenous practice, and scored largely on the basis of its skillful appropriation of giallo-horror principles. Its spectacle of unsurprisingly above-average performances aided significantly in overriding a few instances of anachronisms and illogical developments—with also a then-unremarked exceptional casting of the Eigenmann brothers (Michael de Mesa and Mark Gil) as well as topflight delivery by Tanya Gomez; this must also be the only canonizable entry with an animal in the cast list. As in countless other Philippine horror samples, the City of Pines embodies the collision between modernity and ancestral culture, but in harsher terms than usual. The ending is meant to provide some respite from the conflict, but the film is clever enough to take as much as it gives.

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

Á!

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

Still Lives

Year of Release: 1999
Director & Screenwriter: Jon Red
Producers: Pelipula Film Productions & Blue Cord

Cast: Joel Torre, Nonie Buencamino, Ray Ventura, Ynez Veneracion, Alan Paule, Caridad Sanchez, Archi Adamos, Soliman Cruz, Mel Martinez, Raymond Keannu, Mon Confiado, Richard Quan, Nathan Forrest, Randy Punsal, Benjie Felipe, Leon Miguel, Jun Ureta, Ian Victoriano, Raul Morit, Michael Angelo Dagñalan, Ruben Lee, Bombi Plata, Roberto Pangan, Larry Manda, Bong Rosario, Jason Red, Michael Red

Badong, a neighborhood drug dealer, seeks to maintain his dominance via the standard carrot-and-stick approach. He exudes friendly warmth toward his most productive earners, but metes lethal punishment when his clients displease him. He warns Enteng, his clean-cut personal assistant, that he cannot bow out of the business mainly because of the trouble caused by Paul, his thieving friend. An associate, Nardo, wishes to propose a money-making scheme although he also owes Badong for past unpaid transactions. Badong proceeds confidently, having paid off influential officials, but fails to contend with the reality that government authority never really operates as a monolithic entity.

Acknowledged as the work that initiated the independent-digital trend in the Philippines, Still Lives has managed to live up to its promise, despite a narrative resolution whose twist may have seemed too clever by half. Its longer-lasting feat is enabled by strategies that several generations of successors tended to take for granted from the get-go, thus resulting in more failures than necessary: an intimate familiarity with the culture that it engages with, and a commitment by its creative forces to serve the best interests of said social context, including a willingness to suspend judgment in order to more accurately depict its most difficult-to-access aspects. The facts that digital technology itself still had to evolve more fully and that the team could have benefited from a budget several times larger than what the presentation languished on: these become moot points when set against the onslaught of an inspired cast and offbeat elements introduced ostensibly to prop up a controlling gimmick, but ultimately implemented in order to augment the film’s entertainment value. When Philippine historical incidents began to mirror the film’s concerns, that should have served as proof that Still Lives was aiming at much more than purveying transient amusement.

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

Á!

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

They Call Her … Cleopatra Wong

Alternate Titles: Cleopatra Wong; Female Big Boss
Language: English
Year of Release: 1978
Director: Bobby A. Suarez [as George Richardson]
Screenwriter: Romeo N. Galang
(From a story by Bobby A. Suarez)
Producer: BAS Film Productions

Cast: Marrie Lee, George Estregan, Dante Varona, Johnny Wilson, Kerry Chandler, Franco Guerrero, Alex Pecate, Philip Gamboa, Danny Rojo, Bobby Greenwood, Jesse Lee, Joaquin Fajardo, Victor Romero, Joe Cunanan, Steve Havarro, Avel Morado, Romy Misa, Bernie Bernardo, Joe Canlas, Tony Castro, Mark Sherak, Clem Persons, Paul Mejares, Robert Mendez, Buddy Philipps, Don Gordon Bell, Robert Mallet, Skip Kriegel, Mike Youngblood, Bill James, John Stewart, Thunderboys Stuntmen, PIS Stuntmen

Instructed by Manila Interpol, Cleo hies off to Singapore to investigate the proliferation of fake currencies across the major ASEAN countries; she passes herself off as a counterfeiter so she could be picked up by a middleman. After subduing him and his goons, she’s then assigned to Hong Kong, to track the arrival of fake money in jars of strawberry jam. This leads her and her Interpol detectives to a convent in Baguio, where they attempt to uncover the mystery of why a religious order would engage in a global criminal operation.

Long appreciated more outside than within his home country, Bobby A. Suarez turned out to be just the right candidate to export for overseas film production. An ardent B-movie aficionado, familiar with the latest contrivances that popular entertainment had on offer, he lucked out with an assignment that enabled him, though on an apparently tight budget, to shoot in three countries with a large cast. The resulting poverty-row epic featured some of the wildest flights of imagination ever witnessed in a Filipino-directed action film, complemented by the wit and charm of Singaporean actress Marrie Lee, who was sharp enough to know that the entire enterprise shouldn’t be taken too seriously, but provides just the right amount of nimble-footed intensity to be able to foreground the work’s campy elements. Subsequent Suarez projects affirmed his belief in the transnational crime-control function of Interpol, but Cleopatra Wong marks the point right before his professional competence and influential outreach overpowered the several mésalliances that managed to proliferate in the present narrative.

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

Red Roses for a Call Girl

Alternate Titles: The True Confession of Diana; Rose Tattoo
Language: English
Year of Release: 1988
Director & Screenwriter: Bobby A. Suarez
Producer: BAS Film Productions

Cast: Maria Isabel Lopez, Robert Marius, Werner Pochat, Julia Kent, Manfred Seipold, Amanda Amores, Pia Moran, Arnold Mendoza, Vangie Labalan

In Germany, a streetwalker named Marian gets abducted because she hasn’t been able to repay the money she owes her pimp, Ringo. The same woman, who now calls herself Barbara, reappears at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and makes the acquaintance of Klaus Timberg, who arrives because his profligate son, Peter, is given over to drag racing and nightlife. Klaus secretly hires a local sex worker, Diana, to induce his son to fall in love. As it turns out, Diana’s procurer is Ringo, who relocated to evade criminal prosecution in Germany. When Barbara, via Klaus, learns about this, she attempts to seek vengeance; Klaus’s predicament gets even more complicated when Peter discovers that Diana is really a sex professional.

The first notable element in Red Roses for a Call Girl is how it departs from the usual war-set or futuristic action (and even horror) material that foreign coproductions insisted on when they selected the Philippines as location for their film investment, in the wake of the initial success of the Marcos-era Manila International Film Festival. Opting for a loose reworking of La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils, Bobby A. Suarez instead devised a low-budget drama that nevertheless expands on the original’s themes of exploitation, familial bonds, and cross-cultural romance. The far-from-ideal production values and performances (excepting the native talents, unsurprisingly) accrue their own level of charm, the way that Third World ventures occasionally succeed in doing, in contrast with the Hollywoodish aspirations of the typical local productions of the period.

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

Á!

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

Hubad na Pangarap

English Translation: Naked Ambition
Year of Release: 1987
Director: Abbo Q. dela Cruz
Screenwriter: Armando Lao
Producer: Golden Pearl Production

Cast: Michael de Mesa, Julio Diaz, Anna Marie Gutierrez, Lola, Vangie Labalan, Archi Adamos, Dante Castro, Chris Daluz, Tony Angeles, Tony Martinez, Stella Strada II, Jesse dela Paz, Lina Anota, Dick Morados

Miguel arrives at his rural rest house with several of his swinger friends, including a good-time girl with whom he hooks up. When his volatile girlfriend Cindy arrives, she throws a fit and drives all the visitors away, allowing Miguel to appease her by making out with her. All by themselves, they turn their attention to the place’s caretakers, Nelia and Ador, a poor but attractive couple engaged to each other. Miguel and Ador are childhood chums, but Miguel’s interest in Nelia starts to strain their friendship. Cindy’s exploitative regard toward Ador meanwhile leads to a bloody resolution in which the police are forced to intervene.

Abbo Q. dela Cruz’s debut film, Misteryo sa Tuwa (Joyful Mystery, 1984), was a film maudit that will always be worth at least one viewing, but that will probably be defensible as strictly a late-era Cold War masterpiece—patriarchal, myopic, and desperate. It was so overblown that it came close to shutting down the film production division of the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, which nevertheless came up with one last debut piece, Pio de Castro III’s Soltero (Bachelor, 1984), a film that replicated its shortcomings, albeit on a decidedly more intimate scale. Dela Cruz had better timing with his sophomore project, written by one of the winners of the next batch’s scriptwriting contest (which were never produced because of the preceding year’s follies). The Misteryo sa Tuwa connection provides the first step in comprehending the offbeat properties of Hubad na Pangarap: its misanthropy is unmistakeable, but this time more carefully skewed against its privileged characters, so that its ineluctable misogyny is favorably contrasted with its masculine characters’ meanness or feeble-mindedness. The libertarian spell occasioned by ECP-screened entries also fostered the busting of the final Catholic taboo against displaying the male form, so Hubad na Pangarap enables a more-than-game Julio Diaz to cocktease not just his onscreen female master but an unsuspecting general audience as well. More productively, the film can be regarded as the middle entry in a trilogy scripted by Armando Lao, bookended by William Pascual’s Takaw Tukso (Constant Craving, 1986) and Chito S. Roño’s Itanong Mo sa Buwan (Moon Child, 1987), depicting increasing narrative complexity where working-class masculinities are confronted with and confounded by the well-laid schemes of the femme fatale.

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

Á!

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

Sarong Banggi

English Title: One Night
Additional Language: Bikol
Year of Release: 2005
Director & Screenwriter: Emmanuel Dela Cruz
Producers: Cinemalaya Foundation, UFO Pictures, Cutting Edge Productions

Cast: Jaclyn Jose, Angelo Ilagan, Greg Rodriguez III, Alchris Galura, Miguel Iñigo Guño, Jam Rodriguez, Miguel V. Fabie III, Tanya Guerrero, Ronald Diama, Ester Reyes, Josephine M. Abelgas, Victor Cusi, Roger Macusi, Cesar P. dela Cruz, Jean dela Cruz, Mica Torre, C.J. dela Cruz, Rose Beltran, Monster Jimenez, Mario Cornejo, Josel Garlitos, Marlon Despues, Jing Villaruel, Ariel Carullo, Lorena Landicho, Lilia Villena

On the eve of his birthday, Nyoy is brought by his friends to the vicinity of Manila’s red-light district. They made an arrangement with Jaclyn so that Nyoy can have his first carnal experience. When they see her from a distance, they’re realize that she’s older than she claims to be so they decide to ignore her and proceed to a bar where they pick up a younger girl to pair with Nyoy. The girl however prefers a more exciting partner, so she allows herself to be picked up by another man in a convenience store. When Nyoy realizes he’s been abandoned by everyone, he returns to the open-air restaurant where Jaclyn sits by herself and invites him to join her.

Essentially a two-hander once Nyoy and (the reflexively named) Jaclyn start their interaction, Sarong Banggi attains a rare look at awkward intimacy that evolves into a harsh, deromanticized glimpse of the inner life of a fallen woman. Key to its achievement is Jaclyn Jose’s ruthless attack, allowing the once-hopeful but now regret-ridden character to take over without any hint of the performer perfecting her craft—which paradoxically makes perfection possible. By underlining some of her lines with contrapuntal behavior, she enables the narrative to reach places without requiring expository explanation. A plot twist that would have defeated lesser artists becomes a marvel of multistratified delivery: does she cry from disappointment, joy, horror, or self-pity? The composure that she forces herself to assume afterward similarly raises questions that she wisely avoids opting to answer. Aware of how exceptional this approach to character is in local cinema, Emmanuel Dela Cruz requires Angelo Ilagan, Jose’s scene partner, to maintain sympathetic naïveté throughout, while packaging the presentation in expressionist flourishes that serve to contrast with the depths of the abyss that Jose fearlessly plunges into.

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

Á!

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

Sol Searching

Year of Release: 2018
Director: Roman Perez Jr.
Screenwriters: Roman Perez Jr. & Norman Boquiren
Producer: Universal Harvester

Cast: Pokwang, Joey Marquez, Gilleth Sandico, JM Salvado, Conrado, Raffy Tejada, Raul Morit, LotLot Bustamante, Mayen Estañero, Troy Aquino, Francis Magundayao, Jelson Bay, Chokoleit, Lee O’Brian, Paulo Rodriguez, Sue Prado, Hector Macaso, Chad Kinis, DJ Maki Rena, DonJake Consuega, Vic Romano, Sky Labastilla

Elementary school teacher Sol collapses after swilling liquor on the job and stressing herself with the students’ usual infractions, but fails to recover. Her colleague and best friend Lorelai makes it her mission to ensure that Sol gets an extended wake, where her long-missing husband is expected to show up, followed by a decent burial. Unfortunately Sol is a non-entity in their small town, her family property grabbed by influential claimants, whom she in turn antagonized by agitating for farmers’ welfare. Initially only Bugoy, the student whom she saved from parental abuse, assists Lorelai, but eventually the other players in the school and town hall come around to help solve Lorelai’s predicament while ensuring that their personal agendas can also be pursued.

An entry that’s guaranteed to surprise close observers of contemporary Philippine cinema, since it left no traces behind save for a popularity prize at a now-defunct film festival and the usual positive notices automatically bestowed on anything that spells “indie production.” One possible clue as to the eventual critical dereliction visited on it lies in its throwback properties: its crude surface is reminiscent of celluloid-era hack work, while its thematic preoccupation with localized developmental issues creates disturbing associations with early martial-law media policy during the regime of the elder Ferdinand Marcos. Yet the achievement of Sol Searching lies in the way in which it subverts developmentalist requisites while deploying stouthearted wit and humor, in delineating a narrative that would be recognized as tragic in any context. The creative tension generated by the material encourages broad delivery from a cast that, large as it already is, increasingly proliferates toward the end; yet these risk-taking touches are substantiated by further forays into rewarding twists and revelations. A forward-looking throwback then, as good as it’s possible to get.

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

Á!

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

Halaw

Alternate Title: Ways of the Sea
Additional Languages: Cebuano, Tausug, Zamboangueño Chavacano
Year of Release: 2010
Director & Screenwriter: Sheron R. Dayoc
Producers: Cinemalaya Foundation & Los Peliculas Linterna Studio

Cast: John Arcilla, Maria Isabel Lopez, Arnalyn Ismael, Ross-Ann Dalkis, Aljimar Hajilol, Rodaine Avalie, Hadja Nursiya Darangina, Edgardo Sumicad Jr., Randy Amodia, Hadji Amman Sahi, Nasri Tawasil, Anelyn Carino, Justies Love Matchon, Reden Silven, Fharwis Amil, Joel Bustamante, Maimuna Mutos

Hernand encounters a whole set of difficulties in organizing his latest attempt to transport Philippine natives illegally to Malaysia on a motorized outrigger boat, via the southern backdoor. Some of the young women he recruited to work as entertainers got cold feet and backed out, while Khalil, who’s in charge of one of their stopovers, wants to collect on a loan he lent out earlier. Mercedes, a veteran hospitality worker, joins their group and provides assurance and confidence to some of the understandably anxious women. Their passage through the Malaysian area of responsibility is fraught with danger, with their prospective country’s coast guard on the alert for their type of intrusion.

The reason why Halaw endures over the passage of time has to do with the several balancing acts it executes in delineating its passengers’ sea trip (in contrast with the road trips of New American Cinema); since there can only be pitifully few possible conclusions at the end, none of them worth accepting, the journey becomes the whole point of the narrative. The collection of passengers is distinguished by social gaps that each one tries to overcome, as casually and painlessly as possible, though this turns out to be easy only for the most privileged among them. At the head of their group are two Manila-bred Tagalog-speaking migrants (played by the “name” members of the cast): Hernand has his hands full ensuring that everyone gets on board, while Mercedes uses wilier ways to persuade the understandably reluctant female recruits. At the other extreme is a prepubescent girl, Daying, identified by the others as a Badjao native; she may be the only character who does not speak her native tongue, since no one else would understand her—but she also literally upstages everyone by performing the celebrated Pangalay dance. These rounds of simple, lighthearted distractions, including exchanges of gossip, jokes, and beauty tips, will be recognizable to any native confronted by the looming prospect of overseas alienation and danger. Most of the action increasingly takes place in the dark, since the group has to travel by night through pre-electrified islands. The film provides a visual counterpart to forestall the anguish that inevitably awaits, by enabling us to occasionally glimpse natural scapes of quiet beauty, with none more ravishing than the very destination that marks their transformation from citizens to illegal entities.

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

[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]

1—Birdshot

Year of Release: 2016
Director: Mikhail Red
Screenwriters: Mikhail Red & Rae Red
Producers: Pelikulared, Tuko Film Productions, Buchi Boy Films

Cast: Mary Joy Apostol, Manuel Aquino, John Arcilla, Arnold Reyes, Dido de la Paz, Elora Españo, Ronnie Quizon, Rolando Inocencio, Suzette Ranillo, Angelica C. Ferro

A busload of passengers is passing through an abandoned field at night. Next day, Maya is taught by her father Diego, the sole tenant of a plot of farmland, to handle a gun. Against her father’s warning, she crosses the fence of a forest sanctuary and, once inside, shoots and kills an endangered Philippine eagle. In order to investigate the whereabouts of the missing animal, Domingo, a rookie police officer, is instructed by his station commander to drop his investigation of the disappearance of a bus of farmers who were planning to go to Manila to protest the harsh conditions that landowners, in collusion with corrupt government officials, were imposing on them. Domingo persists in following up the earlier case but is pressured into focusing on the disappearance of the eagle, leading him on a collision course with Maya and her father.

2—Neomanila

Year of Release: 2017
Director: Mikhail Red
Screenwriters: Zig Madamba Dulay, Mikhail Red, Rae Red
Producers: TBA Studios, Artikulo Uno Productions, Buchi Boy Films

Cast: Timothy Castillo, Eula Valdes, Rocky Salumbides, Jess Mendoza, Ross Pesigan, Angeline Andoy, Angeli Bayani, Ron Villas, Raul Morit, Shandii Bacolod, Donna Cariaga, Astrid Hernandez

Toto’s capable of running fast because as a street kid, he earns a living from snatching. His older brother, imprisoned for some unspecified petty crime, asks him to report a well-known drug pusher, since one of the standard covert practices in fascist President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs is palit-ulo (literally head-swapping), where a suspect surrenders a higher-ranking criminal in exchange for favors or freedom. After his girlfriend informs him that the guy he has to find is dead, a plainclothes narc named Irma, who was his mother’s friend, checks up on him. When he discovers next day that his brother’s jail was bombed, he confronts the gang that he suspects of the act but they proceed to mess him up. Irma saves him from getting killed and, since he no longer has any family left, he accompanies her on the extrajudicial rubouts that she and her partner and lover Raul have to accomplish. However, Toto is still unused to cold-blooded killing and protests when one of their targets is a mother who brought her infant child with her.

The problems that confront the country’s dispossessed offer no reprieve regardless of political regime. This principle plays out in the two consecutive works by Mikhail Red that happened to straddle the end of the last liberal-democratic President and the start of the first authoritarian President since the earlier Ferdinand Marcos. As it turned out, Birdshot was set in a distant rural locale while Neomanila was in a slum community adjacent to the business district. The promise that Birdshot’s filmmaking talent holds forth is a throwback to the heady days of the then still relatively benign years of the 1970s military dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, when the country’s most gifted aspirants could propose subject matter that implicitly criticized the political system by insistently focusing on narratives of survival. This resulted in a few instances of verisimilitude that martial-law authorities were quick to seize on, so Filipino filmmakers during the Second Golden Age managed (for the most part) to be subtle and ambivalent whenever their material came too close to mirroring real-life events. Such considerations no longer impinge on the generation of talents since then, so Birdshot’s presentation of a local reality so insulated that the disappearance of a busload of politically significant passengers can be successfully hidden from outside investigators, does not fully square with the traumatic real-life horror of the 2009 Maguindanao massacre that it apparently references. The narrative’s seriocomic factual incident of an older male peasant shooting down an endangered eagle to be able to cook tinola, or poultry stew with green papaya and chili leaves, is transformed here into the case of a young maiden similarly unaware of the consequence of killing wildlife—in a government sanctuary that she entered surreptitiously, against her father’s injunction. The plot opts instead to turn on character transformations that affect the protagonists: frustrated by his superior officers’ corruption, an idealistic policeman vents his anger on the wildlife-killing suspect’s father by torturing the latter; the daughter then responds by killing the policeman, along with any prospect for moral clarity. Neomanila’s dramatis personae, in contrast, respond to the terrors of an openly oppressive political system either by banding together in gangs or, where family is still available, by fulfilling whatever filial injunctions may be passed on to them. When the protagonist, still barely an adolescent, finds himself divested of relations and rejected by his would-be homies, he turns toward parental figures who welcome him for his ability to run, during the historical moment when emergency situations could profit from such a skill. None of these safety-in-numbers options works out satisfactorily for anyone concerned—although the movie’s canniness lies in how it offers glimpses of affective connection between substitute mother and abandoned son, enough to prepare us to empathize with the latter’s insistence that children are any war’s true victims, and to dread the easy prospect of rupture. The country’s film output as a whole attains a certain salience during periods of authoritarian repression, although this property will still have to be described, explained, and evaluated; when cinema of the Duterte drug-war gets defined, preferably in comparison with the Marcos martial-law era, Neomanila deserves to be one of the foremost items to be sampled.

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

Á!