Watching the dead: Philippine cinema and global recognition
THE OUTSIDER By Erwin Romulo
The Philippine STAR 11/05/2004
Don’t resurrect the dead.
It’s the English translation of the title of an awful Filipino film released in the 1980s that involves Satanists, mad doctors and ghastly makeup (the latter the only real horror in the movie). Yet it seems pertinent – and admittedly a bit flippant – to introduce any discussion on Philippine Cinema and global recognition. Golden Ages have come and gone: their brightest stars either dead or forgotten, perhaps both. The films themselves are rotting away in bureaucratic hells that stink of vinegar or lining the paper trumpets children blow on New Year to ward off evil spirits. If we are to believe our own critics, the final nail was hammered in long ago and almost no one from the international community even bothered to send their condolences.
Yet films are still being made: the entertainment industry continues to thrive despite an ailing economy. But with issues of piracy and competition from big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, most producers are content to indulge in cannibalism and necrophilia: peddling the same material over and over with only some new effects thrown in as a sign of growth. It’s not unlike tribesman parading the dead because the corpse’s hair and nails continue to grow.
It’s a sad fact given that, according to film scholar Antonio D. Sison, that Filipinos were watching films a "mere two years after the invention of the cinematographe by the Lumiere brothers in 1895." Sadder still because at its best local movies have proven to be of superior quality and have won accolades in international competitions.
As early as 1937, productions such as Zamboanga directed by Eduardo de Castro and starring Fernando Poe Sr. and Rosa del Rosario were praised by no less than Frank Capra, director of American classics such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life. Quoted by Arsenio Bautista in an essay, Capra was reported to have said: "It’s the most exciting and beautiful picture of native life I’ve ever seen." Bautista is also quick to point out that Hollywood was so impressed by Manuel Conde’s film Ghengis Khan – screened at the Venice Film Festival in 1952 alongside Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon – that it remade the film and cast the Duke himself, John Wayne, in the title role. After the war, films like LVN Pictures’ Anak Dalita and Badjao both directed by National Artist for Film Lamberto Avellana garnered awards at the Asian Film Festivals. Another National Artist, Gerardo de Leon, made films such as The Moises Padilla Story, adaptations of Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo and 48 Oras, which had the Cahiers du Cinema hailing the director as a "master." (If independent filmmaker Cesar Hernando is to be believed, Walter Hill’s own 48 Hours borrows heavily from De Leon’s film, particularly in its opening.)
In the 1970s, after the collapse of the studio system and the declaration of martial law, there came a spate of films that heralded a local nouvelle vague or a new Golden Age (let’s leave it to the critics to decide which). Amidst the bomba and fighting fish inserts of the times, local audiences were watching Lino Brocka’s Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang. Scathing in its indictment of Philippine society, the film was not only a critical favorite but also a top-grosser. Not since Rizal’s books had Filipinos flocked to a work of art to be chastised by.
For many film historians abroad (or rather programmers of Asian retrospectives and showcases), Brocka is the key – and perhaps only – name. Proof of this can be found by looking at cineaste bibles such as Ephraim Katz’s Film Encyclopedia, which has no entry on Philippine cinema whatsoever – only a hundred words or so on Brocka. His film Maynila, Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag is the only Filipino film to be included in the British Film Institutes list for the greatest films in the first century of cinema.
But in 1974, however, he greeted everyone with a primal scream: Tinimbang opens with one of the most harrowing abortion scenes ever exposed to celluloid. The film’s story is as shocking.
It follows the story through the eyes of a young man (Christopher de Leon) who befriends the town leper (Mario O’ Hara) who is having an affair with the town idiot (Lolita Rodriguez). She becomes pregnant causing a scandal that raises the furor of the town-folk. Ultimately, it is exposed that the youth’s father (Eddie Garcia) was the father of the unfortunate’s aborted child, driving her insane.
The film is considered a landmark not because it was the best film of the period. Rather, it fulfilled the promise of a great talent that had finally found his voice. Two years later, more would cry out.
Critics agree that 1976 was a watershed year, far from halcyon but fruitful nonetheless. Films like Ishmael Bernal’s Nunal sa Tubig and Mike de Leon’s Itim graced cinema screens and employed a more impressionistic palette than in the past to create a cinema of mood rather than of bombast. Both educated abroad, Bernal and de Leon made films that were European in influence but essentially Filipino in content. With Brocka, they form the trinity of Philippine cinema that emerged from the 1970’s.
Not that the films were always box-office successes. A year after Tinimbang, Brocka’s Maynila was released and it flopped. Produced and photographed by Mike de Leon, it was even bolder than its predecessor: mixing documentary realism with film noir lighting, naturalistic acting with evocative music to devastating effect. It was Brocka widening his canvas to go beyond the small town of his previous effort to the belly of Manila itself. It has been recognized more abroad, having a successful run in Paris.
Bernal’s Nunal sa Tubig fared better but was far from being a hit. That was good enough for a film that confounded even Bernal’s admirers.
De Leon’s Itim was a commercial failure – an inauspicious start for one of Philippine cinema’s undisputed but elusive masters. Scion of LVN Pictures, he grew up with cinema. Principally interested in photography, he soon felt confident to direct after his experience on Maynila. Often compared to filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick and Michelangelo Antonioni, his first film was likened to the low-budget Val Newton-produced horror films of Jacques Tourneur by the foreign press when it did the festival circuit. Ignored at home, it won the Best Picture prize at the Asian Awards of that year.
In 1977, independent film-making was also making its presence felt abroad when an unknown Eric de Guia won the International Critic’s Prize in the Berlin Film Festival as Kidlat Tahimik. The film was called Mababangong Bangungot and continues to be screened abroad.
As the 1980s rolled in, political unrest was escalating, reaching a peak with the assassination of Sen. Benigno Aquino in 1983. Perhaps sensitive to climate, filmmakers were spurred to make films that continued to provoke a strong reaction both in the Philippines and abroad. With Insiang in 1976, Brocka became an international celebrity, showing other films like Jaguar and Bona to wide acclaim in festivals most notably the prestigious Cannes Film festival. During the 80s, he was Philippine cinema to the world at large, a role he ably played by directing films like Bayan Ko, Kapit sa Patalim.
According to some pundits, though, it was De Leon who made a milestone in Cannes history by being the first director to have two films showing at the Director’s Fortnight at the same time ever. Those two films, Kisapmata and Batch 81, were both flops on initial release in the Philippines.
After the People Power revolution in 1986, the world had its eyes on the Philippines. Time Magazine declared the new president Corazon Aquino Woman of the Year. The economy was picking up and foreign watchers trained their eye towards the country. With all this attention and expectation, observed film archivist Jo Atienza, the best the local film industry could offer were puerile comedies like Pido Dida (that incidentally starred Aquino’s youngest daughter).
Again, it’s independent cinema that picks up the thread that leads toward the 1990s. In 1983, a Fine Arts student at the University of the Philippines named Raymond Red makes a first stab at filmmaking by directing a short called Ang Magpakailanman on super 8mm. Inspired by the works of Fritz Lang and the German Expressionists, he would make further shorts like Ang Hikab (1984), Mistula (1985) and A Sketch for the Skies that were well received abroad and would secure his reputation as the best Filipino short film director. In Pearlie Rose S. Baluyot’s short biography of the director, she says that even Brocka himself and British film critic Tony Rayns praised Red’s talent. Rayns going so far as to say that Red was "a talent on a Wellesian scale".
Red debuted his first feature-length motion picture Bayani at the 1992 Berlin Festival’s Forum of Young Cinema. According to Baluyot, it was televised on German television a month later and competed at the Tokyo Film Festival. It earned favorable reviews both here and abroad. His follow-up Sakay based on the Filipino revolutionary was met with mixed response.
After winning the Hubert Bals award at the 1993 Rotterdam Film Festival to develop the screenplay for his third feature Makapili, Red started to work extensively in advertising. As journalist Lourd de Veyra has said: "Jumping from the independent cinema raft to the advertising cruise liner was a financial decision." Unable to find financing for his projects, Red returned to short film making with Anino, which would eventually win the Palm D’ Or at the 53rd Cannes International Film Festival.
Pito-pito was the term used to describe low budget films churned out by the commercial film outfits like Regal Films. Not unlike the B-movies of Roger Corman that gave young upstarts like Joe Dante and Francis Ford Coppola their break, the pito-pito films in the 1990s ushered in new talents like Jeffrey Jeturian, Rico Maria Ilarde and Lav Diaz. All three would make waves abroad to some degree but no hoopla akin to a beauty titlist’s clinching second runner-up in the Miss Universe contest. * * *
Don’t resurrect the dead.
Yet the Philippine cinema is showing signs of life, faint but nonetheless growing louder. Diaz’s five-hour drama Batang Westside is considered the first Filipino masterpiece of the 21st century and has festivals buzzing with excitement for his next – even longer – film Ebolusyon. Red’s older brother Jon Red has made worthwhile films like Still Lives and Astig, the latter winning the Silver DV award at the Hong Kong International Film Festival. Both films have not enjoyed a wide-commercial run in the Philippines.
Brocka and Bernal are dead; De Leon produced, co-wrote and directed the only Jose Rizal film of note so far Bayaning Third World to critical acclaim here and abroad – it flopped on commercial release.
Up until now, Red’s planned third feature Makapili has not started production.
In the 21st century, new filmmakers have sprung up most notably from music video world like Lyle Sacris and Quark Henares. Both released critically lauded works in 2003 but did poorly at the box-office. (As of writing, Henares’ romantic comedy Keka received the audience award at the 2004 Los Angeles Pan Asian film festival.)
Perhaps the most genuine form of foreign recognition for Philippine cinema can be found not in Europe but in a small theatre in present-time Virginia. Here Americans pay $10 to watch old Niño Mulach and Ramon Revilla films. With buckets of buttered popcorn and beer in plastic cups, they howl with delight at the inane special effects as well as the ham acting. It looks like they’re having a ball.
And why not?
"What’s a resur-rection without a few laughs anyway?" * * *
Thank you to Jo Atienza for her insightful comments and Alexis Tioseco for putting much older film critics to shame.
