Toronto fest exec hails RP movies
By Ruben V. Nepales
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 21:23:00 09/06/2008
Toronto fest exec hails RP movies
As the Venice Film Festival winds down, the mass migration from the Lido to Toronto, which has become an annual tradition among many Hollywood folks, is in full swing.
After opening the Venice fest, George Clooney, Brad Pitt and their film “Burn After Reading” have moved on to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) where their comedy is also a main attraction. Joel and Ethan Coen, switching gears after their grim “No Country For Old Men” won the Oscar Best Picture (and a Best Director trophy as well) early this year, return to comedy with a tale about idiots in Washington, DC.
George, who worked with the Coen brothers in two earlier films, “Intolerable Cruelty” and “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” said: “Joel and Ethan call it my trilogy of idiots. It’s the third of the idiots that I’ve played with them. The only thing that made me feel better was that Brad Pitt is as stupid as I am in this one ... ”
Screening ‘Bayan Ko’
When Lino Brocka’s “Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim” is shown here on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 9:30 p.m. at the Jackman Hall as part of “Dialogues: Talking with Pictures” section, it is in observance of the 10th death anniversary of David Overbey, credited as one of the first writers and festival programmers to champion Philippine cinema. Journalist Joan Dupont, whose 1981 interview with Lino in Manila for Le Monde was arranged by David, will present the film which stars Phillip Salvador, Gina Alajar, Paquito Diaz and Claudia Zobel.
We learned about the interesting way in which David first saw a Filipino film, Lino’s masterpiece, “Insiang,” and how he eventually met the late great director, as recounted in a 1996 article by Eric Cabahug for the Manila Times’ Sunday Times Magazine.
Discovering ‘Insiang’
Eric wrote: “It was one particularly sunny day in 1978 when the ‘accident’ happened and the ‘discovery’ was made. At a small-scale international film festival in a Canadian suburb, David was invited to a screening of a French film in a building which had a dozen identical audio-visual rooms. Without looking hard at the number posted on the door, he crept into one room, plopped himself down a seat, and waited for the screening to begin. Soon enough, the lights were put out and the film began playing. Then, reading the film’s opening credits, he realized that he was in the wrong room.
“He had read nothing that was in French and the film’s title was not what he had expected to see splashed on that particular screen. It was a foreign name in some alien language. ‘Insiang.’ And credited as director was Lino Brocka, somebody he had never heard before.
“Since the film had already begun, David decided he’d stay awhile and see what this Brocka guy and his ‘Insiang’ had to offer. To his delighted surprise, he found himself hooked right away. Then he decided to continue watching. ‘The hell with the other film; this is pretty good,’ David recalls saying in his mind as he was drawn deeper and moved by the ‘powerful, wonderful’ Filipino domestic drama.
Meeting Brocka
“…That initial contact with Filipino cinema would not be followed until a year later when, en route to Australia for a writing job, David’s plane stopped over in Manila … ‘Insiang. Lino Brocka,’ he recalls thinking. Immediately he told a flight attendant he’s getting off and instructed her to take his luggage off the plane. What happened next was something straight out of a movie: David got off the plane, looked up Lino’s name in the phone book, called him, told him vaguely who he was, that he had seen ‘Insiang,’ that he was ‘most impressed,’ and that he wanted to see him. Brocka came to pick him up at the Manila International Airport, took him to his house where he stayed for two weeks — ‘as I did year after year,’ he offers — and introduced him to the denizens of movielandia.” In becoming familiar with folks from Nora Aunor, Rosanna Roces to then censors chief Manuel Morato, David also got to know the shenanigans in local show biz.
Eric, whom we contacted via e-mail about his article, said about David, “For a foreigner, he knew a lot about Philippine cinema ...
“I remember him as a big, imposing man,” Eric said of his impression of David, who fell in love with the Philippines and kept coming back for a period that covered almost two decades...” David confessed to Eric that “Biyaya,” Rosa Rosal’s 1950s melodrama, never failed to make him cry. He considered this classic tearjerker one of the best Filipino films along with the likes of Ishmael Bernal’s “Himala,” Brocka’s “Bona,” “Jaguar” and “Bayan Ko…”
Eric informed us that he himself has become a screenwriter — his first script, “Dayo,” has been turned into what he described as “the first all-digital Filipino animated film” and is an entry in the Metro Manila Film Festival come December.
‘Uncompromising’
Here’s what David wrote in 1985 about the film that will be screened in Toronto in his honor: “‘Bayan Ko: My Own Country’ was the well-deserved recipient of last year’s prestigious British Film Institute Award for most outstanding film, and it is not difficult to see why: The film is uncompromising in its vision of present-day Filipino society. Set against the backdrop of Benigno Aquino’s assassination, ‘Bayan Ko’ tells its story of a young printer (Salvador) whose life is a series of rapidly diminishing options. His pregnant wife needs expensive medicine and, because of this and the strike at his factory, Turing is eventually lured into a life of crime by a small-time hood. Widely acclaimed as the Filipino Man of Irony, Brocka’s film also manages to suggest how, given a different social and economic system, Turing’s fate might have been altered.”
David died of heart attack on Dec. 16, 1998.
We asked Noah Cowan (former co-director of the TIFF and now the artistic director of Bell Lightbox, the future home of the festival), who was responsible for creating the Vanguard programme, where Dante Mendoza’s controversial “Serbis” is an official selection, for his opinion on whether “Bayan Ko” has stayed relevant, 24 years after it was made by Lino.
He replied, “‘Bayan Ko’ is, unfortunately, as relevant today as it was then. Oppression, poverty and the will to overcome misery are still daily realities all over the world. As our planet becomes richer, more and more people are left behind to fend for themselves and yet there is little collective action. ‘Bayan Ko’ reminds us how much stronger we are as a global civilization if we think and act together.”
When we pressed Noah to share some of the interesting tidbits that perhaps Joan Dupont has shared with him about interviewing Brocka in Manila, he answered, “Joan is keeping her cards close to her chest. I can’t wait to hear all about it.”
Noah said of David, “He loved the Filipino people and engaged with the country in various political and personal ways. He had always intended on living out his last days there and insisted that his ashes be spread on the beaches of Cebu when he died (which they were — you never contradicted David).
“Regarding Filipino cinema in particular, David (and his successors) saw the Philippines as one of the few places that was invigorating and reinterpreting the social realist European cinemas of the post-World War II period. Through the judicious infusion of melodrama and a belief in exploring the specific cultural realities of the country, Filipino filmmakers continue to make a compelling, audience-friendly yet artistically meaningful contribution to world cinema.
Champion of RP cinema
“David was also delighted that the Philippines led the world courageously in the frank exploration of homosexuality in the non-Western world. The aesthetics and themes of films like ‘Macho Dancer’ have been well-copied in the surrounding region and further afield ever since.
On how TIFF has kept David’s legacy in championing Philippine cinema, Noah sounded enthusiastic: “The Philippines continues to inspire us to devote more programming resources to the region. This year, we announced the hiring of Raymond Phanathavirangoon to supervise our programming there. He is a champion of Filipino cinema and is partially responsible for bringing ‘Serbis,’ the new film of Brillante Mendoza, to the competition of the Cannes Film Festival this past May and to us for its North American premiere. Our commitment to emerging talent from the country continues and is this year embodied by ‘Adela’ by Adolfo Alix Jr.
“We are also inspired by the Filipino audience, both here and in the Philippines. When people are pressed for choice between video games, TV and other forms of visual culture, Filipinos continue to be great supporters of the cinema experience, a belief that culture is to be shared as a community engaged in meaningful discourse around a work of art. That is Lino Brocka’s — and David Overbey’s — legacy to us and we take it very seriously.”
