SFIFF53 2010—Michael Hawley Previews the Press Announcements

In a matter of days, the full line-up for the 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival (April 22 to May 8) will be revealed. If you're a San Francisco Film Society member, look for an e-mail this Friday with instructions for downloading a PDF of the fest’s mini-guide (and all tickets go on sale to members that same day). Non-members will be kept in the dark until after the official press conference next Tuesday, and can start buying tickets April 1. In the meantime, plenty of good stuff has already been announced. Here's a recap, followed by my personal 20-film wish list for the fest's 2010 edition.

For devotees of Midnight Mass hostess Peaches Christ (aka Joshua Grannell), the World Premiere of her/his feature directorial debut, All About Evil, will be the must-see event of this year's festival. Peaches seizes control of the Castro Theater on Saturday, May 1 at 10:45PM "with a fully realized stage-show spooktacular hosted by Peaches Christ, starring members of the cast including Mink Stole, Thomas Dekker, Martiny and more."

The SFIFF event I anticipate most each year is programmer Sean Uyehara's pairing of a silent film with a new live score written and performed by a contemporary music artist. You'd think last year's The Lost World/Dengue Fever combo would be an impossible act to follow, but I think Sean's done it again. On Tuesday, May 4, songwriter Stephin Merritt of the group The Magnetic Fields will premiere a new score to Stuart Paton's 1916 adaptation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Joining Merritt will be Castro Theater organist David Hegarty, author Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) on accordion and others TBA.

Brazilian director Walter Salles (Central Station, The Motorcycle Diaries) will be the recipient of 2010's Founder’s Directing Award. His tribute takes place on Wednesday, April 28 and will feature a clip-reel of career highlights, an on-stage interview and "a special screening of In Search of On the Road (a Work in Progress), an hour-long edit prepared specifically for the Festival of a documentary about Salles's effort to make a documentary about Jack Kerouac." The following day Salles will offer a Master Class, plus attend a screening of his 2008 Cannes Competition film, Linha de Passe, which won a prize for its lead actress Sandra Corveloni. Hopefully, someone will ask the director why it has taken two years for this film to reach us (I believe this screening might even be the U.S. premiere?) Linha de Passe shows again at the Pacific Film Archive on Friday, April 30.

Receiving this year's Peter J. Owens Award for acting will be none other than legendary screen vet Robert Duvall. At the Friday, April 30 tribute, he'll be feted with a career clip reel, on-stage interview and a screening of his latest film Get Low, co-starring Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek.

Each year the festival gives its Mel Novikoff to "an individual or institution whose work has enhanced the filmgoing public's knowledge and appreciation of world cinema." Could anyone be more deserving of such an award than Roger Ebert? On Saturday, May 1, Ebert will appear on-stage in conversation (employing his extraordinary, new computerized text-to-speech speaking voice) with directors Terry Zwigoff, Jason Reitman and others TBA. Following the tribute, the festival will screen one of Ebert's favorite films of 2009, Erick Zonca's Julia, featuring a balls-to-the-wall performance by Tilda Swinton. If you missed this film when it screened at the SF Film Society's Kabuki Screen (R.I.P.?) last summer, or its subsequent run at the Roxie, you're lucky to have this additional opportunity.

The SFIFF's 2010 Kanbar Award for excellence in screenwriting will be given to writer/producer/Focus Features CEO James Shamus on Saturday, May 1. Shamus is best known for the films he's written and produced for Ang Lee, including Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Ice Storm and Lust, Caution. Following an on-stage interview with critic B. Ruby Rich, the festival will host the West Coast premiere of a new director's cut of Ang Lee's underappreciated 1999 Civil War film, Ride With the Devil.

Every year the festival screens newly restored prints of some select cinema classics. For SFIFF53 we'll get to take another look at Satyajit Ray's 1958 The Music Room at the Castro on Saturday, May 1, as well as Luchino Visconti's 1954 film Senso (date TBA).

This year's State of Cinema Address will be delivered on Sunday, April 25 by film editor/sound designer extraordinaire Walter Murch (The Conversation, Apocalypse Now). Titled "Three Fathers of Cinema: Beethoven, Flaubert, Edison," the address will "contemplate what would have happened if motion pictures had been invented in 1789. He will present various theories on the evolution of filmmaking, investigating the cultural origins of cinema in the 19th century and the implications for the future of cinema in the 21st century."

The festival has also announced the 11 films that will be competing for Golden Gate Awards Documentary Competition. There are three I'm especially looking forward to. Lixin Fan's Last Train Home won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary (World Cinema), and looks at the phenomenon of China's annual New Year's mass migration. Winning the documentary Jury Prize just last week at SXSW is Jeff Malmberg's Merwencol, in which a brain-damaged survivor of a bar attack copes by setting up a complete WWII-era town in his backyard. In Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's Sundance Grand Jury Prize Documentary winner Restrepo, we follow a group of soldiers fighting the Taliban in the mountains of Afghanistan. The other eight titles are Colony, The Invention of Dr. Nakamats, Mugabe and the White African, The Peddler, PianoMania, Presumed Guilty, Russian Lessons and Simonal: No One Knows How Tough It Was.

Twelve filmmakers will compete for this year's New Directors Prize. I saw Ounie Lecomte's South Korean adoption drama A Brand New Life at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and would definitely recommend it. I've also heard very good things about Pedro González-Rubio's Alamar, which won a coveted Tiger Award at this year's Rotterdam Film Festival. The remaining 10 titles are Animal Heart, The Day God Walked Away, The Famous and the Dead, Night Catches Us, Northless, La Pivellina, Shirley Adams, Susa, Tehroun and—I've gotta see this one for the title alone—You Think You're the Prettiest, but You Are the Sluttiest.

This year's Persistence of Vision Award will go to Fremont-born, Oscar-nominated short-film animator Don Hertzfeldt on Friday, April 23 in a program titled "Life, Death and Very Large Utensils."

Finally, SFIFF53 will close on May 6 with a screening of Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg's documentary Joan Rivers—A Piece of Work. It is anticipated that Rivers will attend the screening, along with director Stern. At the closing night party at 1015 Folsom, "partygoers will celebrate the culmination of SFIFF53 with festive drinks, hors d'oeuvres and music inspired by the legendary comedian Joan Rivers."

Every year I draw up a list of the 20 films I most hope to find in the SFIFF line-up. They're culled from a longer wish list of approximately 100 films, spanning from 2009's Berlin Film Festival up to the present. A few have received mixed-to awful-reviews, but they're from directors who interest me nonetheless. Last year I only got seven of my 20 films, but eventually caught up with all but three. We'll soon know how SFIFF53 shakes out.

Altiplano (Belgium dir. Peter Brosens, Jessica Hope Woodworth)
The Army of Crime (France dir. Robert Guédiguian)
Enter the Void (France, dir. Gaspar Noé)
Everyone Else (Germany, dir. Maren Ade)
Face (France/Taiwan dir. Tsai Ming-liang)
Gainsbourg (vie héroïque) (France dir. Joann Sfar)
Hadewijch (France dir. Bruno Dumont)
Hiroshima (Uruguay dir. Pablo Stoll)
I Am Love (Italy dir. Luca Guadagnino)
Korkoro (France dir. Tony Gatlif)
Life During Wartime (USA dir. Todd Solondz)
Lola (Philippines dir. Brilliante Mendoza)
Lourdes (France dir. Jessica Hausner)
Min Ye (Mali dir. Souleymane Cissé)
Rapt (France/Belgium dir. Lucas Belvaux)
Revolución (Mexico dir. Mariana Chenillo, Fernando Eimbcke, Amat Escalante, Gael Garcia Bernal, Rodrigo Garcia, Diego Luna, Gerardo Naranjo, Rodrigo Plá, Carlos Reygadas, Patricia Riggen)
Scheherazade Tell Me a Story (Egypt dir. Yousry Nasrallah)
Skirt Day (France dir. Jean-Paul Lilienfeld)
The Time That Remains (Palestine dir. Elia Suleiman)
White Material (France, dir. Claire Denis)

And here are four terrific films I saw at January's Palm Springs International Film Festival—films I'd love for my Bay Area friends to see, too.

Dogtooth (Greece dir. Giorgos Lanthimos)
I Killed My Mother (Canada dir. Xavier Dolan)
The Milk of Sorrow (Peru dir. Claudia Lhosa)
To Die Like a Man (Portugal dir. João Pedro Rodrigues)

Cross-published on film-415 and Twitch.

PUSSYFEST 2010

When Michael Moore's recent documentary Capitalism: A Love Story screened at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, and it started out with Moore's query of whether or not 100 years from now Americans would be remembered for their attention to human rights or their obsession with cats flushing toilets, I laughed the loudest in the audience and was quickly glared at by others who made it clear that I was "missing the point." Well, what can I say? The antics of cats have amused me since I was a child. That's why I'm so pleased and purr-oud that guest curator Jesse Miller has compiled a selection of shorts for the first annual PussyFest here at The Evening Class. Relish in the death of intelligentsia! Down with critical thinking! Meow.

Talking Cats

Stalking Cats

Maru's Greatest Hits

Synchronized Cats

Socially-relevant Documentary on Cat Addiction

Socially-relevant Documentary on Cat Eviction

Omnibus Shorts

Catcerto

Audience Favorites

FRENCH CINEMA: CINÉ-FILS—Agnès Varda on Poetry

Agnès Varda could read to me out of the phone book and I would be enthralled with the cadence and expressiveness of her voice. In this wonderful interview with Ciné-Fils, Varda speaks on how mental images become film scenes, where film and poetry meet, and her surrealist influences. Ciné-Fils—named after a quote by Serge Daney: "I had to be a cinephile, ciné-fils, a child of the cinema, mythologically born in such and such a film"—is worth a lengthy perusal, especially for its essays (original language) and video interviews (graciously subtitled in English).



Of related interest: My transcript of Varda's Q&A session following the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival screening of Les Plages d'Agnès (The Beaches of Agnès), which—I might add—is now available on Netflix Instant Play. A must-see!

SFIAAFF28 2010: FILIPINO CINEMA—A Few Evening Class Questions for Richard Bolisay

"I wish Francis 'Oggs' Cruz, Richard Bolisay, and Dodo Dayao would get space in the broadsheets, because they're far more interesting than anyone writing there regularly."—Alexis Tioseco, "Wishful Thinking for Philippine Cinema"

When he was a boy, Richard Bolisay's father told him that he had "a peculiar pair of eyes", which no doubt accounts for his meditative gaze into the heart of dreams and—by extension—cinema. A self-described "dreamer from Manila", "Chard" Bolisay administers his own site Lilok Pelikula / Sculpting Cinema, his alternative to a dreamt-of Philippine magazine that would focus on film criticism. Indeed, Lilok Pelikula's intelligent writing seems shaped from the discipline of dreams. In his wistful Criticine "Love Letter" to the films of Mike De Leon, he described Lino Brocka as "a dream fighter of the common people." That word—dream—thrums throughout Bolisay's writing like a bass beat. One senses that this young writer has harnessed the language of dreams to "raid the inarticulate". I am grateful for his willingness to respond to my questions.

* * *

Michael Guillén: What do you want San Francisco audiences to understand about Filipino cinema?

"Chard" Bolisay: Sometimes it's distressing that when I read foreign writers writing about Filipino cinema, the very first thing I notice is that they misspell our name. Filipino takes its shape as strangely as Philipino, Philiphino, Philipinno, or even Filiphino. So maybe I would like to make that clear first—it's Filipino. As much as we appreciate interest and admiration, annoyance can't be helped when such carelessness, whether unintentional or not, is committed. When in doubt, anyhow, one can always go for Philippine cinema.
As any national cinema, ours depicts a certain truth about our condition. Themes of poverty and violence are not surprising to see because our society is indeed poor and violent. It is something seen everyday, felt everyday, though not maybe by the filmmakers themselves but by the subjects they choose to tell. That's why local films that tackle such themes gamble on finding an audience. Why see a film of your own life? Why see a film while you can see such poorness on your own without paying for the price of a ticket? (The price which is more than enough to feed a family a day for those who live below poverty line.) There's a reason why Brillante Mendoza, like Kim Ki-duk to South Korea, is not popular in his own country.

Philippine cinema is as diverse as you can imagine: there are serious dramas, poor slapsticks, tried-and-tested romantic comedies, art house orgasms, and—once in a blue moon—interesting historical pieces. Sexually explicit films that were popular in the late '70s and '80s, and that remained steadily in the '90s through Seiko, are being revived now through the popularity of gay films, whose unsurprising number of audience is keeping Philippine cinema a little more of its (rather fittingly) gay life.

Guillén: What do you want San Francisco audiences to understand about Lino Brocka?

Bolisay: Lino Brocka is a Filipino filmmaker, as Filipino as the first Filipino may be. He knows the Filipino life, speaks the Filipino language, eats Filipino shit, breathes Filipino fart, fights for Filipino freedom, tells the Filipino experience ... and that doesn't come close to exaggerating his image, or to overrating his merits. Simply put, he is the Filipino that we never feel bad about representing us, no matter how bad he chooses us to be seen. His bad, sometimes, is even far from the others' good.
I am no expert on Brocka but I must say I like his family dramas more than his political pieces that made him an icon of the movement. A matter of taste and upbringing this preference may attribute to, but as I always argue, his family dramas are as political as much as his social realist works are. For instance, Tubog sa Ginto [Dipped in Gold, 1970], which may only pass off now as "the macho man's admission of his possession of a vagina", is practically the most entertaining movie to address homosexual relationships, with all the killer dialogues and naughty framing that Brocka unrelentingly provides. That's the quality of an important filmmaker—relevance not only during his time but even several years, or decades, after.

Guillén: How do you situate yourself within Filipino cinema and Filipino film criticism?

Bolisay: I have always been a lurker, a passive moviegoer. Blogs just happen to be public—and their being public just happens to be fun and interesting, that's why I find myself in it. Other than that I'd still be writing in my journal, cursively, selectively scribbling thoughts. Allow me to share a laugh but that phrase "Filipino film criticism" is just preposterous!

Guillén: If there is one Filipino film that you don't think gets enough attention, what would it be?
Bolisay: Gerry de León's Ang Daigdig ng mga Api gets a lot of attention but only a handful have truly seen it, apparently because no print of it exists. To be honest, it wouldn't be of much help to recommend Filipino titles to foreigners considering, confronted with our own embarrassment, we don't know where to find a decent—more so, English-subtitled—copies of them. That, my dear friends, is where our history always finds itself going: disposed to disappear.

Cross-published on Twitch.

SFIAAFF28 2010: FILIPINO CINEMA—A Few Evening Class Questions for Dodo Dayao

"I wish Francis 'Oggs' Cruz, Richard Bolisay, and Dodo Dayao would get space in the broadsheets, because they're far more interesting than anyone writing there regularly."—Alexis Tioseco, "Wishful Thinking for Philippine Cinema"

According to Dodo Dayao's MySpace page, he is 102 years old and chasing pavements. He further describes himself as "writer, filmmaker, infrequent painter, random komikero [i.e., comic book enthusiast], heartthrob in a past life, monkey gone to heaven." We should all be so prolific. Not only does he administer two film sites—Is It Safe? and Piling Piling Pelikula—but, he's a team contributor to Geeks United, Korean Bug and Unspoken Cinema.

In similar collaborative spirit, his oil paintings have been featured in group exhibitions at various galleries in the Philippines (examples can be seen at Quezon City's West Gallery website as part of three group shows: "12x9", "Them!" and "2010: The Year We Make Contact"). He's also collaborated with Khavn dela Cruz as "translator" on such films as Ang dagat na nalulunod (The Drowning Sea, 2008). His film writing—especially as reflected at Piling Piling Pelikula—is hot with incendiary irreverence. I find his poetic insights brave, searing and addictive. It's no wonder that Alexis Tioseco wished him a wider audience and I'm delighted that he was quick to respond to my set of email questions.

* * *

Michael Guillén: What do you want San Francisco audiences to understand about Filipino cinema?

Dodo Dayao: That it's not all social realism and exoticized poverty. That it is multi-colored and many-flavored and more often than not—especially these days—goes on adventures. And that there's more where all this came from.

Guillén: What do you want San Francisco audiences to understand about Lino Brocka?

Dayao: That Brocka made around 65 movies and only around 10 of them have been elevated to the canon. And that the films that didn't make it to the canon—the melodramas, the comedies, the pop films—demand as much investigation, possibly even more, than those that did. Canons are moldy and rigid and play it safe and are no fun at parties anyway. I always thought cinema should be the opposite of all these (especially the part about being fun at parties).

Guillén: How do you situate yourself within Filipino cinema and Filipino film criticism?

Dayao: I'm a fan first, a writer second and a critic a distant third. I abandon myself to tone and voice and color, to energy of language and blood in the pulse and the beating to a pulp of all anonymity and objectivity. Cinema is all about wading knee-deep in the mud and getting your feet dirty and sometimes your heart broken. And I always thought film writing—or any kind of writing for that matter—should be as vivid and fervent and as misbehaved and as given over to the moment, not dry like a dissertation. Also, would-be film reviewers should at least know basic grammar. But there should be more film writers, if only to amp the volume of discourse. There are very few of us and the ones that are doing good work—and there are a good number of these already, mind—are either people I know or have met. I want to someday be swept off my feet with awe and envy by a complete stranger's piece. All this, of course, most likely situates me in the margins—which is really where I prefer to be.

Guillén: If there is one Filipino film that you don't think gets enough attention, what would it be?

Dayao: A trick question, as there can never be just one. But for now, let me just say that Joey Gosiengfiao's masterpiece is not Temptation Island (1980) as the world seems to think; it's Bomba Star (1980).

Cross-published on Twitch.

SFIAAFF28 2010: FILIPINO CINEMA—A Few Evening Class Questions for Francis "Oggs" Cruz

"I wish Francis 'Oggs' Cruz, Richard Bolisay, and Dodo Dayao would get space in the broadsheets, because they're far more interesting than anyone writing there regularly."—Alexis Tioseco, "Wishful Thinking for Philippine Cinema"

Lessons From the School of Inattention has long been one of my favorite blogs to explore for commentary on national cinemas. Lawyer-critic Francis "Oggs" Cruz has been administering the site since 2006—after shifting away from his previous site Repository of Ideas—and offers a helpful index of all the Filipino films he's reviewed. I'm grateful for his swift willingness to respond by email to a batch of questions related to this year's edition of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.

* * *

Michael Guillén: What do you want San Francisco audiences to understand about Filipino cinema?

Francis "Oggs" Cruz: I believe the interesting thing about Filipino cinema is that it is, to put it bluntly, undefinable. In terms of how the international community sees Philippine cinema, it seems that our nation's cinema concentrates heavily on social realism (as popularized by Lino Brocka, and continued by many of his disciples from Joel Lamangan to Brillante Mendoza) or distinctly personal visions (Lav Diaz's kilometric films, Raya Martin, John Torres, Khavn dela Cruz). However, to box a national cinema based on what essentially are stereotypes is limiting (for a period, the Philippines has been an exporter of cheap exploitation flicks and gay films: Brocka's Macho Dancer).

What I essentially want San Francisco (and the rest of the world, and quite embarrassingly, even my own countrymen) to know is that there is more to Philippine cinema than what is being shown in film festivals.

First and foremost, Filipino cinema—while it is only gaining attention very recently—is not new. I hope this newfound interest in Philippine cinema will unearth the vast history that is quickly being forgotten. There are filmmakers like Gerry de León, who is more famous in the West for his exploitation features than his home-grown films (48 Oras / 48 Hours, a taut Filipino film noir; The Moises Padilla Story, a political propaganda film that hybrids as a Jesus Christ allegory); Manuel Conde (Genghis Khan, and the Juan Tamad series); and Ricardo Abelardo (Mutya ng Pasig / Muse of Pasig). All of these directors are worth discovering. The fear here is that there is very little time to discover these directors because their films are disappearing (due to governmental lack of interest to archive these films and save them from rot).

Second, Filipino cinema is not limited to Tagalog cinema. While Manila has represented the Philippines mainly because it is the seat of government, commerce and culture, the availability of digital filmmaking has created film communities outside Manila. The result of this is a multi-faceted and probably more truthful cinema. There is definitely a difference between a Manila-made film about the Mindanao rebellion (Marilou Diaz-Abaya's Bagong Buwan) and a digital film that is made by a director who is from the area (Arnel Mordoquio's Hunghong sa Yuta or Sherad Sanchez's Huling Balyan ng Buhi).

Guillén: What do you want San Francisco audiences to understand about Lino Brocka?

Cruz: Lino Brocka is also a very commercial director. There is a danger of limiting Brocka to grim and socially relevant cinema. However, throughout his career, he has made several pleasing crowdpleasers. There's Ang Tatay Kong Nanay (My Father, My Mother, 1978), a melodrama about a gay man who is forced to inhibit his homosexuality while rearing his ex-lover's son. There's Santiago (1970), a taut action film. There's Natutulog Pa Ang Diyos (God is Still Sleeping, 1988), an extremely ludicrous melodrama that is strangely a guilty pleasure of mine. There's Angela Markado (Angela the Marked One, 1980), a revenge thriller where a woman who was raped starts murdering her rapists one by one.

If we talk about Lino Brocka, it's impossible not to talk about Ishmael Bernal, his supposed rival and arguably the better director. He directed Himala (Miracle, 1982), Pagdating sa Dulo (At the Top, 1971), and Manila After Dark (1980), supposedly an answer to Brocka's Manila in the Claws of Neon.

The beauty of this Brocka retrospective is that it would most likely arouse curiosity as to the other directors during Brocka's period who are also worthy of similar retrospectives (Mike De Leon, Mario O'Hara, etc.). The danger of this Brocka retrospective is that it might limit Philippine Cinema to a single director's work.

Guillén: How do you situate yourself within Filipino cinema and Filipino film criticism?

Cruz: The interesting thing about the current state of Filipino cinema is that there are so many new films, so many new directors, but so few critics writing about them. Filipino cinema relies too much on foreign writers and festivals to acknowledge itself. Print media is more interested in talking about gossip, actors and actresses than film. It is more interested in listing how many awards a film has won rather than analyzing why the film won such awards. One cannot blame print media too much because film criticism does not sell. Filipinos are culturally onion-skinned and courteous, and have yet to develop a critical culture.

If digital filmmaking jump started Philippine cinema, blogging—which I think I represent—will hopefully jumpstart Filipino film criticism. Filipino film enthusiasts are getting more information about films that would normally not be able to get any attention in traditional print media from the internet and film bloggers. Little events like the Fully Booked Film Series—a monthly free screening of overlooked films that is dedicated to the memory of Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc which I, Dodo and Chard curate—have become starting points for what I hope to be a revolution in film viewing.

I sincerely hope that more Filipinos would be as excited with their cinema. It's quite shameful that foreigners are more excited about our cinema than us.

Guillén: Name one Filipino film that you don't think gets enough attention and should.

Cruz: This is difficult because I have to choose one. If I had the option of being greedy, I would choose around a hundred, in the hopes that Martin Scorsese would start noticing our cinema and make a move to restore even just a few of my nation's cinematic treasures.

But if I have to choose one, it would have to be Mike De Leon's Kisapmata (Blink of an Eye, 1981). I will not say anything more in the hopes that you would try to search for it and see it for yourself.

Cross-published on Twitch.

SFIAAFF28 2010: FILIPINO CINEMA—Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting, 1974)

"What a title!" Michael Hawley quipped regarding the 1974 film Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting), one of the four films featured in the Lino Brocka mini-retrospective that comprises part of the focus on Filipino and Filipino American cinema in the 28th edition of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF).

The title is a Biblical reference to the Book of Daniel 5:1-31, wherein the last Babylonian king Belshazzar holds a feast at which sacred vessels confiscated from Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem are used to drink wine and further profaned when the revelers toast to the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone. Suddenly, a mysterious hand appears and writes on the chamber wall "mene mene tekel upharsin", which defies interpretation until the prophet Daniel interprets it to read "you have been weighed and found wanting." This Biblical story is the source of the popular idiom "the writing on the wall" as a euphemism for impending doom that is so obvious only a fool would not see it coming. It also provides the origin for the similar expression "your days are numbered."

You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting lays out its impending doom in the film's opening sequence: a sepia-saturated flashback wherein an albularyo (traditional/folk medicine practitioner) performs an abortion on Kuala (Lolita Rodriguez), as the baby's father Cesar (Eddie Garcia) restrains her and covers her mouth to silence her cries. An example of feticide and not pro-choice—Kuala having been clearly coerced—the sight of her aborted fetus drives Kuala insane. Cesar then abandons Kuala to her fate as the village's scabrous idiot as he persists as an incurable lecher.

When Neil Young caught a revival screening of Weighed and Found Wanting at the 2009 Viennale, he reported to The Auteurs that Brocka considered his commercially successful eighth feature his "first novel", which prompted Young to envision "the sprawling nineteenth century fictions of George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell when watching this humanistic exploration of small-town prejudice, one which covers pretty much every stratum of society while relating a melodramatic, almost soap-opera-like story of sexual hypocrisy, abortion, jealousy and young love. As usual with Brocka, happiness is elusive and short-lived, and to be a sensitive or sympathetic individual is to be doomed to misery and/or death. But while the ending is typically downbeat, Brocka does offer a glint or two of optimism—for which, given the starkly grim finales of most of his oeuvre, we must be grateful."

Noel Vera—a writer and programmer based in the Philippines, and author of Critic After Dark: A Review of Philippine Cinema (2005), named after his influential blog—has contributed an informative profile of Lino Brocka ("Lino Brocka: The Heart of Philippine Cinema", abbreviated from a longer version) for the festival's program along with capsules for the four Brocka films in the retrospective. Of Weighed and Found Wanting, he synopsizes: "You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting was Brocka's rare attempt to do melodrama on a large-scale canvas; it's a panoramic view of society in a small provincial town, from its wealthiest citizen to its most wretched outcast. The film seems inspired by several sources: Federico Fellini's 1953 I Vitelloni, for one (the sensitive youth who leaves town to come back a celebrated artist), and also Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 The Last Picture Show (the mysterious older man who turns out to be the catalyst and mentor for the youth's transformation into manhood). Two other sources I should cite: José Rizal's social-reform novel Noli Me Tangere, which is the source for the mother (driven insane by the loss of her child) and her leprous husband, and also Brocka's own life: the town where he filmed was the same one he lived in as a bastard child. Mario O'Hara wrote the script from a story idea by Brocka, and gives a great performance as Berto, the leper. The film was both a critical and commercial success when it came out in 1974; it began the '70s golden age in earnest, and remains one of the period's key films."

Both Vera's profile of Brocka and the program capsule are abbreviated from earlier versions that expand in intricate detail the role Weighed and Found Wanting had in establishing Brocka's career in the mid-'70s and his eventual influence on Philippine cinema. "Tinimbang," Vera wrote in his earlier review, "was like a rock flung through a plate-glass window; the film was a herald call, officially the first in what was to be called the '70s Golden Age of Philippine Cinema."

After having abandoned Kuala, Cesar becomes one of the richest men in his village and sires a son Junior (Christopher de Leon in his first role). At first, Junior takes pleasure in all the privileges provided by his family's social position—an opulent home, popularity, good looks, a girlfriend who's the prettiest girl in town (shades of Cybil Shephard!)—but, then his pleasure curdles. His father reveals himself as a lecherous philanderer, his mother a hectoring shrew, his girlfriend fools around with another boy and is summarily married off, and his friends prove to be louts. Junior's perspective shifts and he recognizes everyone around him as "ignoramuses, hypocrites, spiritual grotesques", except for the town's outcasts—deranged Kuala and the leprous Berto—who he befriends, despite his father's admonitions. The film ends, Vera synopsizes, "with Junior acting out the action described by the film's title—he stares at every town folk in the eye, judges them, and finds them all wanting"; a dramatic moment helped enormously by the broad canvas and large ensemble Brocka employed to create his melodramatic epic.

Vera contextualizes that Brocka was essentially telling his life's story, drawing from his memories of San Jose, Nueva Ecija, and of the people there. "Junior was Brocka—the sensitive young man, disillusioned with the status quo and yearning for something different, something more; he was also Milagros [Laurice Guillen], the politician's bastard (Brocka himself was the illegitimate child of a political figure). You might say that the secret behind Brocka's intensity, behind his close identification with the outcast and oppressed, was that he himself was an outcast—painful knowledge that would make him more open to the plight of others, to fellow outcasts in life."

This is especially apparent in the sideshow narrative of the effeminate teacher who makes unsuccessful passes at Junior and is shown prissily skirting puddles during a rain shower. This makes the young men laugh and—relating the image to Berto—Junior says it was funny to watch a man acting like a woman. Berto does not bite. Instead, he asks Junior if he would laugh at Kuala for her idiocy or himself for his leprosy? As these two outcasts have been pictured as two of the most decent people in the film, the effeminate homosexual is thereby aligned with decency. For 1974, this was an amazingly brave alignment on Brocka's part.

In broad, overly-assured strokes Kane Wheatley-Holder reduces the psychological complexity of Weighed and Found Wanting to a socio-political allegory of resistance: the common man against the Marcos regime. I, however, prefer the more nuanced insights offered by Richard Bolisay at his site Lilok Pelikula. Bolisay observes that Brocka's filmmaking was "driven by his force and brilliance as a political observer than as a political activist" and warns against erroneously boxing him "into a solely political filmmaker which he isn't. His films show many faces of politics, and not just the one that drives people into streets to protest." Differentiating even further, Bolisay writes: "Filmmakers are not just makers of film. They are also makers of political discussion. It is like saying writers just write, they don't think. Brocka … made films not only to depict the tumultuous years of the Marcos regime and its after effects but also to awaken the minds of the people by not just being political, but by being real and honest. The seventies and the eighties were the years of unrest, but not all films made during those decades were expressions of dissent."

Junior's story and his climactic act of judgment (resistance?) is not, however, what Vera finds to be the film's true point of interest. As type, Junior "is hardly original" and joins "a gallery of small-town youths who learn about disillusion and heartbreak." What's more, Vera characterizes Junior as "something of a self-righteous prig—de Leon plays him as if he's too good for the likes of his father and those hypocritical grannies. It's a superior stance too easily assumed; you feel he hasn't quite earned the right to do so." Vera criticizes de Leon's performance as "downright thin." No, the film's presiding power lies in "the intense yet simply told story of love found at the bottom of the world" between the town's most miserable inhabitants: the homeless lunatic Kuala and the leprous Berto, nearly lunatic himself in his loneliness. Vera considers that O'Hara may have written the best role for himself and mentions in his Senses of Cinema appreciation of Mario O'Hara: "In Brocka and O'Hara's treatment of the character, you see a rare (for Brocka's films) ambiguity—Berto in his loneliness and sexual hunger is a somewhat frightening presence; when he first looks at Kuala, it is with a predatory glint in his eye. We later learn of Berto's true nature—shy, sensitive (or rather, oversensitive), full of an affection for others that he doesn't dare express. It's a fascinating character, especially as Brocka had asked O'Hara to play him; O'Hara agreed, and does a magnificent job. Which is as it should be, because as people in the know put it, he was really playing himself." Vera concludes: "Rodriguez and O'Hara make the relationship that blossoms between them effortless, yet utterly real—Rodriguez as Kuala responding to Berto's attentions hungrily, even greedily (the way a child would); O'Hara as Berto suddenly finding himself functioning as guardian and father as well as lover. The couple are the most successful evocation of love in any of Brocka's films, I think, and by far the most moving."

Mario O'Hara and Lolita Rodriguez had worked together on an earlier Brocka film Stardoom (1971), which Vera describes as "a Jacobean melodrama (with great performances by Rodriguez as the backstage mother, and O'Hara as the unwanted son)", and later portrayed lovers again in Gumising Ka, Maruja (Awaken, Maruja, 1978), "Brocka's rare (and for the first half, well-made) gothic ghost story."

Vera likewise raises a provocative critique of Brocka, observing that the "intense identification he felt towards his characters is the foremost virtue of his storytelling; at the same time, [that] it was his biggest vice. If he had a tendency to like certain characters—to get under their skin and look through their eyes—he also had an equal tendency to shut others out—to condemn and deny them their full measure of understanding." He argues that Brocka has wasted the potential characterizations of Cesar and Milagros. After her seduction of Junior, Milagros simply vanishes from the film, Vera complains, "And you miss her; you want to know what happened to her, how she ultimately fared after her one-night stand with Junior." Eddie Garcia's Cesar "could have been a crucial role in the film, the correlative to de Leon's Junior—where Junior is a young innocent waking up to compassion, Cesar could have been an aged hedonist haunted by it, mirror images lit from different angles." These two characters "fall on the borderline that separates those who deserve Brocka's condemnation and those who deserve his compassion; they are either swept to one side of the border or forgotten, and the film's complexity suffers as a result."

03/15/10 UPDATE: Watching Lino Brocka's You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting (1974) a second time projected and with an audience revealed a palpable discomfort with Brocka's melodramatic style (reminiscent of the overblown melodramatics of Sirk or Fassbinder). Though Dave Kehr noted at the New York Times that this "broadly popular cinema of sex and soap opera transformed itself into a vehicle for strong social commentary and a political force to be reckoned with" and further observed that "Brocka seems less interested in psychosexual conflict for its own sake than as a reflection of the inequalities and injustices at the base of the Philippine system", the SFIAAFF audience didn't seem to quite know how to take the film's histrionics.

Though writing about a separate Philippine film, Noel Vera's description of the audience reception applies equally here: "They were laughing throughout much of the film, but it wasn't easy, derisory laughter; if anything, it was a terse release of tension, the kind of laughter you hear from someone fully aware he should know better but feels nervous, nevertheless." This was especially apparent in the scene with the gay schoolteacher (YouTube segment 11, below), which elicited the loudest laughter. Knowing how this scene was a set-up for Junior's conversation with Berto in the next, I was amused by how the SFIAAFF audience became quiet and contrite once they realized that Brocka was chiding them for being complicit in ridiculing the effeminate gay man. This is a complicated dynamic, however, which raises a distinction between laughing at someone at their expense as opposed to laughing with someone in the sense of sharing a cultural in-joke. In the 35+ years that gay liberation has fought for its place at the table since Brocka filmed You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting, it would be absurd to assert that an effeminate male no longer elicits laughter—as, conceivably, any gender reversal elicits laughter—but, arguably that laughter has shifted in degree away from cruel judgment to savvy bemusement or—to a certain extent—a kind of "you go, girl" identification? The audience reaction to these two hinged scenes underscores a certain timeliness to Brocka's film that otherwise might be perceived as "dated." The struggle for human dignity among the marginalized remains timeless.

On second viewing, I also noticed the manner in which Brocka juxtaposed Catholic iconography—primarily images of Jesus—as backdrops against which the hypocrisy of his characters becomes silhouetted. This is especially noticeable in the film's opening flashback where Cesar reacts to Kuala's aborted fetus. He's positioned in front of a painting of the compassionate heart of Jesus. One visually absorbs Brocka's criticism of patriarchal veracity. Further, there's a distinct alignment of the film's narrative trajectory with the Catholic ritual calendar, particularly apparent with Kuala's baby being born during the Christmas season.

You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting is available on Netflix. Otherwise, it's available on YouTube in subtitled segments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16.

03/16/10 UPDATE: Noel Vera and I have been exchanging comments on Facebook regarding Brocka and this film. He's synopsized our conversation at his site Critic After Dark. Essentially—based upon Berto's query to Kuala if that was her "real name"—I asked Vera if Kuala's name had a hidden meaning? He came up with this: "Might add that looking around, the name 'Kuala' might have some significance, other than being an unusual name for a Filipina, means in both Malay and Indonesian 'estuary,' that muddy region of a river where fresh water merges with salt water. Certainly Kuala in the film might be considered by the men in town 'muddy' or unclean goods, and that she represents a mix of innocent and hedonist (a hedonist rendered innocent by insanity), age and youth, mother and whore."

That's a fascinating riff, whether O'Hara/Brocka meant it or not. Unaware of linguistic demographics in the Philippines, it makes me further wonder if a Malay/Indonesian name for the character of Kuala would further set her apart and characterize her as an outsider? I wonder how integrated the Malay/Indonesian languages are in Philippine culture?

Cross-published on Twitch.