"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.
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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.
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.
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?
About Elly (Iran dir. Asghar Farhadi)—Director Farhadi deservedly won Best Director prize at 2009's Berlin Film Festival for this complex psychological thriller about a group of young, upper-middle class Tehranis on holiday at the Caspian Sea. After a harrowing, near-tragic event, Elly, a teacher and interloper in the group who's been set up for some uninvited matchmaking, goes and disappears. The film becomes not so much "about" Elly, but about the deceptive, flawed personages who are left to deal with the aftermath of her disappearance. This was Iran's 2009 Oscar submission, and it's a glimpse into an Iranian social milieu we rarely see, at least in films which get exported. My favorite Iranian film since 2005's Iron Island. (Seen at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival.)
City of Life and Death (China dir. Lu Chuan)—Lu spent five years making this stunning masterpiece about the brutal 1937 siege of Nanking by Japanese occupation forces. Brilliantly walking the line between massive widescreen epic (cast of thousands, impressive sets, sweeping score) and intimate art film (B&W, hand-held camera), the film is constructed as a series of tangentially connected set pieces. A group of resistance fighters battle the enemy while perched atop bombed-out buildings. P.O.W.s are marched along atrocity-strewn roads en route to mass execution. In the film's central story, a Chinese collaborator, a German businessman (real-life figure John Rabe) and a young schoolteacher struggle with increasing desperation to maintain the integrity of the city's International Safety Zone, with its 300,000 refugees. Perhaps most surprising is the film's broadminded portrait of a conflicted Japanese sergeant and his relationship with a comfort woman. This month's scheduled U.S. theatrical release of City of Life and Death has been indefinitely postponed while distributor National Geographic Entertainment "negotiates" with the Chinese Film Board. Best to see it at SFIAAFF—this is one film that demands a big-screen experience. And be sure to check out the schedule changes which affect the film.
The Housemaid (South Korea dir. Kim Ki-young)—For 2010's Out of the Vaults selection, SFIAAFF has chosen this disturbing 1960 doozy which has been restored by Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation and the Korean Film Archive. Rat poison, abortion, blackmail, suicide, marital infidelity, murder and a caged squirrel all figure into this transgressive, anti-consumerist cautionary tale of a music teacher and the treacherous live-in maid who shoehorns her way into his home. From the dripping opening titles, to the nerve-racking score and sound design, to Kim's determined, constantly roaming camera, The Housemaid is an unsettling experience that should be enormous fun to watch with a crowd at the Castro Theater. (Seen on streaming video at The Auteurs.)
Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest,Part 4 & Part 5 (China dir. Yang Fudong)—Anyone who's curious what contemporary avant-garde Chinese cinema might look like won't want to miss this. And while I normally have a low threshold for ponderous artiness, I found myself engaged throughout. SFIAAFF will be screening two of the piece's five parts with separate admissions. While they're mostly self-contained, there are overlapping motifs and stylistic similarities—both were shot in B&W with zero dialogue and feature studied compositions, slow and purposeful camera movements, and full frontal nudity. Part 4 is set amidst a seaside community of kelp harvesters and dried cuttlefish cultivators. Part 5 takes place in a modern day Shanghai seemingly overshadowed by nostalgia for the city's opulent past of cafes, bathhouses and rooftop baseball (?!?). A coterie of business-dressed men and women, presumably the titular seven intellectuals, lug suitcases across both sea and city landscapes. Of the two parts, I'd probably recommend the more varied and playful Part 5.
The Forbidden Door (Indonesia dir. Joko Anwar)—Gambir is a successful sculptor of pregnant women who lives a chic lifestyle. He also suffers from erectile dysfunction and has a beautiful wife with her own Forbidden Door in their home. He becomes obsessed with a Lynchian private club where patrons watch unspeakable things being done to people on live TV, including an abused boy who keeps sending him messages for help. These are the key elements of this ultra-stylized metaphysical thriller from Indonesia, which reaches its apotheosis with a Christmas dinner scene worthy of Grand Guignol. Fortunately there's sufficient substance to warrant all that style, at least until the film's rather creaky denouement.
Talentime (Malaysia dir. Yasmin Ahmad)—In her final film (the talented filmmaker passed away last year at age 51), Yasmin Ahmad explores themes that are recurrent in all her works, namely love and loss and the need for tolerance in a multi-cultural/racial/religious society like Malaysia. The story focuses on three students who are finalists in a high school talent competition, each possessing their own set of familial tribulations. The film has a bittersweet, corny charm to it, but is hampered by some overly broad supporting characters, mawkish songs, abrupt editing and an overabundance of Debussy's "Clair de lune."
Like You Know It All (South Korea dir. Hong Sang-soo)—With Hong you either admire his persistence of vision or become really irritated/bored over how he essentially makes the same film over and over again. I'm pretty much in the second camp, but am still interested enough in how he reworks his themes to jump ship just yet. His latest contains all the signature Hong moves—an immature protagonist who's approaching middle-age and has a career in the arts, a bifurcated story structure, a trip away from home and lots of public drinking that leads to fighting or fucking or both. Hong's avatar this time out is an art-film director. In the first half he juries an out-of-town festival (falling asleep during films) and reconnects with an old friend. (I believe this section contains Hong's first dream sequence!) The second half finds him guest-lecturing at an out-of-town university and reconnecting with an old mentor. In both cases he leaves behind a wake of petty resentments and pissed-off people. Many Hong fans are considering this film one of his best.
Dear Lemon Lima, (USA dir. Suzi Yoonessi)—This debut feature about a half Yup'ik Eskimo girl coming to terms with her heritage plays like a sweet and snarky after-school special. Thirteen-year-old Vanessa is the token minority student at a well-to-do school in Fairbanks, Alaska. She's appointed a team captain for the school's annual Snowstorm Survivor Competition, and enlists fellow nerds to do battle against her self-obsessed ex-boyfriend. Some fine performances, worthy intentions and snazzy visuals are nearly enough to overshadow the film's mega-cuteness and strained quirkiness. A shocking tragedy just before the final act nearly capsizes the whole enterprise.
Prince of Tears (Taiwan/Hong Kong dir. Yonfan)—This overwrought, yet stodgy tale of passion and betrayal during the communist witch hunts of 1950s Taiwan was Hong Kong's Oscar submission for 2009. It's based on director Yonfan's memories of growing up in that era, during which time he must have witnessed lots of impossibly gorgeous women and men languorously exhaling cigarette smoke. Come for the history lesson, stay for the truly sumptuous art direction (also by Yonfan). (Seen at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival.)
The People I've Slept With (USA dir. Quentin Lee)—Nothing gives me less pleasure than to slag a festival's Centerpiece Film, but man, this was no fun at all. Putting a broad, Asian-American spin on the sex comedy genre, we watch as a self-avowed slut (Karin Anna Cheung) discovers she's pregnant and sets off on a laborious mission to find the father with the help of her gay best friend. One candidate turns out to be Mr. Right (Archie Kao), and she (cluelessly? maliciously?) withholds the fact of his dubious paternity until seconds before they say their wedding vows. Ha ha ha. On the plus side, Cheung and Kao have an amazing chemistry in their scenes together, which might have worked wonders in a different movie. And I did crack up at a line where Cheung bemoans finding yet another white pubic hair.
Before finding words to describe my pleasure in viewing my first Lino Brocka film You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting (1974), I'd like to render a few comments on the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) and this year's focus on Filipino and Filipino American Cinema. When Festival Director Chi-hui Yang first mentioned to me that the festival hoped to build connections with the Bay Area's Filipino American community by "bringing them into the festival", I was impressed with CAAM's strategic outreach to the second largest community in the Bay Area after the Chinese; but, I was also slightly confused because I had long imagined the Filipino community as being more of a Latino community by way of shared colonial histories and a Catholic substratum. In retrospect, I realized this understanding had been shaped by a 1994 Mexican Museum exhibit "Paraiso Abierto a Todos" curated by Enrique Chagoya, and featuring the work of Philippine artist Manuel Ocampo.
I phoned my friend Tere Romo, former curator for The Mexican Museum, and asked her what she recalled of that exhibit. She remembered that the Manuel Ocampo retrospective was already in the works when she arrived on the scene and—though she did facilitate it—it had largely been set into motion by curator Enrique Chagoya and fellow artist Rupert Garcia, who were both enthusiastic about the political dimension of Ocampo's work; a dimension they felt affirmed a shared identity between Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Chicanos and Filipinos.
I asked Tere if it had been the exhibition's intention to diversify the Mexican, Mexican American and Chicano community by focusing on a Filipino artist? Romo confirmed that Chagoya and Garcia approached the Mexican Museum to mount an exhibition of Ocampo's work simply because they loved his work and wanted to show it; but, Tere saw it as the perfect opportunity—not only to extend the community to draw in another audience for the sake of drawing in another audience—but, more, to enunciate linkages already present historically, socially and culturally. She accomplished this by setting up a complementary exhibit in the orientation gallery next to Ocampo's retrospective. She drew pieces from the Mexican Museum's collection that showed the actual influences via the Manila galleon trade in Mexican art. For example, she looked at the Chinese influence on Mexican laquerware and floral rebozos. The Museum's collection even had a Filipino buto—a statue of a saint—which confirmed a direct reference. These trade items manifested during the time period when Mexico was—in a sense—the viceroy for the Philippines. Trade passed through Acapulco, was transported across Mexico to Vera Cruz, then transferred to Spain. In the process, handlers—often artists themselves—influenced by the work from China and Japan, adapted the imagery.
But Tere wanted to emphasize that the connection between Mexican and Filipino communities was not only a historically distant trade connection. More recently—with the United Farm Workers effort—the Filipinos were the first to go on strike for farm workers rights. Filipino organizer Larry Itliong formed the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC). César Chávez and Dolores Huerta became involved when the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA)—which they co-founded—voted to join the AWOC, creating what is now known as the United Farm Workers of America. Additionally, the first martyr in that cause was a Filipino farm worker.
Having now experienced the Filipino community approached by both the Mexican Museum and the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), I can more fully appreciate what Dina Iordanova has proposed in her contextual essay "Mediating Diaspora", published in Film Festival Yearbook 2: Film Festivals and Imagined Communities (2010:12-44).
The concept of "imagined communities" comes from Benedict Anderson's 1983 study Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, wherein Anderson proposed "an imagined political community" as a definition for "nation". Iordanova found this applicable to film festival communities. She writes: "The festivals that we zoom in on here are all linked in some way to the concept of the nation as 'imagined', precisely as Anderson conceives it, and, in most cases, to 'diaspora' as well. Members of the community probably will never meet face-to-face; however, they may have shared interests or identity as part of the same group." Film festivals, however, instigate community by being a live event that convenes "only in one place at a time, usually at regular intervals as yearly events. For the festival to happen, organizers and audiences must come face-to-face in exactly the same place at exactly the same time. They practically suspend the 'imagined' element of the community by substituting it with a very real one that is, nonetheless, configured around the same axis of imagination that drives the ideas of nation and nationalism. There is a double-step process when transnationally-positioned film festivals are involved. On the one hand, audiences and programmers involved with the festival are invited to experience themselves, by an undisguised act of imagination, as an extension of a community that is 'headquartered' somewhere else but to which they, by virtue of their very attendance at the festival, now relate to through a mental image of affinity and through the act of their very real togetherness. Yet, a secondary act of imagination is implied as well, linked to the need to experience a certain degree of identification with imaginary, fictional characters whose stories are told in the films projected at the festival. In the 'live' space of the festival, organizers and audiences form a community, an actual one, that congregates face-to-face for the purpose of fostering an 'imagined community' that comes live in the act of watching a film and imagining distant human beings becoming part of one's own experiences. Thus, the festival's set-up extends an invitation to engage in what is essentially a political act of imagined belonging and to continue the nation building process that is pre-supposed by extending it to the diaspora and beyond." (2010:12-13, emphasis added.) This concept of festival attendance as "a political act of imagined belonging" speaks to me on many different levels.
SFIAAFF's focus on Filipino Cinema finds precedent—according to Variety reporter Christopher Alford—in a comparably-mounted program at the 2006 Hawaii International Film Festival whose "generalist approach of the festival," Iordanova observes, "cuts across ethnic divides and aims to draw large crowds of diverse backgrounds." In a way, Iordanova adds, festivals such as the Hawaii International and SFIAAFF "work with a political vision of a certain imagined community and target a diasporic audience that is intrinsically diverse." (2010:24)
Here, Iordanova expands her thesis to juxtapose diaspora with "the global city". She writes: "Within multicultural societies, film festivals related to diasporas and 'imagined communities' all happen at the periphery of the mainstream public sphere." Though conceding that some skeptics criticize that such ethno-specific film festivals not only remain isolated from each other but contribute to "the profound fragmentation of an ideally public sphere", Iordanova balances with an alternate viewpoint that celebrates multicultural hybridization, "undoing diaspora in favor of the global city concept." In other words, though "the existence of various 'imagined communities' within the multicultural sphere may lead to fragmentation, there are also processes of hybridization and integration, of 'situated' yet mobile identities that come about as a result of [what Dr. Avtar Brah (1996:1, 187) has termed] 'the honing of diaspora'." (2010:33) Mobile identity is an apt term, especially in light of SFIAAFF's "Filipino Or Not?" phone game app.
All of this is to suggest that I no longer see SFIAAFF as a film festival catering to diasporic identities as much as a festival committed to celebrating its hybrid citizenry in a global city. Their focus on Filipino cinema confirms as much and allows for the Latino community to share equally in solidarity.
Here I will reiterate Michael Hawley's consummate overview of the Filipino sidebar: "One of the strands running through 2010's festival is a Focus on Filipino and Filipino American Cinema, the highlight of which is a long overdue tribute to Lino Brocka. Openly gay and often at odds with Ferdinand Marcos' regime, Brocka directed 60-plus films between 1970 and his death in 1991, most of them melodramas with a social/political bent. To the best of my knowledge, with the exception of one-off screenings of 1988's Macho Dancer (for better or worse, his best known film in the U.S.), the Bay Area hasn't seen a Brocka film since the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) showed Dirty Affair in 1992. (And if memory serves, the screening I attended was cancelled after the film broke midway through). Even the venerable Pacific Film Archive lists only one Brocka screening in its entire online archive; again the 1992 SFIFF presentation of Dirty Affair.
"The SFIAAFF mini-retrospective consists of only four films, but they seem very well chosen. Yang explained that SFIAAFF wanted to program more, but prints were extremely hard to acquire. 1975's Manila in the Claws of Neon is a neo-noir about a country boy in the mean city, which I first saw at the 1980 SFIFF under the title Manila in the Claws of Darkness. (Oddly, the film is a.k.a. Manila in the Claws of Light). SFIFF also screened Brocka's mother-from-hell masterpiece Insiang in 1984, but I missed it. Bayan Ko is the film that got Brocka's Filipino citizenship revoked, and a print had to be smuggled out of the county for its competition screening at Cannes in 1984. The fourth selection is 1974's You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting (what a title!). All four films will be screened in 16mm or 35mm prints.
"The rest of SFIAAFF's Focus on Filipino and Filipino American Cinema can be found scattered throughout the line-up. "Classic Filipino American Shorts" is, well, exactly that. From this year's Documentary Competition comes Ninoy Aquino & the Rise of People Power, about the revolutionary leader, political prisoner, exile and martyr to the cause of Philippine democracy. Manilatown is in the Heart—Time Travel with Al Robles is part of the CAAM@30 Documentary Showcase and the latest from director Curtis Choy (The Fall of the I-Hotel). From the Narrative Competition we have the world premiere of Gerry Balasta's The Mountain Thief, a docudrama about one family's struggle to live amidst a garbage dumpsite. And finally, the one I'm most looking forward to, Raya Martin's hyper-stylized allegory of early 20th century American colonialism, Independencia."
I also replicate my capsule review of Independencia from the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival:
Listening expectantly in the dark is Miguel (Sid Lucero), the son in Raya Martin's lustrous Independencia who—crouched still with vigilant eyes—hears the sounds of war approaching within a raging storm that ravishes the Philippine rain forest. The wet foliage—as Joni Mitchell phrases it—"looks like slick black cellophane" and as if to emphasize the film's irreality, Martin purposely employs theatrical devices and fabulist artificiality to emphasize not only the history of his country, but the history of his country's cinema. Martin describes Independencia as "an intimist film in the woods."
Patrons of the Pacific Film Archive in the past academic year will undoubtedly recognize Joe Garrity as the charmingly droll box office cashier who now and again ushers the auditorium as well. I keep recommending that he simply refer to himself as an "ushier" but Joe resists; sensitive—I suspect—to accusations of not knowing how to spell.
In the social weave of Bay Area film culture, Joe has had an intriguing background for one so young. He's spent time in Chile immersing himself in the Spanish language, interned for Saturday Night Live, and administers his own YouTube Channel where he showcases the short films that he and his twin brother Phil have created. Here are three clever examples of how they've utilized their twinship to comic effect.
In Doublemint, Joe and Phil Garrity mash commercial advertisement with action genre to expose chewing gum as a potential gateway drug.
In Twinversion, the Garrity brothers do their bit to battle the "twinjustice" of being misidentified and rehearse a job interview with Alice's ("Who are you?") Caterpillar. How they decided who should part their hair where invites a provocative investigation. Personally, I think their moustaches set them apart, don't you? Joe's could be licked off by a cat tongue and Phil's invites visions of megalomaniacal fascism.
In Bill and Dave, the Garrity Brothers go twin squared and imagine themselves as offscreen infants while channeling their twin father and uncle.
All three shorts have been written and directed by Joe Garrity, whose B&W 16mm short Ferris Wheel on Fire—a childhood memory of an amusement park—will be included in "Fleshed Out: Films by UC Berkeley Students", PFA's annual showcase of campus talent screening on Thursday, March 11, 7:30PM, and curated by UC Berkeley students Meaghan Curran, Sophie Raskin, Max Siegel, Johnny Starks, and Celeste Vasquez, as part of an internship offered by UC Berkeley's Film Studies Department and PFA, under the guidance of Kathy Geritz, with the assistance of Jonathan L. Knapp. Presented with support from the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Endowment.
"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"
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).
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).
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.
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.
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.
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