Where's the flicks?

Noel Vera

The Society of Film Archivists (SOFIA), celebrating its 11th year
with the help of the UP Film Institute, the Cultural Center of the
Philippines (CCP) and the National Council for Culture and the Arts
(NCCA) is presenting "Ukay-Ukay: Where's the Archive? A Festival of
Restored Filipino Films" at the UP Film Institute on July 14 to 18,
and the CCP on July 21 to 25. Opening the festival will be Eddie
Romero's 1966 "Passionate Strangers," a love story / political drama
set in a sugar plantation in the south, and closing it will be
Romero's "Banta ng Kahapon" (Lessons from the Past, 1977), another
political drama set during the 1969 Congressional elections.

Other Filipino films include:

"Giliw Ko" (My Love, 1939)--Carlos Vander Tolosa's frothy confection
featuring Mila del Sol as the country girl who goes to the city to
make it big as a radio singer, and has to choose between her career
and her childhood sweetheart (Fernando Poe). The print's restoration
is far from perfect and the film itself is hardly impressive
technically (this same year Hollywood presented "Wizard of Oz"), but
the songs have a lilting loveliness, the musical numbers a rustic
charm (one of the numbers featuring the SSS trio--three of filmmaker
Manuel Silos' sisters), and there is an interesting subtext about
how Filipino songs are considered "inferior" to American ones, and
how del Sol makes a fateful choice as to what she'll sing on the
air. Watch out for an early appearance by Mona Lisa, drop dead
gorgeous in a bathing suit, featured here as Fleur de Lis.

"Dalagang Ilokana" (Ilocana Lass, 1954) has Olive La Torre direct a
gloriously fresh and funny Gloria Romero as a spirited, cigar-
chomping country girl who rolls tobacco leaves into cigars for a
living. Romero is a wonderful comedienne, combining as she does a
stately beauty and aristocratic nose with eyes that slant just (and
maddeningly) so, plus a sense of humor game enough to undercut her
impeccable poise; Dolphy does well in a supporting role as comic
sidekick with an insatiable appetite. The film, set in the tobacco-
growing lands of the Ilocos region, is also a lengthy advertisement
on the many pleasures of smoking, with seemingly everyone onscreen
from the loftiest haciendero to the lowliest tobacco roller casually
lighting up fearsome-looking cigars made from uncut tobacco leaf;
one character actually suffers asthma attacks if he can't get his
regular nicotine fix from the tightly rolled cigars that only Romero
knows how to make.

"Jack and Jill" (1954)--Mar S. Torres directs an early comedy about
sexual role reversal, with Dolphy as a flaming homosexual, Lolita
Rodriguez as his butch sister, and Rogelio de la Rosa as the love
interest that can possibly reform Rodriguez's tomboy tendencies.
Dolphy shrieks and shashays with the best of them (a real treat,
considering that he's known as one of the industry's most notorious
womanizers), and he's usually the life of the party and of every
scene that includes him; Rodriguez plays a glowering stick-in-the-
mud drudge against which Dolphy's delicate butterfly insanity
batters his delicate self. Wonderful comic interplay between the two
actors, and the climax--a big confrontation involving a gang of half-
naked musclemen and a gaggle of screaming queens--has to be seen to
be believed.

"Sanda Wong" (1955)--a fine entertainment directed by Gerardo de
Leon and co-produced by the Philippines and Hong Kong that features
Jose Padilla Jr. as the eponymous bandit, and Danilo Montes as his
troublesome brother in blood. The picture boasts of a cornucopia of
pleasures: pirates, a burial at sea, an Amazon dance (performed by
Lilia Dizon, mother of actor Christopher de Leon), a magic ring,
pythons that magically drop in from nowhere. It's handsomely
produced as Filipino films go; perhaps not as extravagant as
Hollywood fantasy adventures, but de Leon's wonderful visual style
and editing more than make up for this.

"Malvarosa" (1958)--Gregorio Fernandez directs a large cast
including the five wayward, rather brutish brothers (Carlos Padilla
Jr., Rey Ruiz, Vic Silayan, Eddie Rodriguez, Vic Diaz) whose names
make up the film's title. Charito Solis plays their lone sister who
has to put away her dreams of a happy marriage (to Leroy Salvador)
and struggle to keep the family together and make ends meet.
Tragedies abound, including the death of their alcoholic father (a
harrowing train accident), and the melancholia of their hard-put
mother; eventually, Solis' character is threatened with rape,
accused of immorality and contemplates suicide. Melodrama, but very
well done melodrama, with details of setting and story and character
that put it on a level above the ordinary.

"Biyaya ng Lupa" (Blessings of the Land, 1959)--Manuel Silos'
masterpiece, starring Tony Santos and Rosa Rosal as a farming couple
who struggle through the changing seasons of weather and life to
raise their "lanzones" trees and their family. The languid, lifelike
pacing recalls Jean Renoir at his most naturalistic, but with an
expansiveness covering years of quiet family life that also evokes
Satiyajit Ray's "The Apu Trilogy." Considered by many to be the
greatest Filipino film ever made; I may disagree, but not by much--
it's an excellent choice.

"Pagdating sa Dulo" (At the Top, 1971) was Ishmael Bernal's satiric
look at the Filipino film industry, with Vic Vargas playing a taxi
driver turned aspiring star, Rita Gomez as his co-star and lover,
and Eddie Garcia as the respected film director who discovers her.
Bernal piles dead-on parodies atop delicious gossip atop
unsettlingly astute observations about art and commerce to dissect,
clinically and comically, the pride and prejudices of the local
filmmaking business. The wit on display is cruel partly because it's
so funny, partly because it's so true, mostly shot in understated,
intelligently staged long takes. The film is all the more impressive
considering it was Bernal's first effort, yet the sensibility on
display is that of a mature, fully developed filmmaker. A flop when
it first came out, Bernal eventually recovered and went on to have a
prolific, critically and commercially successful career.

The festival schedule is as follows at the UP Film Institute: July
15 Maalaala Mo Kaya (3 p.m.), Seksing-Seksi (6 p.m.); July 16
Dalagang llokana (3 p.m.), Ano ang Kulay ng Mukha ng Diyos (6 p.m.);
July 17 Jack & Jill (2 p.m.), MN (4 p.m.), White Slavery (7 p.m.);
July 18 Sanda Wong (3 p.m.), Pagdating sa Dulo (6 p.m.).

At the CCP: July 21 Jack & Jill (2 p.m.), Seksing-Seksi (7 p.m.);
July 22 Giliw Ko (4 p.m.), Biyaya ng Lupa (7 p.m.); July 23 MN (4
p.m.), Passionate Strangers (7 p.m.); July 24 Naalala Mo Kaya (1:30
p.m.), Malvarosa (4 p.m.), Pagdating sa Dulo (7 p.m.); July 25
Dalagang Ilokana (4 p.m.), Banta ng Kahapon (7 p.m.).

For details call the CCP Media Arts Division at 832-1125 local 1704
or the UP Film Institute at 926-3640.

(First appeared in Businessworld, 7/16/04)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)