From the "On The Scene" Archives:

by Bliss Cua Lim

Aptly titled "Looking Back, Moving Forward," the recently concluded Filipino film retrospective at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater in Manhattan featured 29 films (out of an announced 30, the only cancellation being the festival opener). The films spanned about six decades in Philippine film history, commemorating the centennial of Philippine independence.

The 20-day festival, which featured a special program of films by internationally acclaimed director Lino Brocka ("Insiang," "Manila: In the Claws of Neon") also showcased the work of other key Philippine directors -- from pioneers Gerardo de Leon and brothers Octavio and Manuel Silos to New Cinema auteurs Ishmael Bernal, Marilou Diaz-Abaya, Mike de Leon, Chito Roño and Mario O'Hara. Important contemporary directors, whether long-time independents like Gil Portes or respected commercial directors like Joel Lamangan, Joey Reyes, Olive Lamasan, and Carlitos Siguion-Reyna, were also represented in the festival selection.

Despite a number of canceled and postponed screenings, the festival entries played to consistently packed and enthusiastic audiences. Described by director Marilou Diaz-Abaya as "a very good beginning," the festival's programming can be regarded as a laudable attempt at representing the diversity of directors, film movements, and stars in the history of Philippine cinema. The major obstacle for any ambitious retrospective of Philippine films must always be the limited availability of well-preserved, subtitled prints. Diaz-Abaya pointed out that the bulk of the programming consisted of melodramas, despite the fact that the most prominent mainstream genre in the Philippines has historically been the action film, today representing over 60 percent of the over 160 films produced annually.

Among the festival's highlights were rarely screened classics like Gerardo de Leon's "Noli Me Tangere" ("Touch Me Not", 1961). Hailed as the "Father of Philippine Cinema" for his earlier work, De Leon's cinematic adaptation of the turn-of-the century novel by Jose Rizal was a luminous introduction to the festival's array of major Filipino works, many of which have been read as social, if not national, allegories of the Philippine condition. In fact, the festival's opening-film cancellation was the Berlin Film Festival premiere, Marilou Diaz-Abaya's "Rizal," about the life, and death by political martyrdom of the national hero.

Ishmael Bernal's "Nunal sa Tubig" ("Speck in the Water", 1986), the festival's closing feature, remains a beautiful and poetic meditation on the encroachments of modernity upon rural life. Other mainstream highlights included Mario O'Hara's "The Fatima Buen Story" (1994), an astounding hybrid film which draws from the docudrama, action film, women-in-prison narrative, melodrama, and gothic horror, is a fine example of the work of a new generation of signature mainstream film directors. Chito Roño's "Itanong Mo sa Buwan" ("Ask the Moon", 1988) can be seen as a Filipino film noir in its investigative story structure, which centers upon Jacklyn Jose (subject of a retrospective tribute at the Nantes festival) as the sympathetic femme fatale. The festival also featured strong examples of quality commercial melodramas--Carlitos Siguion- Reyna's "Ang Lalake sa Buhay ni Selya" ("The Man in Her Life", 1997), a woman-positive tale of an unusual encounter with male queerness, as well as Olive Lamasan's "Madrasta" ("Stepmother", 1996), starring "megastar" Sharon Cuneta.

The festival's haunting opening-night screening, Diaz-Abaya's "Sa Pusod ng Dagat" ("In the Navel of the Sea", 1998), which had replaced the same director's "Rizal," is a nostalgic coming-of-age narrative that thematizes folk superstition as well as the social crisis of modernization. Produced by private investors new to the film scene and directed by a veteran of the New Cinema of the '70s and early '80s, "In the Navel of the Sea" is a remarkable example of the vitality and experimentation infusing Philippine cinema today. "Sea" continues its esteemed festival screenings next week at the Toronto Film Festival.

Marilou Diaz-Abaya sat down with indieWIRE following the successful opening night screening of her film. Characterizing the state of Filipino filmmaking at present, Diaz-Abaya responded by first contextualizing the early '90s as a period of almost euphoric economic growth for the Philippines and Asia in general, a time when "flushed with new investments," more movie theaters were built, television and film studios expanded, and TV finally emerged as a profitable ancillary market for films following their theatrical release.

She recounted that the influx of dollar remittances from overseas workers resulted in the emergence of a new, more educated middle class, who preferred to patronize Filipino movies by "signature directors" like Joel Lamangan, Joey Reyes, Chito Roño and Carlitos Siguion-Reyna, among others. But the Asian economic crisis, combined with the increasingly discriminating tastes of the audience, created a certain amount of panic among Filipino film producers.

"The margin of profit is shrinking," said Diaz-Abaya, "but this is because Filipino producers refuse to admit that the Philippines will inevitably become too small a market for the production costs required now. And this is not dictated by us (Filipino directors) because our fees remain almost the same; it's (dictated by) Eastman Kodak, here in New York."

She went on to say that the producers now "have no idea what will or will not make money. That's very good for the filmmaker because, like the late '70s and the early '80s [the period of the New Philippine Cinema], they are forced to concede that the judgment on what will or will not make it, is really the director's." So Diaz-Abaya is optimistic. "Directors are being allowed to make films which five years ago would have been thrown out, because [producers] thought they had a formula, but not now."

Abaya noted that the economic uncertainty had actually led to more opportunities for new independent producers and directors whose work are non-traditional in funding and theme. "It all paints a picture of vitality. I'm not discouraged," Abaya declared. The festival's features certainly constituted resounding proof of the tenacity and dynamism of one of Asia's most prolific and promising film industries.

[Bliss Cua Lim is a doctoral candidate in the Cinema Studies program at New York University. She has taught in the English Department of the University of the Philippines and at the Cinema Studies Department of NYU. Her dissertation on the Fantastic in film will include a chapter on Philippine cinema.]