Armando 'Bing' Lao, 2026 National Artist for Film

Armando 'Bing' Lao is 2026's National Artist for Film

This September 2026 Armando 'Bing' Lao (1948 - 2024) was posthumously granted the title of National Artist of the Philippines, generally considered the highest honor the state can give one of its citizens.

Personally ambivalent about this. First instituted by Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in 1972, the award-- meant to recognize those who contributed significantly to the Philippine arts-- is actually an attempt to ingratiate the president into the Philippine artistic community, possibly give folks something to talk about beside the inflation crisis; after declaring Martial Law later that year Marcos used the award to give his 'New Society' a progressive air, signal his support for Filipino artists (who were becoming increasingly critical of him), distract the public from the more fascistic actions of his regime. 

Nowadays this aspect of the National Artist is largely forgotten or willfully ignored. Subsequent presidents-- Cory Aquino, Fidel Ramos, and so on-- have maintained the award (now an 'order') in part because yes it lends their administration a progressive high-culture tone, in part because it's 'something we've always done'-- convenient excuse for continuing a tradition unexamined. 

The award or order or whatever isn't all bad-- the recipient (or his heir, if the award is posthumous) receives financial benefits, life insurance, prestige. Not bad for a country that traditionally pays its artists mostly lip service while still alive. 

Maybe my favorite awardee was Nick Joaquin, not so much for his contributions (which are significant don't get me wrong) but for what he did with the 'honor'-- absolutely refusing to accept every time it was offered and only giving in when the regime agreed to release activist and scriptwriter Jose 'Pete' Lacaba, who had been kidnapped, tortured, and detained for two years. When Joaquin delivered his acceptance speech he spoke about the importance of an artist's freedom and was subsequently banned from speaking at important cultural events-- now that is what I call leveraging one's privilege. 

All that said if anyone deserves to be called 'National Artist' for his 'significant contribution to the Philippine arts' it has to be 'Bing' Lao. He first worked for William Pascual in 1984 but it was his third script for the director that stood out-- Takaw Tukso (Passion Play, 1986), a brilliantly knotty four-person chamber piece that I described as 'Bergman transposed to Southeast Asia, all sweaty and squalid and begrimed.' The film itself survives in a poor video copy, no print that I know of, but those who remembered it (including me) were impressed. 

Lao worked steadily henceforth but the next time I remember seeing his name was in the Good Harvest 'pito-pito' film* Sana Pagibig Na (Enter Love, 1998), about the death of a young man's father and the youth's subsequent discovery of and developing friendship with his father's secret mistress. The film (director Jeffrey Jeturian's debut) was a minor gem whose lowbudget production values served to emphasize the intriguing premise, the delicate handling of a potentially lurid topic, the exceptionally fine performances.

*('Pito-pito' literally meaning 'seven-seven'-- seven days' shooting, seven days' postproduction, a quick cheap way to realize one's script on the big screen)

Pila Balde (Fetch a Pail of Water, 1999) is perhaps Lao's and Jeturian's finest collaboration, sketching the interdependent relationship between two communities, a middle-class apartment complex and the squatter area surrounding it. Again the no-budget aesthetic manages to highlight how much Lao and Jeturian achieve, not just narratively but visually, not just with a single protagonist but with a handful of interacting characters.

Tuhog (Larger Than Life, 2001) is Lao and Jeturian's meta film, about a mother and daughter and the film adaptation made from their life, and it shows the pair working at a more sophisticated level, weaving satire and parody into a story of women being abused (twice-- first by the men in their lives, second by the filmmakers).  

Lao also worked with director Chito Rono, notably on La Vida Rosa (The Life of Rosa, 2001), Rono's sleek noir about a con artist and a lockpick struggling to survive in the streets of Manila. Where Sana Pagibig Na and Pila Balde are microbudget affairs, Rosa shows Lao capable of storytelling on a larger scale, with established stars (Rosanna Roces, Diether Ocampo) and a director commanding a proper production budget, and still the humanity of his characters shine through-- Rosa has a child Enteng (Jiro Mano), and their relationship onscreen is refreshingly unsentimental; lockpicker boyfriend Dado stays in contact with his ex Jing (Angel Aquino), and their rapport is understated and believable. Arguably Rono's best work, and easily the performance of Rosanna Roces' career. 

But it's Lao's collaborations with director Dante 'Brillante' Mendoza that may have achieved the most international recognition, from Serbis (Service, 2008)-- detailing a day in the life of a second-run movie theater, complete with sex workers servicing the audience and a goat wandering into the building-- to Kinatay (Butchered, 2009), another day in the life, here the last in a prostitute's life. The latter achieved notoriety when venerated American film critic Roger Ebert blasted it as 'the worse film in the history of the Cannes Film Festival,' or words to that effect, startling hyperbole that drew more attention to the picture than it otherwise might have enjoyed (Mendoza's Prix de la mis en scene notwithstanding). I found it grim, and it took not just Mendoza's relentlessly measured deliberately crude visuals but Lao's recently developed writing philosophy-- the Found Story-- to create that unforgettable grimness, freak Ebert out along the way. 

Found Story was a set of principles Lao formulated after the boxoffice failure of one particularly expensive production-- basically his observation of what works in the Philippine and international market, what Filipino writers and filmmakers are especially good at, and where the two spheres intersect-- reduced to a set of rules a producer could follow. It was his belief that realism and truth are a Filipino artist's sharpest weapons, and it's when said artist focuses on these weapons-- on eschewing what's fanciful or irrelevant and limiting oneself to what's immediate-- that a Filipino filmmaker is most guaranteed to succeed, artistically if not financially (implied: that would likely follow). Kinatay's success in Cannes is in many ways a validation of Lao's theory. 

An interesting anecdote with an appropriate finale and matters might end there except Lao must have realized that what works for a producer would work just as well if not better for the writer. Thus began his lifelong effort to proselytize his system to up-and-coming writers and this, if nothing else, may be Lao's lasting legacy. He established a Found Story Screenwriting Workshop that he taught for a number of years; he has fostered a new generation of writers and filmmakers, some of whose works I've admired (Ralston Jover's Bakal Boys (Child Metal Divers, 2009), Edgardo Roy's Pamilya Ordinaryo (Ordinary Family, 2016)). 

Ralston Jover on Lao: "His stories are remarkably mundane everyday Filipino life with distinct tones of playful humor, spiritual-social honesty, philosophical meaning. He is a great mentor and colleague who respects talent, never condescends, genuinely loves teaching with the aim of honing your craft." Jover adds that with Lao's manuals "I truly found my 'voice' in scriptwriting."

"Any director who works on a Bing Lao script cannot go wrong," Jeffrey Jeturian said. "That's how solid and rich Bing's screenplays are. His dialogue is sharp, his characters alive and multi-dimensional, with clear motivations, his storytelling is fluid and dynamic." He adds: "You'll notice the social realism of Brillante and my own films all bear the stamp of Bing, sometimes in a more pronounced voice than the directors'."

Writer-director Honee Alipio: "I didn't want to see him as a friend, but as a mentor, with me as student. I helped him with his workshop, ten sessions in five weekends, for ten years. I lived in Zamboanga but every time I came to Manila, I go straight to him. Eventually we became less like mentor-student, more like father-daughter to each other. 

"The Found Story approach is foundational to my creative process. Rather than start from abstract fiction, I anchor my scripts in meticulous research and documented facts. 

"In my film Enjoy Your Stay (co-created with Dominik Locher), I synthesized testimonies from migrant workers to portray systemic issues with precision, accountability, and absolute realism. The approach guides me in translating raw reality into authentic cinematic storytelling.

"When we pitch Sir Bing would always ask: 'Why this story? Why now?' He would probe our intentions and check our ego. 

"When dealing with the common man, we try empower them, especially minorities. 'Talo na naga sila sa lipunan, aapihin mo pa,' he would say ('They already lose out to society and here you are oppressing them'). This addresses the issue of 'poverty porn' in indie films."

Brillante Mendoza: "Armando 'Bing' Lao has been part of my journey in cinema for more than four decades. We started working together in the 1980s on Takaw Tukso but our collaboration became much deeper with Masahista in 2005, my first film, which went on to win the Golden Leopard in Locarno. 

"At that time Bing was developing his Found Story theory, and without realizing it I became his student. He was creative consultant in many of my films and wrote Serbis and Kinatay, both of which competed in Cannes.

"But what I value most is not the credits, it's everything I learned from him-- how to observe, how to listen, how to trust reality, how to allow a story to reveal itself.

"The learning never stopped. Every film became another lesson, and even today, I carry his teachings with me in the way I make films and see the world. 

"Bing is not only my collaborator or mentor. He is my friend, my brother, one of the people who helped shape the filmmaker I have become. 

"I will always be grateful for that journey-- and for everything from him that continues to live through my films."

Writer-director Zig Dulay: "Bing Lao's scripts taught me to look at people more deeply. His stories were never just about what happened. They were about what was underneath-- the wounds, contradictions, fears, desires, and truths that make us human. He taught me that if you look closely enough, there is always a story waiting to be found. 

"But for me Sir Bing is much more than his scripts. He is one of the people who opened the door for me. I will never ever forget that. 

"He allowed me to learn standing beside him. I became his production assistant, then his assistant director, eventually the scriptwriter of his film Ad Ignorantiam-- all while he mentored me. 

"Sir Bing changed my world. He helped me see the world differently, but more importantly he helped me see myself. 

"That is what Found Story means to me. I learned from Sir Bing that a story is not always something we simply invent. Sometimes it is already there-- in a person, a place, a community, a memory, a wound. You have to research, observe, listen, immerse yourself, and allow the story to reveal itself to you. 

"Found Story taught me humility. It taught me that as a filmmaker I do not always have to impose a story on people. Sometimes I have to be patient enough to discover the story that life is already telling. 

"He did not simply teach me how to write a story, he taught me how to see the world.

"For that I will carry his lessons with me for as long as I can tell stories."

First published in Businessworld 9.15.26