Jaguar (Lino Brocka, 1979)

If you'll be my bodyguard  

Jaguar has a tony reputation: directed by Lino Brocka, loosely adapted by Jose 'Pete' Lacaba and Ricky Lee (from the true-life story "The Boy Who Wanted to Become Society," by Nick Joaquin), edited by Augusto Salvador, lensed by Conrado 'Carding' Baltazar, it's the first Filipino film to compete in the Main Competition of the 1980 Cannes Film Festival.

That said the film doesn't come up as often in cinephile discussion as Brocka's Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng  Liwanag or Insiang, which shouldn't be a surprise. Maynila and Insiang were released on DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming as part of the Criterion Collection; Jaguar is only available in crummier and crummier streaming copies, in the nether regions of the internet-- until recently, when the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP), the Philippine Film Archive (PFA), and Cite de Memoire all collaborated on a restoration. The film premiered in last year's Lumiere Festival in Lyon France, then opened the Sinag Manila Film Festival last night with a star-studded screening. After over forty years, Jaguar returns to Filipino audiences with a vengeance. 

Johnny Tinoso and the Proud Beauty (Mario O'Hara, 1993)

A Letter to Mr. Nestor Torre

Dear Mr. Torre;

After reading your choices for best picture in the Metro Manila Filmfest, I would like to offer as candidate a film that almost entered and was almost shown during 1993; a film that, if it had been released, I believe would have been the finest in the festival: Johnny Tinoso and the Proud Beauty.

A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino (Lamberto Avellana, 1965)

A thousand words

Confession: when I saw Lamberto Avellana's revered film adaptation of Nick Joaquin's classic play Portrait of the Artist as Filipino some mumble mumble years ago I wasn't thrilled. It was an adaptation of a stage play that at first glance looked unapologetically stagy, complete with well-timed entrances and exits, and its actors spoke a Spanish-accented English I'd never heard in a Filipino film before. It was filmed in an understated style, and after the sharp angles and looming closeups and deep shadows of Gerry de Leon's Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo felt like a step backwards, a middlebrow work of art.

Tatarin (Summer Solstice, 2001)

War of the sexes

Tikoy Aguiluz's Tatarin, based not so much on Nick Joaquin's famous short story as on the play he later adapted for stage, is about the oldest and longest-running war known to man, the war between the sexes. Joaquin's problem then was how to make this war relevant again to jaded audiences (the play was written in 1975); his solution was to set the play in the 1920s, when male-dominated Western Culture was just beginning to tremble. Aguiluz's adoption of Joaquin's stratagem is, I think, a smart move--this way he captures the very roots of the war (or at least of the 20th century edition of the war) as waged by our grandparents and great-grandparents; he photographs the combatants at a time when the battle is still urgent and raw, the stakes desperately high.