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Brocka: The Shakespeare of Filippino Film by Mara Math
Few high-quality prints of Lino Brocka's work have survived since his death in 1991, despite having won numerous awards and directing the first Filippino film to go to Cannes - "Insiang" (1978), a Shakespearian tragedy about a daughter's revenge after being raped by her mother's lover. Hence, Bay Area film lovers are in for a treat. The 2010 Asian American Film Festival is mounting a Brocka retrospective, a rare opportunity to see four of the pioneering director's masterworks on the big screen.
"Lino was certainly one of the great filmmakers of the 20th century," says Roger Garcia, a film programmer for the Torino and San Francisco International Film Festivals, "And in the first rank of classic Asian filmmakers along with Satyajit Ray and Akira Kurosawa."
Working as both a commercial and an indie director, Brocka made over 50 films, spanning a gamut of genres, including noir and agitprop, neo-realism and melodrama. Even in his most commercial works, such as the explicitly homoerotic "Macho Dancer," probably Brocka's best known film in the US, he always slipped in something "heartfelt and substantial," notes Noel Vera, an authority on Filippino film, in his essay for the program guide.
Surprisingly, given Brocka's ebullient, high-energy personality, and his alluring titles, which include "Dipped in Gold," "All Be Damned," "My Country, Clinging to a Knife Edge," "Manila in the Claws of Neon," and "You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting," (the latter three, with "Insiang," comprise the AAIFF program), the films themselves are often are often "quiet contemplations about the individual and society," Gracia says, "and how individual victims of social injustice try to fight back."
Brocka's open opposition to the vicious and corrupt Marcos dictatorship is one reason that, despite intense popularity in his home country, his films were not widely distributed abroad, outside of film festivals. After the Marcos regime was toppled, Brocka stood by his progressive principles, and made the only narrative feature to directly criticize the supposedly liberal new president, Cory Aquino.
"As an openly gay, politically outspoken filmmaker, Lino clearly identified with this oppression and the need to fight it," Gracia points out, adding that Brocka's protagonists were often women oppressed both at home and work, shown in empathetic, dignified portraits. Lino's films proceed from the basis of his audience, not the filmmaker's ego, and that is what makes him a great artist," Garcia says. "His cinema is not about "me" as so many of today's films shamelessly proclaim, but about the respect of "you."
Lino's legacy has been often overlooked until recently, and Garcia applauds the AAIFF retrospective. "It's timely that San Francisco will now get a chance to see some of his works on the big screen, for a new generation to watch and understand."Posted on Mar 01, 2010 - 09:38 PM