Category: jorge arago

fanning the bernal flame

in any account of the 2nd golden age of philippine cinema, lino brocka and ishmael bernal top the list of best directors, and always in that order.  when a bernal fan asked me why, gayong even alphabetically her idol should come first, i said, well, chronologically brocka came first, and his debut film Wanted: Perfect Mother (1970) was a huge box-office success.  bernal’s first, Pagdating sa Dulo (1971), a film within a film, was a critical success but a commercial flop.

bernal was a bit too high, too sophisticated, for the beginner that he was.  only now are cineastes one in saying that bernal was ahead of his time.  no wonder it took a while for people to rise to his occasion.

it helps, of course, that some of bernal’s best films have been showing intermittently on cable TV since 1994 courtesy of cinema one, and that sari dalena and keith sicat kept the flame alive with their documentaries on ishma.  and when Pro Bernal, Anti Bio finally went to press in july 2017, rogue magazine’s jerome gomez was quick to ask for excerpts that came out as “Stardust Memories” announcing the imminent launch in november.

kicked off with personal funds, and some more from friends of bernal — this is my chance to thank you so much, evelynne horrilleno, dannie alvarez, noel anonuevo, tisi and winston raval, pis boado, bobbie malay and satur ocampo, julie de lima-sison, deanna ongpin-recto, maribel ongpin, leny de jesus, ricky lee, raquel villavicencio, laida lim, butch perez, and mt. cloud bookshop — Pro Bernal, Anti Bio (2017) is co-published by ABS-CBN publishing inc. and the indie book producer everything’s fine (EF).  of the 1000 print-run, the publishing house took on 300 copies to distribute in mainstream bookstores.  the rest EF is paying for (50% down, 50% due a year from launch) which is why katrina continues to seek collaborators on bernal events where we can peddle the book.

it was a boon that mark yambot, head of abs-cbn publishing, allowed us to dictate the content and the look and the feel of the book (though we did concede on a few minor details :-), thanks to katrina who took over the project the moment i dropped the manuscript — raised funds, negotiated with mark, and harassed the printing press peeps about quality control hanggang sa dulo.

BOOK LAUNCH/S
mark graciously arranged for and attended two november launches a week apart.  the soft one in trinoma on the occasion of cinema one‘s filmfest screening of sari & keith’s Ishma! the docu, before which mark asked katrina to say a few words about Pro Bernal, and where she met cinema one‘s ronald arguelles.  the hard(core) one in victorino’s where i finally met mark, and author bernal was represented by his sister ging ledesma and nephew andrei, and co-author jorge arago by his sister sol and her kids robin and nico sagun.  #intrafamilia

noel añonuevo and joel saracho who were with katrina in trinoma were again in victorino’s, joining dannie and deanna, bobbie and satur, raquel aka kelly, national artist bien lumbera, randy david, nic tiongson, tom agulto, sari & keith, celina cristobal, boni ilagan, roly peña, joe carreon, lucy quinto, leo martinez, bembol roco, and elmer gatchalian, among others.  friends from left, right, and center, what a rare and fun gathering!

erwin romulo slipped in, got a book, and slipped out.  and then there was oliver ortega aka bolix, the book’s designer who was unfazed, undaunted, by my quirky format.  i finally got to ask him about the margins, ang kitid sa itaas, nakakapanibago, but there had been no moving him (or the margins).  ayun pala, there’s such a thing as “the golden ratio”.  fascinating!  #angtaray

ARCHIVO
december 6, Archivo 1984 Gallery, a makati museum of local art and memorabilia, held a film showing of bernal’s Pabling (1981) and invited katrina to come and sell books.  marti magsanoc bought a pile, some of which are available in The CCP Shop, archivo’s branch in pasay. #BernalNight

BOOK REVIEWS
krip yuson’s rave review Reliving Ishmael Bernal came out in philippine star on december 10, elaborating on an earlier facebook post: “What a wonderful book: ANTI BIO PRO BERNAL, on Direk Ishmael Bernal’s life, films and milieu.”  two days later came jessica zafra’s ProBernal AntiBio is the best Filipino film book of the year, maybe of all time!  thank you, krip and jessica (and butch perez, for getting a copy to jessica)!

ISHMAEL BERNAL GALLERY
february 2018, we were invited by sari dalena to do a small exhibit for the Ishmael Bernal Gallery of the UPFI film center.  katrina got to flex her amateur-curator muscles, plotting out the friendship of bernal and arago from UP undergrad days through to bernal’s filmmaking years to bernal as actor on the Dulaang UP stage, with memorabilia unearthed from jorge’s old office and movie stills we had salvaged from his room in binangonan in 2012.

books were sold, Nunal sa Tubig (1976) was on loop, and i got to chika with sari and keith, fidel rillo, lem garcellano, dannie alvarez, sol and jorge’s favorite bayaw steve sagun and kids, especially with obet and team who had worked with jorge back when virgie moreno was director of the film center.  also i finally met and got to thank carlo vergara who did the bernal and arago avatars for the book. #zsazsazaturnnah

SOFIA
in early march, ronald rios, head of the Society of Filipino Archivists for Film that’s doing a Reflexive Cinema series — a three-year celeb (2017-2019) of the centennial anniv of Philippine film in partnership with CCP and NCCA — invited us to the screening of Pagdating sa Dulo in CCP’s dream theater.  katrina read excerpts from Pro Bernal to introduce the film and, after the screening, joined producer george sison (the peace and prosperity new-age guru) and production designer cesar hernando in the open forum.  #ReflexiveCinema

LIT FESTIVAL
april 19-20, katrina was back in CCP, this time for NBDB’s philippine international literary festival.  she was given a booth in the main lobby, where her own books were among the 75 (+1) launched by the ateneo de naga press on the 19th, making it easy to slip from tindera to author mode, haha, and she finally got a copy of the book to eli guieb whose work on Nunal sa Tubig (1976) was part of the anti bio, and who said that he had a new essay on it.  Nunal lives!  #PILF2018

GAWAD URIAN 2018
in may, we heard that the jazz musician winston raval was receiving the Natatanging Gawad Urian, the first ever awarded to a musical director-film scorer-composer.  the awards night was to be co-produced by cinema one, so katrina asked, and was allowed by, ronald arguelles and the manunuri to sell books at the event held in ABS-CBN’s vertis tent in QC.  she finally met winston who flew in from the states and who, with wife tisi de los santos, was part of bernal’s kansas family (and of Pro Bernal).  winston was musical director of 18 bernal films, among them Nunal, Manila by Night, Himala, Tisoy, Relasyon, and Ikaw ay Akin (for which his ’70s band vanishing tribe won urian’s best music award in 1979).  #LifetimeAchievementAward

CINEMA CENTENARIO
impressed by their mini film festivals and curation of film screenings, katrina emailed cinema centenario, asking if a bernal collaboration was possible.  salamat kina hector barretto calma, dev angeo, ivy peralta, and rollie inocencio who were quick to reply and arrange for the all-day bernal film fest last july 29.  focusing on bernal’s restored films, they were set on Himala and Ikaw ay Akin but were needing a third film; katrina offered to ask george sison for Pagdating sa Dulo, and he was quick to say yes (thank you!).

of the three films it was bernal’s first film Pagdating that got the most interesting responses from a larger audience.  in between screenings katrina was part of a talk with young critics circle’s aris atienza on bernal and his work.  the conversation, i hear, spanned everything from that comparison between brocka and bernal to the state of film workers and film culture in general.

cinema centenario also took in some copies of Pro Bernal for selling, and put up a wall of bernal’s photo collection.  bernal would be thrilled that microcinemas are now part of the landscape of culture — small scale, rebellious, creatively defiant — and at teacher’s village yet!   #PHCinema100

CCP CINEMALAYA
when katrina sent a letter to CCP artistic director and vice president chris millado about the possibility of a book event for bernal’s memoir, she didn’t think it would happen so soon, but things just fell into place.  cinemalaya 2018 was paying tribute to actor bernardo bernardo by screening the bernal opus Manila by Night (1980) and there was a timeslot before the screening for a fringe event that was a perfect fit for Pro Bernal.  salamat, chris millado!

serendipitously film scholar joel david, author of Manila by Night: A Queer Film Classic (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018) who is based in south korea, was home in time for the aug 7 event and gave a talk, moderated by patrick flores, no less.  billed “Queer and Defiant: Ishmael Bernal, Bernardo Bernardo, and Manila By Night” it meant a command appearance for me in CCP’S silangan hall.  time to finally meet personally and thank joel and patrick, without whose intellectual and moral support i might still be struggling with the anti bio.  #deeplygrateful #ilovetheinternet

salamat rin kay minda casagan of the CCP film division, who was a student of bernal, at kay bebang siy and her team at the intertextual division, who always go the extra mile for katrina and the bernal book.  twas also great to chika with raffy guerrero after so long (Genghis Khan pa!) and to meet the colorful khavn de la cruz of Balangiga fame!  salamat rin, of course, kay vito hernandez, kasosyo ni katrina sa Pro Bernal sa hirap at ginhawa.

QUEER & DEFIANT
maybe it’s just the fag hag in me, but i love how “queer”, as it applies to film classics by and about LGBTQ people, is now synonymous with “awesome” and “amazing” because daring and brilliant.  and fun! because honest and candid and, even, positively shameless about breaking taboos, as bernal and bernardo were in life and in print.

the reading by noel anonuevo and rody vera of selected excerpts from Pro Bernal, Anti Bio, with bernal (noel) and BB (rody) having a conversation of sorts on Manila By Night on the one hand, and kabaklaan during martial law on the other, was a blast.  noel and rody got so into the spirit, and body language, of the two, it was like nabuhay muli ang dalawang bakla, and nakaka-miss sila.

it was also interesting, exhilarating even, how noel’s and rody’s reading / acting / vocal impersonating brought alive the text.  sabi nga in bolix, nagkaroon ng isa pang layer.  iniangat at nabigyan ng kakaiba pang dimension, kumbaga, ang mga iniwang salita ng dalawa.  salamat, salamat, noel at rody!  sa mauulit!

of course i’m now looking forward to a reading of the bosom buddies mismo, with noel as ishma and, um, maybe joel saracho as jorge?  #extra challenge!

*

Pro Bernal, Anti Bio available here:

UP Press Bookstore
Mt. Cloud Bookshop
Popular Bookstore
Artbooks.ph
Cinema Centenario
Uno Morato
Archivo1984
The CCP Shop

artists and writers for freedom and democracy, circa 1986

katawatawa that on facebook a statement from duterte apologist rebecca añonuevo and other “concerned writers” supporting SEC’s takedown of rappler has been judged “unoriginal” and “pathetic” — as if the statement by let’s organize for democracy and integrity in support of rappler / press freedom were any less pathetic?  read press freedom for what? press freedom for whom?

worse, anoñuevo daw might as well have re-issued na lang a “pro-dictatorship pro-marcos paid advertisement” of jan 28 1986.  LOL.  obvious naman na pilit na pilit ang paghahalintulad ng dalawang isteytments, the cause of SEC vs. rappler being quite puny in comparison with the cause of COWAFD (pilit na pilit rin ang COWARD, guys, seeing as they were more like losers after the fact).  halata namang ibig lang halukayin (at pahiyain? as if?) ang signatories ng 1986 declaration na mostly luminaries, including national artists no less.  though in either case it would be interesting to see the signatures mismo (even if forgeries are a possibility, too, alas).

but thanks anyway for resurrecting the COWAFD (parang covfefe) declaration that reminds of what it was like 32 years ago in the run-up to the snap elections that paved the way to EDSA.  the ad came out 10 days before the snap elections that had newbie cory aquino with former senator and member of parliament (MP) doy laurel challenging the dictator ferdinand marcos and former senator and MP arturo tolentino for the top posts of the land.

the opening paragraphs are obligatory preliminaries, romanticizing diversity of opinions, claiming openness to “alternative national futures.”  nothing on the joys of censorship, of course, rather, on the need to stand up, and be identified, for the dictator.  or else.  or else?

but the whole of it is a precious artifact, a document of historical interest wherein the best and the brightest, our most privileged of artists and intellectuals in the time of martial law, clearly articulated what exactly they feared about the prospect of cory and doy replacing marcos, AND even dared envision an “enlightened and transformed national leadership” under the marcos-tolentino team.

“When great issues are joined in the life of a people and life-and-death choices present themselves in political terms, the writers and artists must take a stand and must not seek refuge and false comfort in total political anonymity.

“We believe that the special presidential elections on February 7, 1986 present us with one of two choices: to reestablish Philippine democracy on a new and more enduring level, with its guarantees of individual freedom and social responsibility, or to risk a future dominated by the spectre of unending social strike (sic; strife?), hate, vengeance and perhaps a bloody fratricide the ferocity of which has never been known in our history.

“The plain and simple fact is that we, as writers and artists, have serious apprehension about the candidates of the opposition. We are apprehensive about the fact that they have nothing to offer than a dubious promise of sincerity and an even more dubious promise to hand government over to an unidentified cadre of advisers. These are no more than niggardly excuses for a lack of a coherent program of government.

“In view of the crises that threaten the economic security and the cultural serenity of our nation, we can only regard such representation from them as symptomatic of a reluctance to come to grips with reality and an indifference to the need for wisdom and maturity.

“As such, this coalition seeks to preserve what has already been achieved in terms of cultural advancement and to proceed further under an enlightened and transformed national leadership equipped to face the pressures of change and advance our national and spiritual progress. We believe that the leadership of President Ferdinand E. Marcos is out only guarantee for survival at this point.

“Indeed, we believe we can best achieve our national interests and realize our aspirations of writers and artists with the triumph of the Marcos-Tolentino team.”

hindi ko iyan nabasa noong 1986.  my parents and i, and my in-laws, too, were big fans of ninoy (dilawan kami noon) so we must have dropped the hans-menzi-marcos-crony-owned manila bulletin by then in favor of the feisty eggie apostol’s philippine daily inquirer.

at kahit pa nabasa ko ang paid ad na iyan, it wouldn’t have changed my mind about voting for cory and doy.  yes, on sheer faith.  there was no paying attention to marcos shrugging off cory as a mere housewife.  e ano kung walang karanasan, andyan naman si doy, a laurel, tutulungan siya, aalalayan siya.  we were so naive.  on that and a lot more.

but so also were the artists and intellectuals, the best and brightest.  naive.  imagine, promising an “elightened and transformed leadership” under marcos, the only one  “equipped to face the pressures of change and advance our national and spiritual progress.”  even, that he was “the only guarantee for survival” at that point.

parang hindi nila alam na malubha ang sakit ni marcos noon.  even if he had been reelected, unquestionably, in feb 1986, marcos was going to be replaced anyway, if not by enrile with the backing of fvr’s integrated national police (honasan had twice postponed that coup d’etat), then by imelda with the backing of ver’s afp.

parang naniwala rin sila sa sariling propaganda about the nation’s “economic security” (matagal nang bagsak ang ekonomiya, na lalong lumubha nang patayin si ninoy, thanks to capital flight atbp.) and “cultural serenity.”  cultural serenity?  susmaryosep.  jorge arago must have sniggered snickered simpered at that, if he really signed it, that is, and he may have.  at the time he and i were putting out environmentalist junie kalaw’s journal Alternative Futures (Vol. III Decentralization).  i suspect that he was responsible for getting “alternative national futures” into that declaration, maybe an ex-deal for his signature, haha.  he was like that.  for the record.

ProBernal AntiBio is the best Filipino film book of the year, maybe of all time

Jessica Zafra

I got my copy from Butch Perez at lunchtime, opened to page 1, and did not stop reading until I finished the whole book. So no work was done today, and it was a day very well spent.

Intelligent, wicked, sometimes vicious (Bernal did not spare anyone, especially himself), this anti-biography is presented as a wide-ranging conversation between filmmaker Ishmael Bernal and his closest friend, the scholar and screenwriter Jorge Arago. Mercifully many of Bernal’s targets are long-dead, because he murders them.

Read on…

Reliving Ishmael Bernal

Alfred A. Yuson

As a triumph of memory, happenstance, superb editorial work and design, it’s the most fascinating local book I’ve held in my hands of late — and it isn’t because I personally knew the subject, as well as the three co-authors (two of them posthumous).

Pro Bernal Anti Bio is a 392-page softbound book in a handsome square format that allows the running main text to share space with marvelous marginalia from a legion of friends, writers and film people who had enjoyed association with the legendary film director Ishmael Bernal, who passed away in 1996 and was conferred the National Artist award in 2001.

Published by ABS-CBN Publishing, Inc. and launched on Nov. 25, it credits three co-authors: the subject himself, his life-long buddy Jorge Arago who passed away in 2011, and Angela Stuart-Santiago, in whose hands this testament to entwined lives, creativity and a memorable milieu became a labor of love enhanced by pluperfect strategic decisions.

“Ishma” or “Bernie” had asked Jorge to start preparing his biography, one that would focus equally on the biographer’s own life and their partnership. Jorge began to call it an anti-bio, and sporadically wrote essays that would frame the project. But time overtook them both, with a fire that hit Arago’s home laying waste to invaluable records.

Perhaps sensing his own mortality, Jorge tried to pass on the task to his friend Angela, who initially dismissed the daunting demand. Yet she found it falling squarely on her lap upon Jorge’s demise, especially when she learned that he had left sole access to his remaining private records.

Her “Pretext” introduces the book:

“The conversation between National Artist for Film Ishmael Bernal and rogue scholar Jorge Arago is mostly contrived but the words and sentiments are totally theirs, the threads fashioned from their own stories, published and unpublished, over the years.

“It’s a tell-all of a life lived to the hilt, fiercely forthright and critical but also gay and subversive, ironic and irreverent, sparing neither self nor nation, mothers nor lovers, art nor culture nor language, Marcos nor Cory. Friendly fire, as it were, in guerilla wars waged by two leftist intellectuals against ‘middle-class totems and taboos, innocence and igrorance.’

“I chime in now and then from the margins along with a cast of family, friends, artists, and critics in cameo roles. My backstory of the bosom buddies and the making of this anti-biography comes after, and Patrick Flores packs up with a paean to Ishmael’s ‘Awareness, Abandon.’”

Ishmael’s handwritten journal started in 1994 and Jorge’s essays form much of the conversation, with Angela allowing Jorge’s structural concept to hold sway in the early going. It starts with Ishma’s departure, then quickly flashes back to the start of their friendship in UP Diliman, cohabitation in a Malate apartment from where they published the counter-culture magazine Balthazar, and Ishma’s disastrous start as a movie director.

Covered as well in this period, from the 1960s to the ’70s, are the brief success with the bohemian When It’s A Gray November in Your Soul café on A. Mabini St., Ishma’s scholarship in France and film studies in Poona, India, his film reviewing days with The Manila Chronicle, aborted first film project, and breakthrough as a director with the critically acclaimed yet commercial flop Pagdating Sa Dulo.

He was lucky to have followed it up immediately with Daluyong, on which he writes:

“I was in the news a lot as — I don’t want to say it — the threat to Lino Brocka (the competition between us was always friendly). Considering that I had just had a box-office flop that was dubbed ‘artistic’ or ‘serious,’ I think the producers took a gamble. I could have given them another flop, but I didn’t.

“Daluyong became a big hit because it starred big bomba stars of the period: Alona Alegre, Rosanna Ortiz, Ronaldo Valdez, Eddie Garcia. It had enough sex, enough quotable quotes, enough long confrontation scenes and sampalan and iyakan. It had also lots of beautiful clothes and jewelry, beautiful cars, swimming pools, chandeliers, mansions.”

In culling their early memories together, a tongue-in-cheek mode was characteristically shared by Bernal and Arago, with both also questioning the “irrelevant erudition” they had acquired.

At any rate, Ishma turned mainstream, megging blockbuster hits, including a number of “bold movies” and the occasional artistic puzzler such as Nunal sa Tubig (script by Arago), until he peaked in the early 1980s with the controversial and eventually seminal Manila By Night, which became City After Dark when Imelda Marcos voiced out her objections. This was followed by a remarkable series of his best films: Relasyon with Vilma Santos and Christopher de Leon, Himala with Nora Aunor, Broken Marriage again with Santos and De Leon, and the comedies Working Girls 1 and 2 scripted by Amado Lacuesta, in whom Ishma found the ideal madcap partner. They also collaborated on the serious feminist film on abortion, Hinugot sa Langit.

In between were filler films for old producer friends, while the early activism that had helped galvanize his partnership with Arago also resurfaced, with the MTRCB and higher powers-that-be as the bogeys.

No less essential in providing a complete picture of this friendship are the pertinent explications and asides from co-author Stuart-Santiago. Deployed munificently are commentaries from contemporaries, colleagues, writers and film critics.

This roster alone is suitably impressive, counting among others Ninotchka Rosca, Nestor Torre, Petronilo Bn. Daroy, Joel David, Jose Maria Sison, Behn Cervantes, Anton Juan, Nick Deocoampo, Ed Cabagnot, Bernardo Bernardo, Mario Hernando, Bibsy Carballo, Ricky Lee, Pablo Tariman, Clodualdo del Mundo, Noel Vera, Rolando S. Tinio, Floy Quintos and Tom Agulto.

The women Ishma became closest to are also given frequent voice: non-showbiz friend Evelynne Horrilleno, film stars Rita Gomez, Elizabeth Oropesa, Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos, and scriptwriter Raquel Villavicencio. In the prime of his careeer, Ishma’s best lady buddy was fellow director Marilou Diaz Abaya.

The book also reveals the writing genius of Jorge Arago, whose quirky shyness would have deprived us of his brilliance if not for the text that is shared here, to wit:

“Since Bernal was conferred the National Artist Award, friends and relatives have not ceased to remind me that the honor calls for some changes in my perspective. I guess it means I cannot repeat Bernal’s considered opinion about who has the smallest tool in the film industry of his time, I must desist from identifying the venerable actor who found an ahas na bingi under his bed, I need crazy glue to prevent me from echoing Lino Brocka’s horrified scream of ‘Ecsta-NO!’ at the sight of a pro-active protrusion that had earlier driven Bernal to rave ‘Ecsta-SI!’ I may not speak, by the same token, about the difficulties he experienced in doing a short film for Amnesty International about the late unlamented Alex Boncayao Brigade and its pet peeves.

“But the National Artist Award itself, especially in the halcyon days BC (Before Caparas), is a safe subject on which I am free to abreact before fungi from Alzheimer’s overrode my memory entirely.”

On Bernal’s part, among his last entries that speak just as formidably of our society is the following:

“I look forward to making a film on the important participation of women in the revolution — Gregoria de Jesus, Marina Dizon, Narcisa Rizal, etc. Ramon Revilla is trying to pass a bill in Congress that will completely exempt from taxes all films about national heroes. If this bill is passed we might see a plethora of Andres Bonifacios and Gregorio del Pilars and Antonio Lunas and Mabinis. I don’t know if this is going to be good for the industry or not. (Laughs) A massacre movie about Juan Luna and that woman! We do have a tendency to overdo things. It boggles the mind.”

Orders for the book, which sells for P900 a copy, may be addressed to bernalbynight@gmail.com.