91 THE STRUGGLE OF THE OPPRESSED: LINO BROCKA AND THE NEW CINEMA OF THE PHILIPPINES THESIS Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of North Texas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS By Arminda V. Santiago, B.A., M.A. Denton, Texas August 1993 Santiago, Arminda V., The Struggle of the Oppressed: Lino Brocka and the New Cinema of the Philippines. Master of Arts (Radio, Television, Film), August 1993, 227 pp., appendix, bibliography, 115 titles. This study is an examination of Lino Brocka's development as a filmmaker of the New Cinema of the Philippines. It provides a close textual analysis of two recent Brocka films, Macho Dancer (1988) and Fight for Us (1989) using a sociocultural approach to the study of the representation of aspects of social reality and their relationship to contemporary Philippine society. The study is divided into six chapters: Chapter I contains the introduction to the study, Chapter II traces the development of Philippine cinema in relation to Philippine socio-political history, Chapter III describes the New Cinema film movement in the Philippines, Chapter IV provides a biographical sketch of Lino Brocka in which the development of his critical attitude, notions of social reality, and significant works are discussed, Chapter V contains the film analyses, and Chapter VI contains the conclusions to the study. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author would like to thank the following institutions and individuals for helping make this thesis possible: The Fulbright-Hays Scholarship Program of the United States Information Agency The Institute of International Education The Philippine American Education Foundation The Institute of Library Science, University of the Philippines The College of Mass Communication, University of the Philippines The Film Center, University of the Philippines The Filipiniana Section of the Main Library, University of the Philippines Professor Grace Javier Alfonso, University of the Philippines Professor Joel S. David, author, The National Pastime: Contemporary Philippine Cinema Professor Amelita M. Lopez, De La Salle University Mr. Ed Reyes, Proprietor, VIDEO EXPRESS New Jersey iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................... iii Chapter I. INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY.........................1 Introduction Objectives of the Study Significance of the Study Review of Literature Method II. PHILIPPINE CINEMA AND FILIPINO SOCIETY .............. 46 A Legacy of Colonization A Filipino Point-of-View Emerges Film: A Big Business The Golden Age of Filipino Film A Commercialism Gone Haywire The Cinema and Marcos Martial Law and Philippine Cinema Philippine Cinema After Marcos Ill. THE NEW CINEMA OF THE PHILIPPINES.................86 A Reaction to the State of the Nation (1972-1985) The New Cinema Artists Themes and Messages Film Censorship and the New Cinema Commercial Filmmaking and the New Cinema IV. LINO BROCKA .................................... 107 Humble Roots Brocka's Social Reality Significant Early and Recent Works iv V. FILM ANALYSES OF Macho Dancer AND Fight forUs..............................134 VI. CONCLUSIONS .................................... 181 APPENDIX ............................................ 192 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................... 219 V CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY Film is said to be a documentation of real life. The invention of the photographic process made possible the recording of real-life images on celluloid and photographic paper by way of the photo-chemical process. At the time of their invention, photographs were the most faithful reproductions of the real world yet devised. The subsequent devising of the mechanical apparatus that aided in the creation of an illusion of movement is perhaps the ultimate that man has achieved in recording life images. Speaking from a perspective that specifically privileged the mimetic capabilities of the movie camera, film theorist Andre Bazin proclaimed, "cinema attains its fullness in being the art of the real"1 and that it is a re-creation of the world in its own image.2 Still, as early formalist theorists such as Rudolf Arnheim and Sergei Eisenstein argued, film may also be seen as a transformative medium which "re-presents" the world rather than records it. Man as a social being lives in a group known as society. He exists with other individuals and endeavors to understand his existence by tying together the realities that exist between him and others; a social reality that is constituted in terms of individually and socially accepted categories of meaning.3 The reality that he makes 1 2 sense of involves not only his relationship with nature but also his place in the order of kinship and hierarchy in the society he belongs to. The cinema has the unique quality of capturing representations of reality on the screen. It presents both visual and spatial reality through photography; presenting an image the way the human eye sees it. This is in consonance with the nature of Realism as a movement in the visual arts with its aim of providing a truthful, objective, and impartial representation of the real world based on meticulous observation of contemporary life. 4 Keeping in mind the photographic process and the mechanism of creating the illusion of movement, the filmmaker then has the task of a creative interpretation of reality and provides a total environment through which people see aspects of their own world. Social reality then comes alive in larger-than- life images through film. It confronts the individual with images of his/her world and initiates thinking as well as giving a reflection of the needs and conflicts within his/her own society. As Irving Thalberg stated, "the motion pictures present our customs and our daily life more distinctly than any other medium."5 The filmmaker is an individual who lives in a society. He is not detached nor isolated from it. He interacts with his society, hence, sharing a common experience with other individuals. He, like everyone else, finds meaning in his social reality. Through film, the filmmaker has the ability to manipulate several formal aspects of the image in order to give to the image of reality the shape he desires.6 With this in mind, the filmmaker has the option to merely depict images as symbols or to bring us closer to events filmed by seeking the significance of a scene.' Cinema then 3 functions as the threshold of learning described by Bazin, "a sesame to universes unknown...giving us knowledge of empirical reality otherwise unavailable." Along this line, a Filipino filmmaker known both locally and internationally has managed to create films that are consistently relevant to the social needs of Philippine society. Lino Brocka, a leading artist of the New Cinema in the Philippines and the most prolific filmmaker among those whose works chronicle the underprivileged and oppressed in Filipino society, observes that Filipino films are wanting in realism. He contends that "art is an imitation of life so an artist must try to imitate life...but art is not just imitating, it is also trying to confront people with certain realities....the screen becomes not just a mirror that reflects but a mirror that confronts."' Thus Lino Brocka has been a proponent of films depicting social realities in Philippine society; presenting the Filipino with images within the contemporary milieu of the social, political, economic, and cultural spheres of his country. His films show a clear grasp of the lives of ordinary people and in turn translates this vision into filmic images to share truths about life and inspire thinking and action. However, in his two decade career in filmmaking, Brocka has also been known to make compromises when he accepts jobs directing melodramas branded by critics as commercial. Brocka himself in fact has, described the commercial melodramas that he has made as just that: compromise movies. Compromise movies are movies that you compromise because you want it to make money in every possible way.1" The phrase "every possible way" has many meanings here, including the inclusion of 4 titillating sex scenes; building up a cast composed of matinee idols or actors/actresses that have box-office appeal; and incorporating into the film every conceivable thematic motif with appeal to the mass audience (e.g. song and dance numbers, fight scenes, crying scenes, etc.). ... you know these are concessions already that as far as I am concerned won't hurt the movie....you do this because you know fully well that it is one way of attracting the movie crowd." The compromise films that Brocka describes falls in the category of commercial or formula films shown in the mainstream commercial circuit in the country. In the context of the Filipino film industry, the use of the words "commercial" and "formula" to label a film would mean that the main objective of the film is to earn as much money as possible. Both terms are used interchangeably in the industry. Philippine film producers and film production companies have through the years experimented with marketing techniques in selling their films to the Filipino mass audience and have come up with a formula that they find successful. In this way, the Filipino movie audience is treated as a mindless and passive mass. Mozart A.T. Pastrano wrote a very interesting article, "Pinoy (Films) Forever", which is about a panel discussion held during the Writer's Workshop at the University of the Philippines that focused on the conditions prevailing in the Filipino film industry of the 1990s. Pastrano discussed what screenwriter Rene Villanueva meant in saying that "to understand Filipino movies, one has to understand how such movies are made."" The article centers on the viewpoint of a screenwriter in describing the characteristics 5 of commercial films in the Philippines. The following are the ingredients of the formula that Villanueva discussed in the workshop: 1. The script is not the screenwriter's work but is the movie producer's. 2.