Sa Loob at Labas ng Bayang Sawi: Mga Salamangka Mula sa Itaas, Mga Pagtutuwid Mula sa Laylayan

Abstract

Film year 1999 saw a few Filipino films that had managed to rise above the decadence of the film industy in terms of cinematic discourse, film practices, and industry ethics. Most films produced last year, as was the case in the previous years, were devoid of any artistic imagination, drifting aimlessly in an industry that has become the turf of incompetent practitioners whose brand of artistry is highly suspect.

Films like O’Hara’s Sisa, Jeturian’s Pila Balde, Lamangan’s Bulaklak ng Maynila, Portes’ Saranggola, and Javier Reyes’ Phone Sex and Luksong Tinik were the better films of the year. These films are conscious of their position in the situatedness and positionality of discourses on historiography, sexuality, class and social relations, and structures that characterize contemporary Philippine society. Their effort to de-colonize the imagination in ways that oppose the stasis most Filipino films find themselves enclosed in had gained for these films a stature a few rungs higher than what the industry churned out last year.