The 1985 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts

BIOGRAPHY of Lino Brocka

LINO BROCKA sees the world through the eye of a camera. Hundreds of movies are catalogued in his memory to be used as examples and comparisons, and bits of his own past continually surface in films he has already made and others which he hopes to make. For him movies have at various times provided an escape from everyday reality, a study of American lifestyles and language, a training ground in cinema techniques, a platform for social and political commentary, and international recognition.

Nothing in BROCKA's parentage or early life was either typical or straightforward. His birth certificate is incorrect. The preschool education he received from his father was exceptional but unlike that received by his peers. His description of his childhood is glowing, but this time of happiness was cut tragically short when he was only six. The honors and awards he garnered in high school belie the fact that he and his brother worked long hours earning money to survive. Even the university education frequently ascribed to him is not completely accurate.

LINO's father was Regino Brocka, a skilled carpenter, boat builder and salesman from the Bicol peninsula, Sorsogon province, Luzon, the Philippines, who settled his schoolteacher wife and family in the town of Pilar, while he traveled extensively throughout the islands plying his various trades. On a trip to Nueva Ecija, a province in central Luzon, he became infatuated with a 15year-old girl named Pilar Ortiz. Much against her family's wishes Regino took her back to Bicol and, deserting his legal family, lived with her on an island off the coast.

For many years they had no children. Their first child, LINO, was born on April 3, 1939 and at that point Regino's legal wife filed a charge of bigamy against him, largely, she later said, as an attempt to force him to return to her and their family. Regino was convicted and sentenced to two years in Muntinlupa Prison, near Manila. LINO and his mother moved into a rented room close to the prison and there his brother Danilo was born. After his father was released they returned to their island and a more or less normal life.

The dominant force in LINO's life throughout his childhood and youth was his father, even long after the latter's death. On their island Regino was an important man. He was fairly affluent, the only man with a complete set of shipbuilding tools, and one of the few people with a knowledge of the world beyond Sorsogon. As an older man, his advice and opinions were sought and listened to, and he took an active interest in politics.

Regino poured his knowledge, experience, time and love into LINO, the child of his old age (Danilo was still too young). Using the sand on the shore, a stick, seashells, water, leaves and pets (a monkey and talking bird), Regino taught his son the alphabet, arithmetic and natural science, as well as singing, dancing and reciting poetry. He carefully explained to LINO the difference between right and wrong and emphasized the importance of admitting his wrongdoing, rather than waiting to be found out. Regino also took the young boy with him to meetings and introduced him as if he were an equal; afterwards he encouraged him to ask questions and offer opinions.

Today LINO says: "I have vivid memories of my father because I had a very good, very, very happy childhood. The island was like that in Blue Lagoon the film which starred Jean Simmons." This idyll ended abruptly when the boy was six. His father went to the mainland for supplies for his own birthday and failed to return. Every night for the next week his mother took a lamp to the top of a cliff overlooking the sea, hoping her husband would see it and find his way home. Finally word came that the body of an unidentified man had been found and buried on an adjacent island; he had been killed in what was later suspected to have been a political murder. LINO, his mother and his three-year-old brother went across and watched while the partially decomposed body was disinterred and identified as Regino. LINO's childhood had ended.

With Regino went the family's security and social position. His mother was not from the island, she had no relations nearby, and was only a "second wife. The small family had to move from their: house and LINO watched and tried to understand when his mother went to work in town as a taxi dancer, and then "married" a local fisherman who was kind to LINO and his brother but totally different from their dead father. Her new life apparently did not work out, and in time Pilar wrote to her family in SanJose, Nueva Ecija, asking for help. They had not heard from her in 15 years.

In San Jose, Pilar and her children were poor relations. The family was split up, with LINO sent to live with the aunt who was the family's mainstay, and his brother to their grandmother; their mother was sent to work in another town in a branch of the fashion school owned by the family.

At his aunt's LINO was treated like a houseboy, subjected to teasing and physical abuse, and was expected to behave as a typical Filipino child, not asking questions and certainly not offering opinions. This situation lasted for four miserable years. Both of the brothers were desperately unhappy but did not want to add to their mother's problems by telling her. After a serious argument with his aunt which culminated in her throwing a large bowl at him and knocking him unconscious, LINO ran away to his grandmother's. The next time Pilar visited her children they poured out their stories of maltreatment. Pilar broke with her older sister, moved back to San Jose, and she and her children were again reduced to a hand-to-mouth existence.

LINO at this time was only ten years old and his brother seven, but they began working at any job they could find. They helped their mother give home permanents; they collected and sold the fragrant, rough surfaced pakiling (Ficus odorato) leaves for cleaning walls; they grew bean sprouts and strung sampaguita (jasmine) lets, and sold them in the marketplace where LINO would recite poetry and sing a particularly heart-rending song about being an orphan. At the same time his mother struggled to obtain papers which would qualify her to teach in elementary school.

The only relief LINO found from this day-to-day struggle was at the movies. In those days children were admitted free as long as the tops of their heads did not reach the ticket counter or if they were in the company of an adult. When he grew too tall to slip under the counter, and there were no adults around, he found ways to sneak in. The movies showed him another world, America, where everything was beautiful, everyone danced like Fred Astaire and swam like Esther Williams, where there was no poverty. (LINO even tried breathing under water "like Esther Williams," and his failure only convinced him that Americans could breathe under water but little Filipino boys could not.) It was a fantasy world—which he did not realize at the time and he loved it.

Once his mother started teaching, the family's financial situation eased considerably. LINO's energies were now directed toward success in high school. The only way he could repay his mother for all her hard work was, as he saw it, to get good marks and win all the prizes so that she would be called up to the stage with him at the awards ceremonies. He excelled in his academic subjects as well as in oratory, debate and any area that involved performing. In his spare time he also read his way through the small San Jose Library and devoured books by authors like A. J. Cronin and Somerset Maugham sent to him from Manila by a friend.

LINO BROCKA graduated from Nueva Ecija North High School in 1956 with six medals and a scholarship to the University of the Philippines (UP). He entered pre-law because his mother wanted him to become an attorney and then president of the Philippines. (A fortune teller had once read his palm and predicted he would be "known throughout the Philippines," and Pilar decided only the president could be that widely known.)

BROCKA's first year at UP was cataclysmic in many ways. First and most importantly, his relationship with his mother changed when he accidentally discovered that part of the family's present financial security was the result of her long-standing liaison with an official from another town. The admiration and filial responsibility he had always felt toward her were diminished, as was his willingness to pursue the career she wanted for him. He now looked back on his high school days and realized that, although he was well liked and a consistent prize-winner, he was not accepted by the elite at school or in town. He had been excluded, he decided, because his classmates' parents had known about his mother and, in their small-town fashion, had taken their moral indignation out on her son. Belonging, something his mother had never been able to achieve, either on the island or in San Jose, became a paramount ambition in BROCKA's life.

In consequence he dropped pre-law and began taking only subjects which interested him (mostly literature and poetry) and ignored others which bored him (chemistry and math) but which, unfortunately, were requisites for graduation. Because his graces were so bad his scholarship lapsed at the end of his first year and from then on his attendance depended on how many part-time jobs he could find and how much money he could save for tuition. He was to remain a student, offend on, for nine years.

During these years he often begged professors to allow him to audit classes. One professor who accommodated him, Alfredo Morales, Dean of Education, not only permitted him to attend his lectures but arranged a research job for him. BROCKA now doubts that Morales needed the research done, but certainly he, BROCKA, needed the money and benefited from the experience of systematic study. By the time he left the university in 1964 the perennial student had enough English credits for a master's degree, but still lacked some first-year requirements for a B.A.

While at the university BROCKA joined the Dramatic Club which was directed by Wilfredo Maria Guerrero. The other club members, BROCKA recalls, were from the upper class, wealthy, spoke English well and were in the intellectual mainstream: "All the most interesting people were there. The girls were beautiful, the men were big, [for a country boy] it was just like going to New York!]"

And a country boy he was. Because he had been performing in public since he was four or five, it was only natural that he auditioned for a speaking role, but his thick provincial accent was to prove a major barrier. Trying out for a minor part, he remembers skidding onto the stage panting, "Mader, mader, look at da gurls in der baiting shoots (bathing suits)! " Guerrero sent him back to make the entrance again, but there was no improvement. Frustrated, BROCKA argued, "but that's the way we say it at home. " Guerrero tartly pointed out that BROCKA was not at home; he was in Manila, and if he couldn't say it right then someone else could!

The would-be actor next tried prompting, but he prompted too loudly and with too much expression. Humiliated and discouraged, he dropped out of the club for a while. He went back to watching American movies by the hour, and spent more hours in empty fields practicing an American accent and drawling the latest slang. He began carrying the "right" books—such as the poems of Arthur Rimbaud—and slowly edged his way back into the Dramatic Club as a stagehand. He swept, pulled curtains, moved scenery and hung around, desperate to be included, terrified of being socially gauche, wanting to belong. He can laugh about it now, but then: "It was all so painful. That's what I remember. I used to stand in the rain to get taxis for them, anything."

But the boy from the provinces went beyond sweeping and curtain pulling. He sat through rehearsal after rehearsal, watching directors and listening to actors. He learned about set design, especially on a low budget; he learned how to position lights and use them to advantage; he learned how to improvise and make do. When BROCKA left the UP and the Dramatic Club, he had a solid knowledge of basic stagecraft.

During his years at UP, BROCKA worked at a music shop and in the canteen on campus. Later he worked in the film industry, doing publicity for American "B" films shot in the Philippines and packaged in Hollywood; once he worked as an assistant director. Some friendships from the Dramatic Club, like that with Behn Cervantes, now a fellow director, were permanent.

It was Cervantes who introduced BROCKA to a team of young Mormon missionaries in 1961, largely to rid himself of them. BROCKA listened, first out of politeness, recognizing that whatever the missionaries were preaching, their beliefs were deeply sincere. Slowly he seemed to hear echoes of his father teaching him about honesty, about commitment, about living what you believe. He responded to the Mormon concept that God has created the world for us and that we should feel good about ourselves, in contrast to what he saw as the Roman Catholic concern with guilt. And he liked the emphasis on simplicity in Mormonism, in contrast to the pomp and ceremony he associated with the Catholic faith into which he had been born.

BROCKA became the team's first Filipino convert and agreed to go to Hawaii on the two-year mission required of all male Mormons—in part to get away from the Philippines and the pointless life he felt himself to be living.

He was not a successful missionary, but in the mission field he learned a lot about himself. He did not mind working as a two-man team but refused to report on his partner to their superior. He found that he was older than the average missionary, with more life-experience and more views of his own. The idealism with which he entered the church soon became tempered by the realization that the Mormon church was not different from other large organizations, and that Mormons were like other people some believed and lived the credo, some did not; some did their work humbly, while others curried favor with their superiors; some supervisors gave their teams leeway and others insisted on absolute obedience.

BROCKA was transferred from Oahu to Hawaii to Kauai to Maui to Lanai, and finally to Molokai island, in less than 12 months. During this period, along with routine missionary activities, he taught part of a course in World Religion at the University of Hawaii; contributed to fund raising by staging plays and shows for tourists; worked with third generation Filipinos who were ashamed of their ancestry; and discovered that manual labor—construction work and pineapple picking—was not for him. A series of unsatisfactory reports followed him from place to place which asserted that he was a bad influence on other missionaries because he raised questions about orders, did not unwaveringly obey superiors, and seemed to get sidetracked from tile main task of gaining converts.

His last assignment, Molokai, was apparently the church's post of last resort. If he had any religious experience during his two years as a missionary, it was here during his year at the Kalaupapa leper colony. Very slowly, "to keep from dying of boredom," he began to get involved in the lives of the lepers and the multi-denominational staff. They worked together on projects, put on performances, went fishing in the early morning and talked about what was important and what was not. On infrequent trips to Honolulu the young man listened to friends moaning about their problems and how difficult their lives were. In contrast, the lepers on Molokai were positive, facing life with cheerful good-humor. Even their funerals were happy because they believed that after death they would be made whole again.

BROCKA had a lot of time to think and he began to put his own life into some kind of perspective. He had gone from being a prize-winning high school graduate with the world ahead of him, to a university dropout whose mother compared him unflatteringly to his former classmates, and his search for meaning in life through the Mormon faith was unfulfilled. Gradually he formed his own credo for living: to be grateful for what he had, not to clutter his life with non-essentials; to reject the excuse that something is futile and therefore not worth doing; and finally resolving that "life will never put me down, I shall prove stronger than life."

After completing his missionary commitment BROCKA attended the Mormon Church College of Hawaii for one semester in a last attempt to complete his education. He paid his own way, working as a groundsman, but found the Hawaiian climate so conducive to sleeping under coconut trees that he failed to attend classes. Thus, still without a degree, BROCKA decided to visit the United States.

His arrival in San Francisco with $50 in his pocket ended his membership in the Mormon church. He lived for a few weeks in the city's "tenderloin district," learning from hoboes how to survive. At last he got a job as a busboy in a restaurant at Fisherman's Wharf where he ate his first solid meal in a month. Two months later he took a job in a hospital for the elderly where the administrator offered him a permanent position and help in getting American citizenship if he would stay, but he refused.

In Manila, before his mission, BROCKA had experienced a feeling of choking, drowning in his own life. After five months in San Francisco he felt an overwhelming homesickness for the Philippines, a feeling which now attacks him every time he travels. Therefore he returned to Manila in 1968 with no money and no job. His mother, who no longer had dreams about his becoming president and just wanted him to have an occupation, urged him to come home to the province. She bought 3,000 chickens and set him up in the business of feeding, caring for, and marketing the birds. For years afterwards he could not stand the sight of a chicken.

On a weekend escape to Manila his old friend Behn Cervantes introduced him to Cecile Guidote (1972 Ramon Magsaysay Public Service Awardee "for leadership in the renaissance of the performing arts, giving a new cultural content to popular life"), who was the founder of the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA). They asked him to join PETA but, thinking of his mother's disappointment if he should make such a move, BROCKA returned home. The next time he was in Manila, however, he dropped by Fort Santiago where PETA was rehearsing its first play. The crazy, hectic confusion of rehearsal was like opium; he knew this was where he belonged, not in San Jose with the despised chickens.

BROCKA's visits to Manila increased to every weekend, and two day weekends lengthened to three, four and five days. Finally Guidote worked out a plan whereby he could eke out a slim existence in Manila. PETA was producing a television program called Balintataw (Pupil of the Eye). The association agreed to pay him 10 pesos for each press release he wrote, and the same amount plus transportation for each script he delivered to the actors. Guidote also arranged for him to act in crowd scenes for an additional pittance.

BROCKA made one more trip back to San Jose to tell his mother what she already suspected, that his heart and soul were in Manila. Reacting with understandable anger Pilar announced she never wanted to see him again.

For the next two years the young man lived behind San Andres Market in the Leveriza slum. He walked miles across town to save jeepney fares, and at Xavier House, PETA's headquarters and the living quarters of the priests at Ateneo University, he sometimes helped himself to the food in the refrigerator. He recalls this period with embarrassment and comments, "I'm sure Father Reuter [the drama director] knew I was taking food and, because he knew I was really hungry, he made sure no one did anything about it. If Father Reuter asks me to do anything, go anywhere, I will go, even to Timbuktu!"

PETA staged plays and gave drama workshops both in Manila and the provinces. BROCKA went everywhere and did anything: errands, scrip/writing, acting, leading exercises and ultimately directing a few of PETA's TV shows. In 1970 a producer with Lea Productions saw one of these shows and asked if he would be interested in making a film to be entered in the Manila Film Festival (MFF).

Now that LINO BROCKA's name is internationally known, much attention has been focused on this first film—for which he also wrote the screenplay that won the Best Screenplay Award from the MFF. Critics have looked at Wanted: Perfect Mother, and tried to make it more than it really was. BROCKA himself is uncomfortable with the acclaim. He says that all he did was borrow from the big international picture of the year, Sound of Music, and from a Philippine comic serial. The film portrayed the problems of a governess to a brood of motherless children, and "there was a lot of singing." The movie made money at box offices across the country, including theaters in Manila where previously only American films had been shown.

Lea Productions thought it had found a gold mine: a director who made a movie in three weeks and wrote his own script (minimum costs) which was their all-time top moneymaker (maximum profits) and which won an award (prestige). He had also proved that Filipino movies could make as much money as English-language films and so opened previously closed doors to locally-made films.

BROCKA made nine movies during the next four years for Lea. From Teodorica Santos, who was in charge of production, he learned a great deal about trade-offs in the industry. For example, if a director had a special story he wanted to film he had first to make money with one or two crowd-pleasers; then he could make the film he wanted.

After the success of Wanted BROCKA was allowed to select and write his next story, Santiago, and was given a well-known star for his male lead. He was also allowed to bring in PETA actors to play minor roles and crowd scenes, a move which resulted in a more professional film.

Santiago (1970) was a war picture, with sufficient action and a known star to attract audiences, and sufficient serious content and realistic characterizations to impress critics. It earned him the Best Director Award from the Citizens Council for Mass Media (CCMM).

The success of Santiago allowed BROCE to tackle a more sophisticated story, Tubog sa Ginto (Dipped in Gold, 1970). Based again on a comic serial, with therefore a built-in audience, Tubog told the story of a wealthy married homosexual and his family.

BROCKA approached the usually taboo topic with sensitivity and sympathy, using actors and actresses like Lolita Rodriguez who were stage-trained, rather than film stars. He won the approval of young intellectuals for his willingness to make a movie about a controversial subject, and he won the acclaim of the critics and received the Best Director Award from the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS).

LINO BROCKA quickly became a name in Manila's large motion picture industry; Lea Productions' darling; the most talked about, written about, young director in the business. Beginning with his first movie, BROCKA showed no unwillingness to work within a given framework such as a serialized comic. Such stories were familiar to thousands of readers who would pay to see them recreated on the screen. What BROCKA concentrated on was adding to or enriching a formula story he made the characters more realistic, he tried to avoid stereotyped situations and endings, and he focused on acting, not just from his stars but from all his performers.

In the industry he is known as an actor's director, and for good reason. Low budgets and short shooting schedules force directors to rely on actors with proven box office appeal and formula stories, and they usually skimp on everything else. But BROCKA has used actors with stage as well as movie experience, choreographed crowd scenes carefully, and worked intensively with individual actors, explaining characterization so that he can get exactly what he wants in one take. He has also looked for new talent in the fields of music and script writing.

With Lea Productions BROCKA made one more award-winning movie, Stardoom (1971, Best Director, CCMM) which was about movies. It told of a young performer forced into stardom by his ambitious mother (Lolita Rodriguez again) and the fatal results of that ambition.

After his first success Lea had provided him with a car, and then with a furnished apartment. He found himself slowly succumbing to a comfortable lifestyle which depended upon the studio. The old familiar sensation that life was choking him returned, and in 1972, after nine movies with Lea, BROCKA quit.

He spent the next two years teaching film, drama and speech at two colleges in Manila, St. Theresa's and St. Paul's, directing for television, and continuing his work with PETA. He taught his students that entertainment could and should make the audience think. Teaching helped him organize and refine his concepts of entertainment and movie making, and exposed him to young, educated minds and sensibilities, the vanguard of what he hoped would be intelligent audiences for future movies and plays. His work in the provinces with PETA taught him to improvise and use local situations and conditions as the core around which the workshops, and later films, were constructed.

Unlike many Filipino producers and directors at that time, BROCKA disagreed with the notion that the majority of movie goers could not possibly appreciate subtle, meaningful subject matter, or fine, underplayed acting; that more violence, more sex, more stars, and more fantasy layered onto much-used plots were necessary. And his experiences in the provinces convinced him he was correct.

In 1974 he got together a group of about 100 artists and small investors, and with 10 businessmen who matched their investment, formed CINEMANILA to produce relevant, artistic films. CINEMANILA was divided into two groups—the artistic group which he headed that would produce the films, and the business group which would handle the financing, packaging and selling.

The first film was born of BROCKA's memories of his childhood. Tinimbang Ka Nguni't Kulang (Weighed But Found Wanting, 1974) was the story of a 16 year-old growing up in a small town; he is young enough to be unprejudiced but old enough to notice what goes on around him. The film touches on ostracism, love, cruelty and forgiveness. While certainly not ending happily-ever-after, it speaks both of rebirth and maturity.

Tinimbang was an artistic and box office success. BROCKA won the Best Director Award from FAMAS and the film became required viewing in religion classes in many Catholic colleges which regarded it as a major statement about Christian living. Within weeks of Tinimbang's release BROCKA was once more the most talked about director in the Philippines.

CINEMANILA made three more films, all but one directed by BROCKA, but none achieved the success of the first. While directing, BROCKA cheerfully signed checks, personally guaranteed loans, anything that was put in front of him. When the expected profits did not roll in, he learned an extremely painful lesson about business. The financiers who in the beginning had talked glibly about profit-sharing, did not talk now about debt-sharing. To make matters worse, CINEMANILA's last film was hit with a lawsuit.

The company declared bankruptcy, but BROCKA, who had personally signed many of the loans, ended up owing P800,000, plus the constantly accruing interest.

With the help of friends, advances for making films for several companies and cutting his own expenses drastically (he does not even own a car) he has reduced his debt, and now with the Magsaysay Award money, he hopes to pay off the balance. It is entirely typical of BROCKA that he accepted the personal responsibility of repaying the small investors who had backed the project. It is also typical that he has not become noticeably more businesslike. If someone comes along with an idea for a movie he likes, he will still make the movie first and think afterwards about getting paid.

Between films in 1975 a friend mentioned that he was going to Bicol, and since he had frequently heard BROCKA speak of having been born there, invited him to come along. This was BROCKA’s first chance to return to his childhood home and see how much of what he remembered was really true. His mother had always refused to talk about his father and their life on the unnamed island.

Now, without telling her, BROCKA set out on a personal odyssey into his past. He and his friend rented a motorized banca (outrigger boat) and visited all the islands near Pilar. On the evening of the third day a small island far from shore kindled a spark of recognition: there was the lagoon, the rocks and a row of houses. With his friend interpreting for him BROCKA sought out the old men who might remember his father. They told him the story of Regino and the very young girl he had brought to the island from Nueva Ecija, the one whom they still referred to as "the foreigner," and of his other family which was still living on the peninsula. BROCKA called on his father's legal wife and heard about the bigamy charge. He also met his six half-brothers and sisters, the eldest older than his mother.

After he returned from Bicol BROCKA began filming Maynila: Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila: In the Claws of Light, 1975), the movie which many critics regard even more highly than Tinimbang. The framework of the story is very simple: a young man goes to the city looking for his sweetheart who had been taken there by a "recruiter." Slowly and remorselessly the city consumes him as it consumed their love after they share one bittersweet night together. BROCKA's film-making came of age in Maynila, both in content and technique, and the "typical" BROCKA movie was born. Shot in the slums of Manila, the seamy underside of a big city was exposed with its call-boys and street thieves. The plight of the casual construction worker was clearly delineated with on-site accidents and callous supervisors; and people who rose above their problems to offer friendship to a stranger were shown with a dignity which underscored their essential goodness. BROCKA regained his position as the most sought after director in the Philippine movie industry.

At this time BROCKA also began to receive international exposure. In 1977 he was invited to send Insiang (heroine's name) to Directors' Fortnight, an invitational event hosted by the French Directors Society as part of the Cannes Film Festival. In 1980 Jaguar was entered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and in 1981 Bona was included in the Directors' Fortnight. Since then his movies have been shown at film festivals around the world. In addition to viewing competing films, BROCKA was exposed to foreign critics and to retrospectives of other directors. He began to see that his better films would be categorized as "film noir" (black film), comparable to the Italian Le Notti de Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria) and some of the American films from the 1940s like those of John Garfield, which were the antithesis of the happy MGM extravaganzas BROCKA had watched as a child. "Film noir" deal not with fantasy but with reality; instead of glorifying superheroes, they look with sympathy on the common man and the human condition.

In Insiang BROCKA shows the ultimate slum brutality—a daughter, raped by her mother's lover, takes her revenge by leading him on until her mother, in a fit of jealous rage, kills him. The movie delineates the painful change in the girl from innocent (or as innocent as is possible in such crowded living conditions) to scheming bitch. The slum itself is also a malevolent character, refusing to give up its grip on any of its inhabitants.

The story of Jaguar (nickname for bodyguard), produced in 1979, is different, centering on the universal hope to improve oneself. A security guard, chosen to be the personal bodyguard of a rich businessman, convinces himself that this is an indication of friendship and equality. When he kills for his employer and is abandoned by him, his delusion is shattered.

Beginning in the mid-1970s the government of President Ferdinand Marcos began approaching BROCKA to make films it wanted—e.g. eulogizing Marcos as a war hero, interpreting the works of famous Philippine authors, or making "educational" films keyed to the schools. As an inducement it offered to pay off his debts. In every case he eventually refused, primarily because he did not respect the political morals of the people he was dealing with. In an indirect way these approaches to him by the government led to his eventually taking a political stand against it.

BROCKA's involvement in the political scene did not stem from any inherent interest in politics. His refusal to ingratiate himself with the Marcos regime by making "approved" movies began for personal rather than political reasons. For similar reasons he disapproved of the direction being taken by the Film Center and the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines—feeling the taxpayers' money was being spent on cheap sex pictures.

In 1983 he formed Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP) which he chaired for two years. His premise was simple: artists are first and foremost citizens, and must address the issues confronting the country.

BROCKA and members of CAP were asked to be present on August 21, 1983 to welcome Benigno Aquino, a political opponent of Marcos, when he returned from self-imposed exile in the United States. BROCKA was a personal friend of two members of the Aquino family. Following the brutal assassination, he and CAP helped plan some of the funeral events that took place around the country.

Following the assassination—which so shocked Philippine society—BROCKA began speaking at rallies, both in Manila and in the provinces. At the same time he became more vocal about government censorship of movies, which he considers to be a serious impediment to artistic development. In December 1984 he and a number of actors and directors demonstrated against the head of the Censorship Board. They were supported by some of the jeepney (small bus) drivers, and in return they supported the strike a month later by the Jeepney Drivers' Association. As a result of his support of the latter BROCKA was arrested and jailed for 16 days.

As soon as he was released he resumed making movies. He had to support himself, he had to repay debts, and frequently he had to pay his own expenses when he went to speak in the provinces. All the time he was active in anti-government rallies and protests, he was searching for a stronger way to make a personal statement, as a film director, rather than as a "warm-up man" for the politicians who spoke after him. He realized that artists could make the most meaningful statement by using the medium they were most familiar with, and his, of course, was film. He decided, moreover, that his best venue was the International Film Festival in Cannes.

BROCKA flew to Paris and asked Stephan Films to participate in a movie, to be shot in the Philippines, with the post-production (final editing) to be done in France, a not unusual procedure. He then got financial backing from Malaya Films, a company with anti-government leanings. He combined two stories which had already been approved by the Board of Censors and which were based on true events: one a strike at a small factory and the other a robbery/hostage case. The film depicts a young man who is enmeshed by circumstances beyond his control. His wife is pregnant and needs medication. With a strike looming at the factory where he works, he makes a private deal with his employer not to walk out. His fellow workers learn of this and ostracize him; his boss fires him despite their agreement. In the end he is involved in a robbery attempt that goes wrong and is shot to death while his wife watches helplessly.

Much of the footage of the film was shot at night because BROCKA was busy speaking at rallies during the day and filming the protest marches by students, housewives, priests and nuns—which he later wove into the movie. The film was sent from the Philippines to France, and during the editing its double title emerged: Bayan ko: Kapit sa Patalim. The first phrase, "My Country," refers to the protest song which is sung throughout the movie; the second, "Double-edged Knife," alludes to the Philippine saying, "a desperate man will hold on even to a double-edged knife."

When BROCKA arrived at the 1984 Cannes Festival he wore a barong Tagalog (loose Philippine shirt) with a blood red map of the Philippines printed on the front, and underneath it the word "justice. " His reaction to accusations of being overly theatrical was amused: "Of course, that's the whole point. If I could have dragged a coffin in here with me, I would have."

The critics' enthusiasm was unrestrained. Bayan Ko garnered rave reviews at Cannes, and later won the Best Film of the Year Award from the British Film Institute.

When BROCA sought to bring the film back to the Philippines, a predictable legal battle ensued. The film was rejected by the Board of Censors as subversive (inciting to rebellion). After the subversive charge was withdrawn and the film permitted entry, the Board then charged the film was lascivious and would have to be cut. BROCKA and Malaya Films filed suit in the Supreme Court which ordered the board to approve its showing to adult audiences (over 18). The court ruled the board could not cut but only classify.

This was a considerable victory for BROCKA and the Concerned Artists, who have believed all along that the Board of Censors should be abolished and replaced by a ratings board set up by the film industry itself.

Fame and recognition at home and abroad have made very little difference to LINO BROCKA. When asked about having two films entered in competition at the Cannes Fllm Festival, he merely replies, "it opens the door for other Filipino directors and films." When asked about his travels to film festivals around the world, he talks about being homesick for the Philippines. Nor has critical acclaim made it any easier for him to make his kind of movies. Producers are still afraid that he will turn out heavy, arty films which will not do well at the box office.

Fame does have a few advantages, however. The Philippine government, which had refused to renew his passport after he returned from Cannes, quickly reversed itself when he was invited to speak at a human rights conference by none other than the Prime Minister of France.

BROCKA sees no inconsistencies in his life. He firmly believes that films and politics (or concern for the human condition, particularly in the Philippines) cannot be dissociated. He has never lost his desire to develop what he calls "the Great Filipino Audience." This, to him, is more important than creating "the Great Filipino Movie." He does not consider film-making in the Philippines much different from filmmaking in other developing countries—or in Western countries at an earlier stage in their development; like others he is hampered by low budgets, insufficient time and out-dated and much-used equipment. He also has to make popular movies in order to eat.

With a larger budget, with more time and more freedom, what would he do? Ideas bubble out. "I'd like to do a film on the mothers of detainees, those mothers who come to trials and wait and wait. I want to do one on child prostitution. It could never be shown here, but maybe I could do it for distribution abroad. I've talked to these kids, you should hear them, I'd love to do Noli Me Tangere (Jose Rizal's classic about the Philippines, titled in English The Social Cancer) with young actors as in Romeo and Juliet. And All Those Lovely People and The Scent of Apples about Filipinos in the United States. And . . . ."

There will be no dearth of BROCKA films in the years to come.

September 1985
Manila

REFERENCES:

"Bayan Ko," Handout at Cannes Film Festival. 1984.

"Bayan Ko," Variety. Manila. May 23, 1984.

"Bonjour Philippines,'' Le Point. Paris. May 14, 1984.

Brocka, Lino. "The Film as an Instrument for Social Change." Presentation to Group Discussion. Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, Manila. September 3, 1985. (Typewritten transcript.)

"Brocka comes to America," Tempo. Manila. July 24, 1985.

"Brocka: earth wind and fire," Philippine Panorama. Manila. August 10, 1975.

"Brocka still won," Malaya. Manila. July 25, 1985.

"Entretien avec Lino Brocka ' Positif, Revue de Cinema. Paris. June 1980.

Guerrero, Rafael Ma. "Lino Brocka: Dramatic Sense, Documentary Aspirations." Paper for Philippine Center for Advanced Studies. University of the Philippines, Quezon City. 1979. (Mimeographed.)

"In Search of the Great Philippine Movie," Asian Wall Street Journal. Hongkong. May 24-25, 1985.

"Jaguar," Cinématographe. Paris. N.d.

"La Point de L'Iceberg," Cashiers du Cinéma. Paris. September 1981.

"Quinzaine des Realisateurs ' Cinématographe. Paris. June 1981.

Tiongson, Nicanor G., ed. The Urian Anthology 1970-1979. Manila: Manuel L. Morato. 1983.

"Two Filipino Films Make Waves in France," Philippine Panorama. Manila February 12, 1984.

"The Unsinkable Lino Brocka" Focus Philippines. Manila. June 28, 1975.

"Where Maynila fails," Philippine Panorama. Manila August 10, 1975.

Interview with Lino Brocka, viewing of selected movies, interviews with and letters from persons acquainted with Brocka and his work.