Recently released were the results of the survey done by Skilty Labastilla, a film critic, about the top 100 films made by women directors. Labastilla in his introduction mentioned the main reason for the listing as part of the celebration of Women’s Month. It must be said that the listing comes at a more auspicious time, now that the official celebration of the centenary of Philippine cinema is near.
Women have always been celebrated as actresses but as filmmakers, history has always been silent about them. Labastilla noted how some of the films made by women filmmakers have become box-office hits, which can mean that these directors knew how to read the sensibilities of the Filipino audience.
The poll involved some 127 film critics, writers, cineastes and pundits who were provided with a master list for reference.
The list went back as far as 1933, the year a filmmaker named Brigida Perez Villanueva made Pendulum of Fate. The filmmaker is considered to be the first Filipino female director. In one of the lecture sorties I made for “Sandaan,” a project of the Executive Council of Cinema of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), of which I am a part, I always posed the question about the identity and other facts about Villanueva. My purpose for this is that, more than ever, we need to know more about her so that we can honor her.
Aside from Villanueva, the master list included women filmmakers who began their career during the prewar days. They were Carmen Concha, who produced and directed films; Consuelo “Ateng” Osorio and Susana de Guzman.
Upon receiving the master list, I raised a rhetorical question to Skilty why the need to include the names of those filmmakers and their films, the copies of which cannot be found anymore. But why not? Who knows someone out there may have a copy or may have information about the films of these women filmmakers.
What arises out of my own rhetoric is the fact that film preservation and archiving is in a dismal state up to this writing and for some months more. I have heard of a beautiful development regarding this, but I am leaving the disclosure of this most wonderful news to the person herself responsible for this project—Liza Diño-Seguerra of the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP).
There was another point which I raised that, as Skilty has acknowledged, was also brought up by other respondents, among them were Elwood Perez and Teddy Co. This was the inclusion of Fely Crisostomo in the list of women directors. Fely Crisostomo is a male. He is popular for having helmed Chiquito movies and dramatic pieces like Kapag Puso’y Sinugatan and At sa Ngalan ng Pag-ibig.
The newest film to be included was Ulan by Irene Villamor.
Interesting were the decisions of the respondents. For the 100th place, for example, it was a tie between a commercial film, Beauty in a Bottle (Antoinette Jadaone) and K’na the Dreamweaver (Ida Anita del Mundo). The former is a commercial film starring Angelica Panganiban, while the latter could be classified more as an independent film with Mara Lopez. The same catholicity of taste is manifested in the 99th spot, which was a tie again between Four Sisters and a Wedding (Cathy Garcia-Molina) and Mamay Umeng (Dwein Balthazar), a story about an old man awaiting the most natural ending to a human life, which is death.
Done in 2012, this film by Balthazar would augur another work that came out in 2018: Oda sa Wala, which was No. 24 in the list.
I was in the thick of research on my paper on Susana de Guzman and, thus, was interested in the film landing on the 92nd spot, de Guzman’s Sonny Boy. Susana de Guzman was a rare breed among women directors: she wrote stories for Liwayway and other popular magazines of the period, wrote many screenplays from those stories, and directed many of the films made from those stories. To her is attributed 54 screenplays and stories, and some 40 films.
In my list, I would put Susana de Guzman’s Sarong Banggi, a film that became the talk of the town because Mila del Sol showed her knee in one scene. On hindsight, I should have placed Sumpaan, a film with a strange plot involving three brothers who swore to be loyal to each other. Their pact was made on a dagger, which was kept and was to be taken out only when one of them became unfaithful to the brotherhood vow. Rosa Rosal essayed in this film one of her earliest portrayal of a woman reckless and impudent, a danger to men who espoused fidelity.
The top 20 exhibits a major shift in aesthetics: the so-called independent and noncommercial films are heavily represented at this point, except for one or two commercial films. At No.20 is Ang Huling Cha-cha ni Anita (Sigrid Andrea Bernardo) and Tundong Magiliw (Jewel Maranan). Bernardo’s film would introduce a new young actress in the person of Therese Malvar; Maranan’s work is a documentary. These daring choices would be broken by two films belonging to a different period and taste: That Thing Called Tadhana (Antoinette Jadaone) and Muro-ami (Marilou Diaz-Abaya).
Jadaone has one more film in the top 20 and that is the trenchant Six Degrees to Separation from Lilia Cuntapay. The film is about a bit player who specialized in aswang roles. The actress, Lilia Cuntapay, would see herself traveling abroad as her film got feted in festivals.
In the Top 20 are two more documentary films: Kano and His American Harem (Coreen Jimenez) and Imelda (Ramona Diaz). The Diaz’s film is about Imelda, the infamous half of the conjugal dictatorship.
The Top 10 reveals a fabulous listing: three documentaries and seven feature films.
Two documentaries belong to a pioneer female documentarian: Minsan Lang Sila Bata and Bunso. There is an almost forgotten, underrated work from Ditsi Carolino and that is Ang Pinakatagong Lihim ng Simbahan. The title is naughty but the documentary is not about the sexual abuses ascribed now to the Catholic church but its teachings about equality amid the prosperity and wealth of the institution.
Baby Ruth Villarama’s watershed of a documentary, Sunday Beauty Queen was No.4. The documentary was adjudged winner of Best Film in the 2016 Metro Manila Film Festival, a rare feat for a documentary to achieve over feature films.
Sunday Beauty Queen and Kano were Gawad Urian awardees for Best Documentary.
The three films by Abaya in the top 10 are Brutal (No.8), Karnal (No.3), and Moral, which topped the survey.
Minsa’y Isang Gamu-Gamo (Lupita Aquino Kashiwahara) was No.2. This was one of the films that began to establish Nora Aunor as a thespian of the first order and an actor identified with political films.
Completing the Top 10 are Sana Maulit Muli (Olivia Lamasan) at No.10, Anak (Rory Quintos) at No.9 and Salome (Laurice Guillen) at No.5.