About three years ago I dropped by the home of my friend Dik Trofeo to view the documentary he was editing about the Filipino film master Gerardo de Leon, or “Manong” as he still fondly calls him. Dik wanted to hear my comments since I was the one who wrote the script.
Dik is probably the closest you can get to “Manong” the person and the master. He learned cinematography and directing from the master himself. He rose from the production ranks, from script supervisor to assistant director in many of Manong’s films. As a trusted factotum or gofer, he was even allowed to sleep in Manong’s house.
A film scholar can mine a lot of knowledge about Manong by just talking to Dik because of his vast memory of his days with the master. In fact, having a conversation with Dik is like entering a portal into the past of Philippine movies.
Such was his closeness to Manong that during the wake of the revered master, Dik was taken aside by one of the daughters who pointedly asked him if he was an illegitimate child of Manong’s because the family members noted their father’s fond affection for him, akin to a son. By the way, Manong did not have a son, only daughters.
Going back to that day I was viewing a rough cut of the documentary about Manong, Dik suddenly pressed the pause button. Something came to his mind and he excitedly asked me to see some valuable pictures he had found while digging up materials for the documentary.
It turned out that the pictures were behind-the-scenes photos taken by him and the renowned Dick Baldovino during the on-location-shoot of the much acclaimed film: “Daigdig ng Mga Api” (World of the Oppressed). I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. “This is gold,” I told him and on impulse told him to come up with a photo exhibit.
Now let me just explain to those who are not in the know why I consider the pictures as “gold.”
Gerry de Leon made about 75 films from 1938 until his death in 1981. There are about 20 to 25 De Leon films in existence in varying stages of decay. According to film archivist and programmer Teddy Co: “Gerardo de Leon’s body of work represents the very best of what Filipino artists can and should aspire for.”
In the ’50s and ’60s, Manong directed many films that are now considered classics including “Noli Me Tangere,” “El Filibusterismo,” and “Sisa.” But considered to be the best of them all was “Daigdig ng mga Api” (1965), which ran away with almost all of the FAMAS awards during that year, including Best Director and Best Picture.
The thing is that everyone talks about it but nobody seems to have seen it. Why? Because there’s not one existing copy of the film. It has been lost to the ages.
Here’s what Richard Bolisay, one of the more serious student of Philippine cinema says:
“Gerry de León’s Ang Daigdig ng mga Api gets a lot of attention but only a handful have truly seen it, apparently because no print of it exists. To be honest, it wouldn’t be of much help to recommend Filipino titles to foreigners considering, confronted with our own embarrassment, we don’t know where to find a decent—more so, English-subtitled—copies of them.” He, like the rest of us, can only hope that a print would surface one day.
But wait! There is one person who actually saw the film at the Dalisay theater when it was shown in 1966. His name is Clod del Mundo, son of Clodualdo del Mundo Sr., a celebrated writer of illustrated novels. Clod was then only a college student and he went to see the film only because he had a free ticket and his brother Jet was cast in the movie.
Thankfully, Clod, an accomplished scriptwriter himself, has written a book about the film, and that’s where the unearthed pictures shown to me by Dik can now be seen.
The book is entitled “Ang Daigdig ng Mga Api: Remembering A Lost Film.”
Look for it because it’s the next best thing to seeing the actual film. The book gives you glimpses of what the movie would have looked like on screen, how the master director worked, and how films were then shot on location. It even contains the initial treatment done by Pierre Salas, the film’s scriptwriter.
Thanks to Dik, I now have a copy of the book; it’s great reading. But I can’t help but feel a tug of dismay. While I can now watch classic films of the world’s great masters on a streaming platform with just a few clicks, I cannot do the same with many of our Filipino film classics because no prints of the films have survived.
Bolisay cynically says: “That, my dear friends, is where our history always finds itself going: disposed to disappear.” Really, we need to give more serious thought about preserving and restoring our local films and give full support to advocates such as SOFIA (Society of Filipino Archivists for Film.) As someone puts it: “Restoring a film is capturing history in itself, for visual language is more than just pretty pictures on the screen; it tells the story of our nation. And in the absence of film heritage, a nation suffers and forgets.”
It’s the same thing with our nation. When we choose to forget the past, we all are bound to suffer.