It’s one more sign of neglect of yet another dimension of our national heritage. (The Inquirer article is pasted below).

Tonight I saw the new film Pepot Artista, a Cinemalaya entry (Best Picture and Best Editing) and a reminder of why we need to treasure our old movies.

Written and directed by the esteemed film scholar and teacher Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr., Pepot Artista is a story of a young boy’s fantasy about breaking into the movies. But it is also a commentary on the cinema’s hold on our popular imagination. Set in the early 1970s, it makes use of many clips from kitschy romance films of the era, including now-hilarious courtship scenes of the legendary love team Guy and Pip (Nora Aunor and Tirso Cruz III).

Never mind the dubious production values of these featured oldies. They preserve for posterity not just the teeny-bopper looks of stars who are now grandparents, but the sensibilities, audience tastes, and lifestyles of a period in our cultural evolution.

It’s no surprise that Del Mundo, whose day job is De La Salle professor, is also a leading advocate of repatriating our exiled film classics.

Since the end of the Marcos era, the Philippines has not had a national film archive. So the prints and negatives of much of our cinema have found themselves overseas, in the hands of private collectors or in the freezing-cold vaults of government-sponsored archives.

The Inquirer article reports on the efforts of a small group of quixotic archivists to hunt down and bring home our film classics. The article pasted below has a remarkable roll call of the films.

The nation’s film heritage is important as well to Asia’s cultural history, as many of our early films were widely shown around the continent and influenced the development of several national cinemas.

The article has a reference to one of our I-Witness documentaries, in a quote by film researcher Teddy Co about our recent discovery of the missing Gerardo de Leon costume epic Banga ni Zimadar:

"At first, Howie Severino (who did a report on 'Darna' and 'Dyesebel' for GMA-7's 'I-Witness') couldn't identify it…. One, it's an Arabic fantasy; two, it was dubbed in Mandarin."

This needs a little elaboration. My documentary field team (producer Ella Evangelista and cinematographer Egay Navarro) and I traveled to Thailand last April on the trail of the first of 12 Darna movies. We had heard that a copy of the missing 1951 blockbuster starring Rosa del Rosario was in Thailand’s national film archive, an impressive facility supported by the nation's king, a film buff.

Sure enough, the Tagalog fantasy movie was there, although Thailand's chief archivist Dome Sukvhong wasn’t sure if it was really the missing Darna (experts in Manila later confirmed that it was).

But the real surprise from that visit was another black and white film screened for us by Dome (a shaggy-haired character in his own right). Dubbed in Chinese, it featured Asian actors unknown to Dome in grandiose big-budget scenes from antiquity. He guessed that they were either Filipino or Malaysian, just based on the ethnic features.

Back in Manila, we showed a VHS tape of the film in the Mowelfund screening room for a small audience of film scholars, one of whom blurted out curse words in excitement ("P-ina, this is a major find!"). From old movie ads he had seen, Teddy Co identified it as Banga ni Zimadar, another classic that had disappeared from our shores.

But as Teddy said in the San Diego article, that film along with Mational Artist Gerardo de Leon's Dyesebel and the original Darna (directed by Fernando Poe Sr.) remain in Thailand. But Dome Sukvhong told us Thai film authorities were willing to return them to the Philippines. “The best place for a nation’s films is in the motherland,” he said. The irony is that this statement comes from a man who set up his country's archive in the 1980s when the Philippines already had one. Our refrigerated treasure vault of films was dismantled and their contents scattered to the winds when the Marcos regime fell, with some myopic minds in the Aquino government thinking that concern for culture was an Imeldific whim.

Dome did add that our films won’t be coming back if we don’t set up another national archive. The Inquirer article below gives an update on that effort.

But... how on earth did those Tagalog films from the 1950s end up in Thailand? And what was the role of Buddhist monks in popularizing them there? (In case you didn't catch the docu's airing)

The answers tomorrow. Abangan. :>

I’ll also upload the script of our May 9, 2005 documentary, Pantasya ng Bayan, about our fruitful, gratifying search for the first Darna movie.

The Inquirer article from July 19, 2005:
This story was taken from www.inq7.net
(http://news.inq7.net/entertainment/)

Where in the world is 'Genghis Khan'?
By Bayani San Diego Jr.
Inquirer News Service

THE BEST prints of Filipino film classics are abroad.

In the absence of an efficient National Film Archives, our cinematic treasures have found permanent homes in France, Great Britain and the United States.

"Negatives of 1970s films by Lino Brocka and Mike de Leon are in other countries," Clodualdo "Doy" del Mundo Jr. and Vicky D. Belarmino, officers of the Society of Film Archivists (Sofia), told Inquirer Entertainment.

Belarmino was specific: Brocka's "Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang," "Maynila... Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag," "Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim" and "Orapronobis" are in the British Film Institute (BFI); also Eddie Romero's "Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon?" and Mike de Leon's "Itim."

Brocka's "Insiang" is in Cinémathèque Française (CF).

Costly endeavor

Belarmino, who is the secretary of Sofia and a film archivist at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), said CCP's 35mm print of Brocka's "Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa" came from the Anthology Film Archives based in the United States.

The CCP, Belarmino added, obtained its new 35mm copies of "Tinimbang..." and "Insiang" with the help of the BFI and CF, and also acquired copies of "Ganito..." and "Itim" from BFI.

These copies cost quite a sum, Sofia president Del Mundo revealed.

"When the CCP first ordered a copy of 'Tinimbang...,' we had to hurdle a lengthy process," Belarmino recounted. "You need a clearance from the local producer and from the person that deposited the film in the archives... among others."

Of course, this system was designed precisely to safeguard cinematic gems. On the bright side, the location of contemporary classics can at least be verified now.

Classic found

Searching for 1950s and older masterpieces can be more confounding.

Case in point is Manuel Conde's "Genghis Khan," which was screened at the Venice Film Festival in 1952 and released commercially throughout Europe and the US.

Two copies, dubbed in French, are in the CF, according to Del Mundo.

"But there's a copy in the original Tagalog," he noted. "An enterprising Filipino based in California
bought it from an American distributor and is selling it for $10,000 to any interested party in the
Philippines."

So far, no takers. Is repatriation an option?

"Well, these foreign archives may suddenly decide to return our films," Del Mundo said.

An example is 1937's "Zamboanga," starring Fernando Poe Sr. and Rosa del Rosario, which was retrieved from Finland after Mowelfund's Nick Deocampo discovered its whereabouts in his research at the US Library of Congress.

"Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa" was also returned to Lino's brother Danny Brocka, who later turned it over to the CCP.

On one condition

"But they will return the films only if we have an archive that will take care of it here," Del Mundo
stressed.

This is why the original "Darna" (with Rosa del Rosario) and "Dyesebel" (with Edna Luna), both
"rediscovered" in Thailand, have yet to come home.

"That was the condition given by Thailand," said Teddy Co, a film curator and member of the Committee on Cinema of the National Commission on Culture and the Arts. "The first questions they asked were: 'Can you take care of it? Do you have the facilities?'"

The Thais' copies of "Darna" and "Dyesebel" are incomplete, however.

"Both are 16mm prints, without sound," Del Mundo said. "Perhaps, the movies were set to be dubbed in Thai."

Another rare find in Thailand was Gerry de Leon's "Banga ni Zimadar."

"At first, Howie Severino (who did a report on 'Darna' and 'Dyesebel' for GMA-7's 'I-Witness') couldn't identify it," Co said. "One, it's an Arabic fantasy; two, it was dubbed in Mandarin."

Co and Mowelfund also spearheaded the retrieval of De Leon's "Sanda Wong" from Hong Kong. "It was found in 1985, recovered in 1988 and restored in 1998."

A co-production between local studio Premiere and Hong Kong's Ho Chapman, "Sanda Wong" was dubbed in Cantonese.

These unexpected discoveries offer a glimmer of hope.

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