DLSU releases book of essays on select Philippine film directors

IT WAS NOT an exhaustive book about the directors of Philippine cinema by any means, but screenwriter/director/author Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr. hopes that his (and the book’s contributors) three-year labor of love would inspire other film scholars to follow suit and create many more books about Filipino filmmaking.
“Certainly, there are more Filipino filmmakers that should be subjects of serious study,” Mr. Del Mundo said in the introduction of Direk: Essays on Filipino Filmmakers.
He noted that the book — which features 15 Filipino auteurs from pre-World War II’s Manuel Silos and Manuel Conde to Golden Age directors such as Ishmael Bernal, and contemporary names such as Lav Diaz and Peque Gallaga — was a remedy to the “glaring lack of literature about Filipino filmmakers,” in an interview with BusinessWorld shortly before the book’s launch on Aug. 9 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
Mr. Del Mundo bemoaned the fact that many of the films done in the pre-World War II era have been lost, either to war or sheer neglect which limits the studies one can do on the film industry back then.
He would have liked to have essays on Celso Ad. Castillo, Carlos Siguion-Reyna, and Raymond Red, among many others, and encourages film scholars and enthusiasts to create their own anthologies.
As a member of the Society of Filipino Archivists for Film (SOFIA), he stressed the importance of having a national film archive to preserve the works of past, present and future directors.
In one of his essays, he mentioned that “none of Manuel Silos’ pre-war films appear to be extant; therefore it would be difficult to judge the quality of his work during the period,” and so he resorted to getting “a sense of substance” of Silos’ films through synopses found in newspapers and magazines of the time.
Manuel Silos is described as one of the more prolific directors of Philippine cinema from the 1920s to the ’50s. He first started as a vaudeville comedian before directing the silent film Los Tres Zanganos (1927). Mr. Del Mundo mentioned that before the outbreak of WWII, Mr. Silos already had 22 films in his filmography.
The book, 352-pages long, is divided into three sections: “Short Takes,” or short essays on Manuel Silos, Gerardo de Leon and Eddie Romero; “Medium Shots,” which has longer essays on Manuel Conde, Lamberto Avellana, Fernando Poe, Jr., Lino Brocka, Ishmael Bernal, Peque Gallaga, Mike de Leon, Mario O’Hara, Kidlat Tahimik and Brillante Ma. Mendoza; and “Long Takes,” which has exhaustive essays on Marilou Diaz-Abaya and Lav Diaz.
The essays were written by film critics like BusinessWorld’s Noel Vera who wrote about Mario O’Hara, and educators like Ronald Baytan who tackled Ishmael Bernal, Shirley O. Lua who wrote about Fernando Poe, Jr., Nicanor G. Tiongson who wrote on Manuel Conde, and Vicente Garcia Groyon whose essay was on Peque Gallaga.
The book was published by the De La Salle University Publishing House. Those who are interested in getting copies of Direk: Essays on Filipino Filmmakers can contact the publisher, Dr. David Jonathan Bayot, Director/Executive Publisher of the De La Salle University Publishing House at david.bayot@dlsu.edu.ph or call 524-4611 local 271. The Publishing House is located at De La Salle University, 2401 Taft Ave., Malate, Manila. — Zsarlene B. Chua