#015 - Lino Brocka in the Claws of Melodrama

For our season one finale, we dive into the blazing world of Filipino master Lino Brocka, a filmmaker whose furious, hothouse melodramas and searing social issue films feel every bit as lively and vital today as ever. From his unlikely path through poverty, missionary work, and theatre to a fiercely prolific film career under the Marcos regime, Brocka forged a politically charged cinema of desire, exploitation, and resistance that still isn’t nearly as widely seen in the West as it should be. 

We also have a live segment of the podcast coming to you directly from Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, where a new restoration of Brocka's early masterpiece Weighed But Found Wanting is premiering in a dazzling new restoration.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:14

You're listening to the Outskirts Film Podcast. I'm Christopher Small, and as ever, I'm joined by my co-host. Hello, I'm Mike. Hey, I'm Melissa. This week, uh, for the finale of our first season of the podcast, we are going to talk about one of, for me at least, the greatest directors of all time, Lino Brocker. His hot house melodramas and biting social issue films I discovered around 10 years ago and haven't revisited since. Maybe just a bit of background information about Lino Broca first. Uh he was born in 1939 in Pilar in the Philippines. Uh he grew up poor after his father was killed in a mysterious political attack. He actually has one of the great director biographies, which I'll try to condense here a little bit. He at one point became a Mormon missionary and went to convert people in a leper colony in Hawaii. Uh, and from Hawaii he went to the mainland of the United States to San Francisco, quickly became homeless and knocked around a bit. At some point, a relative of his uh gave him many, many, many chickens, and he was gonna become a chicken farmer, but he decided at the last minute to go back to the Philippines, and once he was back, he started to get involved uh in the Filipino Educational Theatrical Association, and eventually in 1970 he started making films, had a big box office hit with the film Wanted Perfect Mother, and that started a career that would span 60 films more or less. When I was looking at these films again, I realized, you know, in the last 10 or 15 years, Brocca really became canonized in some sense and really revived thanks to a series of uh restorations, of which there will be a new one at Itchinamarito. But despite those restorations, when you look at Brocca's filmography, there's a huge number of films that have absolutely no reputation in the West. I think today we'll be talking about quite canonical titles, uh, such as Manila in the Clause of Light, Inxiang, um, Macho Dan Sabona, Cain and Abel. The last thing to say is uh Brocca was working in during the years of the Marcos dictatorship, which is a very, very important part of his work. Uh he was a filmmaker who never shied away from that, never shied away from showing the brutality and ugliness of this system, which was also the case after Marcos was kicked out of power. Unfortunately, Lino Brocker died at a young age in a car crash in Gizon City in 1991, when he was just 52. As I said, he left behind a massive, massive body of work for us to pick over and discover. So before we dive in properly to the conversation, did you have some experience with Lino Broca's films before we decided to do this as our last project of the season?

SPEAKER_01 3:17

In my case, I had some experience with Lino Brocca, but it's always like a filmmaker that even after doing this project, I kind of really want to properly do a deep dive. I was exposed to his work by like a general interest in uh quote unquote like global south cinema. Be aware of like Lino Broca and this like form of production. Of like, as you were saying in the introduction, like naturally there's like a lot of like social issues, like dramas and melodramatic impulses. The the popular element in these films, at some points, in particular in films like Kenny and Abel to me gets to a level of like so even like exploitation at some points, which I say that well, anyone listening to a podcast knows that that's like a good thing here. It's like very much considered almost canonically as like the greatest Filipino filmmaker of all time. And say and then you look at the films, and I kind of always was like fascinated by the idea, like if these films, particularly in a lot of Latin American contexts, if this was the filmmaker uh in those contexts, they wouldn't really like be received in the same way, they would be considered like too harsh, too like rough around the edges, too lowbrow. And to me, like that, uh just like a figure itself as this kind of like uh idiosyncratic filmmaker, like uh deeply distinctive, also in his visual style, the social the social the social elements that you were alluding to, like his like mil political militancy, and also that like pop uh pop like popular element and pop thrusting his work, all colliding, kind of makes him like this kind of amalgamation that has always been like fascinating to me.

SPEAKER_04 4:40

A lot of particularly Western people say when after they've discovered these films for the first time is that these films have this very heady mix between a kind of hot house melodrama, like very trashy, almost like soap opera melodrama, combined with absolutely cutting anti-capitalists' social commentary. Um and that is, you know, more or less true, depending on the film, I would say, you know, like the the films really shift their emphasis uh between those two things. I mean, when I was revisiting uh Manila and the Clause of Light, uh I mean, yes, that film is very melodramatic, but there's times where it's almost like this kind of hypnotic documentary. Um just as In Siang is, you know, every bit as loud and trashy and um nasty as I remember it. Um so so for me, I mean that was a a big relief to discover that he's still the greatest. Um but I agree that it's interesting that, you know, for someone who's so canonized who has such a thick mythology around him, uh that nonetheless the films stay what they are. You know, they're still very lively and they're still, as you said, like for considering that they're very canonized films, they are very um melodramatic and cheap in certain moments, which is I guess also what's appealing about this period of Filipino cinema in general for me, also.

SPEAKER_03 6:12

It is interesting what you said about the the dirdiness, the nastiness, because maybe it's a cultural thing uh that in terms of national cinema, Turkey uh even has uh more uh dirty, roady, and very loud films that I didn't find them very uh very idiosyncratic in as a Western audience member would think, because I thought they were quite familiar in those that tonality for me was something familiar. So it was for me, um especially the the social context that Broca was representing, it was more like a natural thing to be uh so loud and so explicit about violence. This aspect for Western audiences become a thing. They detach the film itself from its context and turn into a pure effect. I think that's usually melodramas are for, but I think there's something that resists to that tendency to just keep it as a form of affect of heightened uh emotion.

SPEAKER_04 7:23

I think that's something we see again and again in Brocco, is this like he he was a guy who was extremely politically active, um both during the kind of martial law years, which was more or less the 1970s, um, and then during this kind of long people power revolution that he was very much part of in the kind of mid-80s, let's say. Um but something I always find impressive about his films, also the ones that I was re-watching, and also Manila, is that uh like this explicit politics in the sense of like political action, demonstrations, marches, union organizing, stuff like that, is always in these films, but it's very rarely the main story. You know, usually these films are about protagonists who are kind of moving in parallel to this like political action. That the protagonists of these films rarely are actually themselves kind of political actors, but like that presence of politics in whatever form is always there, you know, in s in some form or another. There are quite a few films before Manila and the Clause of Light, which I think was the kind of breakthrough in terms of his kind of critical success. But if you if you actually search his filmography in order, there are quite a few films which were more um commercial and came directly out of this theatrical work that he was doing. I think the only one of those films that has kind of even a slight reputation is uh Star Doom, which is a film I haven't seen but always caught my attention because of the name. And then it's like it it really was like for him this kind of uh drive to make like socially conscious films that pulled him up in in the direction that we know. And it's interesting, like I was thinking about this as like I was thinking about him as the last subject of our podcast, because when you read the the official history of Lino Broca, he sounds like the kind of filmmaker that we wouldn't like usually but there's this kind of alchemy of the place that he was working, the subjects that he was drawn to, the specific way that Filipino cinema is, that just creates, I think, one of the most unique combinations. And so Manila and the Cause of Light, it's this very, very bleak, uh hyper-realist, often quite documentary portrait of a guy who uh a kind of country island boy who goes to the city to look for his his uh his sweetheart who who has been kind of enlisted into some kind of slavery. When he arrives, he gets robbed, uh so he doesn't have any money and he starts working in these construction sites, and the first the whole first third of the film is just this kind of amazingly detailed portrait of this incredibly bleak existence as a labourer with very melodramatic touches, like at the same time as like a very, very precise accounting of you know how much are you being paid? What is this scam that the boss pulls where he takes this percentage of the pay? And what is this? The Taiwan, yeah, like this so-called Taiwan move where you don't get paid uh the full amount because of this and that and the other. So it's like all of these details are crazy, crazy, crazy specific. But the film does have that like impulse to be also a melodramer in some way, you know, like it's not uh extremely sober film, and I think it's like the combination of those two things flowing together that makes it so. I mean, uh this this this film for me is I mean, I I remember it very fondly, but when I was re-watching it, I was really, really blown away by this one.

SPEAKER_03 11:17

One of the themes that really uh felt closer, similar to like socially realistic films in uh like in Turkey was this uh theme of like um let's say there are films like especially by Yilmas Gune that revolves around uh uh professional milieu, which are usually uh uh from the lower classes, like let's say um miners or construction workers. So it's a very uh specific and common theme that you could also found in, I think, different national cinemas. But what Broca does here is to that he expands his his uh view of the city or in general urban uh landscape isn't limited to this particular space. And I think what's fascinating is that usually social dramas would just like stay in this microcosmos and tell a story, usually a more moralistic one about workers' rights. And that would be the end of the film. Like you would just we would only stay in the construction site and because it gives you all the uh necessary details about exploitation, worker rights, solidarity, and how uh rich people and uh uh businessmen exploit these people. So you have everything, but we never like we we we go beyond that because Julio goes uh uh tries even sex work and he's also his girlfriend herself is also exploited by this world. But there are several layers uh involved also through the this Chinese community who seems to be exploiting uh people coming from the countryside. So the uh microcosmos becomes a macrocosmos of the manila itself. And I think that's such a difficult thing to achieve within the uh duration of a single film. That's for me, that just just like the the way it holds everything tightly together is a really it's a it's a master work for me from that angle. It's like a economy of the narration is so strong and so well paced and well put together that's it's it's it's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Something that I has always kind of like, as I was mentioning, like uh made his film his films and his making kind of feel closer uh to me, is kind of like just like the themes, for example, like Maninas in in the closest of light, like the urban alienation kind of like uh like descent into darkness. It's kind of like one of ongoing tropes of like popular Latin American cinema, like going back to like 1930s, for example. It's just like this like modernization process, and like the almost during the 20th century became like a kind of almost the staple of this kind of filmmaking that is like someone from a rural area uh is forced to go to like the urban like escape to like uh find some sort of work or labor, and that kind of exposes them to this kind of like timeless tale of the corruptions of like the industrial society and capitalism and all sorts of things. But uh, which is something you actually would see a lot also like in the 1950s, like Mexican cinema, like uh the melodramas we all love, particularly with the more like uh gritier films of like uh Gabaldon or like Alberto Gut. And seeing that in the case of Broca to me, uh as you were alluding to like my like uh microcosm of like the like the national state. It's also fascinating because I think that the fact that it's also in the 1970s kind of allows a different like register of like the grittiness and the like the realism. Um that perhaps in the 1950s you have like a more like closer to sometimes you have the near real style, sometimes you have like the vestiges of like the olden age. When the case of like these specific like uh the forms that Broca is working with, to me what makes them like totally idiosyncratic is like again like the mailing cross of light that the first like I think like almost like half an hour. Uh you barely have any real like plot going on. If you were to describe the plot of the film on like a synopsis, you really would start seeing the film like that 45 minute mark or something. So to me, like the way like Broca manages to do that uh with the addict perhaps like uh oomp of like the greetiness of the 70s to me is kind of like almost like unmatched. I think Manila Nicola like kind of like cement what what I find most interesting, but also like afterwards seeing that fluctuate through his films also is to me very interesting.

SPEAKER_04 15:35

Yeah, it's interesting that you mention kind of Mexican films of the 50s because just as you were saying that I thought about this film that we saw in Locano called Espaldas Mojadas, uh Wetbacks, uh, and it's this like uh border melodrama guy crosses the border to make money, to work as a as a as a worker, and basically the tensions that come from that and so on. That's a film that I love, and obviously I love that period as well, but you know, when you think in that film about the way that, for example, scenes of these guys who have no money sitting around uh next to the train tracks, uh playing cards, talking about their lives, whatever, like you you can I can now, as you mentioned that like compare that kind of scene, which is a very kind of archetypical 50s, also 30s scene in a way, with what it is here, which is a similar scene, you know, when you see these guys sitting around the construction site, but it's kind of imbued with this kind of quilt of documentary details that those earlier films necessarily just don't have. And in this film, you know, instead of there being studio sweat on their face, there's a real sweat. You know, you can see that the guy's hair is greasy, you can see this, you can see that. And then, as Oku said, the fact that then he just moves away from that, you know, the film stops being that after 40 minutes. You know, you're watching that and you're like, wow, this is like the best, and then suddenly it goes and it's something else. It goes to this kind of beautiful place. I mean, the guy who gives him places sleep turns out to be quite a nice guy, himself uh a sex worker and gigolo, and he uh kind of like he's like, Well, if you need some money, you can try this, and he tries it, and it's like okay, he's a little uncomfortable, and then again it just kind of moves on, you know, it's like basically just a way to make money. And what I don't know that like the fact that that exists in the film, and if you look at the you know, if you look at the criteria on Blu-ray, like the cover is him and the guy, so clearly that's kind of the way the film it's strongly remembered, but it's like a very small aspect of the film, and to have that and to have that not be something very moralistic, it's probably the least moralist moralistic sequence in the whole film, is very, very special. It's also worth saying that Brock himself was openly gay, which was very unusual at that time among like Filipino directors, but uh very terrible things that happen to characters, but I think you never lose the humanism through their action, you feel sympathy for them and you feel for them, and they're always portrayed in a dignified way.

SPEAKER_03 19:26

In in his stories, he allows this very human moments to exist.

SPEAKER_04 19:31

Yes, I definitely agree with you, but then also it's part I think of Brocker's cruelty that having set all that up, he often kills those people in horrible horribly perfunctory and brutal ways. Um I would say never in a kind of you know Michael Haneke way to make a point, but it's more of a kind of just like this world is so horrible that even though you like this guy, even though we put a lot of effort to show him as uh interesting, complex character, he's just gonna be killed.

SPEAKER_03 20:02

I don't know, I I didn't feel like that he was just like killing those characters out of like affect, as I was saying. I think there's a it it it is embedded uh uh within this social context, so you just understand that. At least like you you you feel that that can happen, that could have happened there.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

I I think those two things can like uh uh coexist in his films, uh almost uh like contradictory moments, which is like there's naturally like this sense of like empathy in like the way like the characters that Friend Stoic was saying, uh also like the scenes he allows of the characters uh just like being an existent in this world, uh beyond like the uh requirements of the plot itself. But I think there's like a palpable sense of I don't know if this ghost is the world per se, how he views the world around them. I think as Chris was saying in the introduction, there's like this nihilistic element of like no matter how much empathy like uh I have for this character and their own journey, the weight of like the circumstances around them, like the weight of like the history that they're kind of like uh circumstantially just experiencing to me is very palpable in that sense of like how the film always um kind of like whenever you feel like the characters have some sort of victory, there's like always like this reminder of like no no, there's like this like a syst systematic thing that's going on that kind of like to me relates a little bit to also his militant like metal work in real life. And I guess that that tension in his films to me is like also very interesting because kind of like takes like the just like the narrative structures are a little bit like beyond just like the uh perhaps more pulpy elements that you kind of expect. Perhaps the only exception to that might be like the canon able, which I really like, but we can get into that later.

SPEAKER_04 21:41

I would say that these films, you know, have those exploitation elements, but I feel like he never or really kind of basks in the murder of someone who he's established as, you know, particularly interesting. In Manila, I mean the death of Atong and then the death of And the death of Legea, uh ne they both happen uh off-screen, you know, so it's just like the character finds out that this has happened and it's just like super devastating. And this happens in a lot of these films. Either something happens off-screen, or you know, in the case of Cain and Abel, there's this horrible death which just comes from uh a gun being shot through a window and killing a woman and a baby, you know, and it's like it's over. There's no there's no music, there's no swelling synths, there's no nothing, it's just devastation.

SPEAKER_03 22:34

It's all about the framing. You you mentioned those like very cruel and violent moments, but I feel like um we see uh we watch this universe, microcosmos, whether it's a city, whether it's a neighborhood, through the eyes of uh one uh main character. That's usually the films, like at least in the films that we watched. And that's our lens, that's how we perceive that's through their eyes we we perceive their reality, and we see their faces a lot, like and their faces I think contain that humane quality. At least they when when I see this character's faces, I these his uh choices of actors and actresses are amazing. They I think they contain that humane quality. They their face is very much uh innocent. I don't want to say naive, but they have this very generous and welcoming quality. Um, this is more about I think visual aspect of how their faces, their facial expressions look. And I think that's the captivating effect and w why we feel connection to these characters. Although uh all these atrocities and brutal uh murders, uh abductions are happening, we just want to stick to that expression.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

If you look at the most like canonical or most well-known uh Lino Broca films, at least like in the Western releases, like they always have like a portrait shot, but like uh very like close-up as of the main character, as the kind of like this like central like of the poster of like the dude or putri release. And to me, like space also to like how he kind of engages with that throughout the films. I mean their faces themselves are very expressive, they're not like uh gesticulating or like uh alluding to that like uh emotional state, just like by being there and by like letting like the camera linger on them, you kind of like get that like dramatic sense. There's like that durational aspect in those like portrait shots to me that really become to me, at least it's what I mostly associate with like his visual grammar.

SPEAKER_04 24:34

You know, one thing that kind of crosses through my mind every time I see Manila is Raphael Rocco's face, the face of the protagonist. You know, he he he has a strange kind of role in this film because at the same time he's very kind of blank, he doesn't have a backstory really. Uh there's not a lot of kind of rich characterization going on with him. And always at first it takes me a while, and I think like, oh yeah, this is gonna be a big problem, like a floor of this film, you know, that he's basically this blank slate. But then you realize that the film is really a film basically about looking. Like he's through again and again in this film, he's looking at things, and you are looking at his face, often for very, very long sequences. I mean, the kind of central part of this film is that he's going to this Chinese restaurant where he thinks that his sweetheart is being kept as a slave, and he just sits there for hours and hours and hours, and he's just looking, and then he's looking at other people on the streets, even the building site, he's looking at the other guys, you know. His face is so and he also has this quite almost childlike, soft face as well, with very soft features. So that also is like inextricably bound up in this film. The same as the building site transitioning to this kind of street melodrama. For me, the film transforms again in this final stretch with this this absolutely amazing monologue by Hilda Coronel. When he finally finds her, he brings her home and they have sex, which is also amazing that this is not something that's you know, uh there's no kind of slow-motion sex, and since it's like cut and they're in bed naked after having sex. And she just delivers this incredible like 10-15-minute monologue, basically just in close-up with a blank background. So you it's it you just I mean, for me, it's like also then becomes something else completely. It also becomes like this theatrical construction, suddenly out of this very documentary film. Um, and of course, Brocker was, as I said, you know, he was a very theatrically trained director, and these people all in his acting troupe. So there's also that flash of that, you know, in that moment that you suddenly see her, who of course would later be Inxiang as well, and you see her as this suddenly coming completely deep, complex, rich character out of nowhere, in contrast to him, who's kind of a blank slate. It's an amazing, amazing, amazing monologue, and then it shifts and she's dead. You know, so like just that that the the way that this film is able to incorporate all of these different moods and formal ideas and styles of performance, faces, all of this coming together in this film, it's like incredible to me.

SPEAKER_07 27:33

I'm always dreaming, dreaming, love will be mine, searching, I'm always searching, searching till my dream come true dreaming, I'm always dreaming, dreaming, love will be mine, searching.

SPEAKER_03 28:21

Maybe we can go to Bona, because I feel like that's the first film I've watched, and I was very, very first into it. And like after watching In Shang and Manila in the Clause of Light, I I feel like Bona kinda my my uh enthusiasm for Bona kinda dimmed down a bit. I think we're very limited in terms of full-fledged characters because I think Gardo is is just like very difficult, and um, maybe that's a also a particularity of Broca is this very um I don't want to say caricatural, but difficult to understand uh evil, almost cartoonish characters. Oh and it's I think Gardo is one of them.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

In Manila Cross Light, there's like this focus on like the construction side and it's its own like ecosystem in monastery have less focus on the ecosystem itself and more on the labor, uh and like the domestic work that the sheen's ends up doing, like the weight of this on paint uh work and also like very very gender work to me, kind of like has that element in in there as well. To me, kind of like distinguishes the film as you were saying perhaps doesn't have like that like a dramatic power of like the 70s films. But to me it's also very interesting in that sense because to me it kind of feels uh like a feature length, also has again like Bonai uh herself like as the the character uh is interesting because it provides also a middle class perspective, uh which isn't really the case in the the other films I've seen at least. Uh so that adds sort of like a social uh political, socio-economic element to kind of distinguishes the film.

SPEAKER_04 29:51

I mean, I love this film. Uh I wouldn't want to choose between the children here. I mean, it's like this very perverse film, also in some way, in in a way that you know, even a film like In Shan, which I love, uh Bona has more of a kind of perversity because In Shan, which I guess we'll talk about next, is this kind of like classic um miserabless melodrama, you know, with the kind of legacy of Mizuguchi and stuff like that. Whereas Bona is he you can feel that he's trying to make this um uh painful and incomprehensible uh situation in in the basic setup of Bona, which I should say so Bona is the protagonist of the film, uh, and she's this middle class woman, as as Alonso said, it's unusual in these films because usually they were shot in this particular um slum of Manila. Uh and Bona is this this woman comes from the middle class, a very different kind of apartment that we we usually don't even see apartments, we usually see kind of shanty houses and huts and things. And she's basically just bored with her family existence. She lives with her parents, she's completely uninterested in it, and she becomes obsessed. Uh going every day to this pathetic little film shoot of some kind of action film, and she basically falls in love with this kind of bozo who's uh a bit player, you know, he's handsome but stupid, and he's just like punching people on camera and stuff, and she just falls like devotionally in love with him, and then completely throws away her life in pursuit of this like ridiculous male idol. Um, and the the film is that I mean you just see her engaging in this absolutely self-destructive, antisocial form of existence, you know, basically becoming a domestic servant in his house. And seemingly also she's she's chasing a kind of domesticity that she has literally just thrown aside from her own home, and now seemingly wants to be this little wife to this man who doesn't love her, treats her horribly, uh has sex with other women in front of her, is kind of borderline abusive, definitely on a mental level at least. That kind of basic perversity of the film and this kind of unknowability of her character, I think, is what makes this kind of an amazing melodrama. To me, this film is very, very special, and it really takes that right up until essentially the last one minute of the film. It follows that line, and then at the last minute it tips towards a kind of ugly, explosive melodrama.

SPEAKER_03 32:39

As much as Gardo is a care cartoonish character, the film tries to give him a certain psychological reasoning behind his behavior. Like we s hear him saying, Oh, I was like raised by my mother like this, so that's how my mother baited me. That's what that's why I want to like do this and that. So his actions are somehow like given uh some sort of even if it's a fucked up logic, it's a there's a logical reason why he acts uh the way he acts. But for Bona, we don't have we don't have the any background information about her family life or any psychological depth that would uh help us understand or help uh justify her actions. She's just uh defined through her obsession, and that's what I think uh why I find it very hard to like um stand with this character.

SPEAKER_01 33:39

Well, I guess to me that uh one dimensional element kind of how I approach these kind of films is like they essentially like avatar for like one concept or one idea, they don't really like fully fledged characters in the traditional dramatic sense. And I think particularly I don't know if like I'm too permissive with like uh uh quote unquote like uh social like militant films or like political films, but I get that kind of like it's the only thing you really need to basically experience to know for like the film to uh work as more like uh inquiry into the kind of relationship which kind of established in which goes beyond like the specificity of like uh Bona and Gardel's relationship, and it's more like just uh again like a dissection or like a dissertation on the kind of like a patriarchal like structure it's dealing with.

SPEAKER_04 34:22

I think Bona is kind of the kind of classic Lino Brock uh the kind of distillation of his style. When I was watching these films, I mean I couldn't help but notice that a lot of them really do a lot of the particularly I would say argument scenes uh take place in in single shots. It sometimes is just the camera is there and it's just recording this very long sequence. And as I I mean I noticed that here, and I also noticed it in Inshan, which of course kind of highlights the fact that these films were made very cheaply, and they were often made in this one particular slum uh where Broker had some friends and was able to shoot, and they were really shot there. Uh, I don't think there was any kind of um studio work or anything like that. It was really shot there, so you can feel the kind of economical aspect of the films as well very much coming through. So you don't you don't see these elaborate camera movements, um things like that, you know, blowing through the space or whatever. Everything is quite scaled back out of necessity, and I think at some point you start to feel like of also, as I mentioned, he's making a lot of films between these films that we're talking about as well. He just becomes this master of kind of economical staging. You feel these borders of the of the places very, very strongly. So windows, doorways, balconies, things like that are very important for these films because they become almost these kind of borders within simply staged sequences, if that makes sense, you can't get it. I think In Shang was also the film that people outside of the Philippines discovered Lino Broca. I mean, I guess it was probably his ten or fifteenth film. But it was a film that really kind of cemented his place abroad because famously it was uh smuggled to the Cannes Film Festival. It was somehow it premiered in in the Philippines, um, and it caught the attention of uh Pierre Esong, who was kind of uh would go on to be a huge Broca supporter and also a Filipino cinema in general, somehow got wind of the film, invited it to Cannes, and the producer of In Chang smuggled the film out of the Philippines in her suitcase. Uh because In Chiang is it's this very salacious melodrama. I think it's also part of the reason that the film is so well known, is that I mean, maybe if you come from a different cultural context, but I remember seeing this film for the first time as a 19-year-old middle-class British kid and just being like, what the fuck is this? Um and that feeling has never left me. So it's it's about um this very painful subject matter, which is uh Inshan is this young woman who's living with her mother in this slum in on the outskirts of Manila, and her mother takes up a boyfriend who secretly is in supposedly in love with uh Inshang, and this explodes the tensions within an already terribly tense family dynamic because the mother is very brutal to In Shang and beats her horribly and treats her horribly, so the arrival of this guy who's a piece of shit, petty gangster, just makes everything worse. The fact that the film was smuggled out of the Philippines to show it can was because uh at this this was kind of the height of the martial law period when um Marcos had declared martial law to rule over the country without having to obey any kind of constitutional rights. The film was explicitly hated by Hilda Marcos, Ferdinand Marcos's famous uh wife, uh, because she said that it showed like the bad side of our country and like people don't want to see such filth. I think it it's funny because Brocca really has these two films that are the two kind of big ones that are always nailed to the top of the of the Totem pole, and they're they're very different films, and in contrast to Minele and the Clause of Light, which we've just talked about as this very kind of free-flowing, strange, evolving film, In Ch In In Chiang is a lot more like Bona in the sense that it's very focused, but the kind of fury of In Chang and the kind of disgust that is at the heart of this film, evidenced by the very first shot of a pig having its throat slashed on camera, like this roar rage in this film is kind of just I think like nothing else that I've ever seen.

SPEAKER_03 40:20

Even if it's all about disgust, I feel like in the final scene when In Chang meets her mother and she starts to cry, there's you also sense that what she was looking for through all these interactions, whether it's her boyfriend, whether it's this whether it's her mother, I think was ultimately love that she couldn't receive from anyone. Because I think she wanted to be loved and to be taken care of, and that's what she was lacking. Like no one in her life provided that to her in the film. And I think to me, that was maybe the devastating aspect of that that revenge, that thing she done, that that because she wanted to be loved.

SPEAKER_01 41:08

I mean this film, sense of like uh indignance that you were kind of alluding to moves the film in this like like narrative economy in this film, like it's because it's a very I wouldn't say like necessarily straightforward in like a derivative sense, but like you could like understand this film. I they mostly actually, when I uh came to know the film, was kind of described almost like as a as a rape-revened film. Naturally, like structurally it has those elements, but uh that kind of means to misses a little bit of the point of like the wider like um inquiry that like a broca does into like specificity of like the margin like social margin marginality and like the vividness of the ecosystem like the Insciank kind of like uh inherits like by this point uh what we've been discussing in in Manila and then in Bona. Uh to me is also kind of like the main protagonist in the film, almost as much as the main characters. See a lot of like actors just suffering through circumstances like are outside of their own power in a lot of like blocker films, and to me that makes a lot of sense and it's very like justifiable, particularly when the uh political uh thrust of his films goes through this like central conceit to me of like uh how existing in this like uh under like the the rest of like the like socioeconomic minority kind of implies just like this constant like raggedy state of like being subject to these horrible things. And to me, that's like very specific, kind of like inform the grammar of the film itself.

SPEAKER_03 42:32

Here it's just like it's it's a prison basically. No one it's only alluded uh through um through the brother of this shop owner that he's studying because he wants to go to Manila. That's the only way that the outside of this uh neighborhood of the slums exists. That's the only thing. So, in a way, In Chang, she's already living in a prison, uh, starting with the family as the core of the the society. And I think um there are exceptions like in Macho Dencer, uh Noel and the relationship between Noel and her sister, but I think the main source of this systematic violence that uh society uh uh exercises on people starts with the family, and that's why he attacks the family here and he denounces the family as the source of like violence.

SPEAKER_04 43:27

There's a kind of specificity to these films in the in the way that they depict poverty, you know, the way that they he will show you how a meal is prepared, or uh what it's like to go to the shop and not be able to afford things. You know, like all this like wealth of details in this film is what kind of grounds that for me. So then it's able to go to these very kind of overbaked, melodramatic, violent heights, um, without like while still keeping. An attachment to that world. Confinement is a huge part of Inshan, you know, of this existence, the way he depicts it, the way he depicts where she sleeps, the scene when she's raped. All of these things are like about a sense of entrapment.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

The ruthlessness of the film, that revenge arc when when it gets to that, superting those two different things, which is like the perhaps more like classically or traditional, like more like arthouse-inclined, uh melodramatic element of having like more perhaps more like a taste. That doesn't get its hands dirty and goes more to like the symbolism and to like the suggestion. But also doesn't really fully get to like uh which again is not necessarily a bad thing, but there's not like this cathartic uh exploitative element in the violence per se. There's like a fence almost like a dry sense of like, yeah, this is like justifiable, it this is understood understood, but those doesn't really erase kind of like the initial like dourness of like the scent of like sordiness that kind of permeates the film, which is once one thing we're going back to. It's like despite what whatever happens to the to the characters we're kind of seeing through the films, there's this like like uh permeating sense that like the the like horrible like world they kind of like inhabit uh will kind of like continue being that way. Um in that sense, uh kind of like saying like this kind of feels almost almost dry and almost kind of like I wouldn't say like anticlimatic because it feels like there's like an important release, but it's also a sense that that is just like part of the struggle, if it makes sense.

SPEAKER_04 45:36

Yeah, totally. And also I you know, thinking about this idea of um shooting in the slums, uh in this sense, this this slum is uh is tondo, it's known as tondo on the outskirts of Manila. Um I was thinking about you know how certainly a director today, but even a director at that time uh of a certain inclination would have kind of underlined the fact that it was shot in a slum. So maybe you would have these uh shots, like distant shots of kids playing in garbage or this kind of stuff that would give you this feeling, wow, it's so terrible that people live like this and so on, which is itself this kind of condescending level of distance, which isn't the case here. It's it's just a setting, you know, and and actually the the images of life that you see generally are pretty joyful. I mean, you know, despite the the the kind of hor horror of poverty, you know, like I mentioned, these kids playing with a skipping rope. You never really see anything in this kind of leering fashion. It's really like almost he used it just as a as a kind of um place to shoot, almost, you know, like he just as a as a this is what the film needed, so this is where you were gonna shoot. It's like a material fact in the film, and I think again and again he just goes to great efforts to show you that fact, I would say. So how was that? I mean, because I I had the kind of stereotypical uh White West in the introduction to Lina Broca with In Chang, but you had Kane and Abel, which is quite a different introduction.

SPEAKER_01 47:57

I guess it had an impact on how like approached the rest of uh Broker's career because naturally to me this kind of like more what the the pulpiest film from him that I've seen. Uh and also has like a different like uh emotional frequency, but it kind of has those both elements, like those those two elements are very present. And I guess despite being more like structurally out and outworldly, this kind of like confrontation and like uh like faction warfare in front, but again, like well the name Kane and was kind of like I was raised Catholic, so it's like this clearly like a like a biblical tradition was kind of appealing. Seeing how much like melanomatic intensity really via the heart of all the violence that occurs like around the characters uh was perhaps like a really illuminating experience. You you can understand, I think, like his whole like uh body of work, or at least the films I've seen through this film, but also the distinctiveness is kind of like modular in the sense that you can I can now that it's in more films, you can take elements from them and can kind of like create create like a genealogy that leads towards this film.

SPEAKER_04 48:55

I I really like Kane and Abel. I mean I don't want to to act like I'm in a kind of a camp against it. It's just like to me it's a bit um it's maybe how Urku feels a little bit about Bona. It's like very, very professional work by a master, but for me kind of almost lacking a kind of secondary level that these other films have. You know, it's it's almost like maybe how other people see these other films, you know, which is like they they it's it's uh almost missing this kind of tension at its heart that takes it to a a new plane. Um, but maybe like to just go on what you were saying, I think that also can be again just this kind of distorting effect of the fact that we just haven't seen these man's films. Uh but like nobody has outside of the Philippines, really. I mean, you know, you get uh 10, 12, 15 of these films maximum people have any idea about. And then beyond that, it really starts to fall off, and people just don't know those films. So when you look at the films that are made around uh around the same time as Cain and Abel, it's like films that you know don't look so different, uh films that are like much more kind of pulpy, uh strange, unaccountable films that maybe we can't exactly find a place for. I don't think Cain and Abel is quite that. I mean I think it fits quite well with the overall idea of Broca that we have, but just to say that you know, like this we're just scratching the surface. Uh we're really going by received wisdom even when we try and go off-road a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 50:40

I feel that I mean while watching it, I just felt like, oh, I've seen this story a hundred times. I mean, that's the same you would you would also say the same things for other films of Bro Broca because they they are melodrames, they are melodrams, they're universal, uh they they're more less about characters than what um social background that they represent in a way, as you said uh um a couple of minutes ago. Um but here I think as Christopher said, that extra tissue of social tissue is missing. That's something that grounds the the tension between those two characters.

SPEAKER_01 51:26

I I would agree with that in terms of it doesn't really have those depths, but I think there's like a pleasure, at least to me, like it's like a pleasure also in saying like this more like focused work, almost like workman-like form of approaching the film, like uh uh for what it is. And also I just like the violence in this film also I find very interesting. Uh it's like the physical violence of like the bloodshed uh literally of what happens in this film. Uh if we were if we were happy uh earlier talking about like uh Douglas Sirich and like a fast winter, I think this is a film that perhaps you would align closer to like I don't know like uh Michael Wiener or John Flynn in the kind of sensibility it has. Uh which I guess that brings to me like a fascination in seeing uh a filmmaker that could also make this film that is also like uh unquestionably like a Rino Rocket film, uh and can work, it's very recognizable also, uh, but doesn't need to go into like the textual analysis part of things, doesn't need uh that specificity of like the social milieu to uh work into those like perhaps the visual grammar of the film and like the way like he approaches those melodic elements uh and finds new avenues to explore. So to me, just on the pure and almost like uh primal element of of his films, which to me like that primal element goes into those genres, be it like melodrama or be it like what we have kind of described as exploitation, is very present in this film, just perhaps in a more like a centralized uh and like streamlined way.

SPEAKER_04 52:54

It's interesting because like I think like basic social critique of this film, if you can call it that, is quite obvious. I mean, you know, it's a rich family, they suffer from intense Freudian problems, uh, and basically it explodes into this mass of self-annihilating violence. Knowing this kind of structure, I was still surprised by the kind of extent of the violence, as you said, you know, and how far he pushes that and how willing he's able to, you know, go to great depths to show that in in this classic level of hyper detail that isn't necessarily, you know, required by the plot, but he's just pushes it further and further just to show it as this huge spectacle of violence. And as you said, he's like a very, very competent genre filmmaker as well, you know. That's what I love about guys from this period and why it's like basically my favorite type of director to investigate, someone who's able to make a lot of films, is that you know you love them for all the reasons that you love them, but then also from time to time you realize like, oh, this this person actually knew how to make make a movie, you know, like even a lesser movie is like a very, very competent piece of craft, and this movie is super beautiful as well. Um, it's like very unusual to see Brocker shooting in this like upper class plantation setting, which again I think brings out the theatrical side of his personality more because you can just see like there's a kind of delight in staging for spaces like this with the backdrops of the windows, this and that, you know, like there's there's just like a different visual texture to this film than in the other ones, and uh and of course that everyone's amazing. It's also this very kind of packed film with bit players, and they all really, really shine in the way that's like it's in a way that it's easy to uh take that for granted, you know. But maybe you watch another person's film and you realize, oh no, in Brocca, like he really was able to get from this guy who appears just for one minute an amazing, memorable performance.

SPEAKER_01 55:06

I do also think like there's like this tragic uh aspect on how it is uh like uh put together and like particularly in the in the editing of those sequences towards the end, it almost feels like uh there's a futility uh that you arrive to that climax. Like despite being presented as you as like the inevitable inevitability of the conclusion, once you get there, it still feels like very very different of what you expect. There's like this like uh register in the the images and like the the construction that kind of always keeps you on your toes, I think.

SPEAKER_09 56:06

Very self-righteous. Miskinangoing makes me feel guilty.

SPEAKER_03 56:09

Macho Dancer is about a man who lives in the countryside uh whose name is Paul, and from the very beginning uh we learn that uh he has an American lover who um gives him money to provide for his family. And once Larry decides to leave the country and because his service is over, um Paul needs because Paul needs to provide for his family, he decides to move to Manila. And there he gets involved with this group of young men at his age who was working for as uh macho dancers. Strippers we can say, but also sex workers uh whose main uh thing is to uh have like a live shower show. Uh that's like they dance, but also there's specific uh actors to like have shower together uh on on stage. And um within this uh particular uh milieu um he meets with Noel, and uh the um uh an important chunk of the film is also revolves around Noel uh and and his search for his sister. So I think it's um it's also in terms of structure, I think a bit similar to Mal Manila in c in the clouse of uh light, but here I feel like it doesn't work that well. That kind of um ever-changing uh structure, the surprising element that's as the narrative unfolds that you discover doesn't work as much. I think maybe I although I I I also like loved and enjoyed watching it, but l it to a lesser extent than the others, because of the spacing problem. I think the film is too long for its own good.

SPEAKER_04 58:02

It's also from the end of Brooker's career. I mean he died prematurely, as I mentioned at the start, but also at this moment, you know, the cultural context had changed. I don't know if he had lived long enough, like what would have happened, because also I think this is something that a lot of the directors we talked about, I'm thinking also about uh Artivi Ilma's, that you know, when the 90s come, it's a disaster. And uh with Lino Broker, he died in 91, so he never got to live that. Um, but this kind of like idea of like a late career rerun of your greatest hits, you know, things are stretched out a little bit longer, the pacing is a little bit off. Um it's not it's not something that I've had a chance to discover in the films of this period. Maybe it's there, maybe it's not. If it's not there, maybe it's something that would have come the next decade in a bigger way. A film that I saw uh this morning for the first time that I really, really love, is um a film from 1984 called This Is My Country by Anko. I alluded to it as having this amazing opening scene where basically you just follow this side character who's watching a demonstration happen. And that's really, you know, this kind of quintessential, you know, Brocker work because it's again about unionizing in a huge amount of detail. It's set in a printing press, which is you know, another one of those genius melodramatic touches that you set a film inside a very loaded industry like that. And it's again, it's like in the in the vein of the films that we've talked about, just this absolutely perfect piece of entertainment that also just happens to be incredibly depressing and incredibly politically trenchant. We are coming to you live from Il Cinemarito in Bologna. You may hear the sound of chairs being stacked in the Piazza Maggiore, bells ringing, horrible music being played. That's the joy of being live, folks. Uh I am joined by Alonso and also by a special guest Jorge Negrete. Sadly, Urku is not here in Bologna, but we will do our best to capture her spirit. The reason we're adding this little addendum is that after our conversation about Lino Broca, there has been a world premiere of a brand new restoration of one of Broca's films, which we didn't talk about in the episode you've just listened to. That is Wade But Found Wanting from 1974. Jorge, you did a pretty good tagalog, so do you want to say the title of the film?

SPEAKER_05 1:01:24

Yeah, sure, why not? It's Tinimban Kanguni Kulang. That's amazing, folks.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:31

We're looking at lose all the phinipillo audience we gained on the uh Roman porn episode. Or maybe lost, who knows?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:38

Lost or gained, well. Today um let's talk about the movie a little bit. Um to me this was kind of very different kind of Lino Brock film, considering that we've just seen 6, 7, 8, and I revisited a few of them. This one is much less um much less of a chamber drama, I would say. In in Brockers films, usually there's just a few characters usually trapped in closed spaces, maybe a mother and a daughter, husband and wife, etc. This is really like kind of this almost uh whole town gone evil type of horror vibe in some way. Um which I wasn't really expecting, and it's also kind of changing my mental timeline of Brocker's evolution because this was his first major film, I think it's safe to say. As we mentioned in the episode, before this, he just made a few um as-yet undiscovered assignments that are often considered fairly routine, and I think this was the first one that was kind of like a characteristic uh Brocker film in some way.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:49

Yeah, to me it's also kind of like uh surprising to see that how open and how like uh choral like the dramatic dramatic structure structure of the film is. Uh yeah, particularly with uh you start out with like this like central, what was it like the central character where you assumed to be, but then kind of like devolves into like this uh kind of like as you were saying, like the whole town kind of gets like a shot at it. And also in this film, what was gonna say perhaps the first thing I was struck by was like the documentary element we were kind of discussing with the Mayan and the Clause of Light, as like this like breakthrough moment, it's kind of already here, already here in this film, particularly like the processions and the whole like uh beauty queen kind of element of the film, which I think uh kind of amplifies that the like sensory experience that we had with the Mayan and the Close of Light. And having like that hook also uh within the what at more traditional film would use as the opportunity to just ground you the narrative to Roca seems to be like it was always there, this impulse to like have this like I wouldn't say like anthographic, but this like reflection of like real life quote unquote like Filipino society, which I think really builds into like the film as it progresses. So I guess like those will be like some of the first impressions I had. And also I guess like uh the social issues uh uh melodrama element is like fully like uh on full steam on this film already. Yeah, it's out of the cage. Yeah, exactly. Like it really feels like as we were discussing on the pod, like it's kind of essentially like the telenovel approach of like uh taking like a social issue and making it the most like salacious, not only salacious, but like yeah, exalted way of expressing it.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:22

Literally the melodrama comes out of the womb, you know? That's that's how intense it is. But for me, what was really striking is I I think I can see the appeal to Italian audiences, considering that this film has like a lot of pasolinian elements, a lot of Visconti elements, you know, like the first uh Visconti or first Pasolini films. I mean, I thought a lot about uh Acatone, for example, Bellissima, Mamma Roma. In in the way that it is very uh yeah, it's a choral exercise. There's like this approach to the town as a character, but uh there are of course like um there is like a main uh let's say the character which is like this young guy who um has a relationship with um two outcasts from the town, which I it is uh Berto, which is a leopard man, and Kuala, who is um I don't know, I think she has some sort of um uh psychotic trauma because of what happens at the beginning of the film, which is a very as Alonso was saying, like we started like really, really came out strong at the gate uh from for that uh from that first shot. But uh for me also, what Chris said, I I think it's a very different film from uh what I was um used to seeing from Broca. Uh something completely different. I think I don't know if I really like the um the shape that he had in his pre in his uh next films. I appreciate it a lot. Uh I prefer Mike Bell. Leon myself. But um I think he in this one I I can see the appeal and I can see why it opened up like to international audiences. Considering the fact that there's also this trend, like in third world cinema, to exploit the melodramatic elements, also do uh some sort of tremendousism. I call it the tremendismo, like in in Spanish, you know, like these very, very crude and raw uh elements um about um rural people, about uh town people. Um but yeah, that those are topics which I do not have specifically with the film, but you know, with the way European audiences what European audiences like about uh third world countries.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:47

Yeah, but at the same time in this one, I was surprised that somehow it both, as you said, manages to be this kind of salacious melodrama, very much unafraid of showing things that like push the limit of that form. So what Jorge is alluding to is that in the opening scene there's a kind of forced abortion with visible alien-like fetus lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Uh, and this is something that the film comes back to again and again. But at the same time, there's this unusual kind of restraint with the arc of the film. It's almost like there are several moments where Brocker kind of pushes it to the edge of high almost soap opera, and then plays it just at the end a little more subtly than you might expect. And this this I think also feeds into this kind of um uh free-flowing entire ensemble type drama that the film has, you know, that you're constantly switching between characters, you follow some character until you believe that there might be a uh conclusion of whatever arc that they're struggling with, and then Brocco will kind of shift away from that, move to something else, move to something else, move to something else. In the end, of course, it does become high melodrama, it does become almost like uh you know, some kind of strange inversion of uh Fritz Lang's M or something, uh in which the whole town does become this sort of evil force uh chasing these people. But I I also think like somehow to me that's the magic of this film, that it works both sides of the street, like high melodrama and something more subtle, without ever really compromising either of those two things. So maybe also like we could say that it's a very um beautiful restoration, also, and it's very nice to see these films like looking in such good shape, seeing them with such a big audience.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:45

Yeah, and also uh as I think regarding like the restoration itself, like just like the textures of the images, particularly like the chiaroscurus we're kind of alluding to in like Marina the Cause of Light, which we're kind of see kind of seen, not really like uh like uh diffuse, but like I don't think like that element was perhaps like as prevalent in his like later films. To see like this like early 70s to mid-70s, kind of like uh his dialogue with those kind of expressive expressionistic forms to me is also very interesting, as someone that needs to like explore a little bit more. But in this field, particularly like the sex scene, for example, yeah, it's kind of kind of like straight out of like I don't know, like a Jack Sturno film or something like that. If he what would like sex, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:24

Or then if he lived long enough to do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:28

Yeah, or then you have like this just like like throwaway, but we would have been like throwaway sequences, but just shutting these like high contrast, like uh also like you have like the characters in the front, but also like the background is like also like a very like uh elongated uh that type of field. All those elements to me kind of like show well in other context will be like okay, so this is the actual like uh start of this like masterpiece run. But again, that since we come to this like uh retrospectively, kind of creates this even like attention to the narrative real build of Roca. And I think that is always uh a fertile ground for me to kind of like throw away all assumptions because also in the in the main pot we were discussing about like how uh most of the dramatic arcs are reading that around like the archetypes that characters that aren't aren't really like fully fledged humans, but they work because they're archetypes in this film. Like it doesn't really work like that. You have like this more almost like a folk tales story arc, and yeah, there's like this a lot of like uh like wrenches being thrown into like what we think is like the like middlework authorism that comes out of this experience.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:32

Yeah, I also um talking in regards to like to the character development. I when I saw the title, uh I thought the title had like a sort of an Osu air, you know. I was wait, but then found out. Um and I think it's I was wait, but I was wait, but but um I I thought it was um it was sort of thender, also the way that this film shifts, you know, in genres. Sometimes it has like this very strong dramatic elements, but then it's like this sort of a coming of age story, then it becomes like this sort of uh funny uh with these funny beats at the at the school, and then the whole um showing the traditions of the of the village, and uh it had a sort of um uh it worked like a mosaic, you know, of different scenes which were not like really um directed by the narrative. I thought it was more like these sort of brief sketches that try to deploy exactly um life in the village to build up to that uh climax that you were uh both mentioning, which funnily, I I now that you mentioned, I thought that um we were talking before recording this about like the uh very close relationship, and I think Alonso mentioned it also in the in the podcast that there is a very strong uh bond between uh Filipino melodrama and Mexican melodrama because Mexican telenovelas are like really really huge over there, and uh we also have like this uh language uh sort of uh bonds, and um when you look at that, you see compare this film, for example, to the films by Felipe Casals, particularly Felipe Casals, uh Canoa or Fezperanza Caridad, and you see many of those very brutalistic, uh well not brutalistic, but brutal uh elements, uh but also like this very deep connection with the people that they are uh shooting, like it's not condescending in any way, but I think it's very intimate, but at the same time it's raw, I as we like it.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:51

That's a pretty good place to end.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:39

So this was Linobrochka, and other than that, what have you guys been watching lately? I personally am still stuck in Nikatsu Roman Porno, so I'd love to hear um something fresh, something new from you.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:54

I finally have a new film to talk about, uh, but it's a very well-known film, and it's also a film directed by a very old man, so I feel like I have a a past to talk about a new film here in uh in this safe space, and that is Disclosure Day by a little lone director named Steven Spielberg. Um yes, it's a film by now 79-year-old Steven Spielberg. Um and you know, for me, listeners of this podcast know very well that I'm very interested in things that are out of time. Um boy is this film out of time in many ways. Um I've like also for me like gone on this long journey with Mr. Spielberg over the years. Um, and he's a filmmaker that I can never really kind of accommodate myself to, but like remain nonetheless fascinated by. So he's kind of like this prime candidate for liking him in his later kind of out-of-touch years. And I guess for the last like decade and a half, he's been really out of touch. I mean, I don't think any of his films have really done anything for me. Um, and this one is kind of like this very um self-conscious attempt to do something kind of original, you know, like make a comment on the moment and all this kind of stuff. And it's very um idiosyncratic, very strange film that I think it there's a there's a point in this film, it's actually many points in this film, but one in particular, where I felt like a as a viewer that you're just taken to a fork in the road, and either you go with it or you just laugh at the screen. And if you decide to go with it as I did, there's good stuff waiting for you, I would say. Um if you if you can accept very badly CGI'd forest animals and like aliens uh that are kind of bordering on very out and out cliche. Uh if you can swallow that, like this movie will I think do things for you. When it was over, I was kind of surprised that I was quite moved by the film. Because the film is it's about this this woman played by Emily Blunt, uh, who one day starts to get this ability to somehow speak in an alien language, and it leads to this kind of contact with uh aliens on Earth. And it's a film, a very naive liberal film about the belief in images, clearly made in a kind of MAGA moment. Uh and like the combination of that, like the fact that the the text of the film is so much rubbed in your face that it's about this almost, you know, quasi-religious, old-fashioned, hyper-liberal belief in like the truth of images. And if you just like show people images of the truth, they will believe you. I found kind of moving, you know, that's the kind of thing that used to piss me off in Spielberg's films. But now that he's this kind of old, out-of-touch guy, there's something moving about that, and especially when combined with the fact that he's just a very, very filmmaker, brilliant filmmaker on just a kind of a image-by-image level. So you just see in this film again and again, um, in whatever scene it is, that he's like searching for images, like he's searching for a new way to shoot, I don't know, conversation between two people or two people in a car or whatever it is. So there's just this like combination of restless creativity and like this naive belief in images somehow somehow moved my old uh crusty heart. What have you guys been watching?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:58

I guess on the uh opposite end of a um liberal uh Navité, I've been watching like uh militant uh Central American films. Uh one in specific I wanted to touch about um of one of Poleduc's historias for Revial de Pulgarcito. Uh which Poleduc is kinda I I I don't I don't think there's like a um more uh jarring uh transition politically like from Spielberg to Poleduc. But that's the beauty of this podcast. Yeah, there's something in there. Shows our range. Uh yeah, even in Mexico, Poly Luke is not really like that uh well known or studied as a filmmaker because uh his films were perhaps too they had like a structuralist elements, but were also like deeply like uh clearly like films made with like public institutions and in like more like a collective context. Uh his Mexican films like uh Etnocisio and like uh Rit Insurgente uh kind of deal with like uh like a like a kind of a dissertation of like the construction of Mexican state and like what the oppression around it. The film I recently was rewatching is actually doing that uh with El Salvador and kind of takes like a like a classical text of El Salvador called like the title historias porvia de Pulgacito, uh Pulgacito's uh Forbidden Histories, and talks about from the colonial period towards like the Central American Wars in the 70s and how that's kinda like shaped by this uh constant like uh foreign insert insertion in the country. And Luke takes that text, gives like uh those like a voiceover over of that text, and then like juxtaposes that text that comes a little bit earlier in time with images uh he recorded of like the ongoing like guerrilla uh struggle of the Farao Marti liberation front. So creates this very interesting like uh like dialectic the film kind of goes on about. Uh and in top of that, as these kind of fascinating transitions where it's just like purely um yeah, it structured indications of what like the shot you will see next is, so it's kind of like close-up and like presents a close-up, and that says like sum in, and then because assuming was the same close-up of this like uh Guerrigero speaking for like 20 minutes about like the ongoing like struggle. So it's a very dense film to watch, perhaps, if you don't have no context or no interest in the subject matter. But I think it's one of those like non-recognizable um like footnotes of like the film film history that because because they're created like a kind of structure like oh yes, it's just like a militant film, and there's like an assumption of what that means. I think this film hasn't really been like uh presented or discussed in like the just like if you want to we shouldn't like detach the for the the like political element, but it's just like a as a formal example of what Paul Leduc was kind of working with and the uh like uniqueness of his like uh filmic career. Uh I think this film is like a thing of its own and also was collectively created with like the Film Texum Popular. So it's kind of a uh Guerrero film that has this kind of like uh authorist sense in a way. Uh if you know if you're if in Madrid you can actually watch this film at uh Parina Sofia Museum and uh this next coming Saturday, it's build a screen on part of the uh Rinco and Imagine de Bananeras, which is like a program around like a militant Central American film that's rarely shown. Curated by I might have created that program. Oikun, uh how's the Roman porno experience been going?

SPEAKER_03 1:21:31

Very very good, very good. Um still uh very it still uh going on and very interesting discoveries, to be honest. Like uh at some point I was afraid that I was going to get bored of like watching these films, but like thankfully there's 800, more than 800 of them, so um there's always new discoveries to be made. And um, but this this week, um I really literally didn't watch anything aside uh bro Broka and uh Roman Porno. But the one thing I really liked and also wrote to you guys about was The Watcher in the Attic uh by Noboru Tanaka. Um if I can speak about it again because the king Noburu Tanaka again, yeah. The master did it again, the bastard did it again, literally. But uh this is guys, we haven't seen anything yet. Like this is the period or um that uh announces the big changes in his filmography, actually, because his style becomes so baroque, so exuberant and excessive in this film, and it's only the beginning. Uh, because this is actually an adaptation of um do you have you heard uh Rampo Edo Gava, Edo Gava Rampo, which is actually um the way the Japanization of Edgar Allan Poe. So this is actually um a Japanese writer specialized in this like uh Edogoru genre, it's like uh Edo Goro eroticism and grotesque. So um this film is actually the mix uh chair of two of his one of his novels and his uh two of his novels, I think. One of them, one of them is the human chair, which is about a man who basically puts himself within a chair, like uh within the fab, like the tissue of the chair for the fantasy. And the other is about about a man who wanders in the attic of a building and spies on people. So it's basically the uh quintessential cinematographic subject of the peeping, like the viewer, the one who watches, the one who's being watched. There's this aristocratic uh woman called Lady Minako who notices this man watching her, and throughout the film she engages in several uh sexual fantasies with uh this man who basically puts himself in the chair to feel closer to her, who's also the driver. And there's this clown figure that some uh we don't understand how she meets him, but there's this clown Piero that she's also uh having sexual fantasies with. Uh and but also the watcher in the attic becomes kind of like uh her soul mate because they understand they understand that they they're fucked up in this match. So they uh would they go into like poisoning her husband or like randomly killing a Catholic priest with the poison? And this is basically the narrative structure of the film, but compared to She Wee's market that we discussed last uh uh um episode, it's so Baroque, so uh crazy and rich in colors and also uh and also in characters. I was like, what is going on? Is it is this the same director? And I'm I'm really excited to watch more uh from him because he also directed the the um the Sadaabe film, which also released before Oshima's version. So I'm really looking forward to discover that film. But apparently there's also another one called uh Angel Gods Nami, which is also in the like Angel God series, and which seems to be one of the most excessive ones. So basically that's my that's what is in my program uh for next week.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:39

To the uh perverts and degenerates in our audience, like we hear you that you like this stuff. Uh so uh thank you for the last episode for listening to it so much. I mean, I don't know how that reflects on us, but uh we we we we've got the message between that and Doris Wishman. We we know that you have a taste. So we'll stop trying to do serious subjects and just do stuff for you guys. Since this is the end of the season, maybe do you do you want to not only add anything to this episode or what do your reflections uh on this season if you have any?

SPEAKER_03 1:26:20

I first want to thank uh thank thank to our listeners who I don't know uh how many of you guys are out there, but um at least from our social medias, I know that people are coming to me and talking about the podcast, and that moment is one of the like best moments that I I have during my day that when someone comes to me and randomly mentions about the podcast, but I also want to thank thank you too for like sharing these moments uh every two weeks uh since January, I guess. No, was it before? But because it's been such a important uh routine of my daily life, and to to watching these films, to discussing them, I feel very uh thankful for like um uh uh thank uh helping me to discover like films from El Santo. Thank thank you, Alonso, and for Doris Swishman. It was so big discoveries, and like sharing them with you, it's it's it means a lot, and and especially when you're going through like emotionally difficult periods, like those things like really stay with you, and so thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:33

It's been fun kind of creating some sort of like uh community around the assumption that someone's can be simultaneously interested in like uh Santo films and like Silica Show, like uh all the Roman Porno films, and also that same person kind of appreciates like Elor Jang. Like, I don't know, like to me there's something magical in like An Shimizu and like voice Varnet, like despite being like the algorithm tell telling us like each one of them works differently. Uh I don't know, like the exploratory sense of like Cenophilia not as just like a reading list, but also like something of like a sense of inquiry and discovery, uh kind of like I think guides what we try to do in this podcast. And I don't know, like seeing that some people kind of like interact with that and vibe with that, uh I think it's like reassuring and kind of I don't know gives us like a sense of going forward uh for the Siccos mostly.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:27

Yeah, and I want to emphasize to people that we uh choosing these subjects and deciding on the direction we go basically at random, just what interests us. There is zero kind of calculation of what will be popular or what will connect with people, and I think also based on the kind of analytics and feedback that we get in a limited sense is also kind of random that we're not sure we can really make sense of it. Um so I think it's like we we're doing this in the spirit that Alonso mentioned, which is just for the sake of kind of defending a certain kind of cinema, no matter how heterogeneous and variegated it is, like Santo Toshimizu. Uh like we're just happy to fence off that area and have fun inside it. And what I wanted to say also is we will be back, I think, on August 27th. There may be something in the interim at a certain film festival that happens in the summer, but we'll wait and see. And uh as ever, I want to invite you to write to us. Uh if you send us your letters, I mean, based on the success of the Roman Porno episode, I want to be careful by sending too broad an offer of what you can send. Uh, but please send us letters at outskirtsfilmmagazine at gmail.com and we will 100% read it on the air because at this point we will just read anything. Um and you can send those and we will read them in the first episode that we come back. Uh, you can also send suggestions and other things like that. We're open to pretty much everything. Um so thank you both for this. It was wonderful first season, and I look forward to the second.