Director: Lamberto V. Avellana
Language: English
Country: Philippines
Runtime: 107 min
Rating: PG
Full Synopsis
Mike De Leon was instrumental in the restoration of this major rediscovery of independent Filipino cinema. A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino marks the transition between studio-produced genre movies of the 1940s and ’50s and the more experimental and politically subversive filmmaking of the 1960s. Based on a celebrated stage play by Nick Joaquin, who also wrote the story on which De Leon’s radical Kisapmata was based, Lamberto Avellana’s film centres on the tensions within an artistic bourgeois family living in the prewar Intramuros of Old Manila. Seen today, the film remains a stirring reflection on the culture war between the intellectual class of the Philippines and their Spanish and American colonisers.
Funding from the Film Development Council of the Philippines and Mike De Leon were invested to the restoration of A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino, made possible using the 35mm original camera negative preserved by the Asian Film Archive. A first generation print preserved at the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin was used for sound restoration.
This screening is part of Retrospective: Mike De Leon. For the full programme, please click here.
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