MANILA IN THE CLAWS OF LIGHT
Philippines,1975
Original title: Maynila Sa Kuko Ng Liwanag
Director Lino Brocka. Screenplay: Clodualdo del Mundo from the novel of the same name by Edgardo Reyes. Cinematographer: Miguel de Leon. Editor: Edgardo Jarlego, Ike Jarlego. Film score: Max Jocson. Sound manager: Luis Reyes, Ramon Reyes. Cast and characters: Bembel Roco (Julio Madiaga), Hilda Koronel (Ligaya Paraiso), Lou Salbador Jr. (Atong), Tommy Abuel (Pol), Jojo Abella (Bobby), Juling Badabaldo (Misis Cruz). Production: Miguel de Leon, Severino Manotok for Cinema Artists. Length: 124′.
Format: DCP. Source: Cineteca di Bologna, under licence from World Cinema Foundation.
Original version. Subtitles: English
Restoration by World Cinema Foundation and Film Development Council of the Philippines in the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna.
Julio, a young fisherman from a primitive and poor world, arrives in chaotic Manila in search of his beloved, Ligaya. Here he adapts to work on a construction site, but begins his descent into the underworld of social alienation: soon, from a good-hearted boy, he turns into a disillusioned, ferocious and vengeful man.
“Ultra-fast, with a ferocious, unclassifiable vitality, this little man is right in the heart of his country. He knows all the contradictions of Filipino culture and cinema, he lives them all. Brocka is not a solitary hero, he is a public figure, a marginal ‘exposed’, slandered and protected by his fame that is rising abroad. There is something of Pasolini in him: respect for ‘low’ culture, emotion in the face of the beauty of bodies, the will to dissect as far as possible the social bond of which these bodies are the emblem. Brocka loves to entangle his characters in the traps of staging, he does not look away when they are overwhelmed by emotion. They end up with their backs to the wall, and so we do.
Sunday 10 April 2022, h. 4:15 pm
