Lino Brocka - Insiang (1976)

“Insiang: One Happy Family”
By Noel Vera (www.bigozine2.com/theshop/books/NVcritic.html)

Insiang is arguably Brocka’s masterpiece --- it’s his most intense work, the intensity sustained from beginning almost to end. It has the best-structured screenplay of all his pictures (by Lamberto Antonio, based on the original television script by Mario O’hara); it’s also one of his most typical, and atypical of even most other Filipino films.

The film is comparable to Shakespeare’s most elegantly plotted play, Othello, except in Insiang the focus is less on Othello’s downfall and more on Iago’s creation. Insiang shares many characteristics with Iago --- like Iago she is consumed by hatred; like Iago, she is the perfect murderer, able to kill through the indirect manipulation of others.

Insiang is atypical of Brocka’s work, in that it’s unusually tight and coherent (look at Brocka’s other films --- Tinimbang ka Ngunit Kulang (You Were Judged and Found wanting, 1974,) and Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Neon 1975) --- for examples of meandering, scattershot scripts). It’s also the rare Brocka film that displays true ambiguity --- by the end of the film, it’s almost impossible to establish for certain who was good and who evil, who the raped and the rapist (again, look at Brocka’s other films, particularly the later ones --- Bayan Ko (My Country, 1985) and Orapronobis (Fight for US, 1989) for simplified notions of good and evil). You blame and sympathize all three alike, dancing helplessly in an interlocked chain of lust and loathing.

The film is unique in another sense --- Philippine cinema is dominated by the twin themes of love of mother and survival of the family; almost all Filipino films revolve around some aspect of either two. Insiang takes these two great, overarching themes and, with an unmatched ruthlessness, dashes them to the ground, shatters them, reveals them to be the fallacies that they really are. The film is saying: “there are no guarantees, not from family, not even from mother; if anything, the most painful betrayals are inflicted by mother and family. You are ultimately alone.”





http://rapidshare.com/files/338932789/INSIANG.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/338945583/INSIANG.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/338958259/INSIANG.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/338968610/INSIANG.part4.rar

Language: Filipino, Tagalog, English (English hardsubs)
no pass

Lino Brocka - Tinimbang ka ngunit kulang AKA You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting (1974)

From Database of Philippine Movies :
Tinimbang, considered by Lino Brocka as his "first novel" and his first production for his own film outfit, is the story of a young boy growing up in a small town and the unusual friendship he develops with a leper and the village idiot. Their stories draw forth the true nature of hypocrisy in the small town and the boy bears witness and participates in the various emotions that throb under the seemingly quiet village life-prejudice, cruelty, forgiveness, and even love. In Tinimbang, Brocka clearly shows man's limitations as a mortal being, but sends a message of hope for the movie, and in the end, speaks ultimately of rebirth and maturity.









http://rapidshare.com/files/112905521/Tinimbang_Ka_Ngunit_Kulang_MaHaLo.avi.001
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http://rapidshare.com/files/112913146/Tinimbang_Ka_Ngunit_Kulang_MaHaLo.avi.003
http://rapidshare.com/files/112917206/Tinimbang_Ka_Ngunit_Kulang_MaHaLo.avi.004
http://rapidshare.com/files/112921186/Tinimbang_Ka_Ngunit_Kulang_MaHaLo.avi.005
http://rapidshare.com/files/112925507/Tinimbang_Ka_Ngunit_Kulang_MaHaLo.avi.006
http://rapidshare.com/files/112930181/Tinimbang_Ka_Ngunit_Kulang_MaHaLo.avi.007
http://rapidshare.com/files/112932581/Tinimbang_Ka_Ngunit_Kulang_MaHaLo.avi.008

no pass

Lino Brocka - Maynila: Sa mga kuko ng liwanag AKA Manila in the Claws of Neon (1975)

Quote:

Manila: In the Claws of Darkness is the most impressive of his films noirs, made with bows to the American cinema, to Italian neo-realism and to his own country's tradition of star-driven melodramas, but with the force of a third-world director determined to say something about his own society.It is the richly romantic but realistic odyssey of a boy named Julio, who arrives in Manila from the country to search for his childhood sweetheart. The darkness of the title refers to the capital itself, which, said Brocka, exerts an invisible force on the lives of its people.

Brocka exposes the exploitation of its construction workers, some of whom were killed when Marcos jerry-built a huge complex to house his annual film festival. The movie also looks at Manila's slum dwellers, whose children pick through huge rubbish dumps for something to sell.

Finally, it casts its eye over the nocturnal underground of the city, where prostitutes ply their trade. Brocka was gay himself and half fascinated, half repelled by the scene that meets the innocent boy as he scours the brothels of the city, only to find that his girl has been enslaved by an elderly Chinese whorehouse owner. In this situation, there can be no such thing as a happy ending. The boy murders the brothel owner and dies as yet another victim of the big city.

The film has several outstanding sequences, such as when the boy first discovers the fate of his sweetheart and when he decides to take the law into his own hands. But Brocka's painting of life in the corrupt, teeming and polluted city of Manila is the movie's chief glory. It is an unforgettable portrait which invites interpretation as an allegory for the whole of the underdeveloped world. The girl's name means happiness and paradise, the boy's means patience. Ah Tek, the brothel owner, represents money ("atik"), and his recruiter of young girls is Mrs Cruz, a reference to the cross they have to bear. But though deeply romantic, the film never lets go of its central thrust - that no one has a chance in this society unless protected by the authorities or able to pay the price.

Brocka made nearly 50 films, some of which were unashamedly commercial. One of them, Bayan Ko, had to be smuggled into France to be shown at Cannes. But even Marcos could not stop him, and he and a few others made the 1970s and early 1980s a golden age for Tagalog films in a country whose people are still among the most avid filmgoers in the world.
-Derek Malcolm
link





http://rapidshare.com/files/236617371/Maynila_Sa_Kuko_Ng_Liwanag.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/236618261/Maynila_Sa_Kuko_Ng_Liwanag.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/236618271/Maynila_Sa_Kuko_Ng_Liwanag.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/236625425/Maynila_Sa_Kuko_Ng_Liwanag.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/236625854/Maynila_Sa_Kuko_Ng_Liwanag.part5.rar

eng subs:
http://rapidshare.com/files/405659607/nazo.srt

no pass