Press Release
A new book, titled SINE. FILM. PELIKULA: The 100+ Greatest Films of Philippine Cinema (P1,799, Summit Books, 300 pages) gathers several decades’ worth of movies into one brave list.
SINE presents 127 synopses and reviews of the finest in Philippine cinema. A wide range of movies—released in theaters from 1937 to 2020, and today still available for curious viewers to watch—is represented in this book curated by Jo-Ann Q. Maglipon in collaboration with Joel David.
They’re all here—modern classics like Lino Brocka’s Maynila sa Kuko ng Liwanag and Ishmael Bernal’s Manila By Night; independent gems like Kidlat Tahimik’s Mababangong Bangungot and Arnel Barbarona’s Tu Pug Imatuy; blockbusters like Ronwaldo Reyes’s Ang Panday and Jerrold Tarog’s Heneral Luna; sometimes-forgotten greats like Gerardo de Leon’s El Filibusterismo and Gregorio Fernandez’s Malvarosa; wildly popular rom-coms like Antoinette Jadaone’s That Thing Called Tadhana and Cathy Garcia-Molina’s One More Chance; as well as old and new comedies like Mar S. Torres’s Jack and Jill and Jade Castro’s Zombadings: Patayin sa Shokot si Remington.
If they’re great, they’re here.
Interspersed with the movies are the film bio of their directors who have been declared National Artists, including Manuel Conde, Eddie Romero, Mike de Leon, and Da King himself, Fernando Poe Jr.
SINE. FILM. PELIKULA was launched on March 15, at the Philippine Book Festival in SM Megamall. In a lively conversation, screenwriter Ricky Lee—whose films make up 16 of the entries in the book—talked with Maglipon about the business and creativity of making cinema.
BEHIND THE MAKING OF SINE. FILM. PELIKULA
Creating a film canon, as book author Jo-Ann Q. Maglipon admits, was a case of “bravura.”
“We committed to a Greatest Films’ List, not fully understanding that ‘greatest’ was not what we were going for. Certainly not, if listing the greatest meant comparing and ranking, pitting and judging, voting and awarding. We had no taste for going in that direction.”
What Jo-Ann and collaborator Joel David—a cineaste with a Ph.D. in cinema studies from New York University—wanted was simply an honest list of “wondrous, esteemed, and outstanding” films.
Moving ahead, Jo-Ann— who for almost two decades helmed the country’s foremost showbiz magazine YES!—convened a screening committee made up of the YES! staff, who sat down for months, watching movies, arguing about them, and voting on them.
“A List is, of course, never middling stuff,” writes Maglipon. “It takes study. It means learning. It needs expertise.” In this, she says, the team was in good hands. They had Joel David as “patient guru and generous collaborator.”
Working on the book has convinced Jo-Ann that film, at its heart, remains personal.
“It is taste. It is exposure. It is age. It is moral grounding. It is class background. It is education. It is time and place. It is country. It is culture. It is emotional makeup. It is IQ. It is bias.”
SINE. FILM. PELIKULA is thus a canon made by writers with a love for cinema for the reading pleasure of others equally in love with cinema. Others are free, even welcome, to make their own.
“With more than a bit of reverence, we present our List,” Maglipon says, “hoping to get all of you inquiring into our choices and searching them out. As for those among you already more driven, nothing’s to stop you from going loose and curious, plunging in, and making your own exciting cinema list.”
SINE. FILM. PELIKULA retails for P1,799, and is available on Shopee and Lazada. It will be available in select bookstores soon.