Mike de Leon’s ‘unfinished business’

Mike de Leon has "unfinished business." And it's all falling into place.

Last Look Back, the book on LVN — the legendary film studio his grandmother, Doña Sisang de Leon, founded in 1938 and ran like its Hollywood counterparts — that's taken three years to put together is finally coming out in November.

Coincidentally, the Museum of Modern Art in New York is mounting Mike de Leon: Self-portrait of a Filipino Filmmaker— a retrospective of his feature films and shorts as a writer and director — from 1 to 30 November.

In this email interview, "one of Filipino cinema's most fiercely political and dramatic storytellers" talks about the circumstances behind the MoMA retrospective, the LVN book, and why he's still undecided to make a new movie.

Daily Tribune (DT): Whose idea was MoMA's retrospective? How involved were you in the preparations?

Mike de Leon (ML): I received an invitation from Josh Siegel, the curator of film at the MoMA, sometime in early 2021. It was about organizing a retrospective of my films late in the year. But the event was postponed till November this year because of the backlog of programs at the museum, probably because of the pandemic.

I gave Josh a PDF of my then unfinished book (Last Look Back) and I think it gave him the idea to propose a program that would also include select LVN titles. In my book, the LVN films are interwoven with my own films, at times in a non-linear fashion.

Including LVN definitely made the retrospective more interesting to me. But it also became problematic because Josh did not know that many of the LVN films I discussed in the book are in poor condition, or only good for my Citizen Jake Vimeo channel or the Casa Grande Facebook page. He needed films that would be acceptable for theatrical viewing. It became an arduous process of choosing the films, digitally cleaning them up, subtitling them, and sending them to MoMA to be test-projected in a theater. Many films, unfortunately, did not pass, especially Victory Joe (1946) by Manuel Silos or any of the Nida-Nestor musical comedies.

But the "prestige" films of LVN are still included, thanks in large part to the restoration efforts of Leo Katigbak of the ABS-CBN Film Archives. One non-LVN film was (Lamberto) Avellana's A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino, which my father bequeathed to me before he passed and is probably the only film from that era that was restored from the original 35mm camera negative. Almost all of my own films have been restored (the sole exception being Sister Stella L.) by L'Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna (Italy).

DT: The retrospective comes simultaneous as the release of your book. Did you plan this, or is it just coincidence?

ML: The book has been three years in the making. I worked on it intermittently, for the simple reason that I am not a professional writer. I stopped work on it when I started a new (film) feature, Unfinished Business, but this was aborted by the pandemic lockdown in March 2020. This left me no choice but to go back to the book. I owe its completion to two people, Patrick Campos, my editor, and my American writer/friend, Aaron Hunt.

Photo editing took a long time because I wrote the book with photos in mind, and it became a lot easier when I started thinking of the book as a film. I even learned Adobe InDesign and I did my own rudimentary layout (crude but effective) that was later considerably improved by graphic artist Tom Estrera. All this work, including digital retouching of hundreds of photos (some rare), a detailed index, presswork for a two-volume edition, prolonged the production.

That the book will come out within the next month, seemingly in synch with the MoMA retrospective, as well as another full retrospective in France on 17 November at the Festival des 3 Continents in Nantes, is pure coincidence. I thought the book would be finished mid-year 2022.

DT: Which among all your films gave you a new perspective in life, at the time they were made, and why?

ML: I can't say which among my films gave me a new perspective in life. I've made relatively few films in my career, but perhaps trying to save the LVN films was always foremost in my mind, not really feature filmmaking. But when I realized the importance of these films and took concrete steps to arrest their deterioration or prevent their loss, it was probably too late.

DT: Growing up in the LVN compound, what were the things that got you interested to make films?

ML: I was just a young boy when my grandmother was active in making movies, and as I relate in the book, the studio she created, whose influence and prestige reached its peak in the late 1950s, influenced or even distorted my perception of reality. Growing up, it proved difficult to distinguish between life and the doctored 10-reel reality of the movies.

DT: Do you remember any piece of advice about filmmaking or producing films from Doña Sisang?

ML: As I wrote in my book, there have always been two LVNs in my mind. The first was my grandmother's LVN — the studio, the stars, the movie premieres, the largely commercial movies she produced from the late '30s peaking in the late '50s, when I was a young boy of 9 or 10.

The other LVN was my father's LVN — the prestige movies that were meant to compete in the Asian Film Festival, like Anak Dalita or Biyaya ng Lupa. It is clear which LVN I chose to follow in my career as a filmmaker.

DT: Any chance the MoMA retrospective can also be held in Manila?

ML: I don't think there is any chance that a MoMA-like retrospective can be mounted here, because one would need a lot of resources. This is probably the reason I wrote Last Look Back. Since most of the films are gone, the next best thing was the book. Difficult to put into words now when I'm no longer in writing mode, so let me just quote from the book:

"Biologically, I owe my life to my Lola (Grandma) Sisang and my parents, Manny and Imelda, or Melly, but as for my life in cinema, I owe it all to LVN.

"Therefore, I found it fitting to look back at my life in cinema for the last time, recount the good times and the bad, and assess my successes and failures. I'm
compelled to keep the memory alive. I feel that should I still be fortunate to do new creative work, I want to close some doors for good."

By the way, the Asian Film Archive, where most of my films are kept, has recently proposed to mount a similar retrospective in Singapore next year.

DT: Are you still motivated to do another movie? Why or why not?

ML: I'm still thinking hard about making another movie. First, there is my health and age to consider. And then, of course, the kind of film I would be interested to spend my time and resources on. A seismic shift has happened inside my head with the return of the Marcos family to power. I still can't make sense of this, it's too surreal for words. Perhaps I never will. Again, I go back to something I wrote in the book about the film Aliwan Paradise.

Aliwan Paradise is set in a speculative limbo — what the country might transform into in its insatiable addiction to entertainment. The people are desperate for the ultimate entertainer as if that achievement would validate its existence as a thriving nation rather than a failed state.

I think I can now say, without a doubt, who the ultimate entertainer is and it's a tie: the Marcos family and us, the Filipino people.

I made a few films and short videos that have clearly stated my opinion about the Marcos and Duterte families, but really, what can a few films do? I remember the remark quoted to me by the producer, Marichu Maceda, during the furor surrounding the release of Sister Stella L. in 1984. She quoted Marcos the elder who said, "No film has ever started a revolution."