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Tilman Baumgärtel
The Sine-Kino-Connection
Philippine-German Cinema Relations
T
he German director has come to the Philippines to attend the First
International Film Festival in Manila in 1982. After the opening ceremonies
– and a dance with the First Lady of the Philippines – “Rainer” is taken
to a club called CocoRico. The following conversation ensues: “They wouldn´t
dare show my films regularly in this country,” Rainer complains. “Why did they
bother inviting me for one night?” “Who gives a shit,” I say. “All expenses paid
– di ba?” Chiquiting shakes his head. “Shut up, Joey. You are really bastus.”
He apologizes to the German. “Even if we didn’t have censorship, your movies
would flop in Manila. They don’t have enough action,” he explains, “and they’re
full of unhappy people.”
The director, who visits Manila in Jessica Hagedorn´s novel Dogeaters, seems
modelled after Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Fassbinder, though, never came
to the Philippines. But the Manila Film Festival itself was no invention of
Hagedorn, and neither are the German directors who came to the Philippines
in the 1980s. The Manila International Film Festival took place in 1982 and 1983
and was one of the festive extravaganzas Imelda Marcos was so fond of. And
as many of Imelda Marcos’ activities – such as the Miss Universe Pageant in
1974 or the building of the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the Philippine
Folk Arts Theatre – the festival was meant to both “edify” the Filipino public
and to improve the dismal international reputation of the Marcos regime. For
that purpose, the festival invited internationally acclaimed directors and actors
such as Jeremy Irons, Peter Ustinov, Krysztof Zanussi, Satayajit Ray, George
Hamilton, George Cukor, Jack Valenti and King Hu to the Philippines. From
Germany, people such as Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski, Werner Schroeter, Kurt
Raab and – last but not least – sexy starlet Dolly Dollar graced the festival.
Therefore, the character Rainer in Dogeaters appears more like a composite of
a number of German film directors who came to the Philippines with their films
that did not have “enough action and were full of unhappy people.” And while
the prediction that these films would not attract the Philippine masa might be
correct, a small number of Filipinos nevertheless felt engrossed by the works of
the Neuer Deutscher Film (New German Cinema) of the 1970s and 1980s.
This attraction with German cinema led to a brief, but intense period in which
German and Philippine filmmakers joined forces and collaborated and learned
from each other. I call this hodgepodge of films and people from Germany and
the Philippines, of different cultural traditions and a common medium, the
“Sine-Kino-Connection.” (“Sine” is the Tagalog, “Kino” the German word for
“cinema”.)
This book is about this “Sine-Kino-Connection”. At the same time it is about
a part of German film history that few people in Germany are familiar with.
Beginning in the mid-1970s and continuing through the 1980s and into the
1990s, a number of German film directors, theorists and other movie people
came to work or teach in the Philippines. Some came because the Goethe-
Institut Manila invited them for workshops and film presentations. Others
came at their own expense because they were fascinated by the country, which
– especially after the People Power revolution of 1986 that ousted the Marcos-
regime – temporarily exercised its own peculiar kind of magnetism to many
Europeans. The workshops that “the Germans” conducted, the film screenings
that they presented, were in part responsible for the emergence of an alternative
film scene in the Philippines that went on to garner recognition and awards at
international film festivals.
Werner Schroeter, Rosa von Praunheim, Harun Farocki, Maria Vedder and Peter
Kern were among the directors who conducted workshops and film seminars at
the Goethe-Institut, the Film Center of the University of the Philippines and
the Mowelfund film school. Schroeter, Kern and Jürgen Brüning even made
films here.
But often it was the seminars by lesser-known German teachers that spawned
the most enduring results. The workshops of the animator and editor Karl
Fugunt, short film director Christoph Janetzko and experimental filmmaker
Ingo Petzke, by documentary filmmaker Michael Wulfes and Christian
Weisenborn and by Werner Herzog´s cinematographer Thomas Mauch, led to
the production of some remarkable short films and documentaries. (Fugunt,
Wulfes and Weisenborn went on to make some short documentaries on their
own in the Philippines.)
These activities played an important role in the establishment of an alternative
and experimental film scene in Manila in the 1980s and early 1990s that
was unrivalled in Southeast Asia at that time. Among those attending these
workshops were people such as Raymond Red, Mark Meily, Lav Diaz, Roxlee,
Yam Laranas, Tad Ermitaño, the brothers Mike and Juan Alcazaren, Luis
Workshop production Masakit sa Mata, 1991
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Goethe-Institut director Uwe
Schmelter conducting the
Manila Chamber Orchestra
Quirino, Noel Lim, Joey Agbayani, Ditsi Carolino, Caesar Hernando, Joseph
Fortin, Regiben Romana, Ricky Orellana and many others, who proceeded
to establish themselves in filmmaking and/or the arts, if they had not done so
already. This period of the “Sine-Kino-Connection” lasted from the late 1970s
until the beginning of the 1990s, when new budget constraints after the fall of
the Wall in Germany and the subsequent re-orientation towards the formerly
Socialist states in Eastern Europe, dried up the funds of the Goethe-Institut
Manila.
*****
Two subsequent directors of the Goethe-Institut Manila were instrumental in
supporting cinema: Gerrit Bretzler and Uwe Schmelter. The Goethe-Institut
had established a media unit in the late 1970s and was eager to promote the
biggest cultural export from Germany at that time: the films of directors such
as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders or Margarethe
von Trotta.
When looking through the old press clippings on file at the Goethe- Institut, there
is a noticeable change in direction around 1980, both in terms of film screenings
as well as in terms of the more general orientation of the institution. Until the
late 1970s, the Goethe-Institut Manila relied primarily on German cultural
traditions and the relatively safe classics of German Hochkultur. Programming
included concerts with Baroque music and opera recitals, exhibitions of Bauhaus
artists and romantic landscape paintings. The Goethe-Institut sponsored the
restoration of the Bamboo Organ in Las Piñas, organized lectures by German
experts on occupational safety and philately and brought in the Stuttgart
Dixieland Allstars. (In fact, the cultural institutions that were the pet projects
of Imelda Marcos had a significant part of their programming sponsored by
the Goethe-Institut. The Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) featured
German orchestras, theatre groups, ballet companies and opera singers that
were brought in with the support of the Goethe-Institut, almost on a monthly
basis – a choice that seems questionable today, considering that the CCP was
the showcase project of Imelda Marcos. The Metropolitan Museum and later
the Film Center also received logistic support from the Goethe-Institut.)
It was not until the end of the 1970s that the cultural shock of 1968 and its
aftermath left its mark on the Kulturpolitik of the Goethe-Institut and arrived
at its branch in Manila. That included its film program that reeked of the cosy
German Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) mentality even in the late
1970s: Helmut Käutner’s innocuous German comedy Das Glas Wasser (A
Glass of Water, 1960) was shown countless times both at the Goethe-Institut
and at open-air-screenings in Rizal Park in the late 1970s. (Ironically, the movie
starred Gustav Gründgens, who was found dead in a room at the posh Manila
Hotel – and therefore in close proximity to Rizal Park – three years after the
movie had been released.)
Other films that were screened on a regular basis include documentaries on
wild animals such as Heinz Sielmann’s Lockende Wildnis (Alluring Wilderness,
1969) and Bernhard Grzimek’s Serengeti darf nicht sterben (Serengeti Shall
Not Die, 1959). Well-liked feature films – that seemingly were in the collection
of the Goethe-Institut, because they appear in the program over and over again
– were light comedies and melodramas from the 1950s such as Paul Verhoeven’s
Heidelberger Romanze (Heidelberg Romance, 1951), Géza von Radványi’s Der
Arzt von Stalingrad (The Doctor of Stalingrad, 1958) or Helmut Käutner’s Der
Hauptmann von Köpenick (The Captain from Köpenick, 1956). Even episodes
of the ho-hum German television police series’ Derrick und Der Kommissar
(The Superintendent) were shown on a regular basis at the Goethe-Institut’s
“Saturday matinees.”
Then there were the German silent classics, the films by Friedrich Murnau,
G.W. Papst and Fritz Lang, which were a regular staple at the film screenings
of the Goethe-Institut. (It is another odd twist in the Philippine-German cinema
Goethe-Institut director Gerrit Bretzler with Günther Grass in Manila in 1979
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relations that Fritz Lang had been to the Philippines in 1950 to shoot the American
war movie American Guerrilla in the Philippines. Films such as Metropolis,
Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, M, Tabu or Faust were shown frequently, and left
a lasting impression on a number of Filipino filmmakers, including the young
Raymond Red, whose film Ang Magpakailanman (Eternity, 1982) is clearly
inspired by expressionist aesthetics.
Then in the late 70s, a shift in the programming of the Goethe-Institut signalled
that the social democratic government under Willy Brandt in West Germany
– that ruled the country since 1969 with the promise to “dare more democracy”
(“Mehr Demokratie wagen!”) – finally wanted to present its version of a new,
modern Germany abroad. Avant-garde artists, critical writers and experimental
filmmakers, who represented this new openness and tolerance, were sent
around the world to promote this new version of the West German self-image.
In January 1979, two of the proponents of this new, liberal Germany came to
Manila at the same time: the Tanztheater of avant-garde-choreographer Pina
Bausch, who was at this time still far from the international reputation that
she enjoys today, performed at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in the
presence of the Marcoses. And the openly gay filmmaker, activist and overall-
enfant-terrible Rosa von Praunheim, whose controversial debut feature Nicht
der Homosexuelle ist pervers, sondern die Situation, in der er lebt (It Is Not
the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives, 1971) had
been boycotted by the Bavarian TV station Bayerischer Rundfunk, when it was
first shown on German public television.
It was the beginning of a new course in the film programming of the Goethe-
Institut in Manila that gradually moved away from the post-war standards
and started to show retrospectives of directors such as Wim Wenders, Werner
Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Peter Lilienthal, Werner Schroeter,
Wolfgang Petersen, Robert van Ackeren, Klaus Wildenhahn and Volker
Schloendorf. There were programs on feminist films from West Germany that
included works by filmmakers such as Helke Sanders, Elfi Miekesch, Ulrike
Ottinger, Margarethe von Trotta and Jutta Brückner. A series of screenings of
youth films presented works by Hark Bohm, Rüdiger Nüchtern and Reinhard
Hauff. In other programs, films by directors such as Werner Nekes, Alexander
Kluge, Edgar Reitz, Ulf Miehe, Doris Dörrie, Christoph Schlingensief, Marianne
Rosenbauer and Percy Adlon were shown. Therefore, film buffs in Manila had
the opportunity to get a very thorough overview of contemporary German film
at that time.
The film programming at the Goethe-Institut Manila in the late 1970s and 1980s
can serve as further proof for a hypothesis that Thomas Elsaesser develops
in his book on the Neuer Deutscher Film: that the New German Cinema was
the fruit of government sponsorship for independent filmmaking, and that
internationally acclaimed film artists such as Herzog, Wenders, Fassbinder
et al were actually state artists, no matter what kind of anti-establishment
histrionics they indulged in. The criticism of (or opposition to) German society
and politics that many of them expressed in their films – that were more often
than not sponsored by one public institution or another – served as proof for the
new tolerance of West Germany, both domestically and abroad.
This background can serve as an explanation for why the Goethe-Institut
distributed German films all over the world, which might have been acclaimed
at international film festivals, but for the most part were box office flops in their
own country. The Goethe-Institut treated its audience to a brand of German
culture that purported to be critical, avant-garde and left-field. In Manila it was
not just the films of the Neuer Deutscher Film which served as a harbinger
of a West Germany that had left behind the totalitarianism and the crimes of
German fascism as well as the frost of the immediate post-war period. German
Video Art, critical video documentaries, experimental short films, and the
underground Super-8 films of the 1980s were all presented in the Philippines
with only minimal delay after these movements surfaced in Germany.
*****
However, it is not the intention of this publication to suggest that the generation
of experimental, alternative and documentary filmmakers which emerged in the
Philippines in the 1980s was a creation only of the film workshops of the Goethe-
Institut. Most of the Philippine filmmakers who took part in the workshops
undoubtedly would have found their way into film production with or without
the support of the Goethe-Institut. Other cultural institutions in the Philippines
– such as Mowelfund, the cultural institutions of the French, Spanish and
British governments in Manila – played their own part in the emergence of a
local independent film scene. And cultural activist such as Virginia Moreno from
the Film Center of the University of the Philippines also played an important
role in the creation of an alternative cinema scene in the Philippines.
Yet, the assistance of the Goethe-Institut was crucial in two ways, which were
very important in an emerging country such as the Philippines. One of these
factors was immaterial, the other very material. First of all, the Goethe-
Institut was among the first to bring avant-garde films into a country where
local commercial films, American blockbusters and Hong Kong action flicks
dominated the theatres. This contribution has become difficult to appreciate in
the age of comparatively easy access to international art house films via (pirated)
DVDs and the Internet. But as Nick Deocampo pointed out in an article for the
Australian avant-garde-film-magazine Cantrills Filmnotes in 1989, the films of
the Neuer Deutscher Film were instrumental in the emergence of a Philippine
independent cinema simply because they were among the first international
art house films that film buffs in the country could actually watch instead of
just read about in books and magazines: “While early into our birth (of the
Philippine independent film – T.B.) we were very much fascinated by the names
of Warhol, Anger and Deren, whose works we never saw but divined though our
daydreams and our imagination – when we first sat mesmerized by the works
of Nekes and Herzog – we soon realized that the time for our own moment in
cinema had come!”
From workshop produc-
tion Sa Maynila , 1989,
by Jo Atienza, Vicky
Orellana, Vic Bacani,
Alan Hirlario and Igé
Alcazaren
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Movie poster from Bobby Suarez’ Manila Tattoo, German title Rote Rosen für ein Callgirl, 1988
The other, more tangible support for the independent cinema in the Philippines
was the film stock and the equipment that the film workers who conducted
workshops brought to the Philippines, as Mark Meily points out in his
contribution to this book. 35-milimeter film stock, Super-8 material, a Steenbeck
editing table, video cameras – things that were not readily accessible to young
filmmakers in the Philippines, came into the country with the assistance of the
Goethe-Institut. They were instrumental in the creation of the first batch of
experimental films from the mid-1980s onwards. The Philippine contributors
to this book – such as Raymond Red, Mark Meily, Ditsi Carolino, Lav Diaz and
Nick Deocampo – will give their own account of these activities on the following
pages. In addition, some of the German direks who came to the Philippines,
such as Christoph Janetzko, Harun Farocki, Ingo Petzke, Werner Schroeter,
Michael Wulfes and Rosa von Praunheim, share their memories of the time
they spent here.
*****
No account of Philippine-German cultural relations would be complete without
mentioning José Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines, whose controversial
first novel Noli me tangere was first published in Berlin in 1887. It is this novel
and one of its filmic versions, which were the subject of yet another Philippine-
German cinematic co-production, that should prove to be of great importance.
The film researcher Teddy Co had discovered a dilapidated copy of the film Noli
me tangere (1961) by National Artist Gerardo de Leon in the late 1980s. With
the help of the Goethe-Institut, he managed to have the film restored by the
German Bundesarchiv (Federal Archive). The new copy was premiered in 1990
at the Manila Film Center and is still in the possession of the Cultural Center of
the Philippines. Considering that a lot of the filmic legacy of Philippine cinema
from that period is thought of as lost today, this was an important attempt to
save at least a little part of the movie heritage of the Philippines.
*****
Again, the Goethe-Institut was not the only trajectory for the “Sine-Kino-
Connection”. Some filmmakers came by themselves, in particular Peter Kern
and Jürgen Brüning, who describes his experiences co-directing his film Maybe
I Can Give You Sex (1993) with Philippine director Rune Layumas in this book
and whom we have to thank for the pictures of Nan Goldin, who accompanied
him as a still-photographer to the Philippines.
And at least one Philippine director established his own “Sine-Kino-Connection”
by looking for funding for his B-movies in Germany. In his contribution, B-
movie-maverick Bobby Suarez describes how he secured financing for his
actioners – such as Bionic Boy (1977), Cleopatra Wong (1978) or One-Armed
Executioner (1983) – from European producers, including the Germans Leo
Kirch, Dieter Menz and Horst Veit. Suarez’ personal “Sine-Kino-Connection”
culminated in the film Manila Tattoo (Rote Rosen für ein Callgirl, 1988) that was
co-produced with the Austrian-German film company Lisa-Film (better known
for 70s-sex-comedies such as Drei Bayern in Bangkok (Three Bavarians in
Bangkok, 1977) and more recently for TV productions such as Das Traumhotel
(Dreamhotel). The cast of this film that was shot in and around Manila included
German TV serial actors Julia Kent, Manfred Seipold and Werner Pochat.
Manila Tattoo has been repeatedly shown on German television.
While the cooperation between German and Philippine producers was by no
means as extensive as that between American producers like Roger Corman
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and local producers such as Ciri Santiago (who produced dozens of cheap action
movies and horror films for the American market), it existed nevertheless –
Kurt Raab’s trash film Die Insel der blutigen Plantagen (Escape from Blood
Plantation,1983) being the other example of a movie production that used the
relatively cheap work force and the exotic locations of the Philippines for a
grind house film. And then there is Werner Schroeter’s Der lachende Stern
(The Laughing Star, 1983), a poetic documentary about the Philippines under
martial law, about which the director talks in his contribution to this book.
*****
Today, a new generation of experimental filmmakers is emerging all over
Southeast Asia due to the rapid proliferation of affordable and easy-to-use
digital cameras and editing software. Once again Filipino filmmakers – such
as Lav Diaz, Khavn de la Cruz, John Torres, Raya Martin, Brillante Mendoza,
Sherad Anthony Sanchez or Mez de Guzman – are at the forefront of film
directors, who are currently shaping the nascent independent film scene in the
region. Therefore, it seemed timely to look back at the time when independent
film first took root in the Philippines.
As a kind of summary of the book I invited two Philippine filmmakers from
two different generations to talk about their filmmaking practice and their
relationship with Germany: One is Kidlat Tahimik, who is the undisputed
father figure of the whole independent cinema movement in the Philippines. He
started to work on his opus magnum Perfumed Nightmare (1977) in Germany
in the 1970s. (Ulrich Gregor, the former head of the Forum at the Berlinale Film
Festival, recalls in his contribution the mirthful circumstances under which
Tahimik submitted his first film to the festival in 1977, where it subsequently
won a FIPRESCI award). He later headed the Filmforum, an early meeting
point of experimental and independent filmmakers at the Goethe-Institut in
Manila, and organized Goethe-sponsored film workshops in Baguio. The other
one is John Torres, a young filmmaker, who belongs to the recent independent
digital cinema movement in the Philippines, and whose first feature-length
film Todo Todo Teros (2006) was shot partly in Berlin. In our conversation in
Kidlat Tahimik’s house in Teachers Village, these two filmmakers discuss their
films, their aesthetic approach and their filmic connection with Germany. This
conversation is included in this book to provide a link between the historic
“Sine-Kino-Connection” and the present, with its exciting new developments in
the contemporary independent cinema.
I would like to thank all the contributors to this small volume for their
contributions. Their essays made this book a collection of very personal
remembrances. I also have to thank Richard Künzel, director of the Goethe-
Institut Manila, who kindly adopted this project as soon as I presented it to him
and worked determinedly to make it happen. Paula Guevara, and the staff of
the Goethe-Institut’s library, was of tremendous help in researching the press
clippings and the video collection in the archive of the Goethe-Institut, especially
Alicia Paraiso, Arlene Gonzales and Ray Rojas. Gregory Bradshaw did a great
job of proof-reading the final manuscript and translating the contributions of
Harun Farocki, Michael Wulfes and Ulrich Gregor.
And I have to thank the visual artists, who contributed illustrations to this book:
Roxlee, the foremost art animation filmmaker of the Philippines and a frequent
habitué of the film workshops, for his cinema-inspired paintings on the inside
of the cover of this book. Then there are wonderful photographs by Nan Goldin
(New York), who was a still-photographer for Jürgen Brüning’s Maybe I Can
Give You Sex and Josef Gallus Rittenberg (Vienna), who was kind enough to let
us use his cool picture of Werner Schroeter.

Film researcher Teddy Co was of invaluable help in tracking down information
and people and giving me the low down on many of the workshops and productions
from his abyssal knowledge of Philippine film. He and Nick Deocampo, whose
On the occasion of the restoration of Gerardo de Leons film Noli me tangere (1961) by the German
Bundesarchiv in 1991, Goethe-Institut director Uwe Schmelter and German Ambassador Peter Scholz
presented a slightly bewildered Cory Aquino with a wood sculpture.
The wood sculpture shows film cans which commemorate important cities
in the life of José Rizal, who wrote the novel Noli me Tangere. Rizal
studied in Heidelberg, published Noli me Tangere in 1887 in Berlin and
was executed in Manila in 1896.
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essay gives an overview of the manifold aspects of the “Sine-Kino-Connection,”
were the main inspiration for this book. They fed me with anecdotes and stories
about the “Germans in Manila” so diligently and frequently that I eventually
pulled myself together to work on this collection.
I came to the Philippines in 2004, a long time after the burst of creative film
energy that is the subject of this book took place here. And while I tried to paint
a complete picture of this period through the compilation of material in this
publication and with the tremendous support of so many people notwithstanding,
it was not possible to include statements by everybody involved due to various
circumstances. I was unable to track down all of the filmmakers, and some
were – due to time constraints or other reasons – unable to contribute to this
publication.
Therefore not every aspect of the “Sine-Kino-Connection” could be covered
adequately in this book. For numerous reasons, I was not able to include a piece
on the women-in-prison-film Die Insel der blutigen Plantagen (Escape from
Blood Plantation,1983), which was shot in the Philippines by a group of actors
from the Fassbinder-stable. Directed by Kurt Raab, actors such as Barbara
Valentin, Udo Kier and Hans Zander participated in this German attempt at a
trash movie. Also, Werner Herzog, whose films have been screened many times
by the Goethe-Institut and who – as a supporter of Kidlat Tahimik and a visitor
to the Manila International Film Festival – was an important figure for the local
independent film scene, was disinclined to grant me an interview.
A book on the “films with not enough action and unhappy people” by German
directors and their connection with the cinema of the Philippines might seem
as too irrelevant a topic to some, considering the dearth of literature on other,
much more important facets of Filipino film history. Yet, all of this happened, and
therefore it appeared to all the contributors to this book as a worthwhile task to
document this unusal example of filmic globalization. I hope this book serves as
a reminder of this very special episode of Philippine-German film cooperation,
which is fondly remembered by many of those involved in the Philippines, but
so far is virtually unknown in Germany.
Tilman Baumgärtel
Quezon City, November 2007
Dr. Tilman Baumgärtel currently teaches at the Film Institute of the College
of Mass Communication at the University of the Philippines. He studied Ger-
man Literature, History and Media Studies at the Heinrich-Heine-Univer-
sity in Duesseldorf and the State University of New York in Buffalo (USA) and
has taught media aesthetics and media history at the Universität Paderborn,
Technische Universität Berlin and the Mozarteum in Salzburg (Austria). He
contributes regularly to German and international reviews, newspapers and
magazines and has published books on Internet art, computer games and the
German filmmaker Harun Farocki. As a curator, he has organized a number
of exhibitions in Germany, the United States, Switzerland, Korea and Japan.
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Nick Deocampo
Into the Light
Philippine Alternative Cinema and
the Neuer Deutscher Film
A
s I write the history of alternative cinema in the Philippines – a cinema
that is opposed to the country’s commercial film industry – I make the
claim that its seminal influence and inspiration came from the New
German Cinema (Neuer Deutscher Film). I saw in the engagement by a young
generation of Filipino filmmakers towards what then was an international film
phenomenon in the Seventies (the new German films), a way of expressing
non-conformity to the established iconographic practices born out of America’s
colonization of the country (i.e. the Hollywood experience) and the native film
tradition emerging from century-old filmic practices. More significantly, I saw
in the new German films a liberating path that revolutionized both the visual
language and filmic form, producing films that were never before seen in
Philippine cinema. This essay bears witness to this cross-cultural phenomenon.
It shows the effects, acceptance, innovation, and influences cast by German film
culture, which produced a unique growth of films in the Philippines, starting in
the Eighties.
In writing this essay, I cannot avoid being personal. This is because I found
myself at the center of events when the new German films touched down in the
Philippines and began to cast their influence on a new generation of filmmakers
– perhaps the last of the celluloid era before the onslaught of video and digital
formats. Working at the University of the Philippines Film Center in 1979, I
was in charge of organizing film workshops and seminars. This placed me in an
enviable position to mount training programs that, in turn, produced films.
Providing the films I needed to show in my classes were the British Council,
Jefferson Cultural Center (the American cultural arm), Instituto Cervantes,
the French embassy, and other cultural institutions. But while there was a
plethora of choices, it was the Goethe-Institut that produced the most tangible
and productive of cultural collaborations. Its films were the most accessible.
The Director of the Institute, who was then Dr. Gerrit Bretzler, played a crucial
role in introducing Philippine viewers to German film classics at the former
Goethe-Institut on Aurora Boulevard. The nights I spent watching German film
classics paid off. These films ushered me into a different world so unlike the
ones I watched commercially. What attracted me most were the visual style and
the dark emotions in the films. It did not matter if I could not fully understand
them since they were in German, although subtitles did help. The silent film
classics were the most striking ones for me. Films by Fritz Lang, Murnau, and
Pabst were vividly etched in my mind. They brought out a wide range of human
emotions. My appetite for German films only grew more with the coming of the
Neuer Deutscher Film that came like a breath of fresh wind in what already
was becoming a world steeped with imaginings of the German film classics.
But before the new German film invasion occurred, let me say more about how
the Goethe-Institut prepared the groundwork for what would in the next decade
become a swelling film movement. I fondly remember Dr. Bretzler hosting a film
event that allowed local filmmakers to show their amateur films and engage the
public in a discussion. The event was called “Film Forum.” It was there among
the jampacked crowd that I saw my first Super-8 film shows. These amateur
films provided me with a different visual diet. The films showed common faces
and native scenes. Their candidness in depicting common Filipino lives awakened
a new cinematic reality in me. At times, discussions after the film shows became
heated. I often found myself among the “lost” souls lingering at the Goethe-
Institut’s outdoor steps long after the exhibition was over, talking about the
films we had just seen. The public space created by the Goethe-Institut allowed
us to discover what cinema was about. It gifted us not only with films to watch,
but also the space where we could discover what cinema meant for us. I look
back and remember very well, on those black nights – with only voices heard in
the dark – that it was at the Goethe-Institut that a new consciousness in cinema
in the Philippines began to germinate. A new film consciousness was born in
the dark of night. And that night was also symbolic of the darkness that once
wrapped our society in the Seventies. Fear and repression under the Marcos
dictatorship continued to plague our lives with poverty and violence. For a
young Filipino looking for his place in society, those nights at the GI offered me
solace and time to focus my interests onto something that would play a major
role in defining my own life – the cinema.
No one can imagine the delight I felt then when I was later told I was to become
a local coordinator for someone whose name I had only seen in film credits and
books – Werner Schroeter. I was informed that the great luminary of the Neuer
Deutscher Film was arriving and was going to make a film in the Philippines.
Young as I was, I could only gasp at the chance of meeting in person someone
who to me was a living legend. There he was with his long, golden hair. The first
time I saw him, I immediately felt a great sense of friendship. I became his local
guide, looking for subjects to shoot, interesting persons to film, and bars to relax
his tired soul in at night. What fascinated me most was his manner of making
films. When he was doing a documentary, the film became reality itself. The
people he met and talked to suddenly found themselves sliding in front of the
camera as subjects. The dark and wayward places we visited became locations
for his scenes. The themes we merely discussed by chance suddenly loomed
as ponderous subjects in a film that would – I found out later – endanger the
filmmaker himself and force him to leave the Philippines, for fear of a military
Self-portrait of Nick Deocampo on Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm
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Workshop film Kidlat by Joey Agbayani, 1986
reprisal. Schroeter’s film The Laughing Star (Der lachende Stern) turned
out to be a stinging film commentary about life under the military regime and
the excesses of the conjugal dictators Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. It was a
modern-day lesson on Philippine political and social history. While I was out and
about tugging along this legendary director, I hardly felt he was making a film
at all. What I knew then was that someone of legendary stature was among us,
trying to understand a way of life, our way of life. The lessons I learned while
being with Schroeter were more than what I could learn at any film school. He
taught me how to see life. Filmmaking became merely a shadow hounding the
fleeting something called reality. In the years to come, I want to believe that
Schroeter’s influence on my theme and style of making films has manifested
itself in subliminal ways.
Meeting Schroeter in person only added fuel to my passion for the cinema.
I later showed Schroeter’s films at the University of the Philippines, e.g. his
Golden Bear winner, Palermo. I helped organize German Film Weeks with the
Goethe-Institut, where we feasted on some of the most esoteric films of that
time, e.g. Werner Herzog’s Even Dwarves Started Small and Rainier Werner
Fassbinders’ Why Mr. R. Run Amuck, as well as films that brought us new
perspectives, for instance Haro Senft’s children’s films, as well as the new
German documentaries like those of Klaus Wildenhahn.
It was also in 1981 during the infamous Manila International Film Festival when
Herzog himself came to the Philippines as a guest of Madame Imelda Marcos.
I remember attending his talk in a panel and listening to how his generation
established a new German film movement. What I remember most was his
anecdote about “stealing” a camera to fulfill his burning urge to make films. I
believed him. I felt the passion in his words.
Making an even more spectacular presence the year after was the German
actor Klaus Kinski. His film Fitzcarraldo was shown in tribute to the genius
of Herzog and the madness of Kinski. I had already been aware of these two
stalwarts of the new German cinema when I first saw Aguirre – Wrath of God,
and I could only be awed by what they could both achieve cinematically. My
impression of Kinski was that he had a boisterous nature, so loud he could break
even through the gates of hell with his zest for life. Kinski was life itself. The
actor and the man blended into a seamless figure when I caught a glimpse of
him fleeting by in a theater lobby with his arms around a woman.
But my infatuation for German films was hastily cut short when I left for Paris
to study film at the end of 1981. Whereas I studied filmmaking in France, it was
in Germany that I nurtured the desire to make films. Right after finishing my
film study in Paris, I left for Berlin to attend my first international film festival
– the Berlin Film Festival. Arriving at the Zoo train station at the heart of what
then was West Berlin and on a bitterly cold and snowy night, I became a wide-
eyed visitor standing in front of the Zoo Film Palast, which was dwarfed by the
blazing lights from the theater marquee. The sight of the blazing marquee still
leaves a lasting impression on me.
Day after day, I watched the films. The experience left me wanting to make
my own films. It was at the festival that I met Hagmut Brockmann, editor of
Spandauer Volksblatt – a Berlin paper, who later became the producer of my first
film, Oliver. It was he who helped me find my way around the swirling confusion
of festival activities. I was lucky to get in and watch what would become the
winner of the Golden Bear award – Fassbinder’s Veronica Voss. I was impressed
at what I saw in his handling of personal history mingled with historical events.
I sought out an opportunity to meet the director in person. I found the chance
when he held a press conference. I sneaked into the pressroom to listen to him
and even if much of what I understood came from an interpreter, I realized by
watching him that I was in the presence of a huge and temperamental talent.
His fiery character scorched my mind. When years later the news flashed that
Fassbinder had died of a drug overdose, I felt a great sense of loss.
Coming back to the Philippines in 1982, I knew I had to visit the Goethe-
Institut. I wanted to see those new German films that were then making waves
internationally. It was a wish that was, of course, granted. Films of the New
German Cinema began streaming in. Through the workshops I organized, I
started showing the films of the distinguished new German directors – Fassbinder,
Herzog, Wim Wenders, Alexander Kluge, Rosa von Praunheim, Margarethe
von Trotta, and others. Together with my students, I began to delight in the
unconventional themes and visual styles of this new wave of filmmakers.
My relationship with the Goethe-Institut could not have been any better than
in the Eighties, when other German film personalities started coming to the
Philippines and leaving their own marks, not on the commercial filmmakers,
but on emerging young film artists. I can name some of them: Ingo Petzke,
Peter Kern, Karl Fugunt, Thomas Mauch, Maria Vedder, Christoph Janetzko,
Christian Weisenborn, Klaus Wildenhahn, Harun Farocki, Rosa von Praunheim,
Jürgen Brüning…
Ingo Petzke’s approach was academic. He was among the first Germans who would
create a new film language for an emerging generation of Filipino filmmakers.
His influence was deep. He brought about a quiet revolution. He was tasked by
the Goethe-Institut to travel to different parts of the world to spread the gospel
of experimental cinema. In the Philippines, it was Petzke whom we owe the gift
of a new cinema - the gift of tongue that made our young films speak a different
language and see a new vision. The films he brought, which traced the history
of experimental cinema, first shocked our senses, then filled us with a seething
passion to destroy film in order to create a new cinema. Philosophy came with
the new aesthetics we learned from Petzke. During our lessons in experimental
cinema, we discovered film form, or the absence of it. Watching films that
destroyed all notions of Hollywood formula, our consciousness widened as we
soaked ourselves in the films of Walter Ruttman and his Berlin – Symphony of
a Great City. There was also Hans Richter and his abstract films. Petztke even
showed us an international array of radical films from the works of the Soviet
filmmaker Dziga Vertov to the Spanish film anarchist Luis Bunuel, whose Un
chien andalou made us shiver to the bones when we watched the infamous razor
slitting an eyelid. We also encountered the doyenne of American experimental
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films Maya Deren and her haunting Meshes in the Afternoon, and the French
innovator Jean-Luc Godard’s films like Breathless. The impact of these films
may be seen in that rare and exquisite collection of abstract and experimental
films that were produced in the Eighties, e.g. those of Jimbo Alano, Fruto Corre,
Roxlee, Mel Bacani, Cesar Hernando and several more.
Bringing German film directors to train our young filmmakers was an ideal
partnership that came out of collaboration with the Goethe-Institut. The
“Golden Age of Philippine Independent Cinema” was born. The filmmakers
that came to Manila, e.g Janetzko, Mauch, Farocki, Petzke, et. al. taught our
young filmmakers lessons in filmmaking, which were helpful in creating our
own films. While showing German films, we too journeyed into a discovery of
our own cinema. Among the filmmakers who attended those workshops are the
names now enshrined in Philippine independent cinema: Raymond Red, Roxlee,
Yam Laranas, Joey Agbayani, Louie Quirino, Ditsi Carolino, Regiben Romana,
Ricky Orellana and many more. While serving as organizer for the workshops,
I occasionally participated in them and produced a few works of my own.
Karl Fugunt had a strong influence on ethnographic filmmakers like Joseph
Fortin, while Christian Weisenborn taught filmmakers like Ditsi Carolino in his
documentary classes.
Yet, among all of them, it was Christoph Janetzko who brought out the best of
the young filmmakers’ talents. In the late 80s, he came and taught a class in
optical printing. I had a workshop on this subject upon seeing an optical printing
machine lying around at the Mowelfund Film Institute, where I headed to teach
after leaving the University of the Philippines. The experiments made by his
class resulted in the production of films that were outstanding in their aesthetic
quality. Going beyond simple narratives and infusing dazzling technical effects
were films like Joey Agbayani’s Kidlat (Lightning) and Louie Quirino’s True
Blue American Coconut Grove. Leaping way into nihilist territory was Regiben
Romana’s Pilipinas (or, What Do You Think of the Philippines, Mr. Janetzko?)
More lurid displays of sheer anger and destruction on film came with a film
made by Eli Guieb, showing Pepito Bosch cavorting naked with a crucifix and
madman Roxlee’s visually rabid film Lizard or How to Perform in Front of a Reptile,
that gave fitting company to his other maddeningly inspired films like Juan
Gapang and Spit/Optik. Janetzko’s workshops gave birth to a primal generation
of artists who looked at nothing as sacred and divine. I was so proud to bring
this harvest of films to festivals the world over, most especially to the World
Congress of Experimental Films in Toronto in 1989. It was an event attended by
the world’s elite artists and scholars in experimental cinema, e.g. Stan Brakhage,
Fred Camper, Annette Michelson, Michael Snow and many more.
It was not only the films of the New German Cinema that influenced me. I began
to see how this radical film movement had unfolded. Their films were not just
products of a personal revolt, but had political underpinnings too. Against the
backdrop of radicalism, I found my own inspiration to rebel from the status quo
of the Hollywood influence and of the melodrama gripping our local film industry.
I began to study their struggles and strategies and found that their collective
movement had rational and political implications. This was how I got hold of the
Oberhausen Manifesto, a collective declaration of change signed by the moving
spirits of the Neuer Deutscher Film. I identified with it so much that I too
organized a Young Filmmakers’ Congress in 1983, where I drafted a manifesto
inspired by the rallying cry first heard in Oberhausen: “The old cinema is dead.
We believe in the new.” I knew that my love for film was now leaning towards
activism. I advocated the collapse of the local movie industry – a tall order then
at the height of the dictatorial reign of Marcos. But such a cry was in keeping
with the times. In August of that same year came the killing of Ninoy Aquino.
The martyr’s death plunged the country into chaos and from chaos into a militant
people’s movement. I knew it was time for me to make my own films. I felt that
nothing less than a revolution would end the tyranny. In time, I made my film
Oliver. With films provided by my German producer, Brockmann, I made a film
about a transvestite as an assault on the machismo culture that stifled me in a
militarized society. The film was my personal view of the corruption engulfing
our society. In the film, I hid my true identity by assuming a nom de camera,
Rosa ng Maynila, in homage to the German director and film radical, Rosa von
Praunheim, whose films on homosexuality had served to galvanize my ideas
regarding sexuality and filmmaking as a political act. While showing my film
in Berlin in the Horizonte program at the Arsenal theater years later, I was
honored to see my idol Rosa breeze into the theater to watch my film. It was a
touching moment for me.
As the struggle under the Marcos dictatorship wore on, what started with my
first film developed into a Super-8 trilogy, documenting the cursed lives we lived
under military rule. The second film was the most difficult to make. It took five
years to finish. It was Children of the Regime, a film funded by Catholic bishops
about child prostitution. Uncovering military ties with the prostitution business
in Manila’s red light district, I soon began to receive death threats for the
coverage I made of police officers giving protection to bars. It struck me that I
was following the exact same dangerous path as Schroeter. I should have known
his influence on me would lead me into dangerous straits.
As these political events occured, a new director arrived at the Goethe-Institut
– Dr. Uwe Schmelter. His presence hastened the realization of a new Philippine
cinema. Dr. Schmelter became the kind godfather of the country’s alternative
cinema. He arrived at the most exciting of times when the country convulsed
with anti-Marcos radicalism. He was pushed right into the eye of the social storm
– when tanks rolled into the streets and millions of Filipinos were willing to die
for freedom. It was the EDSA revolution of 1986, the uprising of a people under
the yellow banner of democracy. It was People Power. Dr. Schmelter helped
me get my film Children of the Regime out of the country. Like many others, I
Tsismis by Vicky Donato, 1989
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came under threat, as life became uncertain during the last days of the Marcos
regime. Through the kind diplomatic assistance of the Goethe-Institut, my film
landed in the Oberhausen Short Film and Documentary Festival. It came right
in time for the downfall of the Marcos government. After the dictator had fled
the country and democracy was restored, I saw myself leaving for Oberhausen
– the mecca of my dreams as a filmmaker. With my film in official competition, the mecca of my dreams as a filmmaker. With my film in official competition,
I was surprised to learn that I had been invited instead to sit as member of
the distinguished International Film Jury. Accepting the invitation, I stood tall
beside legendary figures in the jury like Fernando Birri, the Father of the New
Latin American Cinema. Being in Oberhausen was like a dream fulfilled. I could
hear myself muttering, “The old cinema is dead. We believe in the new.” It was
indeed an exhilarating experience.
As things got settled after the tumultuous social storm that happily resulted
in the restoration of democracy in the country, the promise of a new beginning
fused with the creative energy that came out of the partnership with the
Goethe-Institut. Now heading the training department at the Mowelfund Film
Institute – a private foundation – I found the best partner one could wish for
in Dr. Schmelter. He was an amiable man, a charismatic administrator, and
had the vision of an artist. Dr. Schmelter moved us out of the comfort zone,
proposed film workshops that would result in new film productions. I was only
too happy to accept. The German economy boomed in the mid-Eighties and
there was money to spend on the spread of German culture throughout the
world. We were lucky to have Dr. Schmelter push for projects that benefited
young Filipino filmmakers.
The workshops normally started with a meeting between Dr. Schmelter and
myself on what type of training we wished to have and who would be the
facilitator. As a host partner, I had the opportunity to suggest what workshops
to organize. As a result, workshops were conducted in experimental film (Ingo
Petzke), cinematography (Thomas Mauch), optical printing and – our favorite
subject – experimental filmmaking (Christoph Janetzko, who came to the
Philippines several times), video art (Maria Vedder), documentary filmmaking
(Christian Weisenborn and Michael Wulfes), directing (Harun Farocki), and
festival organization (Dorothee Wenner). To them we owe the creation of a new
film consciousness.
The German workshops were radical departures from Hollywood filmmaking
practices. Lessons in conceptual filmmaking ran counter to the formulaic
Hollywood filmmaking. Foremost among the cherished contributions made by
the German collaboration was the introduction of experimental filmmaking.
This brought such a radical frame of mind to the young filmmakers. One could
see from their works a reworking of the elements of cinema from the standpoint
of art. This was a departure from the commercial values of Hollywood and the
melodramatic conventions of the Filipino cinema. The films produced by the
experimental workshops were very seldom seen on local screens. They were
devoid of stories to tell and this caused not a few audiences to become uneasy.
The films now spoke a different language and many viewers were disturbed.
From the standpoint of art, I could see the Philippine cinema convulse with the
radical aspirations of these experimental films and documentaries. The films
sought to uncover realities never before shown. Even the government’s film
censors began to become alarmed. The spirit of true filmmaking was breathing
new life into the Philippine cinema.
While it was difficult for the films to find an appreciative public in the country,
the films were appreciated at the international film festivals. The Eighties saw
Filipino experimental films and documentaries travel to festivals far and wide.
The appearance on the scene of a new Philippine cinema through short films and
documentaries coincided with the explosion of a new film energy in Europe that
saw the creation of new festivals dedicated to alternative filmmaking. Raymond
Red and I traipsed to these festivals and paved the way for the international
acceptance of Filipino short films and documentaries. This was how Raymond
got a German DAAD grant to be an artist-in-residence in Germany. He also got
a film grant from a television network ZDF, and produced his first full-length
film Bayani (Hero, 1992). Raymond was retracing steps made years earlier by
another independent film stalwart, Kidlat Tahimik, who in the Seventies made
his mark at the Berlin Film Festival where he won prizes for his film Perfumed
Nightmare. He too became a friend of German film legend Werner Herzog. The
Berlin Film Festival has since then been a gateway for future filmmakers to gain
recognition and win awards. The latest among them were filmmakers such as
Carlitos Siguion- Reyna for Ang Lalaki sa Buhay ni Selya and Aureus Solito for
Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros.
Oliver by Nick Deocampo, 1984