The restoration of Lino Brocka’s 1975 film “Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag” has found a surprise benefactor from across the globe—Oscar-winning filmmaker Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation (WCF).
Indeed, it will take a global village to save “Maynila.” The restoration of Lino Brocka’s 1975 film “Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag” has found a surprise benefactor from across the globe: Oscar-winning filmmaker Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation (WCF) has taken a keen interest in the preservation project.
Kidlat Tahimik (a.k.a. Eric de Guia)—together with the late Lino Brocka and perhaps Brillante Mendoza—is the most famous Filipino filmmaker abroad. His reputation rests on a small but distinguished body of work, starting with “Mababangong Bangungot” (1977) which—ahead of Brocka’s “Jaguar” becoming an entry in the competition category of the Cannes Film Festival in 1981—broke into the competition of the Berlin Film Festival in 1978, where it won the International Film Critics’ Prize.
A small room in the restored Casa Vallejo hotel on Session Road now serves as the country’s first cinematheque, a film archival cinema inspired by the Cinémathèque Française developed by a French film club in 1936.
