FDCP now owns ‘Insiang,’ to restore it like ‘Maynila’

Hida Koronel and Bembol Roco (right) topbill “Maynila, Sa Mga Kuko Ng Liwanag.” FILE PHOTO

The Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) announced in a statement this week, that it has obtained ownership rights to the award-winning Lino Brocka film “Insiang,” and was in talks with a US film group to restore the movie.

The FDCP statement said Insiang producer Ruby Tiong Tan turned over the rights to the council, which runs the National Film Archives. The turnover took place amid restoration talks between the FDCP and the World Cinema Project (WCP).

WCP is a program of The Film Foundation dedicated to preserving/restoring neglected films from around the world. It was initiated by filmmaker/producer Martin Scorsese in 2007.

Considered one of the best films of the 1970s by the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, Insiang follows the struggles of a teenage girl—the titular character Insiang, played by Hilda Koronel—trapped in urban poverty.

She lives with her mother Tonia (Mona Lisa), whose much younger lover Dado (Ruel Vernal), moves in with them. Dado rapes Insiang and the girl plots revenge.

“The film is reputed to be representative of Brocka’s social realist cinema,” said the FDCP. “It made Brocka a prominent figure in world cinema.”

Tan said its writer, the late Mario O’Hara, based the script on a family he had known personally. She noted that Insiang was the first movie ever to be shot in Tondo, Manila.

She told the FDCP: “We had nine policemen around the shanty and shot the film for 21 days straight, day and night, because we had to beat the deadline for the second Metro Manila Film Festival in 1976.”

Insiang won best actress for Hilda Koronel, best supporting actress for Mona Lisa and best cinematography for Conrado Baltazar in that festival. In 1978, it became the first Filipino film to screen at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.

Because of its influence on cinema, Insiang is often screened in film festivals locally and internationally, said the FDCP statement.

Brocka’s other 1970s classic, “Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag,” was part of a previous restoration project carried out by the FDCP with the WCP. The film won best archive restoration/preservation title at the 2014 Federation of Commercial Audiovisual Libraries International Awards in London.

Meanwhile, the FDCP said, it will soon launch the restored version of Manuel Conde’s “Genghis Khan” on DVD, targeted for a February 2015 release.

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