© 1980 Ms. Nora Cabaltera Villamayor aka Nora Aunor. All Rights Reserved.
More than three decades after his death in a car accident in 1991 at age 52, a small sampling of Lino Brocka’s corpus of 66 feature films has slowly been reemerging in the last few decades through glamorous restoration projects. If nothing else, this handful of titles, which cineastes have known Brocka chiefly by, only serve to exalt his legacy as a dissident artist, social activist and public intellectual who is seen as a fearless critic of the Marcos and Aquino presidential administrations. TIFF, which once had a resident Filipino cinema advocate in the late Asiaphile programmer David Overby, has kept a muted eye on the Philippines since, with only piecemeal representation in the past two and a half decades. Where it has remained consistent is in faithfully programming a number of vintage Filipino titles mainly in the retrospective section of its annual film festival. Tellingly, all have been Brocka classics: My Country: Gripping the Knife’s Edge [Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim] (1984) in 2008; Manila in the Claws of Light [Maynila, sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag] (1975) in 2013; Insiang (1976) in 2016 (as a cinematheque screening); and Bona (1980) this year. As 2024 comes to a close, the latest Brocka restoration, Jaguar (1979), has just premiered at France’s Lumière Film Festival in October and looks set to follow Bona on an international tour of film festivals and cinematheques, including back home.
Crafted as melodrama but also intended as a commentary on the ills of hero worship, Bona plots a young girl’s religious infatuation with an older bit actor named Gardo despite coming to learn he is a needy mama’s boy, habitual drunk and serial womanizer. Since Bona is clingy and willing, Gardo is only too pleased to have her as his servant. But being the daughter of a middle-class Manila family, their incompatibility is scandalous and not even Bona’s pragmatic parents can break her illusions. As such, she disregards their violent objections and shacks up with Gardo in the slums to embrace her imagined role as his servile wife. Yet, by the film’s climax we are asked to sympathize with our fangirl’s remorse after her desperation boils over. Although the closing scene is hardly some profound indictment of the story’s entrenched patriarchy, this is the kind of catnip that would garner cheers and applause from North American audiences. In the end, the most charitable thing to say about Bona is that she takes endearingly after her father (Venchito Galvez) and brother (Spanky Manikan). Originally written for a 1973 television anthology episode directed by Brocka and starring Laurice Guillen and Ruel Vernal, the late screenwriter Cenen Ramones had also adapted her story for Brocka’s cinematic version, starring beloved superstar Nora Aunor in the titular role and reliable Brocka regular Phillip Salvador as Gardo. More recently in 2012, Bona was reimagined for the times in a stage production starring Eugene Domingo and Edgar Allan Guzman.
The remarkable circumstances behind Bona’s revival are memorialized in a series of intertitles prefacing the restored film. While researching Brocka, José B. Capino, Professor of English at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, had interviewed the late French cineaste Pierre Rissient in 2017 and learnt of his access to the negatives of several Brocka films, including Bona and Jaguar which had been thought lost. Rissient then consigned details to Capino, who mentioned this to distributor Kani Releasing, who in turn worked with distributor Carlotta Films to manage a rollout for Bona. After Kani Releasing had secured theatrical rights for North America from Aunor, the film’s Executive Producer, the original 35mm negatives were scanned, restored and colour graded in 4K. Originally, Bona premiered at the 1980 Metro Manila Film Festival and had a domestic theatrical release before screening in the Directors’ Fortnight at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival (Brocka’s second film in this section after Insiang in 1978). Apart from a 2-week run at the Film Forum in New York in 1984 and a home video release, the film has been off the theatrical grid since. Following its post-restoration premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in May, Bona had its homecoming premiere at the 20th Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival in Manila in August, with Aunor, Salvador and other cast members in attendance.
Brandon Wee
Bona is scheduled to be theatrically released across North America from December 2024:
Toronto (TIFF Lightbox): 1 Dec 2024 & 6 Dec 2024
Los Angeles (Academy Museum of Motion Pictures): 2 Dec 2024
Minneapolis (Trylon Cinema): 5 Dec 2024
New York (Metrograph): 6-8 Dec 2024
Washington, D.C. (Suns Cinema): 6 Dec 2024 & 12 Dec 2024
Montreal (Cinéma Moderne): 14 Dec 2024
Edmonton (Metro Cinema): 29 Dec 2024
Austin (Austin Film Society): 1 Jan 2025 & 5 Jan 2025
Winnipeg (Dave Barber Cinematheque): 8-15 Jan 2025
Vancouver (VIFF Centre): 10 Jan 2025
Philadelphia (Lightbox Film Center): 22 Jan 2025
Madison (UW Cinematheque): 19 Apr 2025