A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino. 1965. Philippines. Directed by Lamberto V. Avellana. Screenplay by Donato Valentin, Trinidad Reyes. With Daisy H. Avellana, Naty Crame-Rogers, Conrad Parham. DCP. 107 min.
Mike De Leon was instrumental in the restoration of this major rediscovery of independent Filipino cinema. A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino marks the transition between studio-produced genre movies of the 1940s and ’50s and the more experimental and politically subversive filmmaking of the 1960s. Based on a celebrated stage play by Nick Joaquin, who also wrote the story on which De Leon’s radical Kisapmata was based, Lamberto Avellana’s film centers on the tensions within an artistic bourgeois family living in the prewar Intramuros of Old Manila. Seen today, the film remains a stirring reflection on the culture war between the intellectual class of the Philippines and their Spanish and American colonizers.