close
close

Gala screening of ‘Jose Rizal’ at Cinemalaya on August 7

Gala screening of ‘Jose Rizal’ at Cinemalaya on August 7

One of the exciting highlights of Cinemalaya 2024 will be the screening of the remastered version of the 1998 landmark film Jose Rizal by national film artist Marilou Diaz-Abaya.

The film made history as a critical and box office success.

Jose Rizal Cinemalaya

For the record, the film won a total of 17 awards at the 1998 Metro Manila Film Festival, namely Best Picture, Best Actor (Cesar Montano), Best Director (Marilou Diaz Abaya), Best Supporting Actor (Jaime Fabregas), Best Supporting Actress (Gloria Diaz), Best Screenplay (Ricky Lee, June Lana, Peter Ong Lim), Best Cinematography (Rody Lacap), Best Production Design (Leo Abaya) and Best Music (Nonong Buencamino). In addition, the film won the Gatpuno Antonio J. Villegas Cultural Awards, among others.

The monumental Jose Rizal produced by GMA Films, Abaya transformed into a successful film director, followed by an equally successful Muro friend And Bagong Buwan.

The film became one of the most acclaimed films by the film industry and critics and one of the most commercially successful films of the decade.

The leading roles are played by Cesar Montano in the title role, alongside Chin Chin Gutierrez as Josephine Bracken, Mickey Ferriols as Leonor Rivera and Ronnie Lazaro, Gloria Diaz, Gardo Versoza and Pen Medina, among others.

Marilou Diaz-Abaya and Cesar Montano on the set of Jose Rizal.

As the film production schedule showed and told by AsianCineVisionAbaya did not readily accept the initial offer from GMA Films, which wanted nothing less than “the definitive film about Rizal, worthy of a centennial, a film for eternity.”

Abaya’s sons — Mark and David — were in high school at the Ateneo when news of the Rizal bio-epic began to spread. They happen to be students at Rizal’s alma mater.

Abaya’s answer to her son was no, no, no. “It was just an offer.”

Marc and his brother David spoke to their mother and said they couldn’t believe that their mother would turn down the offer to make a biography about Jose Rizal, the man who also studied at Ateneo.

“What face am I going to show at school?” Marc asked his mother desperately.

His other son, David, was also inconsolable.

The filmmaker was on the verge of tears. She got up and called GMA Film executive Gilberto Duavit, Jr. and told him that she had decided to accept the project.

She added: “You have my son Marc to thank. He was persistent.”

It was obvious that the poor mother couldn’t say no to her son.

Abaya quickly assembled Ricky Lee, Jun Lana and Peter Ong Lim as a writing team.

According to Lee, discussions about how to approach the topic were “bloody.”

The strategy that Abaya and his writers agreed upon was a major challenge. They would write the film from the perspective of Rizal as an artist-intellectual in a web of flashbacks from his life and recreations from his novels, exploring the interconnections between his life and his work.

The preparations were extra intensive.

Music scorer Nonong Buencamino and Jaime Fabregas during the Jose Rizal exhibition at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival.

For the lead actor, who plays Rizal (Montano), Abaya personally designed a three-month curriculum that included in-depth lessons in history, politics, poetry, fencing, handwriting and Spanish diction.

Abaya also demanded that her team Nolin and the Philis and conduct independent research into Rizal’s life.

They agreed to meet every Friday to question and catch up with each other.

Production designer Leo Abaya (no relation to the filmmaker) and his team left no stone unturned in bringing late 19th-century Calamba, Laguna (Rizal’s birthplace) back to life.

After several previews and a premiere evening, Jose Rizal was judged a “work of astonishing achievement and stunning miscalculation.”

The consensus was that “it was astonishing how Abaya and her writers managed to cram in virtually all the events of primary importance in Rizal’s life – and that too in a non-chronological order, and even liberally interspersed with scenes from his novels – without making the timeline of Rizal’s life confusing or confusing.”

As it turned out, Jose Rizal became one of Abaya’s most internationally viewed films, invited to festivals and retrospectives from Busan to Tokyo, from Madrid to Paris and Berlin, from Chicago to New York.

Jose Rizal remains a captivating film and the acting here was certainly the best from Cesar Montano in the title role and Jaime Fabregas as Rizal’s lawyer.

Of Abaya’s other groundbreaking films, it is a coincidence that GMA Films produced three: On the day of Muro-Ami’s murder And Jose Rizal.

Throughout her short but fruitful life, filmmaker Marilou Diaz Abaya lived and breathed music, which was also an integral part of all her films.

When Marilou Diaz-Abaya was named National Artist for Film and Broadcasting Arts on June 10, 2022, she had long deserved it. After all, she had lived her art and her life with great artistry.

“How terribly sad,” said celebrated pianist Cecile Licad upon hearing of Abaya’s death in 2012. “I will always remember the happy times and the inspiration she gave me. I will connect with her every time I play Chopin’s funeral sonata.”

Marilou Diaz-Abaya and Cecile Licad in Baguio City with the author.

It is understandable that Abaya’s love for music is well reflected in most of her films.

For the musical score of Jose RizalAward-winning film composer Nonong Buencamino enlisted the services of cellist Renato Lucas and classical guitarist Lester Demetillo, plus members of the PPO string section and an eight-piece male choir. “I rented the old UP Theater for two days and brought the studio recording equipment there. I also composed Lamb of God, the piece for the male choir.”

The music he did not compose in Jose Rizal were the Market of Cadiz Research revealed that it was actually the music played during Rizal’s execution, the Christmas carol sung by Fabregas, and the ballroom dance that came from a Spanish zarzuela.

The remastered classic film Jose Rizal will be screened on Wednesday, August 7, 2024 at 4:00 PM at the Manila Metropolitan Theater during the Cinemalaya Festival as “a tribute to Philippine cinema.”

The 20e The Cinemalaya edition features 10 short films and ten feature-length films and will be shown from August 2 to 11 at Ayala Malls Manila Bay and at the Manila Metropolitan Theater.