Lino Brocka broke through to international acclaim with this candid portrait of 1970s Manila, the second film in the director’s turn to more serious-minded filmmaking after building a career on mainstream films he described as “soaps.” A young fisherman from a provincial village arrives in the capital on a quest to track down his girlfriend, who was lured there with the promise of work and hasn’t been heard from since. In the meantime, he takes a low-wage job at a construction site and witnesses life on the streets, where death strikes without warning, corruption and exploitation are commonplace, and protests hint at escalating civil unrest. Mixing visceral, documentary-like realism with the narrative focus of Hollywood noir and melodrama, Manila in the Claws of Light is a howl of anguish from one of the most celebrated figures in Philippine cinema.
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New 4K digital restoration by the Film Development Council of the Philippines and Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata, in association with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, LVN, Cinema Artists Philippines, and cinematographer Mike De Leon, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Introduction by filmmaker Martin Scorsese
Signed: Lino Brocka, a 1987 documentary about the director by Christian Blackwood
“Manila” . . . A Filipino Film, a 1975 documentary about the making of the film, featuring Brocka and actors Hilda Koronel and Rafael Roco Jr.
New piece with critic, filmmaker, and festival programmer Tony Rayns
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: An essay by film scholar José B. Capino
New cover design by Adam Maida
Original post
[Show spoiler]
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The Philippine Daily Inquirer is reporting that Lino Brocka’s 1975 film, Manila in the Claws of Light (Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag) will be joining the Criterion Collection in 2017. This will be the first Filipino film in the Collection.
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Lino Brocka’s “Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag,” which was restored by the Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, will be released by the prestigious Criterion Collection and Janus Films next year.
The good news was relayed to the Inquirer by filmmaker Mike de Leon, who’s the cinematographer and producer of the landmark social-realist drama released in 1975.
Jennifer Ahn, managing director of the Film Foundation, told De Leon that “Maynila” is “on the short list of titles for distribution in 2017.” Ahn explained that the film will be “available on DVD/Blu-ray in North America.”
Manila in the Claws of Light was restored by the Film Foundation and L’Immagine Ritrovata. The restoration screened in the 2013 Cannes Classics line-up (alongside Borom Sarret, which will be included on Criterion’s upcoming release of Black Girl). There was a brief theatrical run in 2013 and 2014.
According to the Inquirer, the BFI is interested in releasing the film in the UK, and Carlotta will handle it in France.
Manohla Dargis, on the film:
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Classical in its emotional texture and unmistakably modern on both a formal and political level, the film opens with a credit sequence and a series of short takes of ordinary men and women milling around the city’s humbler corners just as the day is beginning. There’s a rough, grab-and-go immediacy to the black-and-white images, which seem at once random and carefully chosen: A few men sweep the streets, another opens a storefront gate and yet another expels an impressively long, rubbery stream of spittle, an act that feels decidedly editorial and almost like punctuation. Shortly after, the black and white switches to color, inaugurating the fictional part of the film. From that moment, everything is in color, yet the strong sense of life — and the sense that you’re watching real people in real situations — remains.
Some notes on the restoration:
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The restoration of Maynila: sa mga kuko ng liwanag was made possible through the use of the original camera and sound negatives deposited by Pierre Rissient, on behalf of Lino Brocka, at the BFI National Archive in the early 1980s. The state of conservation of the negatives was critical.
The negative was wet-scanned at 4K resolution. The digital restoration process required considerable effort due to the great number of issues affecting the negative: tears, scratches, warping, visible marks and halos.
Color decay was also a significant problem. The film’s cinematographer, Mike De Leon, attentively guided the grading phase and validated a positive print for reference.
I wonder if this will released on its own or part of a possible second World Cinema Project box-set. If its the latter, I wonder what other films would also be included.
Another WCP box would be fantastic. Who knows what the rights situation is with a lot of those films though? But this is great news; at least there is some movement.
I just signed up for the 2-week trial on FilmStruck and got to watch this film which is already available for streaming. Looking forward to the Blu release for the extras.
The transfer including the grading was supervised by the film's DoP, using a positive print as reference. Surely he'd know better than most other people what the film ought to look like.
The transfer including the grading was supervised by the film's DoP, using a positive print as reference. Surely he'd know better than most other people what the film ought to look like.
It has been confirmed that Ritrovata apply a standard film print emulating LUT to most if not all of their colour restorations, and presumably after all the supervised grading is done (otherwise all of these different movies should not really look the same).
It has been confirmed that Ritrovata apply a standard film print emulating LUT to most if not all of their colour restorations, and presumably after all the supervised grading is done (otherwise all of these different movies should not really look the same).
Can you provide a reference for this statement?
What's a "film print emulating LUT", and why would the do this uniformly to all their restorations? (I know what a LUT is.)
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Manila in the Claws of Light (1975)
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