Lino Brocka: Filmmaker and Social Activist, One of the First Latter-day Saint Convert in the Philippines

Lino Brocka: Filmmaker and Social Activist, One of the First Latter-day Saint Convert in the Philippines

Lino Brocka: Legendary Filmmaker, One of the First Latter-day Saint Convert in the Philippines

by Hugo Salinas

Many know Lino Brocka (1939-1991) as the most renowned filmmaker to come from the Philippines. Less known is the fact that he was gay. And even less known is the fact that he was a Latter-day Saint. In fact, Brocka was one of the first two converts in the Philippines. After his baptism, Brocka served a mission in Hawaii and studied for one semester at BYU-Hawaii.

The Philippines' Greatest Director

Lino Brocka's story is so unusual that if it was pitched to a movie studio it would be rejected -- for being too unbelievable. Yet ask most any Filipino Latter-day Saint, and they know the story: the man who is widely considered the greatest filmmaker in his country, was also a Latter-day Saint. Beyond that, he could be called the "first convert" to the church, earning him forever a place in Latter-day Saint history and film history. Before Richard Dutcher was old enough to hold a camera, Lino Brocka was making a film that drew on his missionary experiences -- in a leper colony.

Brocka was not an active churchgoer later in life, but never held animosity toward the Church. It appears that Filipino church members eventually rejected Brocka's films because of "R-rated" content and GLBT themes. Yet when one considers Brocka's themes, it is clear that his critically acclaimed films were deeply influenced by many Latter-day Saint values, even while portraying--at times accepting--some non Latter-day Saint values.

After leaving the faith, Lino Brocka became the most productive, renowned, and controversial filmmaker of the Philippines. He fought tirelessly against the censorship imposed by dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Tubog sa Ginto ("Dipped in Gold," 1971) and Macho Dancer (1988) are two of Brocka's controversial movies with homosexual themes.

Brocka died on May 22, 1991, in a car accident.

From "Filipino Film and Video Artists":

Filmmaker, actor, social activist, Mr. Brocka is widely considered as the most prominent Filipino filmmaker who broke grounds for Philippine cinema internationally when his films Insiang (1976), Jaguar (1979) and Bona (1980) were shown at Cannes Film Festival, both in Director's fortnight and the Main Competition. He had a colorful career until his untimely death in a car accident in Quezon City in 1991. Known for the social and political causes he espoused like anti-censorship and human rights, he carried on these causes to his films notably, Miguelito, Ang Batang Rebelde / The young rebel (1986), Orapronobis / Fight for us (1989) and Gumapang ka sa Lusak / Dirty affair (1990).

From "Philippine and Church History" and Church History in the Philippines:

The first missionaries [to the Philippines], Elders Ray Goodson, Harry Murray, Kent Lowe and Nestor Ledesma, arrived in Manila on June 5, 1961. The first two to be baptized by the missionaries were Jose Gutierez Sr. and Lino Brocka.

From University of the Philippines Diliman film festival notes:

The best known and most highly regarded contemporary Philippine filmmaker. The son of a fisherman and a schoolteacher, he converted to the Mormon religion after graduating from college and served briefly as a missionary in a leper colony on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. Returning to Manila, he began acting, directing and writing for the stage and TV. He directed his first film in 1970, but it was in 1978 that he first attracted international attention at the Cannes Festival, with Insiang (1976). Brocka's films often carry a social message and are typically sympathetic to the poor and the working class. They are frequently politically controversial. His French co-production L'Insoumis (1989) mercilessly depicts the lawlessness and terror in the post-Marcos Philippines.

From "Mission Impossible 1: Filipino Filmmaking 1896-1986":

Lino Brocka (1940-1991), like Gerardo de Leon, was the spokesman and master filmmaker of his generation. Raised poor and rural, Brocka studied to be a Mormon missionary, worked with homeless in San Francisco, and taught in Hawaii before returning to the Philippines in his late-Twenties. An aspiring actor, he also wrote and directed for the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) both on stage and for its television show. In 1970, Brocka made his first film Wanted: Perfect Mother. It combined the current hit The Sound of Music with a Filipine comic serial (a governess struggles with her brood of orphans), and achieved box office success. Brocka's career was built on the fact that, in three weeks, he could write and direct a film which could make as much money as an American import. Over the next four years he made nine films.

Brocka was a controversial figure, the subject of both praise and criticism. But he was certainly a prolific filmmaker. Among the best of the more than 70 films he made are Maynila: In the Claws of Neon (1975) and Jaguar (1979) which depict the Philippines in a gritty, realistic style. He has was criticised for Bona (1980), which uses well-known movie stars to make a film that, he claimed, attacked the star system; Kontrobersyal (1980), a film condemning pornography, but which was itself deemed pornographic... and Ang Bayan Ko (My Country; Clinging to a Knife Edge, 1984), a Filipine entry in the 1984 Cannes Film Festival which was disowned by the Filipine government. Brocka was a trenchant critic of the Marcos government, and despite being censored (during the latter period of martial law, his films were smuggled out of the country for screenings) and imprisonment, he continued to fight censorship and agitate against the Marcos regime in both his life and his films.

This vigilance continued with the films he made after the fall of Marcos. Brocka, along with other filmmakers, was disappointed with the policies of the new president, Corazon Aquino. Consequently, he continued to make films critical of the Filipine government. Brocka, without a doubt, brought international attention to both the quality and value of the Filipine cinema as well as the transgressions and repression of the Marcos regime.

The following excerpt has been taken from Mario A. Hernando's Lino Brocka: The Artist and His Times (Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines, 1993), pp. 10-12:

It was [Brocka's friend Behn] Cervantes who introduced Brocka to a team of young Mormon missionaries in 1961, largely to rid himself of them. Brocka listened, first out of politeness, recognizing that whatever the missionaries were preaching, their beliefs were deeply sincere. Slowly, he seemed to hear echoes of his father teaching him about honesty, about commitment, about living what you believe. He responded to the Mormon concept that God has created the world for us and that we should feel good about ourselves, in contrast to what he saw as the Roman Catholic concern with guilt. And he liked the emphasis on simplicity in Mormonism, in contrast to the pomp and ceremony he associated with the Catholic faith into which he had been born.

Brocka became the team's first Filipino convert and agreed to go to Hawaii on the two-year mission required of all male Mormons--in part to get away from the Philippines and the pointless life he felt himself to be living.

He was not a successful missionary, but in the mission field, he learned a lot about himself. He did not mind working as a two-man team but refused to report on his partner to their superior. He found that he was older than the average missionary, with more life experience and more views of his own. The idealism with which he entered the church soon became tempered by the realization that the Mormon church was not different from other large organizations, and that Mormons were like other people--some believed and lived the credo, some did not; some did their work humbly, while others curried favor with their superiors; some supervisors gave their teams leeway and others insisted on absolute obedience.

Brocka was transferred from Oahu to Hawaii to Kauai to Maui to Lanai, and finally to Molokai island, in less than 12 months. During this period, along with routine missionary activities, he taught part of a course in World Religion at the University of Hawaii; contributed to fund raising by staging plays and shows for tourists; worked with third generation Filipinos who were ashamed of their ancestry; and discovered that manual labor--construction work and pineapple picking--was not for him. A series of unsatisfactory reports followed him from place to place which asserted that he was a bad influence on other missionaries because he raised questions about orders, did not unwaveringly obey superiors, and seemed to get sidetracked from the main task of gaining converts.

His last assignment, Molokai, was apparently the church's post of last resort. If he had any religious experience during his two years as a missionary, it was here during his year at the Kalaupapa leper colony. Very slowly, "to keep from dying of boredom," he began to get involved in the lives of the lepers and the multi-denominational staff. They worked together on projects, put on performances, went fishing in the early morning and talked about what was important and what was not. On infrequent trips to Honolulu, the young man listened to friends moaning about their problems and how difficult their lives were. In contrast, the lepers on Molokai were positive, facing life with cheerful, good humor. Even their funerals were happy because they believed that after death, they would be made whole again.

Brocka had a lot of time to think and he began to put his own life into some kind of perspective. He had gone from being a prize-winning high school graduate with the world ahead of him, to a university dropout whose mother compared him unflatteringly to his former classmates, and his search for meaning in life through the Mormon faith was unfulfilled. Gradually, he formed his own credo for living: to be grateful for what he had, not to clutter his life with non-essentials; to reject the excuse that something is futile and therefore not worth doing; and finally resolving that life will never put me down, I shall prove stronger than life."

After completing his missionary commitment Brocka attended the Mormon Church College of Hawaii for one semester in a last attempt to complete his education. He paid his own way, working as a grounds man, but found the Hawaiian climate so conducive to sleeping under coconut trees that he failed to attend classes. Thus, still without a degree, Brocka decided to visit the U.S. mainland. He arrived in San Francisco with $50 in his pocket. He lived for a few weeks in the city's "tenderloin district," learning from hoboes how to survive. At last, he got a job as a busboy in a restaurant at Fisherman's Wharf where he ate his first solid meal in a month. Two months later, he took a job in a hospital for the elderly where the administrator offered him a permanent position and help in getting American citizenship if he would stay, but he refused.

In Manila, before his mission, Brocka had experienced a feeling of choking, drowning in his own life. After five months in San Francisco, he felt an overwhelming homesickness for the Philippines, a feeling which attacked him every time he traveled. Therefore he returned to Manila in 1968.

From: http://www.ldsfilm.com/directors/Brocka.html