From Facebook post, December 14, 2020

IN FILM, OUR YOUNG BOYS ARE IN PERIL!

For some few years, our young girls were: Barbara Miguel as the 9-year old impregnated in Joseph Israel Laban's NUWEBE [lit. nine; English title: Termitaria] (2013); Therese Malvar in Ralston Jover's HAMOG [lit. dew] (2015) and Louie Ignacio's SCHOOL SERVICE (2018), in both films, as a worldly street child; Hasmine Killip in Eduardo Roy Jr's PAMILYA ORDINARYO [ordinary people] (2016), as a young mother in the streets; and Angelique Sanoy in Jover's BOMBA [the bomb] (2017), as a missing child in a delicate relationship with an older man; all of them, without a nurturing family, practically living on their own.

And now, it's our young boys' turn. Of varying styles, three films have gained critical notice for their uncompromising exploration of young boys in adverse conditions; Timothy Castillo as a gang apprentice in Mikhhail Red's urban-noirish NEOMANILA (2017); Kokoy de Santos and Royce Cabrera as young sex workers in Eduardo Roy Jr's social realist FUCCBOIS (2019); and Elijah Canlas as the HIV-infected fifteen-year old in Jun Robles Lana's psychological KALEL, 15 (2019) - miserablist, nihilist in attitude, all bearing the wages of poverty and underdevelopment, institutions broken or dysfunctional, family, church, government, their protagonists lumpen, chronically abused, bereft of agency (like their young girls counterparts), a common theme in Philippine cinema in the tradition of Lino Brocka and of late, Brillante Mendoza and Lav Diaz.

Where lies, redemption?

In a way, the current rage on BL web series (boys love) serves as a counterpoint to this tendency. Is it not?

- Mauro Feria Tumbocon, Jr., Artistic Director, FACINE

16Ferdy Lapuz, Ibarra Mateo and 14 others

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• Emmanuel Dela Cruz

  It's BL VS. LB pala!

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  • 1y
  Emmanuel Dela Cruz replied

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• Avl Reyes

  Mga batang

  Juan dela Patria

  Ng Bayang Pilipinas… 

  See more

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  • 1y
• Jay Altarejos

  In real life, they have been killed

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  • 1y
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