Mike De Leon

Summary:
“Signos” features interviews of courageous personalities who challenged the autocratic rule of the Marcos family.Read More »

PLOT: Sid Lucero, a 26-year old pre-Med student is an aspiring neophyte of the Alpha Kappa Omega fraternity. Over a six-month initiation period, he and six other neophytes are subjected to severe physical and psychological torture in and outside the fraternity house.Read More »

PLOT: A crime-drama-suspense genre film not often seen in Philippine cinema. A controlling patriarch loses it over his daughter’s marriage and her attempts to escape from their incestuous household.Read More »

PLOT: Kakabakaba Ka Ba? (lit. Does Your Heart Beat Faster?) is a 1980 musical-romantic comedy film produced by LVN Pictures (in its last offering) in 1980, with Mike De Leon as director.

The film revolves on two couples who found themselves in conflict with the foreign commercial giants that control the Philippine economy, the Japanese and the Chinese. Moreover, it involved the Catholic Church which has a stranglehold on the Philippine society itself. The film reflects on the Philippine economy and society being primarily controlled by other forces for their own benefits and become instruments in performing illegal activities. Actors Christopher de Leon, Sandy Andolong, Jay Ilagan and Charo Santos starred as main cast in the film, while Johnny Delgado and APO Hiking Society’s Boboy Garovillo portrayed as main villains.Read More »

PLOT: During a homecoming to his provincial home, a young man gets involved with a woman strangely haunted and ultimately possessed, by her sister’s spirit, paving the way to revealing the painful truth about her unsolved disappearance.Read More »

Plot: Retired policeman holds a woman and daughter in a claustrophobic grip with his dictatorial behaviour. His son-in-law resists and the result is a confrontation. A gruesome monster in his familiarity: it could be your next-door neighbour.Read More »

Quote:
Sid Lucero, a 26-year old pre-Med student is an aspiring neophyte of the Alpha Kappa Omega fraternity. Over a six-month initiation period, he and six other neophytes are subjected to severe physical and psychological torture in and outside the fraternity house. The neophytes come to accept the senseless violence as a requisite of their acceptance into the brotherhood. Only five of them survive the brutal, fascistic ordeal, due to the fraternity rumble with Sigma Omicron Sigma headed by Arvisu.

De Leon treats the fraternity as a microcosm of Philippine society to spotlight issues relating to human rights and autocratic rule at the height of Marcos’ martial rule. The significance of the film derives from the parallelism it draws between authoritarian society and the fraternity, and between the fraternity and Philippine society under Marcos.
(L. Pareja, CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art, v. VIII: Philippine Film)Read More »

Kakabakaba Ka Ba? (lit. Does Your Heart Beat Faster?) is a 1980 musical-romantic comedy film produced by LVN Pictures (in its last offering) in 1980, with Mike De Leon as director.

The film revolves on two couples who found themselves in conflict with the foreign commercial giants that control the Philippine economy, the Japanese and the Chinese. Moreover, it involved the Catholic Church which has a stranglehold on the Philippine society itself. The film reflects on the Philippine economy and society being primarily controlled by other forces for their own benefits and become instruments in performing illegal activities. Actors Christopher de Leon, Sandy Andolong, Jay Ilagan and Charo Santos starred as main cast in the film, while Johnny Delgado and APO Hiking Society’s Boboy Garovillo portrayed as main villains.Read More »

Two filmmakers were obsessed with doing a film about Jose Rizal, the Filipino national hero. Their effort to explain the mysteries in the hero’s life lead them to confront the past and its characters.

This odyssey towards the illusive truth show us their face encounters with Dona Lolay, Rizal’s mother; Paciano, the brother; Josephine Bracken, the controversial “dulce extranjera”; Narcisa, the understanding elder sister who holds the key to the retraction controversy; and Padre Balaguet, the jesuit who writes about Rizal’s final hours.Read More »