Pelikula Lektura with Boni Ilagan

The online registration for the UPFI Philippine Cinema Centennial Lecture Series.
In partnership with the Film Development Council of the Philippines.

Pelikula Lektura with Boni Ilagan

Date: 10 December 2019
Time: 10:00 AM–12:00 NN

The Pelikula Lektura in UP Diliman will be held @ the Videotheque, UPFI Film Center, Osmeña Ave.

The lecture is free of charge.

Title:
Pursuing Human Rights:
Film and Dissent

Abstract:

Bio:
All through his college years up to his “senior moments” today, BONIFACIO P. ILAGAN has been working
in the alternative and traditional mass media, including television and video/film, apart from the theater
from where it all got started. He has been recognized in all these media platforms, as attested to by his
body of works and awards from the Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, Cultural Center of the
Philippines, Catholic Mass Media Awards, Film Academy of the Philippines, Philippine Movie Press Club
Star Awards, Gawad Tanglaw, Golden Screen Awards, and the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and
Sciences; and of late, Gawad Plaridel.

In 1999, he was among the 100 awardees of the CCP Centennial Honors for the Arts, chosen from
among “the most outstanding Filipino artists and cultural advocates in the last 100 years for their
contribution to the development of the nation through cultural work and the arts.” In 2010, he was
conferred the Lifetime Achievement Award (Gawad Balagtas) by the Writers Union of the Philippines.

Forty years ago, Ilagan was a political science freshman in the UP College of Arts and Sciences. Driven
by his love for the theater (and for want to be exempted from paying the tuition fee), he auditioned and
was accepted in the UP Mobile Theater of Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero, who would eventually become a
National Artist. In plazas and basketball courts in Manila, the suburbs, and the provinces, Ilagan acted in
Prof. Guerrero’s plays.

After three semesters, Ilagan bade goodbye to the UP Mobile Theater to found Panday-Sining, an activist
theater group that performed in the fashion of the UP Mobile Theater, but with a big activist difference: In
its plays which Ilagan himself wrote, the masa and their plight and aspirations took centerstage.

When President Marcos declared martial law in 1972, Ilagan was already in the underground movement
in the staff of its clandestine press. In 1974, he was captured with the journalist-poet Jose F. Lacaba and
UP English professor Dolores Stephens Feria. He was tortured.

Upon his release in 1976, he worked as a reporter for a television magazine, and as executive editor of
another cultural magazine. It was in the now-defunct Radio Philippines Network (RPN 9), however, where
he stayed the longest, working as writer and director mostly of public affairs programs starting in the late
1970s up to the late 1980s.

Learning that his name was back in some military wanted list, he left RPN 9, rejoined the underground,
but was rearrested and tortured again in 1994.

Upon his release, he wrote and directed the pioneering documentary on Philippine history and the
people’s movement, "Sa Liyab ng Libong Sulo" (1995).

He returned to RPN 9 and later accepted assignments in IBC 13, and in GMA 7 and ABS-CBN.

Among his important works in television under the pen name Patrick Manahan were the unprecedented
and award-winning series "Alab ng Lahi" (1982-84, various directors), a docudrama on the lives and
struggles of personages in Philippine history; and another series called "Bisperas ng Kasaysayan" (1995,
Lupita Aquino Kashiwahara, director) that revolved around a fictional hacendero family torn by the
revolutionary movement in the 1890s.

A memorable show that he helped organize and produce was "Nora Mismo," a public service program
hosted by Nora Aunor. Another project he wrote for was the drama series "Boracay" which could be the
precursor of today’s telenovela format.

Ilagan wrote and directed many documentaries whose social themes were recurrent in his works. One
such work, "VFA: A Question of Nationhood," a documentary on the RP-US relations, was, for some
reason, never shown to the public. It was produced by the Philippine Information Agency.

He wrote screenplays starting in the late 1980s, including "The Flor Contemplacion Story" (with Ricky
Lee, 1994), followed by "Dukot" (2009), "Sigwa" (2010), "Deadline" (2011), and "Migrante" (2012). These
films, all directed by Joel Lamangan, are cited social-realist films on human rights, justice and freedom,
and social reformation.

Ilagan is the recipient of the 2019 Gawad Plaridel Award, given by the University of the Philippines
System to outstanding media practitioners. Named after the great Marcelo H. del Pilar, Gawad Plaridel
bestows honor on Filipino media practitioners who have excelled in any of the media and performed with
the highest level of professional integrity in the interest of public service.