Philippines,
1981, 107 min
Shown in 1983
CREDITS
- dir
-
Mike de Leon
- prod
-
Marichu Maceda
- scr
-
Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr., Raquel Villavicencio, Mike de Leon
- cam
-
Rody Lacap
- editor
-
Jess Navarro
- cast
-
Mark Gil, Sandy Andolong, Ward Luarca, Noel Trinidad, Jimmy Javier
-
COMMENTS
Mike de Leon in person. His film Kisapmata also showed in the 1983 Festival.
Batch ’81 is about the process is that turns average male college kids into fully-fledged members of a fraternity in a Manila university. Filipino frats place much more emphasis than their American models on trials of physical and mental endurance. The film follows one group of neophytes through a series of humiliations and tortures, some of them very disturbing indeed. The film is based on extensive research into the (secret) activities of the frats, but Mike de Leon is less interested in documenting the reality than in exploring its implications. He wastes no time on establishing the day-to-day routines of college life or on sketching unnecessary backgrounds, but instead focuses squarely on the kids’ gradual surrender of self to the identity and ideology of the group. The result is at once alarmingly plausible and imaginative enough to allow a metaphorical dimension to emerge naturally. Ultimately, it’s a film about fascism.
—Tony Rayns
FACTOID #304
After its U.S. premiere at the 1969 Festival, the print of Z by Costa-Gavras was stolen from the locked projection room of the Masonic Auditorium.
