GOLD, SILVER, DEATH
(ORO PLATA MATA)
Dir. Peque Gallaga, 1982.
Philippines. 194 min.
In Filipino with English subtitles.

Regionally acclaimed director Peque Gallaga’s ORO, PLATA, MATA represents, in its first screening in the United States since 1983, an underseen gem of Filipino cinema. It is a film that elegantly charts the complexities and realities of Filipino class dynamics, masculinities and femininities in a thoroughly alive, brutal and passionate period piece following two land owning aristocratic families set just before and during the Japanese occupation of the country in WWII. With blood, gore, violence of reprehensible sorts, and possibly unsimulated sex scenes, this is maximalist unafraid-to-be-unrestrained-about-passions cinema, Filipino-style. Very possibly the late director’s, passing recently in 2020, magnum opus, along with the great SCORPIO NIGHTS (1985).

Special thanks to ABS-CBN, Sagip Pelikula, Leo Katigbak, Julie Galino, Enrico Po, Steve Macfarlane, Connor Burns, Liz Purchell, Brandon Tilghman and August Dunson.