Philippine Second Golden Age

A taxi dancer (Rita Gomez) and taxi driver (Vic Vargas) are fished out of poverty and anonymity by a commercial film director (Eddie Garcia). The obsession with success forces them to affect images as movie stars, which suppress and eventually destroy them as persons and lovers.

A woman falls in love with a Japanese soldier during the Japanese Occupation in the Philippines; the whole town turns against her.

The lives of seven neophytes as they strive to enter a Greek letter fraternity through a difficult hazing process. The entire experience is seen through the eyes of Sid Lucero, one of the neophytes.

This landmark film is considered by many to be one of the most important in Philippine cinema. The son of a wealthy man, Junior has everything he could possibly want. But the emptiness of his extravagant lifestyle and the hypocrisy of the town's so-called leading citizens weigh heavily on him, pushing him to reach out to the village outcasts.

Joey, Kathy, Sylvia, and Maritess, best friends from 1979 to 1982, navigate drug use, singing dreams, unconventional relationships, and housewife roles, depicting personal battles and societal challenges during that period.

Júlio Madiaga, a 'provinciano', arrives in Manila to search for his beloved, Ligaya.

Elsa saw the blessed Virgin Mary who had changed her life and caused a hysteria in a poor isolated village.

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.

Ishmael Bernal's opus recreates the quality and slow pace of life in a dying village surrounded by the sea as it is caught in the eternal cycle of love and hate, of fertility and pollution, of birth and death. A bold and successful attempt to depart from the usual commercial fare, it cryptically paints a large, bleak canvas showing rural fold and how their chances at redemption and happiness are irreversibly decimated by poverty, ignorance, neglect and the dark side of big business.

A witty sex comedy about two young cousins who trade places for their courtship strategies which ends up hilarious. One of the most quotable Filipino films ever due to its sexual innuendos and ambiguity.

The hidden nightlife of ordinary people living in Manila unveils. Lovers and families' conflicts are radically pitted against each other as they live in the night streets rampant with drugs and prostitution. The outstanding narrative explicitly unravels the various characters and episodes. This landmark film of Ishmael Bernal depicts the darkness of city life so vividly that it was once prohibited to use the word 'Manila' on its title.

The life of a young girl living with her mother in the slums of Manila becomes unbearable when her mother's young boyfriend moves in with them.

Coring, a gay beautician, is left with a baby by his former ward, Dennis (Philip Salvador). The baby grows up (the boy is played by a very young Niño Muhlach) thinking that Coring is his real father. Everything seems to be smooth until the kid's mother (Marissa Delgado) suddenly shows up to claim her son.

A female movie fan idolizes a movie bit-player who becomes her obsession. Her unrequited love for him leads to a nightmarish end.

An apolitical worker in a printing press who works as a scab during a company strike belatedly realizes that everyone is affected by the evils of society.

In 1985, in the obscure town of Santa Filomena, the Orapronobis, a cult under the leadership of Kumander Kontra (Roco), murders a foreign priest who gave the last rites to an alleged rebel, who was also executed by the same group. At the success of the 1986 EDSA revolt, political detainees, led by Jimmy Cordero (Salvador), celebrate the fall of the dictatorship. All political prisoners are released, including Jimmy, an ex-priest-turned-underground revolutionary. Not long, after, Jimmy marries a human rights activist, Trixie (Bonnevie). Jimmy becomes an advocate of human rights. Despite Trixie's protests, her brother, Roland (Lorenzo), and Jimmy go on a fact-finding mission to Santa Filomena to investigate the latest crime committed by the Orapronobis. Jimmy meets Esper (Alajar), his ex-girlfriend. He finds out that he has a son with her, Camilo (Herrera). They agree to keep Jimmy's true identity a secret form the boy. Conniving with the military, the Orapronobis step up their acts of terror. Jimmy's group helps evacuate the townspeople to the town church, then later to Manila. Back in Manila, Jimmy turns down a friend's invitation to rejoin the underground movement. Later, he and Roland are ambushed. Jimmy survives, but Roland does not. He recovers and shortly after that, Trixie gives birth to their child. Soldiers raid the refugee center with a masked man who identifies several of the barrio folk as rebels. The refugees and the human rights activists complain to the government. Esper and her son are abducted by the Orapronobis who accuse Esper of helping the rebels. She is raped and beaten up by Kumander Kontra in front of Camilo. Fighting back, she shoots at Kontra. In a hysterical rage, Kontra goes on a shooting rampage, killing Esper, Camilo and the captured barrio men. Later, the military bring the casualties to the town where Jimmy weeps over the bodies of Esper and his son. The film ends with Jimmy contacting his old colleague from the underground.

To support her paralytic father, Chato works as a utility girl for a burlesque star Virgie Nite. But when Virgie gets drunk on the night of her scheduled show, Chato pitches in for her. And she becomes an instant sensation. Enthused by the initial acceptance of the audience, she defies her father's admonitions and presents herself to the manager. And thus, becoming the new burlesque queen.

As a young woman born in a tradition-bound town but raised in the modernizing atmosphere of Manila, Julie gropes towards maturity without benefit of guidance from understanding elders. Home for the traditional town fiesta, she meets poor boy-next-door Dido Ventura (Bembol Rocco), whose passion and impulsiveness rush them into elopement, but his family has a long-standing grievance against the Monserrats, who through fraudulence in the past had grabbed the Ventura property. When the young lovers ask for permission to marry, Julie's snooty aunts make her choose between her present status as a rich single Monserrat, and an uncertain future as Dido's wife. In a moment of indecisiveness, Julie gives up Dido and returns to her music studies. At university, Julie is visited by the elderly violinist from her hometown whom she idolizes, Maestro Juan Roque (Jonee Gamboa), who has learned she is pregnant and come to announce he is her father--then walk out. When she gives birth, against her aunts' wishes she decides to give the baby to its father. But by this time, it's become impossible for the baby to have its father. Dido has joined the band of Huks headed by Kumander Salome (Lito Anzures). Driven by the desire to help his daughter, Maestro Juan Roque goes to the Huk hideout to effect reconciliation between Dido and Julie. A quick night visit for Dido is arranged, and the lovers reunite--too late, for government agents have learned of the Huks rebel's presence, and a bloody shootout affirms the nihilism of the film's title.

During a return to his provincial home, a young man gets involved with a woman who is ultimately possessed by her sister's spirit, paving the way to revealing the painful truth about her unsolved disappearance.

The film revolves around two couples who find themselves in conflict with the foreign commercial giants that control the Philippine economy, the Japanese and the Chinese.

In a poor village by the Manila Bay breakwater, brothers Buboy and Basilio come to the city to escape from the violence at home. They meet a prostitute named Pakita and become close with her when Basilio treats her wounds. All they want is to lead normal lives, but the town's leader Dave has knavish interruptions that await them.

Set at the turn of the 20th century during the Filipino revolution against the Spaniards and, later, the American colonizers, it follows a naive peasant through his leap of faith to become a member of an imagined community.

A Filipino jeepney driver (Kidlat Tahimik) who idolizes America's space program comes to reject the rapid encroachment of technology.

This is a story about a group of beauty-contest finalists stranded on a desert island without food, water, or shelter.

The inner workings of a family headed by a union organizer are revealed when his body is brought back to his hometown for burial. A sakada is a farmer who works in a sugarcane field harvesting it during the months of October to December. After this period, some sakadas who already live in the hacienda plant crops to tide them over until the next sugarcane harvest. Those who came from other provinces go back home. They are seasonal farm workers without any benefits. The plight of the sakadas is further explained as the movie develops, exposing along the way the vast gap between the rich and the poor.