Mike de Leon
Encyclopedia
Miguel Pamintuan de Leon is a noted Filipino
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

 film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

, cinematographer
Cinematographer
A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...

, scripwriter and film producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...

. His is also known as Mike de Leon. He was born in Manila
Manila
Manila is the capital of the Philippines. It is one of the sixteen cities forming Metro Manila.Manila is located on the eastern shores of Manila Bay and is bordered by Navotas and Caloocan to the north, Quezon City to the northeast, San Juan and Mandaluyong to the east, Makati on the southeast,...

 on May 24, 1947 to Manuel de Leon and Imelda Pamintuan. His interest in filmmaking began when he pursued a master's degree in Art History at the University of Heidelberg, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

.

Biography

De Leon first made two short films namely: Sa Bisperas, 1972, and Monologo (Monologue), 1975. He established the Cinema Artists Philippines in 1975. He produced Lino Brocka
Lino Brocka
Catalino Ortiz Brocka is known as one of the greatest film directors of the Philippines. Brocka was openly homosexual and many of his films incorporated LGBT themes into their often dramatic storylines....

's Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag, while also acting as the said film's cinematographer in 1975. For Maynila: Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag, de Leon won best cinematography awarded by the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS).

De Leon's films are a full reflection of the Filipino psyche that sought answer for questions on social class belonging, political absurdities, and fragmentations in various forms. His first major full-length work was, Itim (Black), in 1976. It was an in-depth study of guilt and violence and shows de Leon’s delicate balancing of cinematic elements to project mood and character. It was voted by the Philippine’s Urian Awards as one of the Ten Outstanding Films of the Decade: 1970-1979. The film also won him the best director award during the 1978 Asian Film Festival held in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

.

When De Leon created Kung Mangarap Ka't Magising in 1977, it became a tribute to his grandmother Doña Sisang
Narcisa de Leon
Narcisa Buencamino Vd.ª De de Leon was a Filipino film producer. Clad daily in the frugal rural dress of the camisón, saya and chinelas, Doña Sisang, as she was widely known, was already a 61-year old widow when she entered the film industry...

 to celebrate the centennial of the family's film company, LVN Pictures
LVN Pictures
LVN Pictures, Inc. is one of the biggest film studios in the history of Philippine cinema and its foremost establishment in motion picture post-production until 2005...

.

Known for his varied experiments in styles of film directing, he pushed the birth of the new musical in Kakabakaba Ka Ba?, a landmark film which portrayed a number of self-important totems of Philippine society. Kakabakaba Ka ba? won for de Leon the Urian award for best director.

His other movies include Kisapmata
Kisapmata
Kisapmata is a 1981 drama film directed by Mike de Leon, written by de Leon and Clodualdo del Mundo Jr., and based on Nick Joaquin's 1968 article entitled "The House on Zapote Street"....

(1981), Batch '81 (1982) and Sister Stella L. (1984). In these films he tackled social and political issues with powerful and disturbing imagery. His blockbuster film, Hindi Nahahati ang Langit (1985) was an adaptation from an earlier Filipino Komiks
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 version of the same title. In 1987, de Leon also made Bilanggo sa Dilim, a full-length video commissioned by Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

 Entertainment.

De Leon explored subjects such as incest, fraternity violence, and the Filipino workers' cause. These were themes that were portrayed in the films Kisapmata, Batch '81 and Sister Stella L. respectively. These films became cinematic masterpieces in Philippine History of Filmography and were later listed as the Philippines's Ten Outstanding Films of the Decade: 1980-1989 by the Philippines’ Urian Awards. Later on, Batch '81 was voted best picture by the Film Academy of the Philippines (FAP) where de Leon also won a best screenplay award. For Sister Stella L. de Leon won best director and best screenplay in the Philippines's Urian Awards in 1984. Kisapmata and Batch '81 were presented during the Directors' Fortnight at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...

. The film Sister Stella L. was an entry during the 1985 Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 Film Festival.

De Leon pioneered the use of computer graphics animation for the TV advertising industry in 1988.

De Leon’s film, Aliwan Paradise, became a part of the Southern Winds
Southern Winds
Southern Winds Airlines was an Argentine commercial air carrier that operated from 1996 until 2005. Southern Winds was founded by Juan Maggio, who served as president of the company. In 2002, Mr...

in 1993, which is a collection of four films from Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

, the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

, and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. The NHK
NHK
NHK is Japan's national public broadcasting organization. NHK, which has always identified itself to its audiences by the English pronunciation of its initials, is a publicly owned corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee....

 and Japan Foundation
Japan Foundation
The was established in 1972 by an Act of the Japanese Diet as a special legal entity to undertake international dissemination of Japanese culture, and became an independent administrative institution under the jurisdiction of the Foreign Ministry of Japan on 1 October 2003 under the "Independent...

 commissioned this film anthology.

Achievements

Mike de Leon received the Parangal Sentenyal sa Sining at Kultura at the Cultural Center of the Philippines
Cultural Center of the Philippines
The Cultural Center of the Philippines is a government-owned and controlled corporation established to preserve, develop and promote arts and culture in the Philippines. The CCP was established through Executive Order No. 30 s. 1966 by President Ferdinand Marcos...

 in February 1999. His Batch '81 and Sister Stella L. had been among the 25 Filipino films shown in New York from July 31 to August 1999, organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, in partnership with the Philippine Centennial Commission, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, IFFCOM, the Philippine Information Agency, the Consulate General of the Philippines in New York and the Philippine Centennial Coordinating Council - Northeast USA. These series of Filipino films were presented at the Walter Reade Theater of the Lincoln Center, in celebration of the 100th year of Philippine Independence.

Selected filmography

  • 1999 Bayaning Third World
  • 1993 Southern Winds: Aliwan Paradise
  • 1987 Bilanggo sa Dilim (unreleased) video
  • 1985 Hindi Nahahati ang Langit
  • 1984 Sister Stella L.
  • 1982 Batch '81
  • 1981 Kisapmata
  • 1980 Kakabakaba Ka Ba?
  • 1977 Kung Mangarap Ka't Magising
  • 1976 Itim
  • 1975 Monologo (Monologue), a short film
  • 1972 Sa Bisperas, a short film
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