tracing LIGHT

Behind the firsts in the history of Philippine cinema is a family who draws with light.

- PATRICIA VILLORIA

There's a story that film producer Luis Nepomuceno liked to tell his grandchildren from the height of his career: He once served as a middleman for an American production team filming a project at the same time his own production studio was working on a film as well. One day, while the Americans were lugging around heavy mirror light reflectors the size of refrigerators, he breezed past them with his crew carrying the most feather-light reflector—a smug moment that showed his ingenuity as an experienced Filipino filmmaker.

A young Artu Nepomuceno, his grandson, asked what the reflector was made of, and L.uis told him his crafty secret. He peeled off foil from empty cigarette packets and glued them on simple illustration boards for a D-I-Y reflector that accomplished the same job as the industrial-grade film reflectors for a fraction of the price.

Artu says that his grandfather Luis was always telling stories like this. And among the many stories he has told, the one defining story of his career also happens to be the first Filipino film in theaters to be shot in technicolor, Dahil Sa Isang Bulaklak, released in 1967.

The film follows a romantic drama starring Charito Solis and Ric Rodrigo, beginning with the bashful first blushes of courtship between their two main characters, the trials that test their relationship spanning decades, and a gripping ending with all the markers of a classic melodrama of the time. In that year, the film was selected as the country’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 40th Academy Awards, but fell short of being accepted as a nominee.

From that film, Luis continued to carve his own name in the film industry with Igorota, Ang Langit Sa Lupa, and a bevy of other feature-length and short films that have inspired younger generations of filmmakers today.