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Bontoc Eulogy (1995)

Director: Marlon E. Fuentes

Writer: Marlon E. Fuentes

Length: 56 minutes

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Synopsis

In Bontoc Eulogy, a Filipino-American immigrant narrator tells the story of his journey to recover his roots by investigating his two grandfathers who mysteriously disappeared. The film begins with the narrator’s reflections on his childhood and contrasts it with his children who were born in America. This leads into the narrator recounting the stories of his two grandfathers. His grandfather Emiliano’s story is the first and shorter narrative and ends in the speculation that he was killed in the trenches during the Philippine-American War (1899-1902). The story of the other grandfather, Markod, fills most of the length of the rest of the film.

Markod was a young chief and his story begins when he and many families in his village decide to go to America to be part of the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. The journey is treacherous and some of his companions die during the trip. Once at the World’s Fair, Marko and the other Filipinos construct a traditional village to be part of the exhibition which shows the “progress” from the “primitive” and “barbaric” to the “civilised” and Christian. The narrator speculates on what happened to his grandfather as he researched the aftermath of the St. Louis World’s Fair.

Significance

While much of Filipino-American history is considered part of the history of the West Coast, Bontoc Eulogy gives a different image by showing that some immigrants’ stories began before the mass immigration that occurred after restrictions were placed on people who came from China, Japan, and the Asian Exclusion Zone. The film also explores the juxtaposition of race and science during a time when Herbert Spencer’s Social Darwinism was a dominant force in describing how science and evolution should be used to discuss human differences. While it’s now understood that Social Darwinism was part of a racist past and tied to early 20th century eugenics ideology, this film reminds contemporary audiences that this was one of the ways the US framed different races during the Third Wave of mass migration.

Bontoc Eulogy, while not entirely a factual autobiographical account, is also a subtle indictment of Archival narrative forms often used in the documentary film genre. Sometimes called mockumentaries, Fuentes’ usage of the archival materials juxtaposed with “fake” archival footage questions the premise of the objectivity these forms imply and highlights the colonial period in which archival images became one of the first visual types of documentary tools of the modern era.

The filmmaker

Marlon E. Fuentes was born in the Philippines (1954), where he graduated with a BA in behavioral sciences from De La Salle College in Manila. In 1981 he studied photography at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C. He’s currently a Los Angeles based visual artist, photographer, and filmmaker and has won several international awards for his films.  He also directed B.E.A.T. (1992), Sleep with Open Eyes (1992), Crickee (1993), and Arm (1994).

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Further reading and listening

Panel on Bontoc Eulogy
The 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair
Filipino American History and Film

Entry Author: Jon Silpayamanant

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