Movie a Day Blog is overwhelmed at times thinking about how many national cinemas we are unacquainted with, and how many great films probably go undiscovered and undiscussed.

    One area of ignorance for me has been Filipino cinema, which has gone through various phases and movements over the past 50 years. One of their highlight times was the 1970s, when filmmakers such as Lino Brocka unveiled a distinctive Filipino aesthetic that was influenced by both Western and Asian movies.

    One of Brocka’s early masterpieces is INSIANG (1976), pronounced Inshang, the name of the movie’s female protagonist and a good symbol of the put-upon Third World woman that 1970s cinema focused attention upon for the first time in film history.

    Insiang is an attractive young woman (Hilda Coronel) whom every male seems to desire, especially  Dado (Ruel Varnel), the neighborhood loathario and bully. Insiang has a boyfriend, and refuses all the persistent offeres, but after Dado moves in with her acid-tongued mother to be closer to her, she’s helpless.

    He rapes her repeatedly, but she’s the one who gets the reputation of the neighborhood slut for sharing her mother’s lover, and is ostracized by men and women. The mother, sharply played by the wonderfully-named Mona Lisa, takes it out on both lover and daughter, but her tactics pale compared to what’s building up inside Insiang.

    It’s interesting that non-American movies had their pulse on issues concerning women long before their Hollywood and American indie counterparts. These, along with films being made in Africa, India and elsewhere in Asia in the 70s and 80s, documented the dreary and abused lives many women were forced into.

     Films like INSIANG saw them taking brutal action in revenge, as self-destructive as that might be. Koronel plays Insiang like a ticking bomb, and when she finally goes off at the end, the familiar gore of 1970s Filipino horror movies intrudes and everyone gets their just desserts.

    Brocka was never a subtle filmmaker, but INSIANG still feels contemporary and relevant in issues that surmount all cultures: sexual desire, jealousy and competition between women and generations are at the heart of many movies. INSIANG is one of the more interesting ones.