Barkada, Circa 1950s

Currently watching Lou Salvador Sr.’s Barkada [1958] on Mike de Leon’s Casa Grande Vimeo page. A gritty precursor to Maryo J. de los Reyes’ Bagets [1984], it’s clearly a take-off from Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause [1955] with a dash of film noir and Dickens and a slew of Pinoy melodrama. I’ve been trying to define what attracts me to these old Filipino films on this site, besides being a cinephile and in spite of their bad fidelity. And then it struck me: it’s nostalgic throwback to my childhood in a Silliman Avenue neighborhood where I spent many afternoons watching RPN 9 classic Filipino cinema outside the window of my friend Ted-Ted’s mother’s house. We had no TV, so that was I got my entertainment as a very young boy in the late 80s.



[Also: Lou Salvador Jr. is so easy on the eyes.]