SAN FRANCISCO — A Filipino movie fan, an acquaintance of mine from way back now based in Toronto, had complained to me last year about the type of movies from the Philippines that get shown in foreign film festivals. He was referring particularly to the film, “Tirador,” which he just saw at the Toronto International Film Festival.

How come that most, if not all, of these movies always have to deal with poverty, he wrote me in an email. He added, not all Filipinos are poor! Truthfully, I had no ready answer. On one hand, because Filipinos living in other countries have to contend with the perception by others borne out of images, in this case, of destitution and hopelessness – and words through news reports – obtaining in popular culture, they become sensitive and weary of any reinforcement of that image accessed through media like the movies, in particular those shown in festivals that usually earn some media time.

On the other, film or serious cinema for that matter, will only be true to its calling when it proffers to reflect the social realities from where it comes. Film, in other words, is not only about the subject – or its artistic ambition – but the truth it reveals.
But let me digress for now and be spared of the anguish of this well-intentioned movie fan over the state of Philippine cinema.
(His observation though, calls for writing an exhaustive inquiry on say, the issue of reception of Filipino film by a foreign audience, more by critics and film gatekeepers especially.)

The slum movie, one thread of films on Third World poverty, is the archetypal Filipino film that has gained currency and acceptance in foreign film festivals.Lino Brocka, the great Filipino film artist, whose acclaimed works – from the neorealist melodramas, “Insiang” (1978), “Jaguar” (1979) and “Bona” (1981) to its various permutations, the political thriller, “Bayan Ko,” “Kapit sa Patalim”/My country (1984) and the male sex worker movie, the seminal “Macho Dancer” (1988) – except for the last title, were shown at the Cannes film festival. The honors accorded these films cemented Brocka’s reputation as modern master and the popular acceptance of the genre in the international film circuit, especially Europe.

This is how Philippine cinema has distinguished itself, rightly or wrongly, in the world screens for at least four decades. Curiously, more than 10 years after Brocka’s passing – he died in a car accident in 1991 – Filipino filmmakers continue to channel his creative spirit in a number of “slum movies” that yes, get accepted in international filmfests. From the arduous rehashes of the macho dancer in Mel Chionglo’s trilogy of homosexuality and prostitution – “Sibak/Midnight Dancers” (1994), “Burlesk King” (1999) and “Twilight Dancers” (2006) – to the satirical takes of the social condition in Jeffrey Jeturian’s “Pila Balde”/Fetch a pail of water (1999) and “Tuhog”/Larger than life (2001), the Brocka slum movie endures.

Interestingly, the Brocka legacy of film as mirror of life and society exemplified by the slum movie, has also inspired a re-invention of the genre in the works of  independent filmmakers, notably the spiritual epic tragedy of Lav Diaz’s “Evolution of a Filipino Family” (2005) and “Death in the Land of the Encantos” (2007), the nihilist irreverent imagery of Khavn de la Cruz’s “The Family that Eats Soil” (2005) and more recently, the documentary-like humanist experimentations of Brillante Mendoza’s “Foster Child” (2007) and “Tirador”/The slingshot (2007).

It is in this context that a thoughtful assessment of Mendoza’s works can be made. It must be said that my own lukewarm response to his first features – the half-hearted profundity of “Masahista”/The masseur (2005) and his confusing uneven take of “King Lear, Kaleldo”/Summer heat (2006) – did not prepare me for the ambition and power of his most recent, “Foster Child” and “Tirador” (both 2007).

“Foster Child” relates the last day of the 3-year-old orphaned boy, John-John (Kier Segundo) with his foster mother, Thelma (Cherie Pie Picache) before he is to be taken to his adoptive parents, a Caucasian couple from San Francisco. “Tirador”/The slingshot consists of intertwined stories of four young men, set against the ritual of elections and Lenten prayers, as they attempt to escape boredom and survive hunger – through sex, stealing, murder and religion.

Both devoid of the sentimentality of Brocka’s more acclaimed works, Mendoza’s “Foster Child” and “Tirador” – also a characteristic of the post-Brocka films mentioned earlier – assume potency through the raw urgency of its camera work, as well as the use of available light and sounds, the improvisational dialogue and objective detailing of incidents. With these films, both triumphs of technology – the use of the hand-held digital camera enables the filmmaker to make those very long tracking shots – and vision, Brillante Mendoza, along with the films’ writer, Roel Ralston Jover, has served his country well, despite that admonition from the movie fan in Toronto.

“Foster Child” and “Tirador” will be shown this week at the Asian American International Film Festival in San Francisco. “Foster Child”: March 14, 6:45 pm and March 16, noon, at the Kabuki Theater, San Francisco. “Tirador”: March 15, 7 pm, Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley; March 18, 7 pm, Kabuki