Individual film directors, film-makers
November 2017
Pro Bernal Anti Bio
by Ishmael Bernal, Jorge Arago, Angela Stuart-Santiago
Four years before his death in 1996, National Artist for Film Ishmael Bernal started writing a journal for what he envisioned is a unique biography that would tell all. The goal was an anti-biography that refused to be hagiography or tribute, and instead would be Bernal unexpurgated and uncensored. His biographer was his closest friend and constant collaborator, Jorge Arago, who worked on Pro Bernal Anti Bio until his death in 2011. He then passed the task of completing the book to his friend, Angela Stuart-Santiago. Working towards the goal of a tell-all, and with new research and additional interviews, the final product is a memoir unlike any other in the Philippines. Pro Bernal Anti Bio brings in a cast of actors, scholars, colleagues, and peers who speak from the margins of the book, while Bernal and Arago tell this personal-political history in their own words, sometimes gay, often irreverent, but always revealing an intellect and spirit that was ahead of its time.
