The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History will show John Sayles' Amigo in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Nov. 12. The free screening starts at 7 p.m. Eastern in the Warner Bros. Theater. Sayles will join museum curator Theo Gonzalves for a conversation afterward.
The 2010 drama puts Joel Torre at the center of a story about the Philippine-American War. Torre plays Rafael Dacanay, a village leader who must deal with American troops occupying his community while his brother and son are with the Filipino resistance. The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center is a partner in the screening.
The village at the center of the film
The Americans need Rafael to help them understand the village and identify the people fighting them. His brother sees cooperation with the troops as a betrayal. Sayles follows the village's residents as they decide what they can tell each side and what they can keep to themselves. The pressure on Rafael grows out of relationships he had long before the soldiers arrived.
The American Film Institute credits Sayles as writer and director and lists Torre alongside Garret Dillahunt and Chris Cooper. Dillahunt plays the lieutenant stationed in the village. Cooper plays the colonel who presses him for results. The Filipino cast includes Ronnie Lazaro as Rafael's brother. Torre told the Philippine Entertainment Portal that filming took place in Bohol.
Sayles told Tribeca that he came across the Philippine-American War while researching the Spanish-American War for an earlier novel. For Amigo, he cast actors from the Philippines and the United States. Village Voice critic J. Hoberman noted that the film uses Tagalog, Spanish, Chinese and English. The American lieutenant and Rafael have to work out what the other wants across that divide. The village priest, played by Yul Vázquez, has his own standing with the residents. Rafael's wife, played by Rio Locsin, has ties to the church that complicate his position.
The film moves between the people in the village, the American soldiers and the Filipino guerrillas outside it. Hoberman describes a sequence that pairs an American funeral with a Filipino one. The parallel makes room for both groups' losses in a story built around one community.
The war beyond the village
The fighting followed the 1898 Treaty of Paris, which transferred the Philippines from Spain to the United States. The United States agreed to pay Spain $20 million. Filipino independence fighters led by Emilio Aguinaldo had declared independence earlier that year. As the State Department's Office of the Historian recounts, fighting between U.S. forces and Filipino nationalists began in February 1899, before the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty.
The United States declared the war over in 1902, after Aguinaldo's capture the previous year. Resistance continued in some places. An elected Philippine assembly first convened in 1907, and the Jones Act promised eventual independence in 1916. The islands became an autonomous commonwealth in 1935. The Philippines gained independence from the United States in 1946. Sayles sets the film in the early occupation, when control of the islands and cooperation in a single village were both unsettled. The film had its New York premiere at the 2011 Asian American International Film Festival, where it opened the program.
How to attend the Washington screening
The Nov. 12 program runs from 7 to 10 p.m. Eastern at the National Museum of American History. The theater is on the museum's 1 Center level. Admission is free, and the museum seats registered attendees first, followed by walk-ins if seats remain. The museum lists captioning, assistive listening devices, ASL interpretation and wheelchair access. The film is rated R, and visitors under 17 need a parent or adult guardian with them.
