New Arrival Batch ’81 w/SLIP

Complementing Kispmatas horrific vision of a ruling, paternalistic family despot, Mike De Leons Batch ’81 expands its critique to include tomorrows tyrants. Freshman Sid Lucero (Mark Gil, in his breakout performance) desperately wants to join the Alpha Kappa Omega fraternity. Over the course of a gruelling initiation process, he goes through every humiliation to please his masterseven as their treatment veers into increasingly fascistic, cult-like territory.

Overt echoes of Stanley KubricksA Clockwork Orange and John Carpenter abound in De Leons claustrophobic college drama: a film that subverts expectation by casting college life in a sinister blood-red light. An urgent reaction to Ferdinand Marcos rule through Martial Law at the time, Batch 81 burns bright today as De Leons angriest and most direct filmasking hard questions about masculinity, indoctrination, free will and the banality of evil, most insidious when disguised as brotherhood, responsibility or duty. Raising uncomfortable truths about class aspirations and privilege in the Philippinesand the world at largeBatch 81 is as timely and necessary as it has ever been, presented in its 4K restoration commissioned by the Asian Film Archive and L’Immagine Ritrovata.

directed by: Mike De Leon
starring: Mark Gil, Sandy Andolong, Ward Luarca, Noel Trinidad, Ricky Sandico
1982 / 105 min / 1.85:1 / Tagalog DTS-HD MA 2.0

Additional info:

• Region A Blu-ray
• Restoration Before & After
• Conversation with screenwriters Doy Del Mundo & Raquel Villavicencio
• Interview with actor Sid Lucero
• Interview with playwright Guelan Luarca
• English subtitles