FESTIVAL ’90 : MOVIE REVIEWS / L.A. FESTIVAL

Films and videos representing 25 Pacific cultures screen through Sept. 16. Highlights of today’s and Friday’s programs are reviewed here:

Friday: Fight for Us

The Philippines Screens at 8 p.m., Los Feliz Theater, 1822 N. Vermont Ave.; Saturday at 8 p.m., Melnitz Theater, UCLA “Fight for Us,” an expose of the far-right death squads that are terrorizing the Philippines in the name of combatting communism, displays in full force director Lino Brocka’s mastery of melodrama in the service of social protest. Written by Jose Lacaba, the film centers on a young ex-priest (Phillip Salvador), long imprisoned for his struggle against the Marcos regime, who wins his freedom with the advent of the Aquino government, only to discover that human-rights abuses are worse than ever.

Fearless as always, Brocka bluntly asserts that those savage vigilante organizations who cloak themselves in religious fervor thrive with the tacit blessing of the church and the support of the military.

What Brocka depicts with such outrage is said to be drawn from actual case histories, and although the film is fictional, its vigilante characters correspond all-too-convincingly with their real-life counterparts interviewed in the recent documentary “A Rustling of Leaves: Inside the Philippine Revolution.” Ever controversial, Brocka has long been the Philippines’ leading director, and several other Brocka films screening Saturday and Sunday at the Los Feliz are well worth seeing.