Lualhati Torres Bautista

Lualhati Torres Bautista was born on December 2, 1945 in Tondo, Manila, Philippines. She is considered to be one of the foremost Filipino female novelists, screenwriters, and film and television creator. She is best known for her works in contemporary Filipino literature.

Bautista graduated from Emilio Jacinto Elementary School in 1958 and from Torres High School in 1962. She studied journalism at the Lyceum of the Philippines but dropped out before the completion of her freshman year. Bautista has also served as the vice-president of the Screenwriters Guild of the Philippines and chair of the Kapisanan ng mga Manunlat ng Nobelang Popular. Thereafter, she became a national fellow for fiction at the University of the Philippines Creative Writing Center in 1986. That same year she was also invited to take part of the US International Visitor Leadership Program, which is, a regional project encompassing different regions in American film.

Some of her most notable work include her first screenplay, Sakada which translates into Seasonal Sugarcane Workers is a story written in 1975 that exposes the experiences of Filipino peasants. When it was released it was during the time of Martial Law and therefore the military banned the film from the public for its message even though it won awards from the Catholic Mass Media. Her next film entitled Kung Mahawl Man ang Ulap translated means If the Clouds Parted was also renowned and nominated for awards in the Film Academy. One of her most famous screenplays, Bulaklak sa City Jail, meaning A Flower in City Jail focused around the imprisonment of women. This, alongside her novels Dekada ’70 and Bata Bata…Pa’no Ka Ginawa? exposed to the public the injustices that were being faced by the Filipino people. It also touched base upon women activism during Martial Law and the Marcos administration.

Bautista has won numerous awards and honors and has recently been honored by the Ateneo Library of Women’s writings on Match 10, 2004 during the 8th Annual Lecture on Vernacular Literature by Women. In 2006, she was also the recipient of the Diwata Award for best writer by the 16th International Women’s Film Festival at the University of the Philippines Film Center.

With the works of Lualhati Bautista, she cultivated and exposed issues in periods where media wasn’t readily available. She also brought light to these fictionalized factual-based works to show people certain events going on around them that they wouldn’t have known initially. Because of her contribution to literature and cinema she is one of the most influential Filipino females today.

-V. Armas