Eddie Garcia: Life as a Film Epic

The accidental death of actor/director Eddie Garcia last June 2019, during the shooting of a TV drama in Tondo, was a huge shock to the whole Filipino film community, and beyond. At 90, a living legend of the Filipino cinema suddenly vanished, when he was expected to reach 100 or more, like his Hollywood counterpart who recently passed away at 103, Kirk Douglas! 

Actually, the FEFF was planning to pay homage to Eddie in 2020, but it had been postponed for technical reasons. I had the chance to meet Eddie Garcia several times, and to present him the Best Actor award for his role in Dan Villegas’ Heaven’s Waiting (Hintayan ng langit, shown at the FEFF 2019), at QCinema festival, in 2018. As most great actors of his generation, he was quite humble, and didn’t brag about his talent or anything else. As simple as an old master. 

With 659 films as an actor, and 37 films as a director*, Eddie Garcia is probably the most prolific actor in Asia, except maybe for some famous Bollywood actors in India, or some Japanese actors who started during the silent era… 

Born in 1929 in Sorsogon city, Bicol province, eastern Luzon (where a certain Lino Brocka would come to life a few years later), Eddie was a living legend in the Philippines. From 1949 to 2019 (a 70 years span!), he acted in all kinds of movies, from the popular classic films of the 1950s to the “auteur” films of the 2010s, like Bwakaw. And he directed three dozens of films from the early 1960s to the 1990s, trying all genres of popular Filipino cinema: action, war, local melodrama, sexy comedy, name it, with the most famous actors and directors of several generations. His life and incredibly long career were like a film epic, riding all periods and aspects of Filipino cinema and society changes. We can say he was the equivalent of a Charles Vanel (for the French spectators), or a glorious Marcello Mastroianni for the Italian audience: incredibly popular, and worshipped all the way until the end. 

Thus, we are proud to pay a limited, but hearty tribute to Eddie Garcia, with four features films, and, as the cherry on the cake, Shadows (Anino), by Raymond Red, which won the Golden Palm in Cannes for the best short film in 2000. Even with only a few films, we can feel how talented and diverse was Eddie Garcia, a lasting star of Filipino cinema. 

We love you forever, Eddie! RIP.

* According to IMDB. It is extremely difficult to check his entire filmography (reduced to 30 essential films in Tito Valiente’s essay).