MANILA, Philippines - The newly-restored Hihintayin Kita Sa Langit, a 1991 film directed by Carlos Siguion-Reyna, was recently screened at the Ayala Glorietta Cinemas. Based loosely on Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, screenplay writer Raquel Villavicencio and the main stars of the film — Dawn Zulueta, Richard Gomez and Eric Quizon — were there to show support to the notion that in this case, an old film can have a new lease on life and did not have to ascend to Cinema Heaven.
A romance drama that reinforced the Richard-Dawn love team to the firmament; and to this day, make any pairing of the two in a current telenovela to be an entertainment news item and/or heady shot of nostalgia, the lush Batanes vistas still carry a lot of power and elevate the film to perennial crowd pleaser.
A project of ABS Film Restoration and presented as one of the Sagip Cinema roster of films that Ayala Cinemas is running at the Glorietta, the previously only-in-celluloid film has been digitized (take a well-deserved bow, Manet Dayrit), so that along with a host of other Filipino modern film classics, it can be enjoyed by the current crop of moviegoers and withstand the test of time.
In its celluloid format, Hihintayin enjoyed being a Reyna Films production that was fairly well-protected in a temperature-controlled film library. But the flammable nature of celluloid always puts it at risk, being so temperature sensitive. While digitization is not a cure-all and is not without risk, it is presently one solution for archiving and restoring films that deserve a vestige of immortality.
The legendary cinematographer Romy Vitug was there to view his re-mastered work, and the likes of Ben Chan, Kaye Tiñga, Bibeth Siguion-Reyna and son Rafa, Lance Raymundo, Celeste Legaspi-Gallardo, Wig Tysmans, Keren Pascual, Ronald Arguelles and Leo Katigbak joined the throng of avid Richard-Dawn fans who were more than ready to relive every cinematic kilig moment that the film had meant to them. And a more enthusiastic, replete-with-side-comments crowd would have been hard to find. Each love scene elicited oohs and aaahs. Needless to say, making it more exciting for the audience was knowing that Dawn herself, and Richard with Lucy and daughter Juliana, were there in the cinema with them.