In 1969 melodrama Badlis sa Kinabuhi (Line of Life), screen icon Gloria Sevilla plays Celia, a mother who struggles to care for her son and sick husband in the seaside town of Danao, Cebu. Tragedy soon strikes, forcing Celia to face the court. In this excerpt, Celia performs the well-known Visayan folk song 'Pobreng Alindahaw' ('Poor Dragonfly') to a captivated crowd.

Sevilla's powerful voice and charisma are captured on film, along with the common people of Cebu; the camera pans over villagers of all ages, who react to Celia's voice with recognition, delight or unreadable stoicism. The variety and intricacy of their expressions, and Sevilla's lively presence as she sings a song of woe, act as a rich capsule of Visayan culture and village life in the 1960s.

The NFSA holds a copy of this rare Cebuano-language film, thanks to the Graduate School of Cinema Studies at the University of San Carlos (Cebu), which screened it at the Cebuano Cinema Conference in 2014. Badlis sa Kinabuhi was pivotal in sparking a revival of interest in Visayan-language cinema, covering themes of patriarchal society and justice that remain resonant. This subtitled copy is a rarity, as few versions exist with Tagalog or English subtitles.