Behn Cervantes

Benjamín Roberto "Behn" Holcombe Cervantes (August 25, 1938 – August 13, 2013) was a Filipino artist and activist. He was highly regarded as a theater pioneer, teacher, and progressive thinker who was detained multiple times during martial law in the Philippines.He directed the film Sakada (1976), about the struggle of Negrense peasants at a sugarcane plantation. Copies of the film were seized by the military under the Marcos dictatorship. Musical scorer Lutgardo Labad described the film as "a major cinematic coup that unearthed the inhuman conditions of our people then." In 1981, the film won a Dekada Award for Best Film of the Decade.At the University of the Philippines (UP), he founded the theater group UP Repertory Company in 1974 "to combat the censorship that was in place during martial law." He was also a member of the Upsilon Sigma Phi fraternity. He was also founding member of the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) and the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Filipino.Cervantes’ name is on the Bantayog ng mga Bayani Wall of Remembrance, which recognizes heroes who fought against martial law in the Philippines under Ferdinand E. Marcos.