The fight for who gets to tell the final version of the Philippines’ history has opened a new front, with two polarising films offering different versions of the past released in cinemas.
One tells the story of student activists living under the brutal regime of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. The other examines the dictator’s last days in power from his family’s perspective.
Katips: The Movie and Maid in Malacañang were both released on Wednesday – a month after Ferdinand Marcos Jr, son and namesake of the former president, was sworn into the same office. His election victory was driven by an onslaught of online disinformation that glorified his father and downplayed the corruption and rights abuses that occurred under his regime. He has argued he was too young to bear responsibility for his father’s actions at the time.
For the family’s opponents and critics, Maid in Malacañang – which lists Imee Marcos, a senator and daughter of the late dictator, as a producer – is just the latest offering by the family’s marketing machine.
“This project is one of the sub-programmes of their technology of disinformation,” says Edward Delos Santos Cabagnot, who teaches film-related courses at the University of the Philippines, De La Salle University, and DLS-College of Saint Benilde.
“The relationship between the average Filipino and cinema is a thick one. It’s one of the things that we embraced completely from the American occupation. Politicians know about this.” The large number of actors turned politicians in the Philippines, including the former president Joseph Estrada, is an indication of the sway movies hold with the public, he adds.
Imee Marcos said Maid in Malacañang, which focuses on the family’s final 72 hours in power, would tell “the other side” of the EDSA People Power Revolution, when huge peaceful protests filled the Epifanio Delos Santos Avenue (EDSA), eventually ousting Marcos Sr. The family, forced to flee the country in shame, were dramatically airlifted from the Malacañang Palace in February 1986.
“I am not trying to rewrite history or revise anybody’s version. For me the truth is that I’m not in EDSA. That’s why the truth is that I don’t have the right to talk about EDSA,” she told a talkshow. “I have the right [to talk about what happened] in Malacañang. They are not in Malacañang. I was in Malacañang.”
The film was “by and large in spirit and in much of the dialogue almost verbatim”, Imee Marcos added, though she said there was some creative licence taken by the writer and director Darryl Yap, and it was not a re-enactment.
Publicity surrounding the film has drawn criticism for trivialising or misrepresenting the past. A comment by its star Ella Cruz likening history to “tsismis” or gossip was widely condemned for appearing to downplay facts relating to the period – a time when tens of thousands were arrested, tortured or killed.
The film’s trailer drew sharp criticism from the Carmelite nuns of Cebu, who in 1986 sheltered then opposition leader Corazon “Cory” Aquino after she ran against Marcos and believed her life was in danger. Less than three years earlier, her husband, Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, had been assassinated after attempting to return from exile.
Cabagnot says he does not believe people will flock to see the film, adding that cinemagoers are more discerning now than in previous years.
Free tickets are reportedly being offered. One mayor, Francis Zamora of San Juan City, said he would hand out tickets to local government employees, while civic leader Teresita Ang-See claimed business groups had been asked by Imee Marcos to distribute large numbers of tickets to schools, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Those who would rather watch a story about the people who struggled against the dictatorship can turn to Katips, a film based on a musical drama that follows the struggles of young activists. Last week, it won seven awards including best director, best actor, and best picture at the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences Awards (FAMAS).
Its writer, director and producer, Vince Tañada, a lawyer, says he spent two decades’ worth of savings making the film. It is not intended as a political tool, but it does aim to educate people, especially younger audiences, about the atrocities of martial law, he says. Tañada was born two years after martial law was imposed in 1972, and was a young child when his grandfather, the activist and senator Lorenzo Tañada, was arrested under Marcos. “It’s painful as a child to experience this,” he said on Facebook, adding that it was not only those detained who were victims of the time.
Katips is a story of young people’s struggle for democracy, Tañada says: “In the midst of uncertainty, there’s no other passion that can pull us back to freedom but the burning fire that hides within each of us. Katips is a tale of the young, in their fight for their ideals, how big can one get against a force too much bigger than yourself.”
Additional reporting by Guill Ramos
