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Zamboanga: A Fanciful Tale of Moro Sea Gypsies
Alternate Title: Fury in Paradise; Native Bride
Languages: English, Tausug
Year of Release: 1937 / B&W
Director: Eduardo de Castro
Screenwriters: Bob Wagner & Billy Icasiano
Producer: Filippine Films
Cast: Fernando Poe, Rosa del Rosario, Johnny Monteiro
Minda, granddaughter of Datu Tanbuong, is set to be married to the pearl diver Danao. But the leader of another tribe, Hadji Razul, also wants Minda. He connives with a renegade American captain to kidnap the young lady when Danao goes on a journey. When the pearl diver returns, a massive tribal war ensues and ultimately determines Minda’s fate.
The earliest available Pinoy feature film until 2021[1] also manages to be the best among all surviving pre-World War II local features. None of the early critical accounts gave it much importance, since it was intended to showcase the country’s potential as the Asian counterpart of Hollywood. But those limitations—excessive polish and exoticization, half-naked eye-candy performers, gimmicky underwater photography, manic-yet-dismissible, though also politically incorrect, plot developments—became key to its foreign success and gave it a rare shot at preservation. The current available print has characters speaking native languages, but a voice-of-god narrator overlays the entire proceedings and tells the intended foreign audience how to respond. A seemingly easy-to-forget diversion, whose extreme watchability gives it a distinction that most latter-day films would be grateful to possess, and whose innocent, rambunctious spirit sets it off from the too-reverential though occasionally also prurient handling that marked later treatments of Philippine ethnic material.
Note
[1] Film archivist-historian Teddy O. Co explained in a message that the only known copy of Carlos Vander Tolosa’s Diwata ng Karagatan (Spirit of the Ocean, produced in 1936 by Parlatone Hispano Filipino) “is at the Royal Belgian Film Archives. It’s been there for decades, hidden under the title Wong le tyran, and dubbed into French. Its movie ad advertised it as having been released in Europe. But it’s less than 60 minutes, so a lot has been excised. Perhaps the musical parts, to make it a more action-packed film. It was also released (according to Hammy Sotto) under the title South Seas. To date no one has acquired a copy yet here so far, but a few people know about it…. It has a very young Rogelio de la Rosa” (Facebook Messenger exchange, Sept. 9, 2021). See as well an unresolved query about a 49-minute film (screened at Manila’s silent film festival), produced in 1934 and directed by John Nelson, titled “Is Silent Flick Brides of Sulu Pinoy or Kano?” (Carmela G. Lapeña, GMA News Online, Aug. 27, 2011). On October 31, 2025, film historian Nick Deocampo announced that was able to confirm in person the existence of the filmprint.
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