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BACKGROUND

In the early 2010s, a few months before President “Pnoy” Aquino’s rejection of the endorsement of Nora Aunor for the Order of the National Artist of the Philippines, Kritika Kultura published the call for papers I drafted for a special forum on Nora Aunor. Despite enthusiastic responses and a number of submissions, almost none of the contributors responded to my requests to revise their articles to conform to the latest relevant issues in star studies, no matter if I provided possible topics and readings. I realized later that I had to continue developing the introduction I was drafting, in order to turn it into one more Nora Aunor article. With a number of other scholarly acquaintances mentioning that they had material on other stars, I informed the editors of the paucity of authors prepared to tackle the challenge of star discourse focused on one entity, and suggested expanding the forum’s coverage to the entirety of Philippine movie stardom.

11011A second predicament then presented itself. I targeted certain specific performers and identified scholars who’d written on them in the past, to request new or updated studies. In particular, I sent out requests to appreciators of Aunor’s rival, Vilma Santos, to academics outside Metro Manila and eventually outside the country. The few that responded expressed regrets, and I realized the possible reasons only recently, when a purportedly scholarly book on Santos was published by a private university press: it seemed to want to be many things, but scholarly it was not, at least by updated screen-cultural studies standards. In more painfully specific terms, the earnest exertions were there, but not the familiarization with recent discourse, engagement with new theory, even the basic exercise of deconstruction that would have elevated it from the obsolescent celebration of empirical markers, primarily supposedly Santos’s “record” numbers of trophies. The even more worrisome aspect is that the volume was announced in late 2024 and came out just a few months later, possibly in time for National Artist deliberations—but then we cannot presume such bad faith on the part of the project’s movers, only the observation that it seemed extremely hastily finalized.

11011Regarding the Aunor article I was writing, I’d long heard about an attempt she made to create a traditionally auteurist project, producing Greatest Performance, an unprocessed semi-autobiographical film that she had written, directed, and starred and sang in; one of the Metro Manila Film Festival’s major failures, even arguably its biggest one, was in rejecting the inclusion of the film in their 1989 edition, for reasons that only their profit-oriented mentalities could understand. Fortunately I’d made the acquaintance of the Aunor confidant who happened to be the most important rare-film archivist in Pinas pop culture. Jojo Devera disclosed that Aunor did not want even the degraded video transfer that he owned to exist. I requested Aunor’s permission to view it for strictly scholarly purposes, conveyed to her via another of her confidants, Ricky Lee. Her recognition of the importance of academic inquiry worked in my favor. Later, this circle of acquaintances (including me) misrecognized her approval as a change of heart regarding GP, so Devera arranged a video conference to seek her permission to work on finalizing the work. Here she held fast with her prior rejection and said she’d prefer that it disappear for good.

11011Consonant with the other films I evaluated closely, I attempted to transcribe the video copy but it was too dilapidated and would have inordinately delayed my writing. The best I came up with was an unsatisfactory sequence list—that I also set aside as soon as I completed the article. With the recent possibility that some Noranian artists might attempt to work on GP once more, I looked over the listing I completed and realized I’d never even uploaded it, unlike the other research materials I compiled from other films. Here it is then.

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OPENING TITLE CARDS
[with characters’ names in brackets]

Onscreen:

* NCV Films presents
* Nora Aunor [Laura]
* Tirso Cruz III [Briccio Ledesma]
* Julio Diaz [Pocholo or Cholo]
* Kristoffer Ian de Leon [Boyet]
* in Greatest Performance
* Starring Rez Cortez [Orbac]
* Lara Melissa de Leon [Melissa]
* Introducing Jet Montelibano [Bogs], Fe de los Reyes [Shirley], Butch Elizalde [Tisoy]
* Special Guests: German Moreno [Direk or Desi], Michael de Mesa [Mr. Agaton], Tony Carreon, Miguel Tanciangco, and Bella Flores [Laura’s landlady]
* Nonoy Zuniga [Briccio’s psychotherapist], Bobby Taylo
* Sound Supervision—Rolly Ruta
* Film Editor—Ike Jarlego, Jr. (FEGP)
* Musical Director—Danny Tan
* In-Charge of Production—Vivian C. Recio
* Line Producer—Ricardo Osorio
* Associate Producers—Tita Villamayor / Oscar Villamayor / Eddie Villamayor
* Executive Producer—Christopher Strauss de Leon
* Producer—NCV
* Written and Directed by Guy

Additional credits from the Internet Movie Database:

* Year of Release—1989
* Cinematography—Johnny Araojo
* Production Design—Len Santos

Unlisted:

* Lucy Quinto [Briccio’s mother]

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SEQUENCE LIST

1. Int., concert hall, night. Over opening credits, Laura’s body is taken out of auditorium on a stretcher. Boyet, a young male fan, wanders backstage and sits in front.
2. Int., concert hall, night. Boyet remembers watching Laura perform “Ikaw Pa Lang ang Tangi Kong Minahal.” Briccio Ledesma also watches, along with Desi, the director. Briccio’s wife Shirley notices Briccio’s interest, gets jealous. Her partner and manager Cholo’s in the wings. Laura falters because she’s drunk, so Desi orders her offstage despite her protestations, replacing her with dancers. Briccio exits. Cholo quarrels with Desi but he’s restrained by Laura.
3. Int., Briccio’s bedroom, night. Briccio asks Shirley who’s Pocholo, she says he’s Laura’s manager. Briccio remarks how Laura’s still gifted and deserves a second chance but Shirley disagrees.
4. Ext.-int., Laura’s garage & living room, night. Laura arrives home with groceries. Cholo asks her to watch TV, where Desi’s interviewed criticizing her. The couple quarrel about her having to work; she starts smoking and drinking.
5. Int., concert hall, day. Laura asks direction from Boyet to find Desi, who’s rehearsing dancers onstage. Laura apologizes to Desi.
6. Ext., concert hall, day. Laura finds Boyet at building ledge and converses with him. Boyet has note for her from “Mr. B.”
7. Int., Laura’s stairs and living room in her home, night. Cholo’s three bandmates arrive at Laura’s home. He asks Laura for drinks. She starts drinking but wants out from band rehearsal. Band member proposes concert. Cholo asks Laura to plead with producer.
8. Int., Mr. Agaton’s receiving area, day. Laura awaits at producer Mr. Enriquez’s office. Manager brings his dancer, secretary lets them into office but she refuses Laura, who barges in. Secretary escorts her outside because he refuses to see her.
9. Int., Laura’s living room, day. Cholo tries to write a composition on the piano.
10. Int., folk-music bar, day. Laura’s drinking at folk-music bar where male singer croons “You’ve Got a Friend.” Two strangers ply her with spiked drink.
11. Int., motel, day. Laura’s taken to a room where they rape her. She’s unable to get away.
12. Ext., motel, day. Laura alights from taxi to get to her parked car.
13. Int., Laura’s bedroom, day. When she arrives home, Cholo quarrels with her. She says her car broke down. Cholo becomes violent with her and gets gun. She hides behind stuffed toy. He caresses gun phallically. Laura kisses him and he smiles. He kisses bruises on her face.
14. Int., Laura’s bedroom, night. With Cholo fast asleep, Laura gets his gun.
15. Int., folk-music bar, night. Laura returns to bar where same singer plays “Danny’s Song.” She sees gang with more friends take a table. Threatens them with gun, they apologize (they know her name), she uses argument about respect for women in their family. Laura cries, couldn’t shoot them, they run away.
16. Ext., bayside, night. Laura’s depressed and drunk. Cholo tries to get her to leave, she brings up her breadwinner role. She starts weeping, asking why they’re that way, throws up. Cholo doesn’t get her.
17. Int., Mr. Agaton’s office, day. She’s with producer Mr. Agaton, who wonders why she left him despite giving her her first break. He tries getting close, she takes leave.
18. Int., dressing room, night. Cholo complains about playing during a fashion floor show. Laura tells him off then is called onstage.
19. Int., fashion floor, night. Fashion models on runway. After they leave, Laura and band get onstage but drunk customers complain about the presence of men and heckle them, asking her to strip. Briccio shows up to observe. Cholo beats up rowdy customers. Briccio leaves. Laura apologizes to Mr. Agaton.
20. Int., Mr. Agaton’s office, night. Mr. Agaton berates band members. Cholo fistfights with him.

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21. Ext., bayside, night. Cholo curses at the open water as Laura waits in her car. She teases him about timing his anger with radio music. He tells her to forget the incident with her producer.
22. Int., Laura’s bedroom, night-day. Cholo and Laura make out. Later, Cholo wakes up next morning alone, reads her letter apologizing because she left him early. He gets mad and gets his gun.
23. Int., Mr. Agaton’s office, day. Laura’s back in her producer’s office. She defends Cholo and asks for another chance. He stares at her lasciviously. She tries to leave but he tries to take advantage. Cholo barges in with his gun and shoots him.
24. Int., jail, day. Laura visits Cholo in jail. He’s philosophical about setting free or escaping, and expresses his love for her.
25. Int., Laura’s living room, day. Cholo’s band members comfort Laura in her home. Bogs invites her to live in his home but she refuses. Orbac suggests she live with his sister or with Tisoy’s family. She’s anxious about band’s musical equipment getting stolen. Band members leave to visit Cholo. Tisoy gives her sleeping tablet before they go.
26. Int., Laura’s living room, night. Bogs visits Laura with weed for smoking session. He invites her to his birthday party but she’s hesitant. He tries playing footsies with her but she rejects him.
27. Int., jail, day. Cholo gets a tattoo. He tells tattoo artist Laura hasn’t visited in a while.
28. Ext.-int.-ext., Bogs’s residence, night. Tisoy tells Cholo’s bandmates that Laura’s drug habits are getting worse. His girlfriend Michelle arrives. Bogs shows up with a new girlfriend, Melissa. They enter Bogs’s house for the party. He asks Tisoy to attend to Melissa when Laura arrives so she won’t suspect he’s got a new partner. Laura arrives, stoned. Tisoy shows her in. Melissa starts quarreling with Bogs for not being home, then remarks on Laura’s condition. Tisoy calls Bogs over to attend to Laura. Melissa goes to kitchen where Bogs is checking on Laura and slaps Laura out of jealousy when she sees her. Bogs apologizes to Laura. In Bogs’s driveway, Tisoy asks Orbac to handle Melissa. Tisoy goes to Bogs to tell him to lay off Laura.
29. Ext., Tisoy’s car, day. Tisoy takes Laura home but she refuses and asks him to drive around. Exasperated because she kept asking to be taken to several destinations, he decides to bring her home.
30. Int., jail, day. Wordless take of Cholo brooding by himself.
31. Int., Laura’s stairway, day. Landlady scolds Laura for delay in paying rent, gives her an ultimatum.
32. Int., Laura’s living room, day. Sheriff orders assistants to confiscate Cholo’s band instruments. Laura pleads for something to be left behind but their orders are strict. After they leave, she drinks alone on floor.
33. Int., Laura’s bedroom, night. Laura wakes up at night, runs out of liquor. She sees pic of her with Cholo on her night table, pops a pill but can’t sleep.
34. Ext.-int., Bogs’s house, night. Laura arrives stoned, Bogs takes her in and gives her a drink. In his living room, he apologizes about Melissa’s outburst and says they split. He tries to draw her out but she keeps quiet. They share a joint. Laura falls asleep while he talks. He messes with her while she’s unconscious. Orbac arrives but no one answers at the door. He enters, sees what Bogs is doing, and quarrels with him. Laura tells Orbac to stop
35. Int., jail, day. Orbac reluctantly tells Cholo what happened with Bogs, exonerates Laura and blames Bogs for plying Laura with stuff.
36. Ext., isolated spot, day. Laura cries outdoors at sunrise.
37. Int., Bogs’s residence, day. Bogs sees Laura in his home, tells her he came from Orbac. He tells her a story about Melissa’s desperation to get married to him. Laura gets kitchen knife. Tisoy is able to stop her from attacking Bogs.
38. Ext., Tisoy’s car, day. Laura keeps crying in car until morning. Laura gets out of car, walks alone, rejects Tisoy, kicks his car, walks away.
39. Ext., Laura’s fence, night. Cholo enters Laura’s house by jumping over the fence. He waits for her inside but she doesn’t arrive.
40. Ext., bar, night. Laura, undergoing cold turkey, goes to a bar.
41. Ext.-int., Orbac’s residence, night. Melissa tells band members she’ll be resting. Cholo calls Orbac through window. Orbac lets him in, says he escaped but Laura wasn’t home. Orbac says he heard she shacked up wtih Bogs. Cholo wants to leave to find them but Orbac stops him.

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42. Ext., bar, night. Bouncers expel Laura from bar. She continues quarreling with them outside. Briccio drives up and picks her up.
43. Int., clinic, night. Medics discuss Laura’s condition with Briccio. Doctor sedates her, tells Briccio she needs to be brought to rehab hospital.
44. Int., drug rehab dormitory, night. Laura awakens to swinging feet, realizes windows are steel-barred. Inmates inform her she’s in “Bicutan” (Department of Health Treatment and Rehabilitation Center). She lashes out but they laugh. Medics are called in to restrain her.
45. Int., drug rehab isolation cell, night. In an isolation cell, she undergoes cold turkey, calling for Cholo. Attendants arrive to calm her down.
46. Int., Laura’s bedroom, night. Alone at home and holding gun, Cholo dwells on knowledge that Bogs took Laura from him.
47. Int., Bogs’s garden, night. Bogs, drunk, arrives at his home with Melissa. She leaves him to prepare something inside. Cholo chokes him and escapes.
48. Ext., rehab yard, day. Inmates train Laura to jog. She wears out too quickly so they have to force her. They’re subsequently punished by being forced to duckwalk.
49. Int., rehab dining hall, day. They line up for lunch, then have grace before meals.
50. Int., Laura’s bedroom, day. At home and alone, Cholo broods.
51. Int., doctor’s office, day. Briccio asks doc about Laura. Doc asks for her chart and reports that she’s doing well. Doc says it will take 2-3 months to complete her treatment.
52. Ext., rehab yard, day. Laura continues outdoor regimen and training with rehab inmates. As they rest, she receives a gift from Briccio. In a black bag is a cap, which she wears.
53. Ext., rehab work area, day. She hums song that an inmate recognizes. Attendant fetches her to receive a visitor.
54. Ext., visiting area, day. She and attendant walk to visitng area. Briccio introduces himself to Laura. She remarks that his face is familiar to her. She remembers him as Shirley’s companion.
55. Ext.-int., Briccio’s residence, day. After her rehab, Briccio brings her to his home, introduces his four domestic helpers. Laura’s overwhelmed by size of his house but he tells her to get used to it because it’s where she’ll be living.
56. Int., Laura’s bedroom in Briccio’s residence, day. When she enters her bedroom, she finds flowers with a note from him. She’s delighted by the luxuries he provided. His maid brings her more flowers with note from him. She overhears Shirley quarreling with Briccio
57. Int.-ext., Briccio’s living room & garden, day. Shirley quarrels with Briccio because of Laura’s presence in his life. She calls Laura addict, drunkard, skanky. He doesn’t answer while their argument spills over into the garden and Shirley eventually walks out. Laura keeps observing them from a distance.
58. Int., Briccio’s living room, night. Psychotherapist calls on Briccio, who says his nightmares are starting to recur along with violent moods. Doc tells him not to skip his meds.
59. Int., nightclub, night. Briccio has dinner with Laura, offers her a major concert. She’s hesitant but he encourages her. While slow-dancing, he says he doesn’t want to intrude between her and Cholo. When seated again, he confesses that he rarely lavishes attention on people unless he finds them special. She calls herself lucky. He tries to kiss her but she doesn’t seem responsive.
60. Int., Briccio’s living room, night. Laura vocalizes with pianist trainer Dennis, then practices his song, with lyrics “Takot na muling malito, pagod na ring magtampo.” Briccio asks for her to relax.
61. Int., Laura’s bedroom in Briccio’s residence, night. In bed, Laura requests Briccio by phone if she can include two members of her band, Orbac and Tisoy.
62. Int., Briccio’s bedroom & living room, night. Laura fetches doc, who finds Briccio crying in depressive state in his bedroom. Laura brings his medication, doc tells him to relax. She and doc move to living room, away from Briccio’s hearing range, and she asks doc what exactly is his illness. Doc says Briccio doesn’t want her to know but she insists. Doc says Briccio has violent psychotic tendencies. In his bedroom, Briccio dreams.

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63. Ext.-int., Briccio’s childhood home, day. While he was a kid, his sister brings him a surprise. She gifts him with a harmonica. He pushes his father who dies from falling. His mother blames him for his father’s death.
64. Int., Briccio’s bedroom, night. Briccio awakens, asks for Sara.
65. Ext., Briccio’s gate, night. Cholo arrives at night at Briccio’s residence, rings bell and asks guard for Laura but is told there’s no person by that name there. Briccio climbs fence but is told to leave.
66. Int., Laura’s bedroom in Briccio’s residence, night. Laura answers Cholo’s phone call, where he confesses he escaped from jail. Briccio enters and asks who called, Laura says it’s just a band member. Briccio says guard reported someone who insisted on entering but Laura says she never instructed anyone to visit her. She resumes talking with Cholo and arranges an assignation.
67. Ext.-int., Laura’s residence, night. Briccio and henchmen arrive by car and enter Laura’s living room. Cholo’s harassing Laura but Briccio and his men show up to retrieve her by gunpoint.
68. Int., Briccio’s living room, night. Briccio hits Laura and demands to know if she loves Cholo and how she escaped his home.
69. Ext., Briccio’s yard, night. Briccio beats up man he suspects didn’t guard Laura from escaping. Sheryl shows up and pleads for another chance but he gets mad and shoots her as Laura watches from a window.
70. Int.-ext., Laura’s bedroom in Briccio’s residence & Briccio’s family’s garden, night & day. Briccio watches Laura sleeping and associates Laura with his sister Sara, with whom he’s incestuously obsessed. He remembers hitting Sara in the family garden for planning to marry someone else but she now looks like Laura. As Sara leaves, he pleads with her but she refuses him. In present time, his anger mounts and he nearly shoots Laura in bed but she stirs and he moves away.
71. Int., Laura’s living room, Laura’s bedroom in Briccio’s residence, and Briccio’s bedroom, night. Cholo calls Laura saying he loves her and asking if she still needs him. He winds up cursing himself. He asks her to be with him but she tells him it’s not possible. Cholo threatens to kill himself and her. Briccio listens in to their conversation.
72. Int., beauty-parlor lobby, day. Laura meets Cholo. They attempt to elope in a cab.
73. Ext., Briccio’s car, day. Briccio and his men follows the taxi they took. His car blocks their way and he abducts them.
74. Ext., isolated lot, night. Briccioo’s henchmen bring Cholo to edge of a pit. Laura pleads with Briccio but he hits her unconscious. Cholo spits at Briccio, who affixes silencer to his gun then shoots Cholo.
75. Ext., Briccio’s garden, day. Briccio asks Laura to rehearse but she refuses. She demands to have her freedom but he also refuses and tells her she has no choice except to perform in the concert for her that he’ll be producing.
76. Int., concert hall, night. Laura sings “Iisa Pa Lamang” (music Danny Tan, lyrics Joey Reyes). Briccio’s seated but Boyet in the wings notices man with suspicious bag. Boyet hurries to warn someone. Briccio walks out before her song ends and the assassin’s shotgun is aimed at her.
77. Ext.-int., concert hall, night. Police arrive, shoot it out with Briccio’s gang. As audience applauds, she’s shot and audience panics. Someone turns off the lights.
78. Int., concert hall, night. Assassin exchanges shots with police.
79. Int., concert hall backstage, Briccio’s family’s garden, night. Briccio sees Laura wounded in the dark and caresses her face. He remembers Sara, whom he killed in the family garden. He promises to keep her safe, hears gunfire as police close in, lifts Laura’s body, lifts her to move her.
80. Int., dressing room, night. Briccio hides Laura in dressing room closet. He sees Laura wounded and struggling, pleads with her to stay, gives her his jacket to keep her warm, and calls her Sara during a breakdown. Laura realizes he’s gone crazy as Boyet sees what’s happening.
81. Int.-ext., dressing room and Briccio’s family’s residence, night & day. Briccio remembers incestuous and playful moments with Sara in his family’s home and garden. Boyet witnesses his confession and Briccio’s mounting rage. He aims gun at her. Boyet stops him from shooting her, police hit him as Laura screams.
82. Ext., concert hall exit, night. Medics take out Laura to an ambulance as in opening, leaving Boyet behind.

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Á!

The Experimental Cinema of the Philippines once appeared as a category in my list of pre-internet non-journal non-newspaper periodicals, which provides an incomplete picture of the agency’s persistence in my output. For this reason I thought of providing this landing page, essentially a provisional and still gap-filled collection. I happened to have just a few materials from the agency and only one from the Manila International Film Festival, which was officially one of the ECP’s departments but repudiated by the director-general (originally slated to be Imelda Marcos but preempted by her daughter Ma. Imelda a.k.a. Imee). These were the publications I brought along with me to my graduate studies abroad, to serve as basic research material; as it turned out, everything else I left back home – periodicals, videos, and memorabilia – was either pilfered or damaged by typhoons and/or termites.

11011The discovery of a building proposal, submitted in 1981 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, classified as restricted and titled “The Manila Film Centre,” was something I found online, presumably after having been cleared for whatever was confidential about it. The historical structure appears to have followed the proposal, implying that the former First Lady was closely involved in its design from the start.

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The Film Palace: A Divergence

Regarding the collapse of the Manila Film Center scaffolding during its construction in November 1981, attributed to careless building procedures, I have consistently presented the following qualifications:

• the architect in charge, Froilan Hong, had extensive global academic preparation and experience in modernist construction (he was Dean of the national university’s College of Architecture around that period), so he understandably contested the number of victims – of which, typically, an exact number will never be determined;[1]
• also, anyone then who still remembered the temblor-triggered collapse of the Ruby Tower residential building about a decade earlier (an event that vicariously traumatized Filipino architects and contractors everywhere, including my father) would not be tempted to cut corners in a far more complicated undertaking.

Since the martial-law regime imposed a news blackout for over a day, I have found it impossible to confirm any preliminary report of the incident even in foreign-press accounts. For this reason, two dates are also mentioned in various reports (either the 17th or the 18th), possibly arising from the confusion caused by the delay in the release of information.

11011The national dailies that carefully printed similar-sounding news acknowledged that some workers died but that construction activities had resumed. As anyone with sufficient experience with media psychology could have foretold, several speculations – ranging from natural to metaphysical – emerged to clarify, embellish, or challenge the official version of events.

11011For my part, I can only add what first-hand experience could affirm: on the (still-to-be-determined) date of the incident, I was in the vicinity of the construction, along with the rest of the public-relations staff, winding up overnight preparations required to beat some printing deadline for the production of materials for the MIFF. Our office at the Philippine International Convention Center faced the same parking lot where the MFC was rising dextrally, so occasionally we would peer out to see the structure, brightly lit as if being readied for a Hollywood blockbuster, with ladders, derricks, and hoists on all sides.

11011A few hours after midnight a strong tremor shook the place. Everyone rushed to the windows to see what happened to the construction. The sight was uncanny, with workers scampering everywhere, the ladders filled with men clambering downward. From this distant spectacle we knew that something dreadful could have happened (as it did), but we had our tasks to complete and were groggy from working nonstop already.

11011I mention this specific detail because it appears in no other account except “Grains & Flickers,” the article I wrote for the 2016 book edited by JPaul S. Manzanilla and Caroline S. Hau, titled Remembering/Rethinking EDSA, as well as in my monograph Manila by Night: A Queer Film Classic (Arsenal Press, 2017). One careless commenter blurted out in a group discussion (all right, chat) that my story sounds like an exoneration of the people involved in the tragedy – neglecting the crucial facts that first, it happened, and second, I was with witnesses. Undeniably it complicates the narrative, but I wouldn’t say it exculpates the usual suspects unless one were to operate within the fully guilty-vs.-fully innocent binary to which critically ill-equipped (though unfortunately typical) netizens have become accustomed.[2]

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The Malakas at Maganda mural displayed at the entrance to the main theater of the Manila Film Center (from Lakbay ng Lakan, reprinted with permission). For a discussion, please see the Illustrational Problematics page I uploaded for my book Manila by Night: A Queer Film Classic.

A Haunting

I have to begin by expressing my mounting vexation at the number of netizens asking about the presence of ghosts in the building. Scientific and historical materialism before everything else, please (and sorry for stating what should have been obvious already). We moved in after the MIFF for which the MFC was constructed had ended, and a number of accounts correctly state that government officials were hoping for an exorcism ritual – but identify Imelda Marcos as its instigator. This made no sense, since her event had just finished and it was the ECP, led by Imee Marcos, that was to hold office in the building; it was also out of character for Mrs. Marcos, whose advisers would have dissuaded her from conducting such an exercise. (The MIFF, as an independently run ECP department, occupied an upper floor but was operated by its Deputy Director John J. Litton, who preferred to use the initials JJL.) Fortunately a former supervisor, Nena C. Benigno, provided a definitive account of Imee Marcos’s direct involvement in the ritual in a magazine interview – see Nica de Guzman’s “The Mysterious Curse of the Manila Film Center” in the Philippine edition of Esquire (November 7, 2019).

11011The news about Betty Benitez perishing in a vehicular accident after an assignation with Onofre D. Corpuz had a whiff of karmic schadenfreude about it, since Benitez was in charge of the MFC construction project. The story that what caused their car to swerve disastrously was a vision of bloodied workers crossing the street first circulated as a persistent rumor, but it was another death – that of Benigno Aquino Jr. in September 1983, returning from exile in the US – that finally facilitated the publication of the tale. It came out in a Catholic Church opposition compact, Veritas, minus any authorial credit, and added the slant that the couple, married but not to each other, was conducting an affair.[3] I recognized the article’s stylistic flourishes as typical of a former office co-worker, Eduardo B. Pacheco, who had started expressing dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of the Aquino assassination, resigned soon afterward, and subsequently appeared in the Veritas staff box as business editor. (Pacheco lived in Pampanga after his retirement but was killed in an apparent early-morning burglary in 2012.)

11011What haunted my memory during and after my stint at the agency was an encounter with an elderly security guard. He was extraordinarily avuncular, in the manner that working-class men carry over from their drunken states when they realize how well it goes over with strangers they want to impress. I was leaving work with some of my office mates and lingered by the exit as they timestamped their employee-record (“bundy” in Noypi & Aussie English) cards. The old man started talking about how he’d been guarding the place during the construction period, so I asked if he witnessed the collapse of the scaffolding. He talked at length about workers who lost their limbs, if not their lives, and bodies that had to be cemented over in order to meet the building completion deadline.

11011I knew he was gravely endangering himself but he seemed to be unaware of the kind of reality I’d been able to observe: Imee Marcos enrolled in the same class on Philippine nationalism that I was taking under Renato Constantino a few years earlier, and several heavyset middle-aged barong-clad men, definitely not national-university types, presented their registration credentials and positioned themselves all over the classroom while she sat in the center. I thought I could just warn him another time, when less of a crowd would be standing around … but he never showed up again afterward.

11011He could have been fired, or transferred, or just scared away from his job – but this was martial law, and it was never advisable to assume anything less than the worst. If I’d been one of the over-imaginative (though frankly airheaded) cinema attendants who loved indulging in ghost tales and never wanted for listeners prepped by the MFC’s bloody history, I would have spread the story that he must have been one of the fallen workers who wanted his version of events told right, a revenant who returned to the afterlife upon accomplishing his mission. It would have been a far less distressing account than the real-life possibilities I had to accept.

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Other ECP Materials in Ámauteurish!

I’d reviewed a few films that came out during this period, including the ECP productions except the last one. I’d still been working out a critical voice and perspective then, so I’d prefer not to list these titles here, although anyone interested for whatever reason will be able to find the films in this blog’s Reviews section.

11011The release (in more ways than one) of the Ishmael Bernal film Manila by Night may be regarded as the ECP’s final positive contribution to Pinas pop-culture history: it was banned upon completion in early 1980 and screened with seemingly uncountable cuts and deletions – the most severely censored movie ever in local cinema. After the MIFF’s reliance on pornographic films in order to fund the First Lady’s world-scale bacchanals followed a few months later by the killing of Aquino, the MFC sounded out a call for artistic sex-themed products.[4] I remember writing an informal letter to an official suggesting that MbN should be considered a prime candidate because it was officially accepted for the Berlin International Film Festival competition (though prevented from leaving at the time because of the First Lady’s disapprobation); it won the local critics’ award despite its badly mangled condition; and its producer actively participated in providing well-attended titles for MFC screenings. After this I also recall processing the documentation necessary for the release of the integral version of the film for screening exclusively at the MFC.[5]

11011The definitive empirical summary of the agency’s performance lies in documents, stored on drives, that are now lost: its annual reports, all of which I researched, compiled, and wrote. The first one, titled Experimental Cinema of the Philippines: Year One, came out as a glossy publication, while the second and third were bound printouts. Why only three years, when the ECP was set up in 1981 and the EDSA uprising was in 1986? Once more, despite most accounts’ misperception, the organization existed only for as long as Imee Marcos could devote her full attention to it. After the Aquino assassination (and upon getting her now-controversial law degree from the national university), she decided to run for the interim parliament and focus on her duties therein. With the MIFF only too willing to take over the agency, she arranged for the ECP to be dissolved and a new body called the Film Development Foundation of the Philippines set up in its place. This was the body that was shut down in February 1986.

11011While it was around, the public relations department where I worked managed to come up with a magazine, SineManila, limited to a maiden issue because of a nasty turf war waged by a military agent and her staff who insisted that her department’s tiny magazine, Filipino Film Review (my complete file of which was lost), be the only ECP publication that the public could access. We also managed to come up with only one in-house publication, Jario Scenario, since the ECP at this stage was nearing its transition to the FDFP.

11011Since the officials in our department were outsourced from the National Media Production Center (now the Philippine Information Agency), we were obliged to serve all ECP departments including the MIFF. (Recall the opening account where our experience of the tremor that caused the MFC tragedy was due to one of several all-nighters necessitated by an impending MIFF printer’s deadline.) The start of my employment was right after the MIFF dry-run edition, during which I managed to secure passes for the critics circle and experienced the kind of overload that led me to regard filmfests as less-than-ideal venues for appreciating movies.

11011The next year’s (first regular) MIFF was the one held at the MFC building, already and inevitably notorious even before it opened. It had Satyajit Ray as chair of the competition jury, and honored a now-forgotten film, 36 Chowringhee Lane, Aparna Sen’s debut as a director, defeating entries by the likes of Roger Donaldson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Lawrence Kasdan, Karel Reisz, François Truffaut, and Peter Weir. A daily magazine, Manila Film International (of which my complete file was also irretrievably damaged), was published but not by our department. The next year’s winner was another close-to-forgotten entry, the late Yu Wigong’s Memories of Old Peking (a.k.a. My Memories of Old Beijing), but unlike the previous year, it also had Filipino films in competition: Oro, Plata, Mata (which won a special jury prize) by Peque Gallaga and Moral by Marilou Diaz-Abaya.

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Essential Readings

In coordination with the now-defunct Metro Manila Commission, the ECP and MIFF launched separate publications the next year. The ECP’s was a book edited by Rafael Ma. Guerrero, titled Readings in Philippine Cinema – as definitive a text as it was possible to compile up to that point. The MIFF had strictly supplementary material, also edited (though uncredited) by Guerrero, titled Focus on Filipino Films. The eponymously titled film module that the latter accompanied can well be regarded as the highlight of all the MIFF editions put together: a nearly ideal canon-formation project that conscripted film experts who screened available films (though only once) and deliberated on whether they should be included or not; new prints of the selected titles were then struck, with French and English subtitles. Eye-opener accounts such as “Manila’s Angels,” Elliott Stein’s article in Film Comment, made exceptions in a properly critical report of the MIFF’s proceedings in order to express admiration for several of the module entries.

11011Needless to add, this first-time attempt was never to be replicated thereafter. Many of the now faded prints are regarded as still the most acceptable available copies of their specific titles, with digital remastering the only possible future stage for them. The next year’s MIFF reverted to the dry-run dimension, to be able to evade the then-growing united-front movement that arose in protest over the Aquino assassination.

11011A still insistently forward-thinking ECP administration proceeded with its last batch of productions, which gave me the opportunity to interview Soltero director Pio de Castro III on location in Baguio – at the Hyatt Terraces, the same hotel that collapsed from another tremor several years after. They also assigned me to attend the courses of the lately introduced undergraduate film specialization at the national university, to be able to eventually set up the ECP’s own education program. I countered that, since I already held a bachelor’s diploma from the institute that proffered the degree, I would need only a few extra units in order to earn the new baccalaureate itself. I thought my proposal would have come across as audacious, but then there were already less tasks to attend to with the “indefinitely postponed” MIFF and the impending transition of the director-general to her interim Batasang Pambansa commitment. The February 1986 ouster of the Marcos administration occurred during my final semester of undergrad film studies, so just like in my first bachelor’s degree, I was once more a working student who was out of a job upon graduation.[6]

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Notes

I do acknowledge that the memoir format will better serve some of the material presented here, but I prefer not to let this opportunity pass in case I wind up unable to complete the writing project. So I will name this early the people to whom I plan to dedicate the forthcoming effort: the ones (possibly entirely men, but we have no way of knowing any longer) who unwillingly and prematurely gave up their lives for the construction of the hideously pretentious building where we had to work for too long. The ouster of the Marcos regime was not bloody enough to redress the violence visited on you (as well as on countless others), and the silence with which your annihilation was completed.

[1] A letter sent by Baltazar N. Endriga, former chair and president of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, states that Froilan Hong counted seven fatalities and recapitulates the standard account of how “the scaffolding supporting the platform into which concrete was being poured collapsed and the seven workers fell to their deaths. The bodies of all seven were then retrieved and given the proper rites befitting the dead. [Hong] belied the popular story that many workers were buried alive in concrete and that in the hurry to finish the construction, they were simply entombed under the Film Center’s bowels” (“Account on the 1981 Manila Film Center Deaths,” Inquirer.net, February 26, 2021). Endriga does not state his involvement in the project or whether Hong was present during the accident and/or rescue operations.

[2] I did manage to secure recent official confirmation that short night tremors, ranging from moderate to strong, hit Luzon during both dates, after the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology referred my query to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration. (Since PHIVOLCS was founded only after the incident, in September 1982, the tracking of earthquakes during the period in question was performed by PAGASA.) I have no knowledge of the reliability of the government’s seismographic instruments or record-keeping activities during that time, however, so these questions will have to be regarded for now as compounding the other problem I mentioned of determining the exact date of the MFC tragedy. The worst possible outcome from this admittedly traumatic incident would be a Mandela phenomenon, where the local and global public proceeds from a belief that the accident was caused by sheer carelessness and nothing else; there was carelessness in the obscene haste by which the project was rushed, but only an unanticipated tremor could have caused the internal scaffolding to collapse – which, tragically, turned out to be the case.

[3] Walden Bello, in his autobiography Global Battlefields: Memoir of a Legendary Public Intellectual from the Global South (Clarity Press, 2025), attributed the funding of the church’s same-named radio station to “the Asia Foundation, a well-known conduit of [Central Intelligence Agency] and [US] State Department money” (Michael Armacost, Speech at Foreign Service Institute, Rosslyn, Virginia, April 23, 1986).

[4] Not surprisingly, the MIFF concerned itself with the same goal, since it had already reaped profits from adults-only screenings from all over (downtown venues were censorship-exempt during the festival period). Producers were convened at the MFC’s MIFF office for specific instructions as to what they may be allowed to present – in porn parlance, tits & asses as well as simulated sex scenes. The ECP, for its part, provided support in the form of flyers and warm bodies for the Concerned Artists of the Philippines’s anti-censorship rallies.

11011When the expected moralist backlash occurred, with the chief of the Board of Censors for Motion Pictures asserting her presidential appointment and thereby operating at the same governmental level as Imee Marcos, a high-ranking MIFF official issued a statement that the films were smutty because producers were deliberately violating the limits that the government prescribed. The producers themselves, who were constant visitors at the MFC because of other services such as funding subsidies and tax rebates, replied (in strict confidence, understandably) that it was this same top MIFF official who kept pestering them to shoot far raunchier scenes even if these no longer had any relevance to the films being considered. Said official was blasted on national television after February 1986 by Lino Brocka, for his opportunistic claim that he had been supportive of the anti-Marcos opposition all along.

MbN, as restored by the Marcos regime.

[5] What mystifies me is why members of the critics circle (who that time congratulated me for actualizing the release of the uncensored print) insist on calling the film anything except the title its producer and director-writer provided: because the film that their awards honored was not titled Manila by Night? (City after Dark was the censored version, while Manila after Dark does not even apply to any movie whatsoever, although check out this kink in my argument.) The same government that banned, then censored, the film, also restored the original title when it was approved for an MFC screening. As the person designated to host the premiere night’s program, I saw with my own eyes the words “Manila by Night” projected onscreen during the movie’s opening credits.

[6] I might as well provide one of the plausible urban myths that some media colleagues of mine claim as factual, since it does denote a happy ending and resembles my experience: one of Imee Marcos’s bodyguards supposedly realized that his official enrollment in the same courses she was taking at the national university was an opportunity for self-advancement, and actually completed for his own credit the same undergraduate and law degrees that she claimed to have finished (though without any official documentation in her case); he passed the bar exam and no longer had to risk his life for the sake of any high-ranking government bigwig. Some day some enterprising investigative journalist will have to uncover the truth (or falsity) of this singularly marvelous story.

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