In pandemic year 2020, when the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) had to go online, and it was impossible to do the pomp and pageantry of what has been sold as an annual Philippine film “tradition”, Sen. Imee Marcos claimed it wholly and completely as a Ferdinand Marcos creation from Martial Law year 1975, when the best picture film was “Diligin Mo ng Hamog ang Uhaw na Lupa”.
We liked to dismiss the Marcoses’ claims to culture pre-2022, but none of what Senator Imee says there is a lie.
And despite little of it probably getting into your algorithm, neither is it a lie that in 2024, First Lady Liza Marcos was front and center (literally) of MMFF, not just in the photos for the launch of its purported 50th year in July 2024, but also with her husband, PresidenAt Bongbong at the Konsyerto sa Palasyo para sa pelikulang Pilipino on December 16, and throughout the year, since February, ostensibly stepping into the Imeldific role of joining hands with film industry stakeholders on the promise of supporting the film industry. That the outcome of this is yet another cultural organization called CineGang, Inc. that’s supposed to promote local films to a global audience, which apparently means needing a fancy new office in Makati City, private investors, golf tournament fundraisers, and a Malacañang-hosted first meeting with the First Lady herself in November 2024, is a conversation for another time.
For now, the more important conversation is how it is that after 49 years, the MMFF is still lacking in transparency and credibility, and remains riddled by controversy. That it was created by Marcos Sr. during Martial Law speaks to why.
Created by Proclamation 1459, July 9 1975, the MMFF was seen as “a vehicle for moral regeneration, social development and cultural reawakening in the New Society” where “the commitment of the New Society <was> to enrich Philippine culture, to reawaken the people to their historical heritage and traditional values, and to clarify the Filipino image.”
The MMFF’s identity is bound to being ideologically in sync with government, propping-up as it did Marcos Sr.’s Bagong Lipunan against the backdrop of Martial Law. That 49 years after we are back to the same promise of a Bagong Pilipinas, under Marcos’s son Bongbong, and that the MMFF continues to be embroiled in controversy borne of its lack of credibility, is no surprise.
Politicians across those 49 years have said, over and over again: mabuhay ang pelikulang Pilipino, suportahan natin ang pelikulang Pilipino. But the first step towards supporting Filipino filmmaking, towards ensuring that it flourishes, is to respect its freedom. Martial Law ensured a filmmaking that was unfree. In 1976, a year after the first MMFF and the establishment of the Metropolitan Manila Commission (MMC, pre-cursor to the Metro Manila Development Authority), Marcos Sr. would also appoint as MMC Governor the First Lady herself, she who thought nothing of covering up impoverished Manila for foreign guests. That this leaked into filmmaking goes without saying: it is said that Ishmael Bernal’s Manila By Night had to be re-titled City After Dark because Imelda would not have the world thinking of Manila as a space of squalor, prostitution, violence.