3.4 · The golden age a dictatorship paid for

IntermediateDuration ~11 min read + 37 min videoTools The disputed-number handling you learned in Lesson 0.2

The big idea: the state that funded the best films this country ever made is the same state that jailed the director, cut the masterpiece, and cannot tell you how many workers died building the theatre, and the honest move is to hold both without resolving either.

The analogy

Think about how a commissioned portrait works.

Somebody pays. Somebody else paints. And the person paying decides the pose, the room, the light, and what is allowed to be in the background. Not by arguing about aesthetics. By writing the cheque and setting the terms before the first sitting.

The portraits that come out of an arrangement like that can be extraordinary. Sometimes the painter smuggles the truth in anyway, in the hands, in what is visible through the window, in a face that knows something the pose does not admit. Art historians have spent centuries reading those smuggled parts, and they are real.

None of which changes who chose the pose. And it says nothing at all about the paintings that were never commissioned, or about the painter who went out to paint the street instead and did not come home for a fortnight.

Every part of this lesson is inside that arrangement.

Watch

This is Signos, made in 1983 by the circle of filmmakers who had just formed the Concerned Artists of the Philippines. It is not a film about martial law. It is a film made inside it, by people who could be arrested for making it, and several of them were.

Watch for: Two moments in particular. Around 6:18, an ordinary Manila resident describing the moment he heard Ninoy Aquino had died, unscripted, next to the official statements. Around 12:05, the editor of We Forum recounting the newspaper's shutdown by the military on 7 December 1982: about a hundred armed soldiers, ten people arrested including veteran columnists, and the printing plant still padlocked and guarded around the clock at the time of filming. Later in the film, listen for a speaker laying out the doctrine the whole industry was working under: what is true, what is good and what is beautiful, meaning no slums, no poverty, no problems, because showing the good things is nation building.

A note on provenance, because it matters. The copy above is a third-party re-upload rather than an official archive posting. It is usable as evidence and as research, and this course does not present it as a rights-cleared embed. There is also a copy at the Internet Archive. If anything from this film goes into your own work, the rights conversation starts with the Concerned Artists of the Philippines, not with YouTube.

How it works

Take the money side first, because it is the part that gets left out.

The Metro Manila Film Festival’s predecessor was created to commemorate the third anniversary of martial law and the President’s New Society programme. Mowelfund, which still provides medical and death benefits to film workers, was founded by Joseph Estrada in the same period. The Film Academy of the Philippines was created by executive order. And the ECP, the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, was created by executive order with Imee Marcos as its Director General, mandated to run an international film festival, operate the Manila Film Center, administer a rating system, establish a national film archive, and finance production through a film fund.

The ECP funded Himala and Oro, Plata, Mata. Two of the best films made in this country, paid for by the daughter of the dictator, out of an agency created by her father.

That is what state patronage looks like when it works, and it produced the institutional furniture you still have to sit on. The MMFF, Mowelfund, the Film Academy, and the lineage that became today’s film agency: all of it was built in that decade, by that regime, for that regime’s reasons. Reforming any of it means knowing what it was shaped to do.

Now the other hand, which belonged to the same body.

Censorship under martial law was not a rating system. Scripts had to be submitted and approved before shooting. An executive order in 1983 gave the board the power to bar any film considered subversive in content or as undermining faith in the government. Insiang was initially halted because Imelda Marcos objected that the film failed to present a beautiful view of the Philippines. Manila by Night had its title changed, every mention of Manila removed, was heavily cut, was banned for export, went abroad as City After Dark, and was denied entry to the Berlinale. Lino Brocka was arrested during a jeepney strike in January 1985 and held for sixteen days. He had co-founded the Concerned Artists of the Philippines two years earlier, out of a movement launched by over five hundred artists against expanded censorship.

And the same agency that funded Himala was later accused of producing sex-oriented films, which means the state that would not let Brocka show a slum ran a body that went around its own censors on sex. That is the era in one sentence.

Now the pressure, and what it did to the work. Allegory is the technique of saying the forbidden thing about something else: the tyrannical father in Kisapmata, the fraternity in Batch ’81, the sprawling city that could not be named as Manila. Those are real formal achievements and they are worth studying as craft.

They are not worth romanticising, and this course will not do it. The argument that constraint made the cinema great counts only the films that survived the process. It does not count the sixteen days Brocka spent in custody. It does not count what was cut out of Bernal’s film, which no restoration can put back. It does not count the scripts that were never submitted, by people who knew better, and it never can, because that is not a number anybody kept.

Which brings us to the number nobody kept.

At around three in the morning on 17 November 1981, scaffolding on the Manila Film Center collapsed and workers fell into wet, fast-drying cement. A security cordon went up. Rescuers were not allowed on site for nine hours, until an official statement had been prepared.

The published death figures run from 3 to 169. The government said three. The building’s own architect said seven, relayed years later in a signed newspaper piece. A wire report filed the same day said twenty-six. A newspaper research desk, working from what contemporaneous coverage exists, counted forty to forty-five workers on the collapsed floor without confirming deaths. The most circulated figure, at least a hundred and sixty-nine, is also the least directly documented.

This course does not pick one. Lesson 0.2 exists for exactly this. The verifiable facts are that workers died, that the state suppressed the news for hours while it wrote its statement, that no complete list of who was on site that night exists, and that the range of credible published figures spans two orders of magnitude.

Then hold that next to the censorship board. A regime that could not tell you how many of its workers it killed building a film palace is the same regime that was telling filmmakers what the country was allowed to look like.

That is not a paradox to be resolved. It is one arrangement, viewed from two sides.

The pattern

Same hand, cheque and constraint. Do not average them. The state that funded Himala and Oro, Plata, Mata is the state that halted Insiang, cut Manila by Night, and jailed Brocka for sixteen days. The argument that censorship made the cinema great counts only the films that got through it. The films nobody attempted are not in the sample and never will be. When the range on a number spans two orders of magnitude, the range is the finding. Publish the range with every figure attributed, and say who had an interest in each end of it.

The receipts (evidence, if you want it)

• The patronage side, with dates. The Metropolitan Film Festival, predecessor of the MMFF, opened 21 September 1975 “to commemorate the third anniversary of martial law and President Ferdinand Marcos’ New Society program,” renamed the Metro Manila Film Festival in 1977 (Metro Manila Film Festival, Wikipedia; VERA Files has written on this directly under the title “The Metro Manila Film Festival: As Martial Law corpse”, free). Mowelfund, founded 1974 by Joseph Estrada, then mayor of San Juan and president of the producers’ association, providing hospitalisation, surgery, medical fees and death benefits to roughly 4,500 members (Mowelfund, Wikipedia). Film Academy of the Philippines, created 5 January 1981 by EO 640-A (FAP, Wikipedia); note that sources give 1981 and 1982 inconsistently for the founding, and Lim uses both.
• The ECP. Created 29 January 1982 by Executive Order 770, with Imee Marcos as Director General, under the Ministry of Tourism. Mandate: the Manila International Film Festival, the Manila Film Center, a rating and classification system, a national film archive, and production finance. Six theatrical releases 1982 to 1985, including Himala and Oro, Plata, Mata, plus Soltero, Misteryo sa Tuwa and Isla. Later accused of producing sex-oriented films. Ceased operations 2 October 1985, dissolved via EO 1051 under Marcos. (Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, Wikipedia) Disputed and probably an error: one encyclopedia page attributes the dissolution to the Corazon Aquino administration, which is chronologically impossible, since Aquino took office in February 1986 and the same page dates the EO to 1985. Treat the Marcos-era dissolution as correct and correct the error on air. Joel David’s free “Experimental Cinema of the Philippines: A Hasty Recollection” is a first-hand account by a major Filipino film scholar and is the best free source on the agency.
• The repression side, with dates. EO 585 (1980) put senior defence and justice officials on the censorship board; EO 745 (1981) renamed it; EO 868 (1983) expanded its reach to live entertainment and gave it “the power to bar any film deemed ‘subversive’ in content and ‘undermining faith in the government’” (MTRCB, Wikipedia). Scripts had to be submitted and approved before shooting (San Diego Filipino Cinema’s summary of the NCCA history).
• Insiang (Brocka, 1976). Release initially halted; Imelda Marcos objected that the film failed to present a “beautiful view” of the Philippines; religious officials and public protest forced the ban to be lifted. Directors’ Fortnight, Cannes 1978, the first Philippine film at Cannes. Restored 2015 by Scorsese’s World Cinema Project with L’Immagine Ritrovata and the FDCP. (Insiang, Wikipedia)
• Manila by Night (Bernal, 1980). Title changed, all mentions of Manila removed, banned for export, exported as City After Dark, heavily cut, distribution limited, denied entry to the Berlinale. (Manila by Night, Wikipedia) Kritika Kultura issue 19 (2012) is effectively a free Manila by Night dossier, the best free package on Bernal anywhere, at archium.ateneo.edu.
• Brocka’s arrest. Arrested 28 January 1985 during a jeepney strike and detained sixteen days. He co-founded the Concerned Artists of the Philippines, formally established 31 August 1983, out of the “Free the Artist, Free the Media Movement” launched in February 1983 by over 500 artists opposing expanded censorship. (Lino Brocka, Wikipedia; Concerned Artists of the Philippines, Wikipedia)
• The Manila Film Center, every figure with its owner. Designed by Froilan Hong, built on reclaimed land on more than nine hundred piles, for the first Manila International Film Festival, 18 to 29 January 1982. Scaffolding collapsed at around 3:00 a.m. on 17 November 1981. A blanket security cordon was imposed and rescuers were let in nine hours later, after an official statement had been prepared; other accounts describe a fifteen-hour news blackout. The figures: 3 dead, 34 injured, the government’s own figure released after the blackout (Working With Crowds); 7 dead, from architect Froilan Hong as relayed by former CCP president Baltazar N. Endriga in a signed opinion piece, in which Endriga writes that all seven bodies were retrieved and given proper rites and that Hong “belied the popular story that many workers were buried alive in concrete” (Inquirer Opinion); 26 dead, UPI wire report filed 17 November 1981 (UPI Archives); 40 to 45 workers on the collapsed floor, a count of workers present rather than of deaths (Manila Bulletin Research); and “at least 169,” the most circulated and least directly documented figure. The course never uses a single number and never will.
• Signos, and its provenance. Signos (1983), Concerned Artists of the Philippines, 37:01. The YouTube copy is a third-party re-upload rather than an official archive posting; there is also a copy at archive.org/details/signos-1983. Verified alive and free to view. Not a rights-cleared embed, and any use in your own work starts with CAP. English captions are automatic and rough, so re-check any line against the audio before quoting it on screen. The We Forum testimony at roughly 12:05, with the date 7 December 1982 stated on camera by the editor himself, is the sharpest single citable example of press repression in the film.
• Free scholarship on the era. Joel David’s “A Second Golden Age” is free and is the standing scholarly account of the period by a Filipino critic who lived through it. His “The Cold War and Marcos-Era Cinema in the Philippines” is a free PDF. The rarity worth knowing about: “Visions: Cinema, Film in the Philippines,” UK Channel 4, 1983, produced by Tony Rayns and containing Brocka interviews, free at archive.org/details/vcfitp.
• Free and legal viewing from the rights holders, for this era. Himala (Bernal, 1982, 1:53:13, ABS-CBN Star Cinema), Oro Plata Mata (Gallaga, 1982, 2:52:04, ABS-CBN Star Cinema, youtube.com/watch?v=iokC13BjSFY), Kisapmata (Mike de Leon, 1981, 1:33:00, SOLAR WATCH NOW, youtube.com/watch?v=bzFQtB6fVT8), Moral (Diaz-Abaya, 1982, 2:12:35, ABS-CBN Star Cinema, youtu.be/XrS7raUaq10), Karnal (Diaz-Abaya, 1983, 1:50:08, GMA Pictures, youtube.com/watch?v=nHMxOMXkQsE). All verified alive, all posted by the rights holders themselves. Not legally streamable anywhere: Manila by Night, Batch ’81, Itim, Sister Stella L. And Insiang and Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag are not legally streaming in the Philippines at all, only through a US subscription service. The canon is more available to Americans than to Filipinos, and that is a checkable claim.
• The films this lesson names but does not embed. Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Brocka, 1975), restored in 4K in 2013 by the World Cinema Project with the FDCP and released by Criterion in 2018. Jaguar (1979), the first Philippine film to compete for the Palme d’Or. Kisapmata and Batch ‘81 (Mike de Leon), both Directors’ Fortnight, Cannes 1982. Mababangong Bangungot / Perfumed Nightmare (Kidlat Tahimik, 1977), FIPRESCI at the 27th Berlinale, made on expired stock discarded by a German film school for roughly US$4,000. Himala won the CNN Asia Pacific Screen Awards 2008 Viewer’s Choice for best film of all time from the region.

Watch along, if you have the evening

Optional. Himala is free and legal in a restored print from the rights holder, and it runs one hour fifty-three. It was paid for by the ECP, which is to say by the agency this lesson has just described, and knowing that while you watch it is the entire exercise.

Watch for: Where the money is visible. This is a state-funded film about mass belief, faith in a miracle, and what a crowd will do with a story it needs. Watch it knowing the state that paid for it was, in the same years, telling Brocka he could not show a slum. Nobody has to tell you what to make of that.

Your one move

Twenty minutes, and it is a writing exercise rather than a research one.

Write the Manila Film Center number the way Lesson 0.2 taught you, as something you could put on screen without ever being caught out.

Three short paragraphs, no more:

1. What is not in dispute. The date, the hour, the collapse, the cordon, the nine hours before rescuers were let in, and the fact that an official statement was prepared first.
2. The range, with owners. Every published figure, and who published it, and what interest each of them had. Say out loud which figure came from the party with the strongest reason to want a low one.
3. The finding. One or two sentences on why the absence of a count is itself evidence about the regime, written so a hostile viewer could not take it apart.

Done when the three paragraphs exist and no single number appears as the answer. This is a piece of the Level 3 capstone, and it is the piece a documentary lawyer will read first.

The disputed-numbers handling card carries the Manila Film Center range as its worked example for the “disputed” state, in exactly this format.

Disputed-numbers handling carddisputed-numbers-handling-card.pdf134 KBCourse original, formatted from this lesson's own sources

Want to go further?

Take one film from the era that you have already seen and write two readings of a single scene: the literal one, and the one that got it past a board with the power to bar anything that undermined faith in the government.

Then answer the harder question underneath it. Would that scene be better, worse, or simply different if nobody had needed to hide anything in it. There is no correct answer, and a lesson that hands you one would be doing the romanticising it just refused to do.

The needle: the corruption genealogy is about an office that was paid by the people it governed. Here the office paid the filmmakers instead, which looks like the opposite and is not. Both arrangements make the person doing the work dependent on the person setting the terms, and both leave the cost with whoever has the least standing to complain. The workers on that platform on 17 November had the least standing of anyone in the story, which is why nobody counted them.

Terms introduced

Terms introduced in this lesson

• Censorship
• State patronage
• Allegory
• MMFF
• ECP

Each term links to the glossary, where it is defined by the way you just used it.

Check

Check yourself

1. Someone argues that censorship was good for Philippine cinema, because constraint produced the allegorical brilliance of the era. What is wrong with the argument?

   It is wrong because the censors approved most scripts submitted to themThe allegory is real, and the argument still fails, because it counts only the films that got made. Brocka was jailed, Bernal's film was cut and retitled, and the films nobody attempted do not appear in the sampleNothing. The allegory is real and the films are the evidenceIt is wrong because the best films of the era were funded by the state rather than restricted by it

2. What is the sharpest irony in the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines' record?

   That it funded foreign productions while Filipino films went unmadeThat it was created by executive order but never received an appropriationThat it was dissolved by the administration that replaced the one which created itThat the same state which censored Brocka and Bernal for showing poverty ran its own film body that was later accused of producing sex-oriented films, effectively going around its own censors

3. Published death figures for the Manila Film Center collapse run from 3 to 169. How does this course handle that on a page or on screen?

   Use the government figure, since it is the only official oneUse the highest figure, since the state had every reason to undercountGive the range with every figure attributed, and treat the absence of a count as the finding. A regime that cannot tell you how many of its workers it killed is the storyTake the median of the published figures, since that is the most defensible single value

4. Why does it matter to a Filipino filmmaker today that the MMFF, Mowelfund, the Film Academy and the FDCP's ancestor were all created between 1974 and 1982?

   Because institutions created under a dictatorship are legally void and should be replacedBecause the institutions he has to work with were designed by that regime for that regime's purposes, so reforming them means understanding what they were shaped to doBecause their founding dates determine their current budget allocationsBecause it proves state support for film only happens under authoritarian governments

Check answers

You can move on when you can… hold the paradox without resolving it: name two masterpieces the regime funded, two films the regime censored or mutilated, and the reason no complete count of the Manila Film Center dead exists.

Mark this lesson complete

Go deeper

• Next up: 3.5 · Freedom came, the audience did not, where the dictatorship ends and the industry falls apart anyway, which is the part of the story that nobody expects.
• Joel David’s “A Second Golden Age” is free, written by a Filipino scholar who was there, and is the single best reading companion to this lesson.
• The martial law section of the Cinema research map carries every executive order, every death-toll figure with its source, and the full filmography of the era.
• Kritika Kultura issue 19 is effectively a free dossier on Manila by Night, which is the film you cannot legally watch and can read about at length. That combination is the level’s whole irony in one link.