/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-PHILIPPINES: Still as ‘Imeldific’ as Ever

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Johanna Son

MANILA, Aug 2 2004 (IPS) - “Now when you go to New York, you see little posters (outside shoe stores saying) ‘There’s a little Imelda in all of us,’ the Philippines’ former first lady, Imelda Marcos, says in a documentary about her that is showing here. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

The 75-year-old Imelda, well coiffed as always, is shown smiling a bit at how her 3,000 pairs of shoes – a symbol of her extravagance during the 1965-1986 Marcos dictatorship – became a sales slogan.

Toward the film’s end, she professes readiness to meet God despite allegations of corruption, human rights abuses and the plunder of up to 10 billion U.S. dollars during what was called the ‘Conjugal Dictatorship’ of Imelda and her late husband, former president Ferdinand Marcos.

“I’m sure the Lord will embrace me and bring me to heaven and to eternity,” Imelda explains, as the film pans out to scenes of grinding poverty in the Philippine capital. “I am sure of that.”

What is also certain is that far from making new revelations, what the 103-minute documentary does is to underscore how, 18 years after the Marcoses’ ouster, little has changed in Imelda’s view of how history should judge their rule.

The political survival of the Marcoses – their only son is now governor of their home province of Ilocos Norte and one daughter is congressional representative – says volumes about how the Philippines has failed to hold the family accountable since its fall from power in 1986.

“It’s true, Filipinos are just too forgiving,” sighs Anna Ng, a mid- career editor. She says does not understand why Imelda went to court to try to stop the film’s showing because it gives her all the space to air her side.

‘Imelda’ has won accolades at film festivals, including first prize for documentary cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival in January. ”But for me the film isn’t strong enough to make us re-hate her and what they did to this country,” Ng said of the film by Filipino American filmmaker Ramona Diaz.

Young viewers however, who do not have memories of the Marcos regime, find the events recounted by the film almost unreal. “Is this all real?” a 22-year-old employee asked her mother, a student activist in the Marcos years. “I always thought these were just stories.”

There is no hint of remorse in the film. After all, Imelda Marcos remains out of prison despite earlier convictions by a Philippine court, overturned in 1993, and the one billion U.S. dollar compensation a U.S. court awarded for some 10,000 human rights victims of the dictatorship.

She and the Marcos estate face more than 150 other lawsuits, but life remains much the same for Imelda – as seen in the documentary.

What happens on the side during some of Diaz’s interviews with Marcos is more revealing than some of Imelda’s own words.

As in the old days, servants flit around her – handing her tissue paper when she asks for them, bringing her evening gowns to the garden in order to air them, or distributing her pictures to crowds.

These go well with the approach Diaz effectively uses throughout the film – juxtaposing Imelda’s views or versions of events with recollections, usually contradictory ones, by journalists, analysts, former officials, friends, family.

Glimpses of Imelda’s personality are offered by accounts of how, unable to accept defeat in a Miss Manila beauty pageant in the sixties, she lobbied the Manila mayor until she was declared ‘Muse of Manila’.

She loved being in the limelight, said a childhood chum who recalled that whenever there were parade floats during celebrations in their native Tacloban city in southern Leyte province, “Imelda was always there”.

The desire for a high-profile life and power is also reflected in her recollections of Ferdinand, a rising politician she met soon after coming to the capital. “He (Ferdinand) could not take his eyes off me,” she recalled.

Imelda said it was “more than love” that brought them together, recounting remarks that he would be president one day and that a woman would be ”stupid” to turn him down. They were married after 11 days.

Perhaps the only bit of new information has to do with comments by an aunt on Imelda’s difficulties in her marriage that shaped her role in politics.

Keen to project images of a young, stunning couple in a political partnership, he pressured her to keep svelte by dictating the food she should eat and petite sizes of clothes she had to fit into – “He would say ‘this much, darling, this size, darling’ ,” the aunt recalled. “I know she suffered.”

Imelda later said she almost had a nervous breakdown adjusting to a politician’s life, but things changed when she decided to throw herself into political work, including campaigning for Ferdinand Marcos.

Imelda does the expected when asked about some of the most notorious events of the Marcos years.

She denies that Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972 in order to hang on to power, and that she ordered the bodies of workers left buried in concrete after an accident threatened to delay construction of the Manila Film Centre in 1980.

She denies that there were human rights victims under Marcos’ rule, and that the Marcoses ordered the 1983 assassination of Marcos foe Benigno Aquino Jr, whose widow Corazon was catapulted to the presidency in 1986.

The film recalls Imelda’s excesses – lavish parties on the presidential yacht and palace and megaprojects like the Cultural Centre of the Philippines. These acts led Filipinos to coin the adjective ‘Imeldific’ to refer to something overly lavish.

Theories about Imelda’s persona abound – to some she is delusionary and ruthless, others say she had a shrewd knowledge of how the poor in this country of 80 million people lived vicariously through her.

“She’s certainly not stupid. She’s very, very smart and I’m still not sure if she’s smart or crazy,” Diaz told Australian Broadcasting Corp in late July. “I’m not sure she’ll ever go to prison for that (ill-gotten wealth), for anything.”

The film does not try to pin down the real Imelda, but lets her speak for herself and leaves the viewers to judge.

But the documentary could probably have been enriched by the thoughts not just of Marcos’ gown designers, critics, supporters and kin, but of the people whose lives were changed forever by the regime. One wonders how the families of the construction workers who died in the Film Centre – now a decaying monument to misplaced grandeur, not to mention a home of restless spirits – look back at the Marcos years.

Powerful personal accounts may do more to get Filipinos to ask what, if any, lessons this poor country has learned from the past dictatorship.