Report and photos by Nuel M. Bacarra

The documentary Alipato at Muog may now be shown in regular cinemas after the Movie and Television Review Classification Board (MTRCB) gave it a “Restricted-16” rating, canceling its earlier “X” classification of the award-winning film.

Director JL Burgos successfully appealed the prohibition of his epic film on the search for his missing elder brother Jonas who was abducted in broad daylight in a Quezon City mall in April 2007.

The film was among this year’s finalists of the CineMalaya Film Festival by the Cultural Center of the Philippines, winning the coveted Jury’s Prize Award.

Various groups and supporters accompanied Burgos, their mother Editha and film producer Mona Nieva outside MTRCB’s headquarters in Quezon City for the result of the deliberations Thursday.

The vigil took five hours under heavy intermittent rains that ended in jubilation at the successful outcome.

The censor agency first gave the film a prohibition from being shown in regular cinemas because it allegedly undermines the people’s confidence in government.

Various groups supportive of the film countered that the Burgos family’s loss of their brother and their decades-long search for him is real, aside from the fact that the military is strongly suspected of being responsible in Jonas’ enforced disappearance.

‘People’s victory’

Burgos said MTCRB’s reclassification of its rating is not just their victory but of the people and for truth and justice.

He said: “Ang hakbang natin ngayon ay upang maalis ang banning ng pelikula. So, tagumpay ang pagkilos natin. Pero hindi pa natatapos ang pag-aalis ng X-rating sa ating kalayaan sa pagpapahayag.”

(Our step today is against the banning of the film. So, we end victorious. But the X rating on our freedom of expression is not yet over.)

He added they are hopeful that more films depicting the social ills in the country will be given the same freedom.

Burgos said: “Ang mga pelikulang katulad ng Alipato at Muog ay hindi natatapos sa araw na ito dahil maarami pang pelikula na tiyak na magtatalakay kung anong nangyayari sa lipunan. Kailangan nating maging vigilant, kailangan nating panindigan na ang pagba-ban sa isang pelikula ay paglabag sa kalayaan nating magpahayag.”

(Films like Alipato at Muog must not be denied like today, because many films is bound to tackle what is happening in our society. We need to be vigilant. We need to take a stand that banning films violates our freedom of expression.)

History of censorship

Groups who expressed support to the film bewailed that the MTCRB will always be an enemy to freedom of expression due to the law creating the agency.

Concerned Artists of the Philippines vice chairperson Lisa Ito said that the MTRCB is ordered by its mandate to go after films that discuss the country’s worsening human rights situation.

“Dumadami ang mga desaparecido, ang mga political killing, at iba pa. Lagi’t laging magkakaroon ng likhang-sining tungkol sa kanilang buhay at pakikibaka,” the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts professor said.

(The number of the forcibly disappeared, victims of political killings, and others rights violations are increasing. There will always be creative work about their lives and struggles.)

Ito said that progressive works and stories of struggles should be propagated such as Alipato at Muog to support activities for the surfacing of victims like Jonas Burgos.

Bagong Alyansang Makabayan president Renato Reyes Jr. for his part said the film and the “X”-rating given are political from the start.

“This appeal [against the prohibition] is very political because it ranges the film’s stance against the government’s insistence that nothing should undermine the faith and confidence of the people in the government,” Reyes said.

“It is high time to junk Presidential Decree 1986,” he added, referring to the edict by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. that created the censors board. #