Docu on missing activist Burgos: From X-rated to Best Picture
After enduring what it considered “state censorship” in the form of an X rating, the team behind the documentary on the 2007 disappearance of farmer-activist Jonas Burgos found vindication as it won Best Picture at the 73rd Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (Famas) Awards on Friday.
“Alipato at Muog” (Flying Embers and a Fortress) won the Famas top prize over nine other contending films which were a mix of commercially successful and independent movies.
The documentary’s director and producer Jose Luis “JL” Burgos, younger brother of Jonas, was named Best Director.
“They branded the documentary too graphic, too subversive, too left among other things,” the “Alipato at Muog” production team said on its Facebook page. “Exactly a year later, Famas chose our documentary as their Best Picture. We embrace this recognition. Thank you Famas for standing with us.”
Docu rated X
The 96-minute film, which made its premiere at the Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival in August last year, retraces the events surrounding the April 28, 2007 kidnapping of Jonas during President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s administration.
Witness accounts had said Jonas, then 37, was heard shouting, “I am only an activist!” when he was seized by a group of men at a mall in Quezon City.
Jonas and JL are children of the late newspaper publisher and journalist Jose Burgos Jr., a champion of press freedom during martial law who turned to farming in his retirement years until his death in 2003.
Last year the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) gave the film an X rating, which made it “not suitable for public viewing.”
JL immediately appealed for a review, asking the board to “please stand for what is right and what is just,” and the MTRCB eventually reclassified it as R-16.
Search continues
Edita Burgos, mother of Jonas and JL, told the Inquirer when reached for comment: “We pray that the historic win of ‘Alipato at Muog’ will bring the campaign for the protection of human rights to a wider audience, a bigger community, and convince people to help in the protection of people from being disappeared.”
Edita said her family has not given up after 18 years of searching for her son. “The search for justice and the truth will continue. And more Filipinos will know that enforced disappearances are still happening to this day,” she said.
“If only one, you know—I dream of it—if only one were to extend his foot and stop the momentum of those who dragged him out, maybe, they would not be able to take my son,” she recalled.
According to human rights group Karapatan, a total of 1,915 individuals have been documented as desaparecidos or victims of enforced disappearance from the martial law era under Ferdinand Marcos Sr. to the current administration of his son and namesake.
“Alipato at Muog” is only the second documentary to win the Famas Best Picture prize after “Aswang,” the 2019 film on the drug war of former President Rodrigo Duterte.
