A SOJOURNER’S VIEW: Film as a Fiery Defiance

FILM REVIEW: Alipato at Muog (Flying Embers and a Fortress)
Director /cinematographer / editor – JL Burgos
Written by JL Burgos, Bernardine de Belen
Original Music Score – Bong Ramilo
Sound – Jedd Dumaguina
Animation – Sonny Burgos
Executive Producer – Ramona Nieva

CEBU CITY (MindaNews / 25 November) – Usually after a film is shown, most of those in the audience starts to walk out of a cinema as the credits roll. Rare are the films when there are those in the audience who sit for a while and do not even stand up once the lights are on! They just sit there in the dark stunned and completely mesmerized  and could not steel themselves to leave.

I can remember a few times when I went through such an experience. Years ago, I was in Perth, Australia for a conference in the early 1980s. During the break, a friend from this city took me to view GALLIPOLI (a 1981 Australian war drama film directed by Peter Weir and starring Mel Gibson).

The film was about young Australian men who were sent in 1915 to the Gallipoli peninsula in the Ottoman Empire (the modern-day Turkey) to fight a war. The film ends with the Battle of the Nek which took place in the Anzac battlefield at Gallipoli where thousands of the young men got massacred.

In the audience were those who were related to these young men (who if they remained alive would have been their grandfathers). It was not surprising that the film must have been deeply moving for them. Thus when the film ended, there was such a profound silence inside the cinema and practically everyone sat there for minutes perhaps realizing how tragic the incident was. As those men on their screen were related to them, many would have grieved quietly. I, too was so moved so I sat there along with them, also recalling our young men and women victimized by the brutalities of the Marcos regime.

Another film that brought the audience to a hushed silence at the end of the film was MISSING, the 1982 American biographical film (directed by Costa-Gavras and starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek) about the disappearance of the American journalist Charles Horman in the aftermath of the US-backed Chilean coup in 1973. Horman was in Chile to cover the events when the democratically-elected  President Salvador Allende was deposed by the military.

Following this event, hundreds were rounded up and many disappeared including Horman.

This experience was repeated after viewing ALIPATO AT MUOG, a documentary film I saw recently inside a hall at the USC Cebu City. In the course of the film, I had a mixture of feelings from a sense of pity as to what happened to Jonas Burgos (the film’s central figure) who became a desaparecido in 2007, to deep admiration for a mother who would take on his case with such passion and being frustrated as well as helpless that there seems to be nothing that could be done to surface him alive and to end the continuing disappearance of those red-tagged!

At some points of the film, I was moved to tears for the film brought back my own experience of being abducted (the week before Holy Week in 1983)  and forced to undergo an anxiety-filled days not knowing if  – like the more than hundreds of desaparecidos before me –  I, too,  would just “disappear”  with no trace of where my body would be dumped. Thus, once the film ended, I found myself stuck to my seat grappling with haunting memories!

Alipato at Muog, a 2024 independent documentary film dealing with the forcible disappearance of Jonas Burgos by suspected military personnel – written, shot, edited and directed by JL Burgos (younger brother) – is the filmmaker’s tribute to his Kuya. JL only appears briefly in various scenes, but his voice provides the background narrative so the viewer can get a drift of how Jonas’ tragic story unfolded.  

There is no clip showing Jonas while still alive, but his presence throughout the film is palpable. Even as the film is Jonas’ story, it is also the story of his remarkable mother – Edita. She is practically in most of the scenes, cajoling military officers to surface her son, marching in the streets while holding a banner, speaking at rallies and sharing her reflections. In one scene filmed at night with darkness enveloping her as she was seated in front of a bonfire, she spoke of a mother’s pain in losing her son.

The film is thus JL Burgos’ love project honoring her brother and mother; but it might as well be also his own way to ventilate his lamentation.  In a statement he issued, he wrote: “But how can justice prevail when the crime is committed by the very institution that is mandated to protect its people? Where does one even turn for answers? This is why this documentary is very personal to me.”

The viewers of Alipato at Muog can’t help but feel a deep sense of admiration for the Burgos family. The film chronicles Jonas story, but it is as much the stories of Edita and JL. This family’s saga goes back to the patriarch, Jose, who with Edita founded both the We Forum and Malaya – newspapers who defied the Marcos dictatorship.

The office of We Forum was raided in December 1982, and Jose and his columnists and staff members were arrested. The newspaper’s printing plant was padlocked and sedition charges filed against those arrested. Once released and even as the sedition charges were still pending in court, Jose tested the limits of press freedom by publishing Ang Pahayagang Malaya (later shortened to just Malaya) once released from prison.

In the wake of the Aquino assassination, Malaya – which pioneered the mosquito press – became a daily newspaper that published a million copies daily during the events leading to the Marcos ouster. Burgos died of stroke in 2003; he was 62.  

While the film deals with Jonas’s story, it also tells the story of more than a thousand victims of enforced disappearance. While it chronicles the nightmare of the Burgos family, it is also the nightmare of every family of a desaparecido. The people behind this film have no  illusions that this documentary will stop enforced disappearances. But they hope that this film would serve as both a step towards finding Jonas and a stride towards justice for all victims of enforced disappearance.

Led by the patriarch, the entire family took on an open resistance to the Marcos dictatorship. Despite the collapse of this regime, their commitment to justice did not waver. The son, Jonas, immersed himself among the people’s movement especially among the peasants. He himself was a farmer. Married with one daughter, his advocacies and active engagements led to his abduction.

The military’s act of violating Jonas’ human rights was so brazen as to take place at noontime in the crowded Ever Gotesco Mall. A witness would provide information as to the military car’s plate. As soon as the family members were convinced that Jonas’s life was at risk, they launched a search. The car plate would eventually bring them face to face with powerful forces.

In this arduous search – akin to searching a needle in a haystack – the family faced all kinds of insurmountable barriers. Anonymous informants would drop leads and what would be a last photo of Jonas while in captivity reached the family. All efforts were exhausted to surface Jonas but to no avail. 

Seven years have passed, but there is still no information as to what happened to Jonas after he got abducted. Seven years that the family waited for Jonas to return home, but still no indication if he remains alive or has ended up in a shallow grave. With this film, the family hopes that there can be new leads as to where Jonas is and thus, finally put an end to the family’s ordeal.

Relying on a mixture of materials including old mini DVD tapes, HD, and 4k footage, the filmmaker managed to piece together Jonas’s story. The film also benefitted from the testimonies of a lawyer, a reporter and a former Justice Secretary and Human Rights Commission as well as witnesses  who agreed to appear on condition of anonymity. There are also never-before-seen footage of the family’s relentless search as stories are woven together to uncover the truths.

But what proved most effective was the animation of Sonny Burgos which – despite just being simple drawings converted to moving images – provided the film with stark representations of the terror of those seized by evil men.

While this film tells Jonas’ story, it is also as much the story of the 1,912 desaparecidos who remain missing to date. This statistics mainly covers those victimized during the Marcos regime.  But disappearances persisted beyond the Marcos regime. Jonas disappeared during the administration of Gloria-Macapagal Arroyo. Enforced disappearances committed primarily by the military and police forces persist until today expanding from those red-tagged because of their commitment to justice and human rights to environmentalists.

Each family’s experience of having a member disappeared turns into a painful journey towards the unknown. This was true of the Burgos family and the thousand other families. Members of these families – who usually are the victims’ mothers – appear with Edita in some of the scenes of militant protests. One scene is  a collage showing quick images of some of the more known desaparecidos including Fr. Rudy Romano CSsR who was victimized in July 1985.

Alipato at Muog,  premiered at the Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival in August 2024. Despite winning the Special Jury Prize, it faced a controversy when it was provided an “X” rating by the  Movie Television Review and Classification (MTRCB) as the censors claimed that the film “undermine the faith and confidence of the people in their government and/or duly-constituted authorities.” The rating would have prohibited future commercial public releases in the Philippines.

The MTRCB certainly understood what the film’s conclusion was. There is no question that it was the military behind the disappearance of Jonas. Edita tagged Eduardo Año, a military intelligence chief at the time, as the mastermind of her son’s disappearance. Año, currently the National Security Adviser, denied any military involvement which of course is not surprising.

However, after an appeal and protests by the filmmaker and activists, the film was re-rated as “R-16.” Given its content and rating, the film’s producers have found it difficult to have this film shown in the cineplexes at SM, Ayala and Robinson Malls. Instead, the film has been going around the university campuses where eager students flock to see the film drawn by word-of-mouth publicity. Once seen, many viewers agree it is a  powerful yet profoundly sad film.

It is, indeed, a must-see film for the citizenry longing and fighting for truth and freedom in a troubled nation that seems to be stuck in never-ending cycle of violence resulting from decades of income inequality, limited access to social services, corruption in government and a State military apparatus protecting the interests of the elite and powers-that-be and would blatantly abuse the rights of those fighting for the people’s civil liberties and human rights.

For those of us who went through an experience similar to that of Jonas but somehow were lucky enough to eventually be surfaced and survive to tell the tale, watching Alipato at Muog is an excruciating experience of recalling the fear and anxiety. One can only sympathize with what the Burgos family went through.

It is tempting to offer them a sense of hope that despite the passing of 17 years, one day Jonas will return to their fold. We the confreres of Fr. Rudy Romano – after almost forty years – may have given up that hope and perhaps have resigned ourselves to the fact that the waiting may never lead to a happy ending.

Still Alipata at Muog’s message may not be to lament over lives lost, but to sustain the “the rage against the dying of the light,” and sustain the struggle to build a just, humane and compassionate society!

(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Redemptorist Brother Karl Gaspar is Mindanao’s most prolific book author. Gaspar is also a Datu Bago 2018 awardee, the highest honor the Davao City government bestows on its constituents. He is presently based in Cebu City.)