The Drama that was “Sigwa”

Movie Review
January 23, 2011

The Drama that was “Sigwa”

It was a good night in the movies. I was happy that the Alex Theater in Glendale was filled to capacity for the showing of “Sigwa sa America.”

People was visibly excited and bear the long wait of more than 30 minutes before the film was shown. They murmured as the advertisements for the GMA went on  and on but it was worth the wait.The audience was polite and quiet.

Generally, the film was good political drama. The question why it became a hit in the Philippines was answered.

The film was a dramatization of the activist experience in the events called the “First Quarter Storm of 1970”. “Ang Sigwa ng Unang Kwarto”, its Tagalog translation. In short, Sigwa, the title of the film.

As an activist during the time, I can comment much is still to be desired from the film. Some scenes were deliberately over-dramatized, maybe to give way to the “artistic license” of the director or the writers of the film

The period was stretch over the long period of martial law and beyond.

Using flashbacks, it did not deal on the particular period of the FQS but even after. Even extending the present to further the discourse. It was a good vehicle on  explaining how the legal movement laid the foundations of an armed  movement. But it failed in making some of the connections.

An example, instead of pointing out to the infiltration problem in the movement, it stretched from the legal movement to the armed movement. By saying there were DPAs who entered the NPA in the story of Dolly and Eddie, it is still a mystery to me why the writers placed it there.

Maybe for the purpose of dramatization. But I would say, besides it is not being truthful. As far as I know there was no incidents in the movement like that. It was a writer made drama.

If the writers could have done more research, military agents who infiltrated the movement has been exposed or have exposed themselves earlier like ISAFP agentBenilda Macalde,  Lt. Elnora” Babbete” Estrada in KM and another Navy Lt. Fred Tirante in SDK.

Col. Estrada pinned down Nilo Tayag in a court case  in the late 1970 while Tirante exposed the SDK as a “NPA” front in 1971. That could have been more dramatic and exciting.

But they ( the infiltrators or agents or Ajax as the FQS activist called them that) never extended until the days of martial law. There is a real problem in the periodization of the film. In trying to made it romantic it became over-romantic to the point of a farce. The suicide of Dolly’s partner who was supposed to be an AFP agent is over dramatic.

Another is the scene where an activist is wearing a pasiquin backpack from the Cordillera. There was none and the student at that time never wears backpacks.

Now, I can understand what Luahati Bautista protest on the story that she claims that’s her. It was a stroy of a Fil-Am woman activist who came back to look for her daughter.

Honestly we only knew a few Fil-Am activist.  I know then an Amgirl ( that's how we called them then) was Melinda Paras. She help establish the KDP in the US. But she stayed in the US. Not a good reference.  But I will not comment on that until I read her book “Desaparacidos.”

But still the ending of Sigwa was a foreboding of things to come. I like that ending.

I love to see the day when former FQS activist who are have been or are now in the government like Bobby Tiglao, Gary Olivar , Hermie Coloma and others really finds themselves facing the barrel of the gun they shun and abhor.

But I have to accept it that a lot of moviegoers love the drama of the films that telenovelas that dramatizes the political landscape of our nation. At least the SIGWA did not become just a background but the theme itself of a film.

Just for that I went home contented that the film was worth my twenty dollars.

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