Diaz 'in disbelief' after Marcos' win

Diaz 'in disbelief' after Marcos' win

Hrvoje Hranjski, Associated Press/Manila

The woman who made an award-winning Imelda Marcos documentary said Wednesday she was "in disbelief" that the flamboyant former first lady won a court order temporarily halting the movie's local premiere by claiming it mocked her.

Despite Mrs. Marcos' lawsuit, which is still pending in a Manila court, Ramona Diaz said she stands by Imelda, a portrait of the woman who dazzled the world with her beautification projects and enormous shoe collection as the country languished in poverty under her husband's dictatorship.

Diaz said young Filipinos should be able to see the movie.

"People who are 18 years old don't even know who Imelda Marcos is," Diaz told reporters in her first reaction to the court's decision to halt the screening. Imelda was to have opened in Manila on Wednesday.

"For better or worse, she's the most well-known, most recognized Filipino figure abroad," she said, adding that outside the country, people "may not know where the Philippines is, but they know Imelda Marcos and her 3,000 pairs of shoes."

Mrs. Marcos, 75, says she approved the film only as a school project for Diaz's master's thesis at Stanford University, not as a commercial movie. She also said it was full of "malice, inaccuracies and innuendoes."

"How do you reply to something like that?" Diaz asked. "I've been careful. I wanted to show a human side of her, beyond the caricature. I stand by it."

"I'm in disbelief," she said. "I understand that she thought it was a thesis film, but it was clear from the beginning that it was going to be a film about her life made for public consumption. And even if it were a thesis film, it would be for public consumption too."

Distributor Unitel Pictures Inc. last week appealed the halt to the Supreme Court, saying it involves crucial democratic issues. It said the halt was an "assault not only on the liberty of the press but on the very bedrock of democratic government."

Foreign film reviews say Mrs. Marcos does most of the talking in the movie, describing how she became a beauty queen and later married Ferdinand Marcos. She also talks about her philosophy of life while sketching on a notepad "the circle of life" with a smiley face.

Her famous line: "Thank God when they opened my closet, they found shoes, not skeletons."

The film has opened in the United States and Europe and is scheduled for screening in Australia and New Zealand next week. It won a cinematography award at the Sundance Film Festival in the United States.

Eighteen years after Marcos was overthrown and his family fled to Hawaii following a 1986 military-backed "people power" revolt that ended his 20-year rule, Filipinos are divided over his legacy.

Mrs. Marcos and her three children, including a congresswoman and a governor, are still influential in Ferdinand Marcos' northern home province, where his preserved body lies in a glass coffin. He died in Hawaii in 1989 without admitting any wrongdoing.

Diaz, 41, said she's still fascinated by Mrs. Marcos, and denied misleading her into believing she was only doing a school project.

"She lives her life on stage," she said. "She's part of history. ... At the end of the day, no one misleads Mrs. Marcos."