“Alipato at Muog” director JL Burgos. Image: Courtesy of Cinemalaya
“Alipato at Muog” director JL Burgos urged the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) to review the documentary with an “open mind,” following the ban issued by the regulatory body against the public exhibition of the film documentary.
At the Senate hearing on the MTRCB’s proposed 2025 budget, the agency’s chairman, Diorella “Lala” Sotto-Antonio, stood firm with the review body’s findings that “Alipato at Muog” is not fit for public exhibition, citing its prominent theme that supposedly tend to undermine the people’s faith in the government.
Reacting to Sotto-Antonio, Burgos said in a statement on Facebook that the Cinemalaya’s PG rating of the documentary was “self-rated,” which was agreed upon by the independent film festival and government agency beforehand.
“Alipato at Muog” is about the disappearance of Burgos’ brother, Jonas Burgos, who was believed tortured by the military on allegations that he was a member of the rebel group New People’s Army. The Burgos brothers are sons of the late freedom fighter and newspaper publisher Jose Burgos Jr. The case eventually reached the Supreme Court and had been finalized in 2017 in favor of the Burgos family.
The movie was first screened at the 20th edition of the Cinemalaya festival in August, eventually bagging the Cinemalaya Special Jury Award For a Full-Length Feature award.
“Before anything else, let me clarify the screenings and the ratings ‘Alipato at Muog’ got during the CInemalaya run of the film. The Cinemalaya Festival PG rating of Alipato at Muog is self-rated. There is an agreement between Cinemlaya and the MTRCB for self-rating. It is not the MTRCB who gave the rating,” said Burgos.
Burgos also defended the documentary’s recent screenings in UP last August, where he stressed that the MTRCB doesn’t hold control of its showcasing to the public.
“The UP screenings are independent and not within the scope of the MTRCB. In fact, all State Universities and Colleges are independent of MTRCB. Which means the MTRCB CANNOT stop such screenings. So citing these screenings as NOT CURTAILMENT OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION is not accurate — the MTRCB did not allow such screenings, they simply don’t have jurisdiction in theaters inside SUCs,” he said.
Censorship?
The director also shared the letter he addressed to Sotto-Antonio and the MTRCB, which is meant to justify the documentary’s airing to the public. A second review is scheduled for Sept. 5.
“Kayo magdecide kung censorship ba ito o hindi (It’s up to you to decide whether it’s censorship or not),” he said. “Reviewers also said that we should have included the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals decisions in the documentary for fairness… according to the reviewers, a disclaimer should have been attached to the scene when a military official claims that the military was trained to kill. That the opinion was his own.”
In his statement, Burgos pointed out that the documentary is based on “all available information” in hopes of informing the public about the activist’s disappearance.
“We based our documentary on all available information. The rest of the information we have provided in the documentary was vital in truth-telling so that the viewers will fully understand the story,” he said.
“With regard to the reviewers’ discomfort that there are no disclaimers, especially for the military official expressing his own opinion, it is usually understood that individuals in documentaries are expressing their own opinions. It is also the discretion of the director/filmmaker whether to put a disclaimer or not,” Burgos further added.
“Alipato at Muog” director (center) while filming the documentary. Image: Courtesy of Cinemalaya
Burgos also countered the MTRCB’s claim of the documentary “being left,” while calling out the government agency for apparently “penalizing a political belief.”
“There is nothing subversive about a family’s search for justice. ‘Alipato at Muog’ is a stand against enforced disappearance and human rights violations… In line with being left, may we know the definition of being LEFT? Are we penalizing a political belief here? Because again we will reiterate our stand that the documentary is not subversive at all and it is a basic right in a democratic country for victims of injustices to voice out their grievances,” he said.
With this in mind, the director again urged the MTRCB to review the documentary with an “open heart and open mind.”
“Our documentary is not fiction. It is a story of a family searching for their missing loved one. It is about human rights and the pursuit for justice,” he said.