Lino Brocka's Philippines and Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos's Malacañang Palace, Manila
March, 1987 The Philippines, what a place. An edgy Asian Wild West, full of music and the loveliest people. I once returned there for a holiday on my own. I stayed in Manila (in a hotel that turned out to be a brothel) and then travelled down to the stunningly beautiful island of Boracay. Those slides will surface eventually. I worked on several films there, including Bayan Ko Pilipinas, (1987) a profile of the film director Lino Brocka . Lino Brocka Lino was a cult hero, a folk hero, man of the people. We filmed a march to the Palace, days after several nuns had been fired at, with Lino (and us) at the very front. This wasn't long after the Mendiola Massacre. My first experience of a political march. What I remember most is the flow. Of being carried along by the emotion and the fear. A strange, silent purpose. We were marching towards the guns, to the stand-off on the bridge where those nuns had been shot just a day or so before, and the site of the Massacre just weeks earli