Just a thought: A lot of kneeling will keep you in good standing; for he who kneels before God can stand before anyone.

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AmBisyon 2010 20 Filmmakers

‘We're not here to judge a movie’s artistic merits. We are here to make sure that a film submitted for review conforms to the parameters of the IRR (internal rules and regulations) set by the Armida board,’ MTRCB board member Amalia Fuentes explains her side in slapping an X on two infomercials submitted to the board by ABS-CBN. The 20-minute infomercials, directed by Brillante Mendoza and Jeffrey Jeturian, are part of the network’s voters’ education campaign called Ambisyon.

Amalia, movie queen and former film producer behind AM Productions in the 1960s and 1970s, said the two films showed mostly the dark side of life in the Philippines. ‘What about the other side? Is the dirty side all there is to the country?,’ the usually opinionated Amalia said during an interview Monday.

She found one of the two Ambisyon films particularly disturbing in its attempt to undermine the faith and confidence of the people in government. After showing an endless series of filthy scenes in squatter areas, a man is shown stepping on human feces and then wiping it with a newspaper. To make the scene even look more gruesome, it takes the man, a pushcart vendor in the film, forever to wipe it off his foot. Human feces are not that sticky, notes Amalia, who wonders if the director might have used a kind of glue to make it look more repulsive and therefore, cinematic

‘All right, we show these scenes of poverty in the films, but why don’t our filmmakers show both sides of the story?,’ asked Amalia.