(from GMA TV journalist Howie Severino's blog)
While recently reading the Jessica Hagedorn novel/play Dogeaters (TP is watching the play on Feb. 7 BTW), I noticed that there were several mentions of the infamous building in Manila called the Manila Film Center.
During the second half of the martial law imposed by the Marcos regime, both Marcos and his wife Imelda wanted to build the Manila Film Center in order to enhance the Philippines' reputation in the world. The inagural Manila International Film Festival was to be held in the year 1982, and this Center would host that festival. However, delays hampered its completion, and Imelda wanted this Center done before the festival, so as the deadline loomed, the construction workers were working as quickly as they could to complete the building.
On November 17, 1981, the upper scaffold collapsed and sent workers falling into wet cement. A witness said that some of the workers were impaled on upright steel bars.
Now here is where it gets creepy and ambiguous.
It's been said that since the film festival was about to happen and that the recovery of all the bodies would take too long, Imelda ordered that the construction work continue despite the accident and that the bodies be covered by cement. The number of dead differs depending on who you talk to differs, but it has reached as high as 169 people.
The Film Center was eventually completed, and the festival was held. During opening night, Imelda "strode on stage in a Joe Salazar black and emerald green terno with a hemline thick with layer upon layer of peacock feathers" (http://manalang.com/philippines/manila/manila_film_center.html).
So is there any proof that this actually happened? Or is this just an urban myth?
No news agencies covered the accident when it happened. Perhaps the Marcos regime purposely had the media not report it. This was during martial law, after all. Perhaps the number of dead has been exaggerated as the story spread throughout the Philippines during Marcos's regime and after he was ousted.
In his blog, GMA TV journalist Howie Severino writes the following:
...After numerous return trips to the film center's dark and eery catacombs, futile efforts to find a paper trail, and interviews with survivors and loved ones of dead construction workers, my half-baked conclusion: Not more than a dozen died (we heard figures as high as 169, which was based on an Inquirer account of a spirit questor expedition years ago), and NONE of them left behind in the Manila Film Center. Why are you surprised?
First of all, we couldn't find anyone who knew anyone in there, including relatives. If there really were dozens of skeletons still encased in cement in the film palace, we are almost sure we would have been able to trace loved ones, or they would have found us. The construction workers who survived the incident did not know anyone, nor did they know anyone who knew anyone missing in the building.
We know from years of working in media that the relatives of missing people are extremely persistent and vocal, driven as they are by a human desire for closure on their grief. I think this would have been the case even if they were bribed by Imelda, which is one theory for why they have been so quiet through all these years. I have my own theory: the missing don't exist.
One witness told us that workers cleared the bodies and the debris from the theater floor before resuming the construction, which was finished the same day that international stars like Jeremy Irons and George Hamilton waltzed in...
I guess that the only way to find out what really happened is to excavate the foundations of the Manila Film Center to find the bodies of any missing workers. That's probably not going to happen any time soon, however. The building is still being used, despite the fact that a lot of Filipinos stay away from that building because they think the building is haunted by the ghosts of the dead workers.
After the Marcos regime, the Manila Film Center became the government's official passport office during the Aquino administration. Then, an earthquake struck in 1990, cracking the stairs and the road outside. The building was then pretty much abandoned until 2001...
(again, from Severino's blog)
...when the Center became home to the "Amazing Philippine Theatre", a theatrical show featuring LGBT actors. A Youtube clip can be seen below:
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila_Film_Center_scaffolding_collapse
http://www.gmapinoytv.com/sidetrip/blog/index.php?/archives/42-The-Manila-Film-Center-mystery-A-ghostly-place-or-an-urban-legend.html
http://manalang.com/philippines/manila/manila_film_center.html
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