For the first 25 years of his adult life Jose Maria Sison was known to various degrees as the Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong, and Che Guevara of the Philippines. For the last 35 years of his life he has been living in exile, 10,000 km away from the bustle, the intrigue, the bribery and the squalor of Manila, in the tranquil medieval city of Utrecht, the Netherlands.
In the 1960s Jose Maria Sison founded the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the CPP’s guerrilla-military arm, the New People’s Army (NPA), among other noble and nefarious activities that led to his Philippine passport being revoked in 1987. To the US State Department, the Philippine government, and some European authorities, Sison is a certified terrorist.
With his wife Julieta de Lima (84) he lives a hand-to-mouth Spartan existence and yet they are the most charming couple. This is their love story: their love for each other, their love of country, and the love of many of their compatriots for them.
Stay tuned for upcoming screenings!
Director, scriptwriter. Concordia-trained Montrealer Estdelacropolis (pseud. Demetrios Estathopoulos) was the toast and scandal of the Berlin festival in 1985 with his queerish Pink Flamingos redux Mother’s Meat Freud’s Flesh (97), which was in fact the only Canadian feature there that year.
Malcolm Guy is a director and producer of documentary and fiction films, President and co-founder of Productions Multi-Monde. Malcolm is active in immigrant rights organisations and in the independent film community. He contributed to establishing the international film fest Rencontres International du Documentaire de Montréal (RIDM), the Observatoire du Documentaire, the distribution company Les Films du 3 Mars, and is active in DOC (the Documentary Organisation of Canada). Malcolm’s films look at a variety of local and international issues, with a particular interest in the Philippines. He is a founding member of the Centre for Philippine Concerns in Montreal and is Secretary General of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle.
