A Rare Treat : QC IMC

The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), the underground alliance of revolutionary organizations that include the New People’s Army (NPA) and Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), will turn 32 on April 24.

In connection to this, a rare public showing of documentary films on the underground Left will be held on Monday, April 25 at the Aldaba Hall (located at the back of the Film Center), University of the Philippines, Diliman. The activity is sponsored by the group Contend-UP.

According to a special issue of the underground magazine Liberation sent to Bulatlat, the NDFP was formally established on April 24, 1973, after its original Ten-Point Program was approved. The program, it said, was drafted by a group of at least eight persons called the NDF Preparatory Committee or PrepCom. It revealed that among the eight PrepCom members were former newsmen Satur Ocampo (now congressman) and Antonio Zumel, student leader E. Voltaire Garcia II, Angel Baking and Sammy Rodriguez, who were both members of the old CPP, former Philippine Military Academy instructor Dante Simbulan and Jose Ma. Sison.

The documentaries scheduled to be shown are: “He Never Wrote ’30’: A Glimpse Into the Life of Antonio Zumel”, “Green Guerrillas” and “Resurgence.”

“He Never Wrote ’30’” is a 50-minute documentary on how Zumel, twice elected president of the National Press Club and union leader of now-defunct Philippines Herald, joined the underground movement. Zumel would in fact later be named NDFP chair and spend the last years of his life in exile in the Netherlands. He died in 2001 but, as the title claims, his legacy as a newspaper man and revolutionary propagandist lives on.

The 29-minute “Green Guerrillas” was produced in 1995 and in fact received international recognition. New Zealand film maker Rod Posser reportedly discovered how the NPA guerrillas and indigenous communities bonded together to fight for the latter’s right to ancestral lands and stop a large logging company from grabbing their land and trampling on their rights.

Resurgence, which runs for 45 minutes, was produced in 1998. It seeks to show how the NDFP, which celebrated its 25th anniversary that year, continued to grow strong after several decades of service to oppressed sectors of society.

The March 29 anniversary statement of the NPA said there are now 130 guerrilla zones, covering most of the country’s 73 provinces.