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The Film Center is an uninviting edifice, stylistically a mix of brutalist branch-bank Parthenon and Edward Durell Stone embassy. Its harshness jars with its lovely site, for it is perched on a strip of reclaimed land fringing Manila Bay, not far from the Yacht Club and the hydrofoil embarkation for Corregidor, where the view is superb and sunsets are spectacular.
When the American fleet, led by Admiral Dewey, sailed in here in May 1898, it signaled the end of 300 years of Spanish rule. The Spanish-American War was followed by the PhilippineAmerican War (4,000 Americans killed, and more than 200,000 Filipinos, onethirtieth, of the nation), which lasted from 1899 to 1901. The Islands were granted independence from the United States in 1946. This year, a newly negotiated accord was drawn up to reinforce the symbiotic relationship between the two countries: the United States will continue to use the Subie Bay Naval Base, home port of the Seventh Fleet, and Clark Air Base, the largest U.S. Air Force installation in Asia, in return for $900 million in economic and military aid to the government of President Ferdinand E. Marcos. President Reagan supports the agreement, but it is currently receiving opposition from some members of Congress concerned about the human rights record of the Marcos government.
At the Film Center, before the movies and between shows, it is customary to take a stroll around the broad terrace. In addition to its view of the great bay, the terrace offers a wide choice of local food: Kentucky Fried Chicken, Chicken in a Bikini, Orange Julius, McDonalds, and Dunkin' Donuts. The roof of the nearby Holiday Inn glowed this year with a sign announcing that the opening of Sardi's Manila would coincide with the second Manila International Film Festival.
This Film Center is the only palais du festival which is also a mass mausoleum. Workers had been manning round-theclock shifts for several months in order to finish the building in time for the opening of the first MIFF in 1981 when, shortly before 3 A.M. on November 17, the roof collapsed. More than 200 persons were buried under fast-drying cement. A security blanket was immediately imposed; nothing could be done until an official statement, minimizing the accident, had been...