Wednesday, December 2
6:30 p.m. – Korean Studies Auditorium

In 1902, with the last of the Filipino generals surrendered or captured, the American annexation was complete, and the civilian government of William Howard Taft was established. But pacification was still far from over. Throughout the first decade of American rule, several patriotic Filipinos continued the resistance. A shining example was General Macario Sakay who, in 1902, proclaimed the Supreme Government of the Tagalog Archipelago with himself as President and Commander-in-Chief. In his manifesto, he declared a free Tagalog Archipelago which included all the towns and provinces of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. He claimed that his Tagalog Republic was a continuation of Bonifacio’s Katipunan which started the Philippine Revolution in 1896.

In this dramatization of the life of Macario Sakay, director and writer Raymond Red builds the case for a nationalist who envisioned a free and independent Philippines at a time when most of the ilustrado Filipino leaders had opted to collaborate with the new colonizers to protect their own personal interests. Sakay’s resistance turned out to be the last episode in the Philippine-American War. Sakay was an Official Selection at the 1994 Asian Film Festival in Singapore.

This film was translated and subtitled by Pia Arboleda, Assistant Professor of Filipino and Philippine Literature, Department of Indo-Pacific Languages and Literatures, University of Hawai’i.

IMDB Website | Philippine History Group Review | Download Poster

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