IASA 2019 Annual Conference

Audiovisual materials may serve as historical documents (Lavender, 1997). Given the "intense contestation over the memory" (Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, 2016) and the "disputed" stage of Philippine history related to the Marcos dictatorship (Roque, Deloria, & Buenrostro, 2017), the role of AV archives, whether local or abroad, is important for truth-seeking, most pressing in light of the massive disinformation and historical revisionist manoeuvrings in the country. Locally, a large part of the audiovisual collections covering the Philippines under Marcos is in the Philippine Film Archive (PFA). These AV materials in the PFA film vaults are mainly produced by the Marcos-era National Media Production Center (NMPC). But it is not just in the Philippines that these important AV materials are found. In one of the largest audiovisual archives in Europe and in the world, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, an initial search in its online browser will yield more than 2,500 results related to the Philippines and more than 10% of these are pertaining to the Philippines under Marcos (www.beeldengeluid.nl, 2018). An interesting find is the 44-minute TV documentary by André Truyman titled "Thrilla in Manilla: De Filipijnen onder staat van beleg" broadcasted by KRO on 1 May 1976, less than four years after Marcos declared Martial Law in the Philippines. This is just one of the many AV materials in the Sound and Vision that delve on the past but speak much of the future: An action agenda (AV Think Tank, 2018) in our quest for social justice.