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The main title of Malcolm Guy's film My Friend the Terrorist intends to ridicule the terrorist label put on Jose Maria Sison, the revolutionary who in 1968 re-founded the Communist Party of the Philippines and launched a guerrilla war that continues 56 years later. Speaking with The North Star from his home in Guatemala, Guy shared another objective, suggested by the film's subtitle, A tale of love and revolution.
"What I thought that this film could do is break through the stereotypical image of what a revolutionary is and to show that they're not this picture that's painted of revolutionaries as grim and determined and always dour-faced, and all they do is complain about the system," says Guy.
"Of course, that's not what you get when you go and visit Joma and Julie. You get somebody who was always warm with people, always had time, didn't speak in riddles, but tried to speak the language of the people, and always very determined and clear about the positions they were taking."
Guy first encountered Sison, whom he refers to by his nickname "Joma," in the 1970s. At the time, Guy and his partner Marie Botie worked for The Forge, the newspaper of the Workers' Communist Party, in Montreal. Guy recalls that Sison's writings on the Philippine revolution were reprinted in the paper as well as in books and pamphlets sold at Norman Bethune book stores across the country.
"We eventually made our way to the Philippines in 1985," says Guy, "just after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship. I was asked by a friend to go and film with him at that time, the People Power movement. But I didn't meet Joma in person until the mid nineties."
"We really got to know each other when I became the General Secretary of the International League of Peoples' Struggle. I was Gen Sec for about 10 years, and I was a lucky guy—I got to work side by side with Joma in the meetings. It was like a permanent educational session, and of course, during that time I got to know Julie, as well."
Thanks to the People Power uprising and the fall of the Marcos dictatorship, Sison was finally released after almost a decade as a political prisoner. It later became clear that the revolutionary movement was not satisfied with only toppling the dictator and would continue to struggle to address the basic economic and political problems of Philippine society.
Consequently, the Government of Corizon Aquino forced Sison and his wife Julie de Lima, herself a former political prisoner, into exile.
"It was a little bit of an accident that they ended up there anyway," says Guy, "because Joma, as I mention in the film, was on a speaking tour after being released from prison, after so many years in prison in the Philippines. This was his first trip abroad. Essentially, he got to the Netherlands and the Philippine government removed his passport and permission to travel further, so they had to seek asylum."
"Living in Europe was tough," Guy continues, "as Joma said in one of his poems 'I dream of mangoes while living in a land of apples' and 'I dream of mountains while living in a flat land.' In many ways, they lived the life of an exile, a migrant."
"Fortunately, there was a good exile community in the Netherlands, owing to the fact that many of those who are obliged to leave the Philippines for safety ended up in that country because at that time they had policies that permitted people to go there and to seek asylum. Of course, the situation has totally changed now with a right-wing government."
"They were migrants, they were exiles, but they were never alone. They were always surrounded. There were always visitors. There were always people coming wanting to talk to Joma, to get advice, to exchange about revolutionary struggle to exchange ideas about what was going on, his revolutionary analysis."
In 2002, Sison and de Lima faced a new challenge when the United States designated the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and New People's Army (NPA) as "Foreign Terrorist Organizations" and Joma as a "person supporting terror."
The designation was part of the War on Terror strategy of grouping together revolutionary and national liberation struggles in reactionary (often CIA-affiliated) groups like al-Qaeda on the list. This was an effort to link genuine people's struggles to the 9/11 attacks.
Before 2001, the New People's Army was widely understood as a belligerent in a civil war. It participated in on-again, off-again peace talks with successive Philippine governments, hosted by third-party states, since 1992. Nonetheless, in 2005 the European Union followed the U.S. lead in naming the CPP and NPA as terrorist entities and Sison as a "person supporting terror."
The designation led to an international campaign to defend Sison. The campaign ultimately succeeded, and the European Court of Justice removed him from the blacklist in 2009.
"They never put into question the armed struggle in the Philippines," says Guy, "and that they had been part of that, of setting up the armed struggle. They never went around that. They always approached it directly, and said, that's the only choice that the Filipino people have."
A highlight of the film is Sison's love of music and singing. "I got criticized a bit that there's too much karaoke, but really I wanted to paint a picture of this amazing couple and break those stereotypical visions of revolutionaries," says Guy.
"Yes, they're determined. Yes, they'd give you their lives. Yes, they support armed struggle, but hey, these are amazing people. They have lives. They have kids. They have loves and cares. If [the film] works in that way, and inspires people to want to know more about what they wrote, what they thought and what the revolution is like in the Philippines, then maybe the film has worked on that level."
My Friend the Terrorist will be showing on Sunday, March 16th at the Rio Theatre in East Vancouver.