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AMERICAN INFLUENCES ON PHILIPPINE CINEMA

Nick Deocampo

One hundred fifteen years ago this year (2013), our fate as a people tangled in “a
splendid little war”1 when two of the world’s powerful countries went on a collision
course with each other. The Spanish-American War in 1898 broke out when an emerging
superpower, the United States of America, declared war against the old maritime power,
Spain. The war that erupted in Havana, Cuba, on February 15, 1898 became the reason
for the mighty U.S. naval fleet to engage in a naval encounter the Spanish maritime
forces guarding their Pacific colony in an incident that came to be called as the “Battle of
Manila Bay.” While intending to free the Spanish colony from tyranny (like in Cuba), the
U.S. later kept las islas Filipinas as its own territory in the Far East. On that fateful first
of May, the course of world history changed.

The Battle of Manila Bay and U.S. emergence as World Power

In my new documentary, Film: American Beginnings of Philippine Cinema,2 the

opening scene depicts in 3D animation the battle that decimated the Spanish armada and
signaled America’s ascent as the new world power. Following the order for war issued by
a gregarious Assistant of the U.S. Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, then-Commodore George
Dewey and his naval convoy immediately set sail from the vicinity of Hong Kong for the
Spanish colony on April 27, 1898. It was at daybreak on May 1 when Dewey’s fleet
arrived just off Manila and, according to him, it was then that they were “fired upon at a
quarter past five A.M. by three batteries at Manila and two near Cavite.” In his
biography, Dewey recalls the sea combat that followed: “The squadron then proceeded to
the attack, the flagship Olympia under my personal direction, leading, followed at a
distance by the Baltimore, Raleigh, Petrel, Concord, and Boston… The squadron opened
fire at nineteen minutes of six A.M. While advancing to the attack two mines were
exploded ahead of the flagship too far to be effective.”3 The sea warfare was intense,
lasting for a few hours. It was at half-past twelve P.M. when the U.S. squadron stopped
firing and at one P.M. Dewey’s fleet anchored off Manila. Dewey won the battle and the
American flag then flew on Pacific waters. For its part, the Philippines, once dominated
by Spain for more than three hundred years, found a new master.

Recreating such a dramatic turn of events, Film: American Beginnings of

Philippine Cinema opens the second episode in my planned ten-hour opus on the history
of cinema in the country. It recreates the history of motion pictures with a conscious
effort to tie its growth to the colonial experience and with the birthing of the modern
Filipino nation. Introduced by the Spaniards in 1897, film’s budding growth was
untimely nipped in the bud by the arrival of the Americans. 4 While motion picture
business may have been unceremoniously halted, it did not take long for it to re-emerge
under the Americans. This may have been auspicious for the country as the USA became
not only a new political superpower but also the world’s leader in cinema with the
coming of the twentieth century.
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The American occupation of what would soon be called as the Philippine Islands
augured well with the global rise of motion pictures.5 The colony became America’s
foothold in the Far East for many of its products, foremost of which were Hollywood
films. U.S. interest went beyond mere market considerations. Its administration of the
islands led to its domination over the local population. One way it manifested its control
was through a systematic survey and cataloguing of the land and its people, for example
undertaking a population census. Producing films was another way of similarly taking
stock of the people and their resources. Films became an effective visual device that
suited this task as American traveling cameramen soon visited the colony and, through
their motion pictures, wittingly or unwittingly, made a visual inventory of America’s
newfound territory. The use of film also served as a form of surveillance of civilian life.
The “other”-ing of Filipinos commenced as American filmmakers produced screen
images of America’s “little brown brothers,” characterized to be “weak, uneducated and
unable to govern themselves.” In addition, with the rise of Hollywood as a global film
power, the Philippines became a commodified subject in Hollywood pictures, creating
narratives of conquest set in the all-too-familiar theme of war.

Cinema’s popularity in the U.S. (and subsequently in its colonized territory such
as the Philippines) came at an opportune time when the American people were optimistic
about their role in the emerging world order. With the dawning of a new century, the
Americans prided themselves as the world’s new political and economic power. In this
scenario, America’s going to war had a lot to do with cinema’s triumph as the new
century’s most popular entertainment form. The outbreak of the Spanish-American War
in 1898 offered the right opportunity for the new technical invention to establish itself as
the medium that brought a sense of urgency and historical vividness to the said war.
During those early days of cinema, the moving pictures, no matter how crude, brought a
sense of realism that was unparalleled in the more traditional communications media such
as print and theater. When shown in theater houses, footage of the war captivated hordes
of viewers.

Several films were made about the mentioned war. Despite their being “faked,”
those films were widely cheered when shown to American audiences. One such example
was filmed using cardboard ships and overturned table top filled with water. The Battle of
Manila produced by a duo of British filmmakers, J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith,
was actually shot at the rooftop of their Vitagraph Studio’s headquarters in New York
City in 1898, almost soon after Dewey’s victory. Another film of similar theme was shot
in Paris, France by one of cinema’s great pioneers, Georges Melies. His film was called
Combat naval devant Manille (Military Battle near Manila).6

Although films such as theirs may appear crude to present-day audiences, the
large number of “faked” newsreels produced at the turn of the century—and particularly
of the war efforts waged by America—proved this genre’s popularity. Audiences loved
them as these films stirred the American public to express their patriotic fervor
collectively. As a favored subject, war helped establish the size and influence of early
cinema. It is remarkable to find in them how Filipinos became entangled with America’s
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myth-making enterprise. The Filipino’s debut in cinema, however, portrayed them as

“enemy.” As cinema and imperialism fanned each other, the Philippines became prized
both as a conquered territory and as an object for cinematic fancy.

Views of Empire by American Film Pioneers

Before cinema in the country assumed its national identity, it was first a colonial
cinema. Motion pictures were not indigenous to the Philippines. The first documented
American filmmaker to visit the country and shoot films was the travel lecturer, E.
Burton Holmes. He came in June 1899 and, under cover by the U.S. military, took films
that he would later use in his lecture tours in the U.S. mainland.

Fascinated by the new sights he saw, Holmes’ films were views showing
America’s newly-acquired empire in the Pacific. While observing Escolta and taking
films and photographs, his views of the city ran like this: the street was “rapidly assuming
an American complexion” as “the natives seem to have caught the restless spirit of the
conquerors…”7 The films he shot combined images of the U.S. occupying forces with
native life exuding their tropical charm: cockfight, fire-brigade, native bancas, Ninth
Infantry on the Bridge of Spain, fourth cavalry in formation, among others.

In the hands of another American film pioneer, James Henry White, Manila
became a battleground where “Filipinos” were massacred in plain sight of the camera.
Produced in the backlot studio of American inventor, Thomas Alva Edison, White made
films with titles like Advance of Kansas Volunteers at Caloocan. They were sham
footage re-enacting real battle encounters between U.S. and Filipino soldiers. Advance of
Kansas Volunteers, for example, while passed off as a newsreel, was actually shot at
West Orange county in New Jersey, with “Filipinos” played by African-Americans and
the American soldiers by the U.S. National Guards.

In the hands of yet another American film pioneer, C. Fred Ackerman, the city of
Manila became once more a site for military rule as well as an object for visual
exoticism. Ackerman was a cameraman belonging to Edison’s rival film studio, the
American Mutoscope and Biograph (AM&B) Company. Following Holmes, Ackerman
arrived in September 1899 to film actual scenes in the Philippines. Working under the
protection of the U.S. military during the initial months of the Philippine-American War,
Ackerman became an “embedded” cameraman. He wore U.S. military uniform and
blended with the rest of the U.S. army, while fulfilling his duty as a correspondent and
photographer for the American journal, Leslie’s Weekly, and as a filmmaker for the
American studio, AM&B.

When the Thirties came, a personality whose film made a big impression was
Dean C. Worcester. Although he made only one film, Native Life in the Philippines
(1913), his film proved to be controversial as he used it to campaign against the early
granting of Philippine independence. Worcester was an American government
functionary and noted anthropologist who saw motion pictures as a device that could
advance not just the colonialist agenda but his own personal interests. A distinguished
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zoologist from the University of Michigan and a professional anthropologist of wide

renown, Worcester had published his book The Philippine Islands and Their People in
late 1898 to considerable acclaim.8 President William McKinley then appointed him to
successive U.S. commissions on the Philippines, which led to the establishment of a U.S.
Civil government under William Howard Taft.9 Worcester subsequently became the first
Secretary of the Interior of the Philippine colonial government (1901-1913)10 and soon
established a stormy relationship with Filipino politicians and the native press. 11
Worcester soon became a strong advocate for the use of film to “civilize” Filipino
“natives,” Worcester found in film “the most practical manner to bring about peace
among the different tribes in the islands.”12

Foundations of Local Cinema

As American presence became secured after years of pacification, Americans—

including soldiers who had fought in that war and chose to stay in the Philippines—began
to manage local film businesses either by taking over the management of theaters left
behind by departing Spaniards or setting up new businesses of their own. It did not take
long for them to produce the first films made by local residents in the country.

The first American resident to make films may have been Albert W. Yearsley,
who shot the Rizal Day celebration at the Luneta in Manila on December 30, 1909. This
gregarious American had a prolific career. After 1910 his Oriental Film Manufacturing
Company produced news films for showing in the theaters he owned and managed.
Yearsley’s lead was challenged in 1912 when fellow Americans Harry Brown and
Edward Meyer Gross made a film about the country’s martyred hero, Dr. Jose Rizal.
Their film was destined to become the country’s first feature film and the first to use
well-known actors. Not to be outdone, Yearsley rushed his own shorter version of the
Rizal story into production, and was able to show the resulting picture a day before his
rivals. Yearsley had the advantage of owning Manila’s leading movie house, the
Majestic, where he could show his film at any time with no booking problem. Brown and
Gross might have made use of the Gaiety Theater, which Brown managed, but had
already rented the Grand Opera House, an obviously better choice.

For nearly three weeks, Manila became enthralled as these Americans showed the
country’s first “nationalist” films, ironically made by these foreigners. The heated rivalry
finally subsided when Yearsley terminated his screenings on September 1 and the Brown-
Gross film announced its last night to be on September 5. So ended a bitterly contested
rivalry that did much to lay down the foundations for a domestic film industry.

Edward Meyer Gross continued producing story films that appealed to Filipinos.
Together with Harry Brown (as producer) and Charles Martin (as cinematographer),
Gross formed the Philippines’ first major team collaboration in local filmmaking. The
same group went on to make other historical films. Aside from his initial productions, La
vida de Rizal and La conquista de Filipinas, Gross’ Rizalina Film Manufacturing
Company also produced another dramatic film, Los tres martires (a.k.a. Gomez, Burgos,
Zamora), about the killing of three native priests whose deaths inspired intellectuals like
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Rizal to defy Spanish friar rule. Gross proved to be a prolific filmmaker, making three
films in 1912. By producing only story films, he pioneered what would one day become
the Tagalog film industry, one that would thrive in the making of narrative films.

With films now locally produced, early cinema in the Philippines became assured
of continued patronage and loyalty by appealing to homegrown sensibilities. The
hallowed space inside the teatro, once a preserve only for zarzuelas and operas, was
invaded by silent pictures enlivened by musical accompaniment. While the two American
films captured local moviegoers’ fancy, other films (still made by foreigners) continued
to be made. Travelogues, or films depicting local scenes and traditions, appeared to have
comprised the largest number of local productions from 1905 until 1917. These were
closely followed by the coverage of public events such as parades, disaster films, and
films about government campaigns or local industries like the hemp industry. Typical of
the period, actualities outnumbered fiction films.

American Influences on Film

As my documentary recalls the pioneering efforts made by itinerant American

cameramen and the early resident American filmmakers in delivering the first cinematic
products in and about the country, it also accounts for the American influences that later
shaped the colony’s emerging cinema. In the process, those early films served U.S.
imperialist and colonial interests as the colonial power secured its hold on the country. In
brief, the documentary touches on six areas where American influences were cast on the
emerging Tagalog (later to become Filipino) cinema:

 technology and capital—providing material influences in all aspects of the

film business, including production, distribution, promotion, and
exhibition;
 language—referring to the use of the English language in dialogue and
promotions and also to film’s audio-visual language, which favored the
use of the “classical Hollywood narrative” as the dominant film language
to be used in local filmmaking;
 aesthetics—introduction of popular genres such as the western,
melodrama, action, comedy, and horror and the conditions for their
production such as the adoption of the studio and the star systems, use of
styles such as realism or fantasy, and use of conventions such as feature-
length duration or adherence to the line-of-axis in film editing;
 reception—shaping audiences to assume viewing practices that made them
a captive Hollywood market and a captive of its collective escapist
fantasy; and
 ideology—creating beliefs that upheld the dominance of Hollywood
cinema and the American way of life; censorship was also installed under
the American rule.
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These are the six areas in which the emerging cinema was shaped by the
overpowering American colonial presence and which, in turn, also helped to
vernacularize the Western medium.13 They happened through a shared, if contested,
experience of the moving-picture apparatus by the natives. The power relations that a
film casts between the filming subject and the filmed object, as well as between film
commodity and audience, between film producer and market, symbolically speak of the
shared, albeit contentious, colonial relations Filipinos experienced under their American
colonizers. It is these relations that inform the hour-long documentary of the American
influences that were cast on the country’s moving picture medium.

From its initial entry under the protection of the U.S. military, it did not take long
for a nascent film industry to develop in the hands of private individuals. This made
possible the deeper entrenchment of American values into the emerging Filipino society.
It also allowed film to spread and flourish all across the archipelago. As years went by,
the roots of Hollywood dominance began to be deeply felt in many parts of the country.
My documentary shows how the deep ties between the U.S. and the Philippines turned
Hollywood into a huge social influence, stemming from the country’s material
dependence on its film products to the expressive forms that would give shape to many
local films.

In terms of “Technology” and “Economy,” the Americans provided material

bases for cinema to begin technically as they introduced economic conditions that made
possible the growth of popular cinema. Through “Material Production” of local films and
what “Aesthetics” emerged from them, one would be able to account for many of the
elements found in Philippine cinema that were actually derived from Hollywood. These
included elements like the studio, star and genre systems. Finally, “Ideology” and
“Language” were two of America’s legacies as they first introduced censorship and the
English language. In all these influences, the cultural encounter between a foreign
medium and its local host were historically and visually instantiated in the documentary.

Under the Hollywood Spell

The journey of native cinema from its colonial beginnings to its maturity in the
hands of Filipino filmmakers may be seen to follow the same pattern as the way the U.S.
first controlled then later “freed” the Philippine Islands. Similarly, film evolved from its
military beginning under the U.S. colonial regime to flourish in an atmosphere of private
free enterprise that allowed a local film industry to be established.

Under military cover, the U.S. introduced its colonial designs over the territory,
including the use of film. As earlier mentioned, those initially shot were dominated by
images of military activities. While there were also images of civilian life, they appeared
more like visual inventories of the newly-conquered territory. As the American
pacification campaign progressed, American culture was introduced through popular
media such as newspapers and magazines, later through radio and television, and most
significantly, through motion pictures. Using these media, it was clear that American
influences, in their monopolizing ways and dominance, became the dominant force in
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shaping native life and consciousness for years to come. It was through cinema that
American influence figured in the most public and popular way.

With movies going to the economic sphere, this resulted to the formation of the
local film industry. Seeing their new colony as a market they could exploit, Americans
film businesses took the Philippine Islands as its base of operation in the Pacific region.
This enhanced America’s chances to achieve global film domination, especially after the
end of World War I in 1918. Setting up branches of Hollywood studios, Manila became a
film capital where the best of American films could be bought. In no time, the city
became known for its palatial movie palaces that were among the best in the Far East
before these were reduced to ashes during World War II. It was also in Manila that U.S.
film studios based their film-sale operations as they fanned out to other parts of the
archipelago and across Asia. From its military beginnings to its economic flourishing,
U.S. film domination revealed America’s awesome powers in shaping a nation culturally.

This phenomenon started with the securing of movie houses earlier owned by
Spaniards and other Europeans. Building movie houses not only in the capital city but
throughout the islands paid handsome dividends to enterprising U.S. soldiers who stayed
behind after the Philippine-American War to engage in film business. While there was an
initial period of accommodation and conflict resulting from Americans asserting their
interests in a largely Hispanic society, in the end it was they who ultimately gained
control of the nascent local film business. The spread of cinemas across the numerous
islands may be attributed to the consolidation of U.S. film interests, both in the U.S.
mainland and in the colony. As more Americans put up movie theaters—flimsy and
impermanent as they may had been in places as far away as the Mountain Province to the
north and Zamboanga to the south—films distributed to these movie houses became
steady due to the stabilizing presence of U.S. film studios’ distribution and sales offices
set up in Manila. Big Hollywood companies like Universal and Twentieth Century-Fox
controlled film exhibition through a practice called “block booking,” which secured a
monopolizing patronage of American film distribution. The emerging Tagalog cinema
hardly made a dent in Hollywood’s dominance of local film entertainment.

In addition to two of America’s major film influences such as film exhibition and
distribution, the third crucial influence came in the form of film production. Inevitably,
this was the path to which American interests in the colony eventually led. Native life
became exotic themes in the films produced by both itinerant and resident filmmakers.
Through films that captured local cultural life, the country and its inhabitants were
depicted as “primitive, culturally backward and politically infantile.” The films that were
made and shown in the U.S., particularly those by Dean C. Worcester, influenced both
policymakers and American voters in debating about America’s “possession” of the
Philippine Islands. Worcester’s film for example was used to delay the granting of the
country’s independence.

Notable, too, was America’s influence in shaping local cinema through its cultural
power to provide local films their cinematic forms. This resulted to the aestheticization of
colonial power, as local cinema internalized American cultural values. Pioneer American
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filmmakers became conduits of American values that, consciously or not, seeped into the
filmic practices of elite native Filipinos when it was their turn to control the film
business. Ironically, however, it is surprising to find that the films made by those
pioneering American filmmakers, particularly the ones about Dr. Jose Rizal and the
patriotic drama, Walang Sugat, were the first evocations of nationalism in local cinema.
This happened during the very first year (1912) when narrative fiction films were
produced in the country. Adding to this thickening plot was the reaction of the American-
run state government, which was to initiate the first acts of censorship in the country in
order to curb what appeared to the colonial administration’s eyes as the cinematic
excesses threatening their colonial rule. Considering the contentious acts committed by
the pioneering American filmmakers—Yearsley and Gross—it is time to rethink about
the role that the American pioneer filmmakers played in shaping the history of native
cinema and in making films that we came to value as “nationalist.” With regard to
censorship, American influence also provided the initial impetus for its
institutionalization. Many of the laws governing censorship may be traced to the early
years of U.S. control of the entertainment business. It is likewise interesting to find that
the first years when a film censorship body was in place, Americans comprised the
majority of the said body. One censor chief even later admitted that local censorship rules
were patterned after Hollywood’s Production Code.

Hollywood shapes Local Cinema

From its artisanal beginnings, cinema grew into an industry. As more Americans
came and made films, the system of production was patterned after the Hollywood studio
model. The key moment in this development was the appearance of George Harris and
Eddie Tait, who formed the country’s first truly professional film studio in 1933, the
Filippine Film Productions, Inc. This represented a high point in pre-war filmmaking. It
revolutionized motion-picture production in the country, setting the pace for subsequent
local film studios to be organized. The studio system became a harbinger of things
Americana. With the studios came the star system, where newly discovered personalities
were groomed to become movie stars. The stellar prominence of the likes of Fernando
Poe and Rosa del Rosario was made possible because of the studios with whom they
were under contract. The famed Zamboanga became an outstanding example of
American engagement in producing local films.

With the widespread influence cast by Americans during the early and formative
years of cinema, it should be no surprise that local cinema came to pattern itself after
Hollywood movies and its system of commercial production. Hollywood’s influence
came most evidently in the institution of a genre system, which provided molds and
templates for making movies. Melodrama became a dominant narrative structure. So
were the genres of comedy, action, suspense, horror, adventure, western, sci-fi, and
similar film types, although much of these genres came to be “nativized” into some sort
of chopsuey (or mixed) genre, wherein films contained a little of all these various film
types.
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The creation of love teams, heroes and anti-heroes, deployment of special effects
and many other aesthetic conventions took Hollywood as their model. Even the ritual of
handing out awards and the local bodies that handing them out patterned their
organization and standards after their Hollywood models. The Filipino Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (FAMAS), which bestows annual awards to industry
products, was patterned after Hollywood’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
(AMPAS), which awards the coveted Oscars every year. The local industry organization,
Film Academy of the Philippines, put up in 1981, had its guilds set up like the Hollywood
guilds, except that the local guilds were not unionized.

With the all-embracing influence cast by American cinema on Filipino society, it

is not hard to understand how American values conquered the imagination, consciousness
and emotions of Filipino filmmakers and moviegoers alike. Ideologically, American films
set the standards for what are considered beautiful, just and good, along with other social
values. Many of these are based on values held dear by the American society, including
its obsession with commercialism and entertainment. In fact, the rise of a highly
commercialized cinema in the Philippines may be traced to the almost slavish imitation
of Hollywood standards that attained further excesses when taken over by local film
producers. Here it may be mentioned how American films conquered homegrown
imagination. The way locals imagine themselves as a people, their self-representation
onscreen, the heroes they believe in, the things they consider to be the best in life—these
have been colored by standards exuded by the movies they watched and the values they
got from watching the highly popular Hollywood movies.

As the young nation looked up to Hollywood for inspiration and guidance in its
film affairs, American influences continued to shape local entertainment. Significantly,
these influences went beyond Hollywood. The country’s mass communication
infrastructure was also shaped by U.S. policies, technology and capital. As the need to
integrate the whole country into one central government in order to achieve easy
governance and to spread government’s resources, there was a need to create a
nationwide mass communication system. Records show the strong hand of U.S.
communication and funding agencies in shaping the modernization of the country’s
communication system, including government-run television, radio and cinema
immediately after World War II. This had a strong influence on the relations between
both countries, particularly in the emergence of new media resulting in the further
popularization of American entertainment and culture. Even after independence was
granted to the Philippines in 1946, the U.S. continued to hold the country and its people
under new forms of dominance, more so in the field of entertainment and
communication.

By studying the history of the film medium, how it started and who were
responsible for its growth, what forms were favored and what values came to be
accepted, we know that the dominance played by American cinema in the development of
native cinema resulted in the adoption of American values in aesthetics, morals and social
values. Although challenged in many ways by the native society, such as the Hispanic
community in general and the emergence of “nationalist” filmmakers in later years, in the
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end, these American influences became the dominant expressions in the structuration and
eventual maturation of local cinema. All these came to be possible because of the
colonization that first introduced American control over local society. From the day that
film was unreeled during the early period of American domination, the social, economic
and political conditions highly determined the shaping of native cinema into assuming the
visage of its (colonial) master cinema. Despite attempts by a few native filmmakers to
create films that expressed their native identity and their patriotism, American values in
entertainment and commercialism remained the prevailing standards for the country’s
film-entertainment business.

It is obvious that Philippine cinema in particular and Philippine society in general

fell under the spell of Hollywood. It would take years before this spell could be broken.
The legacy of domination brought about by the U.S. occupation was strengthened by
cinema when it became part of the myth-making machinery of the U.S. colonial
administrative power. The spell that Hollywood cast on the emerging Tagalog cinema
had a profound effect on the imagination and shape of the films made locally. While
imitation both in content and form became prevalent, native mediation only provided
local nuances to Hollywood’s dominant traits.

Hollywood’s spell was a tantalizing influence on local cinema. With all the myths
Hollywood created, film became an effective means to transport American values of
entertainment to its local patrons. But while doing so, it cannot be disputed that this
cinematic spell, before it could find local expression, went through the processes of
recognition, adoption, adaptation, and even subversion, producing film traits that were
made “native” by local filmmakers. It was an uneasy truce between Hollywood and the
native cinema that best describes the contradictory experience felt by Filipinos during a
period when popular culture was implicated in the collective efforts towards nation-
building, even as the natives had yet to emerge from the cocoon of their colonial past.

End Notes:
1
This was how U.S. Secretary of State John Hay flippantly dubbed the Spanish-American
War as mentioned in Stanley Karnow’s In Our Image: America’s Empire in the
Philippines (New York: Random House, Inc. 1989), 79.

2
Film: American Beginnings of Philippine Cinema directed by Nick Deocampo and
produced by the Center for New Cinema with funding from The National Commission
for Culture and the Arts, 2012.
3
Louis Stanley Young, The Life of Admiral Dewey and the Conquest of the Philippines
(Philadelphia and Chicago: P.W. Ziegler & Co., 1898), 120.
4
For more information on the early growth of motion pictures in the Philippines consult
Nick Deocampo, Cine: Spanish Influences on Early Cinema in the Philippines (Manila:
National Commission for Culture and the Arts, 2003; Anvil Publishing, Inc. 2008.)
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5
On the growth of motion pictures during the period of U.S. colonization consult Nick
Deocampo, Film: American Influences on Philippine Cinema (Mandaluyong City: Anvil
Publishing, Inc., 2011).
6
Roger Boussinot lists the film among those made by Georges Melies in his
L’encyclopedie du cinema (France: Bordas, 1967), 1045.
7
The Burton Holmes Lectures, vol. V in ten volumes (Battle Creek, Michigan: The Little
Preston Company, Ltd., 1901), 255-256.
8
“Worcester’s Book on the Philippines,” New York Times, December 31, 1898, Book
Review.
9
“An Important Commission,” New York Tribune, February 12, 1899, B1; “Civil
Government for the Filipinos,” New York Times, February 7, 1900, 1; “Civil Government
for the Filipinos,” New York Times, February 7, 1900, 1.
10
There are several sources of information about Dean C. Worcester: “Non-Christian
Worcester,” in James H. Blount, American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912
(New York and London: The Knickerbocker Press, 1913); reprinted by Solar Publishing
Corporation in 1986 with Renato Constantino as Series Director in the Filipiniana reprint
series; “Dean Worcester,” Bulletin of the American Historical Collection, Vol. 25, No. 1,
January-March 1997.
11
“Plot to Oust Michigan Men,” Detroit Free Press, January 18, 1907, 2; “Worcester
Sues For Libel,” New York Times, January 24, 1909, C4.
12
Film Index, April 8, 1911, 4.
13
For details about these influences refer to Deocampo, Film, chapters X-XII.