ABCD

Roque Federizon Lee (Roxlee)

Roque Federizon Lee (Roxlee)

independent animation

?/?/1985

5 min

Technicolor

Synopsis

ABCD, a five-minute animated short shot on Super 8mm film camera, critiques and raises social awareness about authoritarian and state violence under the government of Ferdinand Marcos (1965-1986), using a satirical narrative that grows “increasingly darker” (Lim 195-196).

The animation has a seemingly innocent beginning, presenting the 26 letters of the alphabet in a row, with each letter corresponding to a word. As the animation progresses towards “D as in Dictator”, it introduces a series of montages, juxtaposed against collages, diffuse black-and-white ink drawings, drawn animation, and photos of protesters and military coercion. Later, a drawn figure poses the question of why Filipinos were in debt while others were born with abundance. The answer asserts that American imperialism is the cause. The animation short concludes with the letter Z: a sleeping man’s snoring is verbalized as “ZZZ”, a final critique of “political apathy” (Ibid. 196).

ABCD exemplifies how experimental animation documented protests against the Marcos regime by serving as alternative cinema, countering the Board of Censors’ attempt to suppress any possible political and social dissent in the Philippines of the 1980s and 1990s (Ibid. 198).

References:

Lim, Bliss Cua. The Archival Afterlives of Philippine Cinema. Duke University Press, 2024.