LOST  FILM  ON  JOLO'S  SEA DIVERS  FOUND  AFTER  60  YEARS

MANILA, February 25, 2006 (MALAYA) Six decades ago, two American producers Eddie Tait and George Harris attempted to launch a Philippine-made film for international release.

This movie depicts the life of south sea divers and was shot in the remote island of Jolo. Its two American producers managed to screen it only to audiences in New York and San Diego on December 10, 1937. Both producers, however, ran out of money due to excessive taxes and the film disappeared into obscurity.

Mowelfund Film Institute director Nick Deocampo said the film has for decades been considered a lost film, one of the hundreds made before World War II that is irretrievably lost. Until one day, a copy has been found.

During Nick last research trip as a senior Fulbright research scholar in the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., he was surprised to be informed by a library staff that there was a newly-acquired film about the Philippines and asked if Nick would be interested to take a look at it.

He was hesitant at first because he already came across three films with the name Zamboanga and none of them was the fabled Tait and Harris film. When he was told that the film was newly-struck from an original print that came all the way from Finland, he instantly became interested. "Why would a film about the Philippines turn up in a frigid country in the Scandinavian peninsula? Interesting," he thought.

At last, after 60 years that the film has not been seen by any Filipino, Deocampo had the privilege to be the first one to watch this historic film alone, thrilled with his new-found piece from the past.

In the movie, the young Fernando Poe Sr. played as a pearl diver who marries the village chief’s daughter (played by Rosa del Rosario). One of the guests in their wedding is a pirate who abducts the bride, inciting a tribal war. Fil-American Eduardo de Castro directed the cast that spoke in Tausog and English languages. The film features underwater photography and that the film processing chores boggles the mind with thoughts of the sacrifices behind the nine-month shooting.

"It showed the picturesque sea and the captivating landscape and with warring tribes and a kidnapped maiden to hook the audience’s attention," Deocampo reveals.

"Zamboanga" came at a crucial moment in the history of filmmaking in the Philippines. Tait and Harris revolutionized local filmmaking when they established the first film studio, Filippine Films in 1932. Their act ushered in the studio system that made it possible for subsequent native-owned studios like the LVN, Sampaguita, Premiere and Lebran to bring Philippine movies to their "golden era" in the ‘50s.

Don’t miss the television premiere of a must-see historic film "Zamboanga" on ABCinema tonight at 10 p.m.