Imelda Marcos documentary maker on interviewing the Philippines’ infamous former first lady
- In eight interviews, the widow of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos talked openly about wealth and excess, her marriage, exile and return to politics
- Lauren Greenfield also spoke to dissidents and political opponents for her documentary The Kingmaker
Filmmaker Lauren Greenfield was drawn to the Philippines by journalist Bill Mellor’s article about the remote island of Calauit. In the 1970s, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos ordered 250 indigenous families off the island so they could stock it with zebras, giraffes and other African transplants. Eventually Calauit was overrun by diseased, inbred animals.
“They were a symbol of the recklessness and carelessness of wealth and power,” Greenfield tells the Post in a phone interview from her office. “Although neglected, they survived. I started thinking of Imelda as a kind of unlikely survivor as well, surviving the scorn of Filipinos and the international community to be elected as a congresswoman. That was going to be my story.”
What surprised Greenfield, the director of documentaries including The Queen of Versailles and Generation Wealth, was how events overtook her original plans.
Money helped the Marcoses fashion a new narrative for their family during the 2016 elections, one in which they used misinformation to transform from evil dictators to heroes of the people. Their methods of distorting history have spread through politics like a virus.
Over the course of eight sit-down interviews and some on-the-fly encounters, Greenfield and her crew got Imelda Marcos to talk candidly about her marriage to Ferdinand, the assassination of Benigno Aquino, her exile in 1986 and eventual political comeback.