A Thousand Cuts, the documentary following Filipino American journalist Maria Ressa, won the award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary at the 43rd News and Documentary Emmys held in New York City last Sept. 28.
“Thank you, Academy. And (Frontline PBS). and of course (Maria Ressa) and (Rappler) and everyone of our Philippine team!” tweeted Diaz, a resident of New Jersey. The feature had its US broadcast premiere on Frontline in January 2022. Directed by Filipino American Ramona Diaz, the documentary follows Nobel Peace Prize winner Ressa as she fights for press freedom during the administration of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. It is a powerful examination o the threat of disinformation spread by social media.
Ressa, who co-founded the online news network Rappler, has had a ongoing battle with the Duterte administration, especially over its war on drugs, where thousands of alleged drug dealers and users were executed by overzealous law enforcement, military and vigilantes.
Philippines court found the New Jersey-raised Ressa guilty for libel, which she is appealing.
A Thousand Cuts is a Concordia Studio, Motto Pictures, and CineDiaz production developed in association with Topic for Frontline.
The full documentary can be viewed online for free on the YouTube channel and website of PBS Frontline, which acquired the rights to the documentary in June 2020.
Two Jersey girls making waves: journalist Maria Ressa, left, and filmmaker Ramona Diaz.
As journalist Maria Ressa fights off attempts of the Philippine government to muzzle her online news site Rappler and to jail the Nobel Peace Prize winner, a documentary of her fight for freedom of the press won the prestigious Peabody award.
A Thousand Cuts — Frontline’s 2021 documentary on the escalating war between the government and the press in the Philippines — was honored with a George Foster Peabody Award in the documentary category.
Directed by Filipino American filmmaker Ramona S. Diaz, the award-winning feature-length documentary follows renowned journalist Maria Ressa, CEO of the independent news site Rappler and a top target of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on press freedom. In December 2021, Ressa went on to be named a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Like Ressa, Diaz immigrated with her family as a young girl and grew up in New Jersey.
As one of the most prominent Filipino American filmmakers in the US, Diaz is the director of numerous feature documentaries including:
Spirits Rising (1996), about Corazon Aquino and the People Power Revolution, which won a Student Academy Award and the Ida Lupino DGA Award;
Imelda (2004), the definitive portrait of the infamous former First Lady of the Philippines, which won the Sundance Cinematography Prize for director of photography;
Motherland (2017), a cinéma vérité portrait of a hospital in one of the poorest parts of Manila, home to the busiest maternity ward on earth, which won a Special Jury Award at Sundance.
In the Peabody Award jurors’ citation, A Thousand Cuts was recognized for its “astonishing access and chilling precision” and was honored as “a journalistic profile in courage for our time and a cautionary tale for global press freedom straining against the rise of populist autocracies around the world.”
A Thousand Cuts premiered on PBS in January 2021 following a decorated theatrical release in the summer of 2020 by PBS Distribution. Most recently, the film was awarded a 2022 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in the International TV category.
“We are thrilled to see Ramona Diaz’s A Thousand Cuts be recognized by the George Foster Peabody Awards,” said Frontline Executive Producer Raney Aronson-Rath.
“At a time when the critical practice and public service of journalism is increasingly under attack in countries across the globe, we are proud to share Maria’s courageous story with our PBS audiences. We share this honor with our production partners at CineDiaz, Motto Pictures and Concordia Studios, and we will continue to champion Maria and other journalists in pursuit of the truth.”
In the last days of the Presidency of President Rodrigo Duterte before he handed over the government to incoming , the Philippine government ordered Rappler to stop its online operation. Two weeks later, the Court of Appeals upheld libel charges against Ressa which carries with it a six-year prison. sentence.
Meanwhile, Ressa remains free on bail and Rappler is continuing to operate as appeals are being made to the newly installed government of President Bongbong Marcos to drop the charges against the news site and the journalist.
“I’m very honored to receive a Peabody Award for A Thousand Cuts,” said Diaz. “It’s been a privilege to be able to tell Maria Ressa’s story. She has been sounding the clarion call for social media disinformation and its effects on democracy since 2016. This important recognition from Peabody goes a long way in helping us amplify this universally resonant story.”
Since 1940, the prestigious George Foster Peabody Awards have honored excellence in broadcasting. The awards now recognize excellence in digital storytelling as well.
Including the award for A Thousand Cuts, Frontline — which is produced at GBH in Boston and airs nationwide on PBS — has garnered 27 Peabody Awards to date.
Stream A Thousand Cuts below.
EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter.
Journalist Maria Ressa faces a host of charges in the Philippines.
No television station in the Philippines was daring enough to air A Thousand Cuts, an award-winning documentary critical of President Rodrigo Duterte's attempts to suppress press freedom. The people of the Philippines will, at last, have the opportunity to view the film about their own country.
“After a year of screening for audiences around the world — from New Zealand to North America, from Israel to the Netherlands, A Thousand Cuts is finally coming home. I’m so grateful that Frontline (PBS) stepped up to the plate to make the film available to audiences in the Philippines where it matters most,” says filmmaker Ramona Diaz.
PBS' Frontline, the longest-running investigative documentary series, announced Tuesday, March 2, that it has acquired full-streaming rights for the award-winning film A Thousand Cuts in the Philippines, a country experiencing an escalating war between the government and the press.
The important acquisition will make the film accessible March 13 on PBS.org/frontline and YouTube to the people in the Philippines who are most impacted by the issues in this story. The news comes after Philippine distributors and TV did not license the film.
A Thousand Cuts chronicles the story of Filipino American journalist Maria Ressa, a top target of Duterte’s crackdown on the news media. Ressa and her colleagues have been at the forefront of reporting on Duterte’s brutal war on drugs and she has endured harassment, arrests, and a cyber libel conviction that could send her to prison. In January, she posted bail for her tenth arrest warrant.
The film will begin streaming in the Philippines on Saturday, March 13. At 9 pm PHT/8am EST on March 13, Frontline will host a live YouTube roundtable discussion with Ressa, Diaz and Frontline’s Executive Producer, Raney Aronson-Rath. The roundtable will explore the importance of sharing A Thousand Cuts with Filipino audiences as Ressa’s legal situation continues to unfold.
The 2020 Sundance Film Festival documentary made its U.S. broadcast debut on Frontline (PBS) in January this year, and is currently available to stream in North America. By securing full streaming rights on both PBS.org/frontline and YouTube, the Philippine people can stream A Thousand Cuts in its entirety and learn about the implications for democracy when press freedom is threatened — a story that is increasingly vital, as Duterte has taken severe measures to thwart journalists.
“At Frontline, we felt we needed to do whatever we could to make this story available to the Filipino people,” says Frontline Executive Producer Raney Aronson-Rath. “We’ve seen a growing desire to have A Thousand Cuts be more permanently accessible in the Philippines, especially as Maria’s legal situation continues to worsen. We’re proud we can make Ramona’s documentary available to the community it impacts the most.”
Prior to its PBS broadcast, A Thousand Cuts completed a robust festival run — including Sundance Film Festival, SXSW Film Festival and AFI DOCS — and a nation-wide virtual theatrical release last summer. The New York Times calls A Thousand Cuts “absorbing” (Critic’s Pick), The Washington Post says the documentary is “utterly urgent” and The Hollywood Reporter describes the film as “essential.”
A Thousand Cuts is now streaming online in North America on pbs.org/frontline and YouTube. The film is also available to stream in the PBS Video App and on PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel.
FILMS FROM Asia are gaining more notice by Western audiences but movies from the Philippines have not received the same exposure than the films from other Asian countries. That oversight is about to change. Cinematografo, a new San Francisco film festival featuring movies, documentaries and short films from the Philippines and productions by Filipino/Americans, hopes to present the new wave of Filipino and Filipino/American film talent to U.S. movie goers. Motion pictures in Japan have always been received well by international film audiences. In recent years, the movies from South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and India have gained fans and acceptance outside of Asia.
Even though the motion picture industry in the Philippines has been in existence just as long as Asia's other movie-making centers, with few exceptions, films made in the Philippines, have not received similar critical recognition. Sometimes marred by poor production values, overly dramatic or fluffy plots and acting, Filipino filmmakers and studios didn't attempt to appeal to international audiences. They were satisfied to cater almost exclusively to the local movie goers with Fortunately, as audiences in the Philippines became more sophisticated and demanded better productions on par with Hollywood or Hong Kong, the Philippine movie industry is changing. Signs of the maturation of the Filipino film industry and the growing appeal of Filipino productions to international audiences included the awarding of the Best Actress award at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival given to Jaclyn Jose for her gritty portrayal of a drug-dealing matriarch in a Manila slum in Ma' Rose. Last month, Across the Crescent Moon, a film that was hardly noticed in its the home country of the Philippines, ran away with Best Global Feature Film and Best Ensemble Acting awards at the International Film Festival Manhattan. It was directed by Baby Nebrida.
A musical number from Ang Larawan that will open the film festival.
Cinematografo happens on Nov. 9-12 at the AMC Dine-In Kabuki 8 Theatres in San Francisco's Japantown. Over a span of four days, the festival will show 11 feature films, seven documentaries, a bevy of short films and a number panels. The exhibition of screenings, panels, and intimate industry networking will feature narratives, documentaries, and short films from North America and the Philippines from Filipino and Filipino-American filmmakers. The festival opens with the U.S. premiere of Ang Larawan (The Portrait), adapted from the musical play of the same name based on the Philippines' National Artist Nick Joaquin’s three-act play “A Portrait of a Filipino as an Artist.” Director Loy Arcenas, lead actress Rachel Alejandro and composer Ryan Cayabyab will be attending the event on today, Nov. 9. Ang Larawan , a musical, was shown at the Tokyo International Film Festival last month to favorable reviews and was an audience favorite.
The Philippine production was hailed as “stirring … handsomely produced… impeccably performed and crisply photographed” by Variety’s Richard Kuipers in a Nov. 1 essay. Hopefully, Once More, the popular romantic comedy featuring Lea Salonga will be the festival's Saturday night feature. The 1995 production, which was filmed in the San Francisco Bay Area, was remastered for this showing. The closing film Sunday night will be The Ghose Bride, a 2017 horror movie of a girl who makes a deal to marry a dead man.
One of the best known documentary filmmakers, Ramona Diaz, will be feted. Her latest, award-winning film Motherland (Sundance 2017), about one of the world’s largest maternity wards located in Manila, will be screened, followed by a conversation about her work and prolific career as one of the best known Asian women documentary makers today. Besides the Diaz tribute, there will be panels on the "State of the Nations" (the Philippines and the U.S.). Another panel, "Minority as the New Majority," will feature a discussion among industry insiders. The CIFF, sponsored and organized by ABS- CBN International, hopes to become the premier event for Filipinos and Filipino/Americans to tell their stories, and to become the platform to bring these films to the world stage. Raffy Lopez, COO of ABS-CBN International, stated that he “has always believed that films are powerful purveyors of culture. When moviegoers leave the theaters, we provide them with a little more understanding of who we are or we trigger a curiosity or hunger for them to know and learn more about our culture and all its complexities and nuances."
While opening night. including dinner, is by invitation, all other presentations are open to the public. Tickets for the festival offerings, including the panels, mixers, conversations wiith filmmakers, can be bought at the door. For a schedule of all the screenings and events and for more information, click here.
