Quezon’s Game: A Filipino Schindler’s List.The players include the Nazi (Kevin Kraemer), the president (Raymond Bagatsing), the general (David Bianco), and the Jew (Billy Ray Gallion).

Canada

Netizens weigh in on ‘Quezon’s Game’

Why is Winnipeg missed in the screenings?

Updated:

Teodoro Alcuitas

The announcement of the movie Quezon’s Game which opens tomorrow ( January 24) in Surrey, B.C.’s Landmark theatre in Guilford has netizens buzzing. 

There are several showings in other centres including four in B.C., two in Alberta and three in Ontario.

Dante Aviso from Winnipeg questions why there is no screening in Winnipeg. 

In an email to philippinecanadiannews.com, green leaf + associates, the movie’s public relations department says they are still anticipating a showing in Winnipeg at this time but won’t know until early next week.

Roy Fabros commented:

#ProudToBeFilipinoAshamedOfDuterte

President Quezon then was saving Jews. However today, Duterte is killing his own people in a generally class drug war against poor Filipinos. (

1) Hypocritically, because Duterte himself is a drug addict. #DuterteIsFentanylQueen. The poor Filipino uses the poor kind ,ie shabu while he uses the rich kind, ie Fentanyl.

(2) Erroneously, because his belief that drug addicts are hopeless is simply wrong! Recently he claimed that even if they are rehabilitated, they will only backslide and return to drug use. He was justifying that they should be killed.

YSh Cabana:

What’s not covered in the film: that Quezon was an authoritarian in the similar mold of Marcos and Duterte. Quezon may be a hero for refugee Jews but this rescue was done through a “selective basis” that accept only “those who would be of advantage to the Commonwealth.” Moreover, “the areas that may be allotted to the proposed settlement for political refugees wall be insignificant compared with the vast tracts of vacant lands that now exist.” (See President Quezon statement on Jewish Settlement in Mindanao, February 15, 1939) Remember the tiered immigration system of Canada or even Trump wall? Quezon was ahead of the fascist game.

Gym Pangilinan Nice points YSh Cabana. I’ve been doing research on the offer By Quezon to put it in its transnational and yet imperially indicates context.

 Since I’ve been revising a chapter after doing a bunch of archival research in the US and Philippines, I’d say with some slight reservations (as to the Quezon cf Trump wall intimation) that Ysh on the Quezonian “authoritarian tendencies” observation is correct. Quezon’s power and style of influence and rule pretty much shaped the very possibilities for Marcos and Duterte through the constitutional and political systems centered around respectively the executive branch and constitutional ordering that he heavily influenced. For a good refresher, I’d suggest reading McCoy’s 1989 essay “Quezon’s Commonwealth” and McCoys comparative essay from 2017 tracing the filiations and political resemblances in populist rhetoric and popular manipulation of mass support by quezon, Marcos and Duterte successively.

 Gym Pangilinan The comparison to Canada’s tiered immigration system may be a bit more aligned w Quezon’s ideas of conditional hospitality afforded to Jewish refugees as welcomed settlers. One must historically bear in mind the regnant concept for settling Jews in Mindanao came from influential geographies of racial climatology and population “colonization” along the “pioneer fringe” [see Bowman (1935); Neil Smith’s chapter on refugee settlement in “American Empire”(2003)]Far beyond the Feb 1939 statement, his policy should be read in light of international refugee rejection and the specific geographic discourses shaping the very means of refugee settlement planned and proposed by Quezon, the US high commissioner and Jewish diasporic advocates based in Manila.

The release of the  movie comes on the heels of today’s 75th anniversary in Jerusalem marking the Holocaust and the liberation of Auschwitz and drawing attention to a rising anti-Semitism in the world.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/world-leaders-commemorate-the-holocaust-in-jerusalem-11579774843