This Sunday at 10 p.m. on ABS-CBN Broadcasting?s Channel 2, the Foundation for Worldwide People Power (FWWPP) presents ?Beyond Conspiracy: 25 Years After the Aquino Assassination.? The film-documentary revisits this point in our history and aims to help the viewer arrive at a more informed perception of this national tragedy.

?Beyond Conspiracy? also reaches out to our youth, many of whom are eager to know more about Benigno ?Ninoy? Aquino Jr., his assassination, what happened afterwards, and who were the likely masterminds.

With the enthusiastic help of Ms Maria Reina Magbanua, a history professor at University of the Philippines, Los Baños, we were able to do just that. Upon learning that the FWWPP had just produced ?Beyond Conspiracy,? she took it upon herself to contact us and we prevailed upon her to arrange for special advance screenings at UP Los Baños most propitiously on Aug. 21.

Professor Magbanua only had one day?s lead-time to set things up. And yet, ?Beyond Conspiracy? was viewed by SRO audiences in two screenings. We at the FWWPP feel that this debunks the notion that our youth are apathetic and have little interest in ?things that happened in the past.? Their initial comments indicate a refreshing thirst for knowledge. In fact, our youthful audience are at this very moment writing out their reaction papers to the documentary.

The FWWPP invites schools, colleges and universities who would like to show ?Beyond Conspiracy? to their own students, on campus, to just get in touch with us through the e-mail address below. We?ll be happy to work something out.

?Beyond Conspiracy? is the fourth documentary produced by the FWWPP that deals with contemporary history. The previous ones are the landmark ?Batas Militar,? followed by ?Lakas Sambayanan? and then by ?Tinig Ng Himagsikan.?

The months of January, February, August and September are really laden with so much historical significance. For many of us who joined the struggle to restore Philippine democracy, these months are known as the ?Season For Remembering.?

The series of protest marches that became known as the First Quarter Storm began in January 1970. Plaza Miranda was bombed and the writ of habeas corpus was suspended on Aug. 21, 1971. On Sept. 21, 1972 President Ferdinand Marcos signed Proclamation 1081 putting the entire country under martial law. Ninoy Aquino, a former senator, was assassinated on Aug. 21, 1983, and on Feb. 25, 1986 The EDSA People Power Revolution ended the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship.

But there is so much more to this than just words on a written page (or an LCD monitor). We of the older generations are obligated to underline the significance of these events in the lives of our youth. We have to help the new generation acquire a sense of legacy.

Quite recently, a group of college students invited me to a symposium they organized in their school. These young men and women were born after the EDSA People Power Revolution, and they were really interested in my memories of college life under martial law.

I told them that we lived pretty much the same as they did today. We had our rock stars and we had parties too. But late night gimmicks were out of the question, and in our school, soldiers from the Metropolitan Command manned the entrances and inspected our bags for so-called ?subversive propaganda.?

What my young audience found particularly appalling though was when I said that we could not sport long hair like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones because soldiers would accost us and cut our locks to New Society standards. ?Could they really do that?? they asked incredulously. You bet, I said. I also told them we had PDAs back then too, but the acronym stood for Presidential Detention Action, and you wouldn?t want one of those with your name on it.

And then, out of nowhere one of the students asked, ?But who really killed Ninoy?? That was when the FWWPP started thinking about ?Beyond Conspiracy.?

Butch Nolasco, who directed the documentary and Ben Tangco, the scriptwriter and head researcher, literally sifted through volumes of court documentation to give ?Beyond Conspiracy? a sense of immediacy, like a story being told for the first time.

?Did somebody really get away with murder??

In the documentary, Ms Tina Monzon Palma, the onscreen presenter said:

?We?ve looked at motive, means and opportunity and have come up with a partial solution to the puzzle. We must now put the last piece in place by probing who had the ability?and the gall?to cover up the dastardly crime in full view of the entire world.?

?The temerity to kill the political opposition?s most charismatic leader in the middle of an international airport in broad daylight?and to telegraph veiled threats of these vile intentions weeks and months before?pushed the limits of Filipino sensibilities ? the plotters must have calculated that, given some time to let off steam, Filipinos would soon file away the Aquino assassination in some dark corner where they store unpleasant memories that can be promptly forgotten.?

Did we really forget? ?Beyond Conspiracy? can help us remember.

Butch Hernandez is the executive director of the Foundation for Worldwide People Power.