It’s NA (Nora Aunor) for NA (National Artist), and NA (Not Anybody)!
We have always been fascinated with Inquirer’s editorials. It’s not only political, sometimes it’s spiritual (Bible-thumping), academic (had UST twice!), and show biz-oriented (the National Artist standard), which we’d like to comment on.
Talking of artistic merits, to cite a “few” of the many with which Nora Aunor distinguished herself:
• 200+ awards and citations—5 International Film Festival Best Actress, 11 Famas, 8 Urian, 16 Star, 5 Film Academy of the Philippines, 3 Catholic Mass Media Awards, 10 MMFF, 4 Young Critics Circle, 1 Manila Film Festival;
• the first Filipina to win an International Best Actress award, the Princess Pataten Statue at the Cairo International Film Festival (“Flor Contemplacion Story,” 1995);
• one of Asia’s top 10 Best Actresses of the Decade, Green Planet Movie Awards, Hollywood (2010);
• 13 Lifetime Achievement awards from the movie, TV and music industry;
• a TOWNS (Ten Outstanding Women in Nations Service) awardee (1983);
• her movie “Himala,” won the CNN Best Asia Pacific Film of All Time (2008);
• self-produced the film “Bona,” one of the Best 100 Films in the World by the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles (1997);
• the only Filipino to be featured by HBO in a documentary film about the lives and achievements of the world’s greatest actresses (1997);
• “Superstar” was the longest running TV show with 22-uninterrupted-year broadcast;
• a filmography of 177 films and a discography of 53 albums and 238 singles;
• films with moral and social values that focus on characters who rise from adversity to the ultimate victory of her class, upgrading the taste of moviegoers, particularly the masses;
• six classic films—“Bona,” “Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos,” “Himala,” “Minsa’y Isang Gamu-gamo,” “Mga Uod at Rosas and Bulaklak Sa City Jail”—chosen by the CCP National Film Archives for digitization and restoration to “ensure the establishment of a film archive in order to conserve and protect film as part the nation’s historical, cultural and artistic heritage”;
• mass-based appeal and charisma that has broken the traditional dominance of mestizos and mestizas in the Philippine show business and ended the explicit bold films or Bomba era in the 1970s;
• charitable projects and performances for free in concerts and stage presentations for the benefit of charitable organizations here and abroad;
Nora Aunor is the one and only genuine multimedia artist on radio, television, movies, music, and stage play who has risen from her very humble beginnings as a train water vendor to become the grand champion of television’s Darigold Jamboree and Tawag ng Tanghalan singing contests, and today the Philippines’ greatest actress (according to the late National Artists Lino Brocka and Lamberto Avellana) whose body of works are “marked by excellence and social relevance and recognized by national and international awards.”
—PIT M. MALIKSI,
secretary and
AGAPITA A. NERY, president,
Batangas-Laguna Association of Teachers of Culture and the Arts (Balatca), Sto. Tomas, Batangas