Moral

A promiscuous junkie who falls in love with an activist. An ambitious but mediocre singer. A lawyer still in love with her gay ex-husband. A housewife whose husband treats her as nothing more than a baby factory. Moral follows the fractious lives of these four desperate women in what has not only become one of the watershed films but perhaps one of the first thoroughly feminist statements of Philippine Cinema’s so called second golden age and one that remains resonant to this day.

Moral is the second film in a “trilogy” directed by Marilou Diaz-Abaya, between Brutal (1981) and Of the Flesh (Karnal, 1983), which established her as the foremost female director in the Philippines. She brought a new vision on the difficult condition of women in Filipino society over the years.
Its restoration was made possible through the use of the 35mm negatives borrowed from the collection of the Film Development Council of the Philippines, which was already in an advanced state of decay. The film has been scanned at 4K and digitally restored at 2K resolution with a total of 2,596 restoration hours by L’Immagine Ritrovata in 2017.

Marilou Diaz-Abaya

Marilou Diaz (1955-2012) married Manolo Abaya, a cinematographer and educator, and became Mrs Diaz-Abaya. She was part of the Philippines’ New Wave of directors. After the fall of the Marcos in 1986, as Corazon Aquino became president, she left cinema for a while, and produced television programs dealing with social and political problems. She went on making films in the 1990s. Marilou Diaz-Abaya, the strongest female talent to emerge in the Philippines’ cinema, died prematurely of a breast cancer in October 2012. Her last film was a short documentary, Reefs of Paradise: a Divine Gallery (2012). 

FILMOGRAPHY 

1980 – Tanikala
1980 – Brutal 
1981 – Macho Gigolo 
1981 – Boystown 
1982 – Moral 
1983 – Of the Flesh 
1986 – Sensual 
1995 – Redeem Her Honor 
1996 – Madonna and Child 
1997 – Miracles 
1998 – José Rizal 
1999 – Reef Hunters 
2001 – Bagong Buwan 
2003 – Then and Now 
2011 – Ikaw ang Pag-ibig