Woman in Gold (2015)

-
World War II happened in the 1940s. After the war ended, reparations began to be made. The last "hostages" of WWII, the artworks, have started slowly going back to their rightful owners. The movie Woman in Gold focuses on the efforts of Austrian Maria Altmann in retrieving the Klimt paintings, including one of her aunt Adele wearing a gold dress and a diamond choker. 
I have to do what I can to keep these memories alive because people forget, especially the young. 
– Maria Altmann (Woman in Gold, 2015)

She enlisted the help of Randy Schoenberg, a lawyer who has Austrian ancestry (being the grandson of Arnold Schoenberg and Eric Zeisl, composers who spent time at the Altmann home, according to Maria). He had to quit his job and support his wife and two kids while pursuing the Altmann art recovery case against the Austrian government. He was able to bring the case all the way to the US Supreme Court and then to the Austrian arbitration panel. This panel ruled in favour of Schoenberg, allowing the paintings to be returned to Maria. She took up Ronald Lauder's offer and had the Woman in Gold exhibited permanently in his Neue Galerie in New York. Randy then started his own law firm, specialising in art restitution.

I liked the movie because it showed that people who were wronged have a chance to get back what is rightfully theirs. What I wonder, though, is if people other than the Jews had the same opportunity. The Jews' sufferings during the Holocaust is well-documented and there are a number of memorials to honour their dead. Reparations and restitutions are under way. But what about the people in Africa and in Asia? I think that stories from these continents should be popularised too; otherwise, the future generations would only know one side of the story of recovery, the European theatre of war. In that case, it's not a matter of forgetting, as Maria Altmann asserted. It will be a matter of ignorance because the older generation did not tell the story to the younger.

Popular posts from this blog

Skyflakes

-
One of the more famous Philippine exports is Skyflakes , a wheat-based, salty cracker. It is one of my emergency food items: I typically have some stocked at home and in my handbag in case I become hungry (like in traffic jams). When there's no electricity and it's impractical to cook rice (because the leftover would spoil), I'd open a pack of Skyflakes and generously coat each cracker with Cheez Whiz... if I had a bottle of it within reach. Anyway, each time I spent more than two weeks outside the Philippines, I'd be elated to see boxes of Skyflakes inside Asian stores (particularly when in I was Australia and in the USA). Back then, I took it as a sign of homesickness. When I moved to California, I didn't miss Skyflakes because Mommy made sure that there's a steady supply in the house. Skyflakes is embedded in Filipino gastronomy as a snack, a panawid-gutom , that anyone who reacts positively upon seeing Skyflakes outside the Philippines must have spe
Read more

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

-
I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in Bagu
Read more

Surat Mangyan

-
Image
In high school, part of the Filipino curriculum was learning about one of the country's ancient native scripts called Baybayin . I learned back then that this script was eventually abandoned because the Spanish, and eventually the Americans, encouraged the use of the Latin script for written communications. But that's in the lowlands; the rules were different up in the mountains. In the lush mountains of Mindoro, groups of indigenous people called Mangyans  live largely in isolation away from the Christianised Filipinos. This isolation has led to the continuous development of the Mangyans' old script, Surat Mangyan . As I walked inside the Ayala Museum , I saw this bamboo tube (I'm not sure if it's an instrument) with Mangyan script written all over it. I suppose that this was equivalent to a book or a song. But I haven't figured out what's written yet, despite the translation guide provided. What I can do, however, is write my name in Ma
Read more