‘Imelda’ director stands by film

The woman who made a documentary about Imelda Marcos said Wednesday she was “in disbelief” that the flamboyant former first lady of the Philippines won a court order temporarily halting the movie’s Manila premiere by claiming it mocked her.

Despite Marcos’ lawsuit, which is still pending in a Manila court, Ramona Diaz said she stands by “Imelda,” a portrait of the woman who dazzled the world with her beautification projects and enormous shoe collection as the country languished in poverty under her husband’s dictatorship.

Marcos, 75, says she approved the film only as a school project for Diaz’s master’s thesis at Stanford University, not as a commercial movie. She also said it was full of “malice, inaccuracies and innuendoes.”

“I’m in disbelief,” Diaz said in Manila, where she is visiting from her home in the Baltimore area. “I understand that she thought it was a thesis film, but it was clear from the beginning that it was going to be a film about her life made for public consumption. And even if it were a thesis film, it would be for public consumption too.”