Synopsis
IMELDA is a documentary about power — how excessive power, sustained by popular support, is amassed and abused. Universally known by her first name, Imelda is the widow of the late Ferdinand Marcos, exiled president of the Philippines. Opposition to his regime continued to grow and after a controversial vote count in his 1986 run against Corazón Aquino, Marcos was forced by a popular uprising to leave the Philippines. Sharing power with Marcos throughout was his wife Imelda, whose beauty, cosmopolitan bearing, lavish tastes and ruthlessness made her more famous, and perhaps even more powerful in the end, than her husband.
Imelda Marcos tells her own story in exceptionally rare original interviews. Intercut are scenes from her daily life today in the Philippines and archival footage from news stories, home movies, and state-sponsored propaganda films; interviews with bitter opponents and loyalist friends; commentary by social and political historians; and the opulent artifacts that chronicle the years of publicly funded personal aggrandizement.