Finally, the people of the Philippines will get to see the documentary film about the widow of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, reports reuters. Last month Imelda Marcos won a court order temporarily stopping the screening of Imelda. But in a statement yesterday, Marcos said that “in the spirit of freedom and everyone’s right to their respective perception, I will drop my case provided the word ‘documentary’ will be removed from the title of the film.” It was a case of “you can’t fire me, I quit” in that the court’s ruling to lift the ban was issued before Marcos released her magnanimous, egalitarian statement. The film’s director, Ramona Diaz, had already agreed to remove the word “documentary” from the title before the judge’s ruling.

The 100-minute film, “Imelda”, looks at the colourful life of the former beauty queen, now 75, and her two decades at her husband’s side until he was toppled by huge protests in 1986. Imelda’s extravagant lifestyle and an enormous shoe collection amassed during her husband’s iron-fisted rule helped to make her probably the world’s most famous Filipina.

Diaz, a niece of a former official in the state agency recovering the estimated $5 billion to $10 billion plundered by the Marcoses, had expressed hope that young Filipinos would be able to watch the documentary and make up their own minds.