GOVERNMENT ISSUE

Now that People Power has dethroned the Marcos regime, a 10-year-old movie made by the sister of assassinated opposition leader Ninoy Aquino has taken on new life.

Lupita Aquino-Kashiwahara’s “Minsa’y Isang Gamu-Gamo” (“Once a Moth”) opened an Asian film festival in San Francisco last week, and she’s been fielding other requests for screenings.

Her love story dramatizes the love/hate relationship between Filipinos and the U.S. Clark Air Force Base on the main island. It’s particularly topical because of speculation about whether the new government of Corizon Aquino will renew the U.S. lease on the base when it expires in 1991.

Aquino-Kashiwahara, a producer at San Francisco’s KGO-TV, said she made the film to protest the second-class treatment of Filipinos at the base--not flat-out anti-U.S. sentiment: “If there were a referendum (in the Philippines) today, I think the bases would stay.”