Ten Filipinos were named National Artists this month, the largest single batch since the honor began in 1972. Vilma Santos, once again left off the list, says she has made her peace with it.

Vilma Santos got the question she knew was coming. At the talkback after the September 20 premiere of the restored Sister Stella L. at the Manila Metropolitan Theater, the Star for All Seasons was asked about the latest list of National Artists, which came out earlier this month without her name on it. Her answer sounded like one she had given many times before: “If it’s meant to be, it is meant to be. If it is for you, it is for you. Kung hindi ka nasasali, it is fine with me.”

The setting gave the moment extra weight. The Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) screened the 4K restoration of Mike de Leon’s 1984 film on the eve of the fifty-fourth anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law. In it, Santos plays a nun whose involvement with striking workers draws her into the politics of the Marcos Sr. years.

The List She Wasn’t On

Proclamation No. 1414, dated September 1 and released on September 9, named ten new members of the Order of National Artists of the Philippines, the country’s highest honor for Filipinos who have shaped its arts and culture. The picks come from the joint recommendation of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), which administers the award. No batch has been this large since the order was created in 1972, when painter Fernando Amorsolo became the first National Artist. The previous record was nine, set in 1997, and this year’s class takes the roster from 81 to 91.

The ten, four of them honored posthumously:

• Gabriel “Gabby” Formoso, Architecture and Allied Arts (posthumous), the tropical modernist whose buildings include the main complex of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the country’s central bank, and The Peninsula Manila
• Rafael “Nonoy” Froilan, Dance, honored for a decades-long career in ballet and choreography
• Maria Beatriz “Patis” Tesoro, Design, whose work advanced the terno, the barong Tagalog and piña weaving
• Armando “Bing” Lao, Film and Broadcast Arts (posthumous), screenwriter and founder of the Found Story approach to scriptwriting
• Gregorio Brillantes, Literature (posthumous), fictionist
• Nicanor Tiongson, Literature, scholar and critic who spent his career bringing overlooked Filipino cultural traditions into view, and co-writer of Tanghalang Pilipino’s Gregoria Lakambini musical
• Alfredo Buenaventura, Music, composer of operas, symphonies, concertos, ballets and choral works
• Teodoro Hilado, Theater (posthumous), regarded as the father of lighting design in Philippine theater
• Imelda Cajipe-Endaya, Visual Arts
• Nunelucio Alvarado, Visual Arts, the social-realist painter from Negros

Two Firsts, Both Easy to Miss

Cajipe-Endaya is the first woman ever proclaimed National Artist for Visual Arts. Hilado, who died in 2015, is the first honoree recognized primarily for theater lighting; earlier theater picks were actors, directors, playwrights and production designer Salvador Bernal. As the CCP’s technical director from 1969 to 1973, then theater director of the Folk Arts Theater until 1986, Hilado introduced systems and professional standards that shaped technical theater in the country, and he trained generations of lighting designers. He was born in Silay City, Negros Occidental, which gives the province two honorees this year. Alvarado is from Sagay, a few towns north.

The Screenwriter Who Wrote for Vilma

For moviegoers, Lao is the most familiar name on the list. He died in June 2024 at 75. He wrote Serbis (2008) and Kinatay (2009) for Brillante Mendoza, both of which competed at the Cannes Film Festival, along with Jeffrey Jeturian’s Kubrador and Chito Roño’s Itanong Mo sa Buwan. He won Gawad Urian screenplay awards for films including Takaw Tukso, Pila Balde and La Vida Rosa. His Found Story workshops taught filmmakers to build scripts out of research and immersion in real communities.

He was also the name Santos went out of her way to mention. At the talkback she congratulated the new honorees and singled out Lao, who had written for her: “Si Bing Lao, naging scriptwriter ko rin.”

The Names Still Waiting

Santos also had a sharper point to make. She described this year’s selection as unusually noisy and said some of the online argument around it had gone “below the belt,” which she told supporters to leave alone. At 72, with 63 years in the industry and a current post as governor of Batangas, she said her priorities now are her family, the health of the people she loves, and her own peace.

She is far from the only major figure still outside the order. Dolphy, the Comedy King, still has no title more than a decade after his death, a gap ElysPlanet returned to when Lea Salonga’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star reopened the question. Santos’s longtime rival, Nora Aunor, was named National Artist for Film and Broadcast Arts in 2022, eight years after then-President Benigno Aquino III dropped her from an earlier list.

The conferment ceremony, where the ten will receive their medallions in person or through their families, has not yet been scheduled.