Maria Clara Awards

The first formal Filipino answer to the Oscars was formed by Manila Times Publishing, Co. To make a statuette which would be given out to the best of the best, National Artist Guillermo Tolentino was asked to sculpt the bronze Maria Clara Award, which bore the likeness of Maria Clara, one of the characters in Jose Rizal's Noli Me Tangere.[1]

Due to various reactions about the voting procedures of the Maria Claras (various factions have pointed out that the Maria Claras were voted on mostly by movie columnists), a group of movie writers, Atty. Flavio G. Macaso (who became the first president of FAMAS), future FAMAS president Vic Generoso, future FAMAS winner Mario Mijares Lopez, Paulo Dizon, Amado Yasoma and Eddie Infante established what would become as the second oldest film industry award-giving body in Asia, the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences or FAMAS. With the creation of FAMAS, the Maria Claras folded up.

Maria Clara Award's descendant, the FAMAS Awards, is undergoing a leadership crisis and registration revocation from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The latter did not allow for the FAMAS to hold any of their major functions, which included an awards night. To go around the ruling of the SEC, FAMAS President Jimmy Tiu, with the support of Dr. Alejandro Roces, held the Maria Clara Awards on October 13, 2006 as a temporary replacement for the FAMAS Awards until the issues on leadership and with the SEC can be settled. The Maria Clara Awards held in 2006 was numbered 55th to correspond with the two Maria Clara Awards presentations in 1951 and 1952 and fifty-three FAMAS Awards presentations from 1953-2005.[1]

The 55th Maria Clara Awards, the first Maria Clara Awards in 54 years (and the first defunct awards ever resurrected in Philippine film awards history), was held on October 13, 2006 at the Golden Fortune Restaurant in Manila. A low-key event which was attended by Film Academy of the Philippines Director-General and FAMAS nominee Leo Martinez and National Commission for the Culture and the Arts Executive Director Cecille Guidote-Alvarez, among others, most of the winners were not present during the awards due to short notice (invitations were handed out three days before the awards).[1]