Alejandro Reyes Roces: Chairman of The Movie and Television Review and Classification Board

CHAIRMAN OF THE MOVIE AND TELEVISION REVIEW AND CLASSIFICATION BOARD 

Alejandro Reyes Roces

(13 July 1924 – 23 May 2011) was a Filipino author, essayist, dramatist and a National Artist of the Philippines for literature. He served as  Secretary of Education from 1962 to 1965, during the term of Philippine President Diosdado Macapagal. Noted for his short stories, the Manila-born Roces was married to Irene Yorston Viola (granddaughter of Maximo Viola), with whom he had a daughter, Elizabeth Roces Pedrosa. He attended elementary and high school at the Ateneo de Manila University, before moving to the University of Arizona and then Arizona State University for his tertiary education. He graduated with a B.A. in Fine Arts and, not long after, attained his M.A. from the Far Eastern University back in the Philippines. He has since received honorary doctorates from Toyo University, Baguio's St. Louis University, Polytechnic University of the Philippines, and the Ateneo de Manila University. Roces was a captain in the Marking's Guerilla during World War II  and a columnist in Philippine dailies such as the Manila Chronicle and the Manila Times. He was previously President of the Manila Bulletin and of the CAP College Foundation.

In 2001, Roces was appointed as Chairman of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB). Roces also became a member of the Board of Trustees of GSIS (Government Service Insurance System) and maintained a column in the Philippine Star called Roses and Thorns.

In 1950 he won second prize in competition with American writers in nation-wide short story contest sponsored by the writer’s digest. He was the first Filipino writer break into the pacific spectator. according to him “You cannot be a great writer, first, you have to be a good person”. Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo appointed Alejandro Roces to head the MTRCB or the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board.

As chairman of the organization, he took a more conservative stance on censorship and classification. He vowed to "raise the standard of films produced in the country."    

Secretary Roces served as the secretary of Education during the presidential term of Diosdado Macapagal, the father of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. 

Roces became a writer by accident. While an undergraduate at Arizona he kept telling stories to his American roommate, who happened to be a writer, in the hope that the latter might use the, as material for his stories, but the American told him one day to write them up himself. Roces did his first attempt, We Filipinos Are Mild Drinkers, won a literary award from University of Arizona. Since then he has won five other awards from his alma mater. His stories have been published in several American magazines: The Arizona Quarterly, Southwest Review, New Mexico Quarterly and Pacific Spectator, being the first Filipino writer to break into the pages of the last mentioned magazine. In a nation-wide short story contest sponsored by the Writer’s Digest in 1950.