After starring in a mushy rom-com like Star Cinema’s “My Love Will Make You Disappear,” Calbayog City kid Paulo Avelino is featured in a great historical drama “Lakambini Gregoria de Jesus,” directed by two progressive film directors Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil and Jeffrey Jeturian.
Before anything else, let me make it clear that Paulo is a relevant subjectfor this paper not only because he is a popular hot item but more so, he is a true blue Waraynon.
Avelino is the man of Region 8 as an entertainer and more.
His grandfather, the grand old man, Jose Avelino, is a proud Calbayognon even in his absence.
Paulo deserves to be here to be admired by Waraynons even if he wasn’tborn in Samar but in Baguio City.
Time to demolish and debunk regionalism because we are one as Filipinos.
Anyway, let’s go back to Paulo appearing in a timely film project about Gregoria de Jesus, the wife of national hero Andres Bonifacio.
According to Ellen, it’s high time that we Filipinos get to familiarize more with Gregoria, Ka Oryang for short.
Ongkeko-Marfil said drumbeating for Ka Oryang, the Lakambini or the muse of the Katipunan is in order to see and feel more of her as a national heroine.
Paulo indeed can support the popularizing of Ka Oryang not only to the masses but to the middle and upper classes of Philippine society as well.
Because the role of Avelino as General Gregorio del Pilar or Goyo (the same monicker in the eponymous film he titularly led which was produced by TBA Studios some years back) is a pivotal character in the making of Ka Oryang as a person and as a freedom fighter alongside revolutionaries as him in pursuit of the liberation of the Philippines from oppression by colonizers.
Ellen as the producer of the de Jesus biopic is aware that giving Ka Oryang a huge space in the gallery of Filipino heroines will trigger and relate to the middle class or even the elite because after Bonifacio, she became the wife of the noted illustrado Julio Nakpil.
“Lakambini Gregoria de Jesus” has become a docu-drama after conceptualizing it as a documentary film.
At the moment, another progressive filmmaker Arjanmar Rebeta, has joined the project, still with Ellen and Jeffrey, and of course, with the perennial no-nonsense screenwriter of film and theater, Rody Vera.
Instead of showing the film project in May to celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of the lady, its commercial screening is reset in a more auspicious playdate.
But special showings are in place to pay tribute to Ka Oryang and the Filipino women. Paulo is indeed lucky to have clinched a part in the monumental filmbio because he can inspire the Filipino women in their quest for independence and equality crystallized in his role playing Goyo and his impact on gender liberation.
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