MANILA, Philippines – Epy Quizon is happy about the submission of their film “Heneral Luna” at the Oscars for the Best Foreign Language film category.
Some members of the press interviewed Epy during the block screening sponsored by Atty. Antonio Enrile Inton Jr. on Saturday to advocate producing more films similar to “Heneral Luna.”
Although awards and nominations are “icing on the cake” for their film, Epy has other things in mind that he wants the younger viewers of their film to remember.
The first point he mentioned is for them to understand why his character Apolinario Mabini was seated all throughout the film.
“The reason why Mabini has been seated the whole time is because Mabini has polio,” he explained. He pointed this out after a student commented about their film, asking why his character was always seated.
“Number two, the heroes are not only the ones in the roles we’re portraying. The real heroes are the people who kept the movie in the theaters,” he said.
When the film first came out in the cinemas, it was in 99 cinemas nationwide. After a week, it went down to 39 theaters, which somehow disheartened them. Yet to their surprise, the film reached its second week and being screened to 105 cinemas nationwide.
“Number three, I salute the people like Fernando Ortigas who would invest on something, gambling on something, gambled his money to something he doesn’t know if he’ll get back or not,” he said, referring to the film’s producer.
He mentioned that as of September 24, they still haven’t got back the money invested for the film. One reason he sees was the fifty percent discount for students, who he believes their producer doesn’t mind that much.
“He believes in the film so much, his goal is to produce a quality film,” he explained.
“The fourth is listen to the in between lines in the movie because it means so much more,” he said, explaining that the lines they used have deeper meaning than what it seem.
Lastly, “the millennials should know our history,” he said, recalling the comments made by some students regarding some of the characters.
“Get familiar with it and get your history books again. The only way you could be proud [to be a Filipino] is by knowing how you became Filipinos,” he concluded.