El Presidente,
The movie was part of the MMMF and landed second.
It’s somehow a great movie but it was lacking a lot of things. It works on a plan whether on what Emilio Aguinaldo did and what he did to become the first President of country. The attempts of the movie was epic, it’s like you didn’t knew that was coming and anything. There are movies that are related to this like ‘Asiong Salonga’ but in El Presidente it’s more excited than Asiong. El Presidente is a movie that will reflect to kids of this generation because, I don’t know how many kids are interested about the First Philippine Republic, but this movie will bring them to being from ‘ngur-ngur’ to being a bit interested about the Philippine Government. I believe in this movie, it depends on which side you’ll go with if it is Aguinaldo or the other one.

It’s at this lack that I guess I can make a jab at Jeorge Estregan’s portrayal of Aguinaldo. I understand his acting limitations, and, he couldn’t register that much facial expressions. Aguinaldo here is a wooden character, idealized as the best leader. There’s more time spent dressing him up in different costumes, and there are so many “photo-op” moments, where at times the movie actually goes into stills, rather than any time spent exploring his character, seeing what makes him tick.

First off, the film is loose with its history. It draws mostly from Aguinaldo’s memoir, but that is only one perspective, and an obviously biased one at that. (This might be a chance too to consider how memoirs, autobiographies and the like might influence the rewriting of our history and national memory, and how a film such as this, with its wide scope and its ability to reach such a large readership would also influence national memory.) Sure, every historical work is an undertaking that is inevitably colored with bias. I just feel like it would have been a deeper