Why do you want to be part of the HASIK Advocacy Filmmaking Program? 

I want to be part of HASIK Advocacy Filmmaking program with the main objective of honing my skills and talents in filmmaking in relation to my advocacy. This kind of program will help me as a filmmaker to use the art of cinema as an effective and powerful medium to deliver my ideas, beliefs, and stand in specific social issues and current events to a wide number of active viewers. Films, more than an entertainment, can change one’s views and can be a leader towards community development and nation building. I also consider the fact that I will gain truthful information and right knowledge that can contribute to my social responsibility, as a Filipino, and as a human being.

During my time as student, I had already realized my passions in life and I found it in the field of Mass Communications. I tried to be a young journalist, reporter, writer, theater actor, and film director when I was just a student then. But most of all, I fell in love with one of its specialization- the art of filmmaking. Since then, I am always amazed every time when anyone in the audience cries, laughs, and even frightens because of what he had just watched inside the movie house. I just love seeing people got affected by the story told to them through the moving pictures on the silver screen.

But more than that, I have become aware that this kind of interest is never just mere interest. This should be my life. More than a profession, this must be my passion. A vocation. A kind of calling.

I am a filmmaker who serves through visual arts.

This is a kind of service. I want to use the arts of filmmaking in my advocacy of promoting positive social transformation. Through the stories that I want to tell them, I will not just entertain them but more than that, I want to inspire my audience. I want to move them to react positively on what they have discovered upon watching my piece. This is a kind of service that I want to give other people- to be an inspiration, more than an entertainment.

This must be the reason why I decided to find an institution that will walk with me in my chosen path, an institution that will speak my language. I choose HASIK to be my partner in this kind of advocacy.

What is your advocacy? Why do you feel strongly about this advocacy?

I have different advocacies in life:

First, my advocacy is for the welfare of the CHILDREN AND THE YOUTH in relation to their rights, education, and leadership values. I feel so much passion with this advocacy based on the core belief that the future of the children and the youth reflects the future of the world. If we are aspiring to live in a better country, let’s think first on how would we improve the situations of young individuals.

Second, my advocacy is for FREEDOM OF THOUGHT, EXPRESSION AND INFORMATION. As a former young journalist and as a current artist-filmmaker, I know the significance of such democratic freedom in line of our jobs and the responsibility to feed the most truthful information to society expressed in the sincerest way we can.

Third, my advocacy is to fight against EXTRA JUDICIAL KILLINGS, TORTURE, AND ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES. The relentless killings and attacks against activists, human rights defenders, and journalists in the Philippines have revealed a completely incompetent response by the government to prevent further deaths and to remedy this worsening situation. This must be stopped by knocking on the doors of the authorities and to the citizens of this country.