Third World Hero

Third World Hero (2000)

Bayaning 3rd World

Do you admire Rizal or you do not care?

Two filmmakers try to create a film venturing on the life of Jose Rizal. Before they do that, they try to investigate on the heroism of the Philippine national hero. Of particular focus is his supposed retraction of his views against the Roman Catholic Church during the Spanish regime in the Philippines which he expressed primarily through his two novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. The investigation was done mainly by "interviewing" key individuals in the life of Rizal such as his mother Teodora Alonso, his siblings Paciano, Trinidad, and Narcisa, his love interest and supposed wife Josephine Bracken, and the Jesuit priest who supposedly witnessed Rizal's retraction, Fr. Balaguer. Eventually, the two filmmakers would end up "interviewing" Rizal himself to get to the bottom of the issue.

Date of release
2000-02-16
TMDB
7.9 / 10 (7)
Runtime
1h 33m
Genres
Drama, History
Director
Mike de Leon

Casting

Interesting facts

Bayaning 3rd World is a 2000 Philippine mockumentary film co-produced and directed by Mike de Leon from a screenplay he co-wrote with Clodualdo del Mundo Jr. Shot in black-and-white, the film stars Ricky Davao and Cris Villanueva as two filmmakers discussing how to go about creating a film on José Rizal.

Production

In 1996, Mike de Leon and frequent collaborator Clodualdo del Mundo Jr. were in talks with GMA Pictures, then called Cinemax, to work on a film on the life of José Rizal, to be played by Aga Muhlach. Both the director and star left the project during the pre-production stage. GMA Pictures eventually got director Marilou Diaz-Abaya to make the 1998 biopic José Rizal starring Cesar Montano.

The film was shot at the ancestral home of de Leon in San Miguel, Bulacan, where in 1976 he shot his directorial debut Itim. Nonoy Marcelo, who directed the first animated film Tadhana, participated as an animator in Noli and Fili parts of the film.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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