Department of Foreign Affairs to Screen “PULE: Utak ng Rebolusyon” on July 26

Today, July 23 is Apolinario Mabini’s 152nd Birth Anniversay, the end of the week-long celebration of the National Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation Week. However, as a post celebration of the NDPR Week, and as a tribute to Mabini, PULE: Utak ng Rebolusyon is scheduled to be shown on Tuesday, July 26, 2 p.m. at the Department of Foreign Affairs Main Building located in Roxas Blvd., Pasay City. Mabini afterall, was DFA’s First Secretary of Foreign Affairs [1899].

PULE: Utak ng Rebolusyon is the Filipino-narrated version of The Sublime Paralytic, the English narrated version which showed yesterday at the Launching of the 29th Apolinario Mabini Awards in Quezon City. They are both about Mabini’s life; his struggles as a working student, until he got involved in underground activities while yet a student of Law. As a Mason and a reformist, he was considered as a threat and subversive by the Spaniards. The cruelty of the Spaniards later turned him into a revolutionary. The educational documentary touches on the “intervention” of the United States in Philippine affairs which Mabini strongly opposed, the reason why he was deported to Guam in 1901.

Though I manipulated — [the advantage of being a film editor!!!] — transposed and changed juxtaposition of shots and segments used in The Sublime Paralytic, Pule’s thrust is more towards his role as the Brains of the Revolution being the Chief Adviser [1898] of the President of the First Philippine Republic Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, and later the First Secretary of Foreign Affairs. This version is also longer, being nearly an hour long. Except for the 1899 document opposing his appointment as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court due to his physical disability, matters about the causes of his disability, and a clause on the UNCRPD are excluded in Pule. Instead, more on Mabini’s cautiousness, doubt and foresight on the American interests in the Philippines at the turn of the century were added.

Described as stubborn, the Americans considered Mabini as the “Insurrection’s Brains.”[The Wichita Daily Eagle, Kansas, December 14, 1899]. Unfortunately, the fight for absolute Philippine sovereignty which Mabini dreamt of, and fought for seems to this day elusive. Big powerful countries continue to fight with the Philippines being sandwiched in between — whereas before it was Spain versus the U.S., now it still is the U.S. backed by the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement [EDCA] that makes the U.S. presence in the country official, as tension brews in the Pacific with China’s nine-dash-line territorial claim over parts of the Philippine economic zone, and most of the South China Seas.

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