THE GUERRILLA IS A POET (Sari and Kiri Dalena, 2013)
After seeing THE GUERRILLA IS A POET, the new film by sisters Sari and Kiri Dalena, whatever your stand may be on communism, what's certain is that Jose Maria Sison, or JoMa Sison, or Amado Guerrero (his war name) is indeed an ordinary man who dreams, who loves, and who fights, but whose extraordinary achievements imparted a constant reminder to Ferdinand Marcos during Martial Law that his tyranny shall not go unchallenged. At almost two and a half hours, GUERRILLA constantly makes for an uneasy watch; its subject overtly serious and heavy. From the time of JoMa's childhood up to his and his wife, Julieta De Lima's exile in The Netherlands, the film broadens the history, making a parallel between JoMa the revolutionary and JoMa the poet- which actually are one and the same, because traces of rage are present in JoMa's literature. The use of docudrama may be distracting at times, appearing propagandist even, yet there are moments of candidness during the i...