Xixi Maturan's THIRD WORLD LIVING

Frankly , I haven't heard of her before the story conference of Howard Yambao's BEST. PARTEE. EVER, entry to last year's QC INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL starring JC De Vera.  JC played a straight-acting gay man caught in nasty broil of Ecstasy addiction and trade.  The film was shot almost in its entirety in the confines of provincial jail where I played a hot headed old fag jailbird. At the conference, as we were introduced, she caught my attention.  Well-made up and in a cocktail dress she amiably smiled at everyone , her name: CATALEYA SURIO.  As we were given a rundown of role assignments, I realized that she was playing a transwoman in for some crime and detained in the male cell.  This was because in the Philippines, a sexually re-assigned is still recognized with what is on one's birth certificate.  Ah, alright. "As far as I remember, I was ALWAYS a girl", Cataleya nonchalantly declares in our online interview.  Orphaned at a very young ...

Poverty. Its prevalence. It , connoted to be the main word to reckon with when the label THIRD WORLD is stuck upon a country's forehead.  It , without having to bat an eyelash flood our thoughts with the dire lack of material needs to feed the best of races and fly high into a plane where abundance lurks.  But on a hundredth thought, Poverty may simply be a manifestation of IGNORANCE.  A blatant syndrome that of which several cranial functions are left unattended to perhaps augment other mortal values of those who call the shots.  If we look around and identify the essence of ignorance, we may simply be amazed with how seemingly happy they are not to know a lot things to propel progress through communal struggle.  We all are ignorant at some point of our lives, but somehow experience may just play roles never imagined to exist. Asia is one continent where third worlds abound.  But then, there is only history to blame.  Colonizers  simply did ...