Lamberto V.

Avellana
Filipino Film Director
Lamberto Vera Avellana (February 12, 1915 – April
25, 1991) was a prominent Filipino film and stage
director. Despite considerable budgetary limitations
that hampered the post-war Filipino film industry,
Avellana's films such as Anak Dalita and Badjao
attained international acclaim. In 1976, Avellana was
named by President Ferdinand Marcos as the very
first National Artist of the Philippines for Film. While
Avellana remains an important figure in Filipino
cinema, his reputation as a film director has since
been eclipsed by the next wave of Filipino film
directors who emerged in the 1970s, such as Lino
Brocka and Ishmael Bernal.

Life

Born in Bontoc, Mountain Province, Avellana was educated at the Ateneo de Manila AB '37, where he
developed what turned out to be a lifelong interest in the theater. He taught at the Ateneo after
graduation and married his teen-age sweetheart Daisy Hontiveros, an actress who eventually also
became a National Artist in 1999.

Film career

Avellana made his film debut with Sakay in 1939, a biopic on the early 20th century Filipino
revolutionary Macario Sakay. The film was an immediate sensation, particularly distinguished for its
realism which was a typical of Filipino cinema at the time. The treatment is the subject of some
controversy today. Avellana's Sakay toed the line with the American-fostered perception of Sakay as a
mere bandit, different from the current-day appreciation of Sakay as a fighter for Filipino independence.
Raymond Red's 1993 film, Sakay hews closer to this modern view of Sakay.

Leopoldo Salcedo, who played Sakay in the 1939 Avellana version, portrayed Sakay's father in the 1993
version in his final film role.

Avellana directed more than 70 films in a career that spanned six decades. Anak Dalita (1956) and
Badjao (1957) perhaps stand as the most prominent works from his oeuvre. Anak Dalita, which was
named Best Film at the 1956 Asia-Pacific Film Festival, was a realistic portrayal of poverty-stricken
Filipinos coping with the aftermath of World War II. Badjao was a love-story among the sea-dwelling
Badjaos, an indigenous Filipino people hailing from Mindanao. Rolf Bayer was the screenwriter for both
films.
Written Report
Contemporary Philippine Arts from the Region

Clarence Dave T. Tolentino

Name of student

Grade 12 – St. Elizabeth

Grade and Section