THERE is no doubt that Martin del Rosario is on a roll.
His name alone adds prestige to the first-ever Cine Silip Film Festival, organized by the VMX division of the Viva Entertainment empire, with the esteemed Ronald Arguelles as festival director. The festival runs from October 22 to 28, in select cinemas under the Ayala Malls group.
According to Arguelles, these seven entries made the cut from among more than a hundred script submissions: Dreamboi, Haplos sa Hangin, Salikmata, And Lihim ni Maria Makinang, Babae sa Butas, Pagdaong, and Maria Azama: Best Porn Star.
Del Rosario is the lead character in the movie Haplos sa Hangin. Highly touted young filmmaker Sonny Calvento is credited as the screenwriter while Mikko Baldoza debuts as the director. Both Calvento and Baldoza belong to the creative geniuses that form Southern Lantern Studios, a small production outfit that has produced outstanding film outputs in recent years.
It’s Del Rosario’s first outing for a Vivamax movie and he does not have qualms at all, knowing that he is working with a group that has award-winning films that represented the country in many festivals overseas.
‘I really fought for this movie with my management team at Sparkle, because when I received the script, I did not allow anything to disrupt me until I finished reading it. I was more than interested, perhaps almost obsessed with the material and my character, so I made sure that I will be the actor to do it. Luckily, everything went smoothly, and we finished the film without glitch, and the festival organizers decided that it deserved to be one of the entries,’ Del Rosario shared.
I first met Del Rosario in 2010 during the filming of Dagim, a horror drama entry for the Cinema One Originals Independent Film Festival, incidentally also chaired by Arguelles. Del Rosario bagged the Breakthrough Actor of the Year Award the following year and people started to take notice of his promise as an actor to watch out for.
We then reconnected when he did the TV series Pintada for ABS-CBN in 2012, and I’ve followed his colorful career since then.
I had a quick chat with Del Rosario recently during the launch of Cine Silip and we were more than happy to see each other again.
‘This is perhaps the most daring I’ve ever done for the big screen,’ referring to the requirements of his his role in Haplos sa Hangin, ‘and I simply trusted my director and the whole team and went along with their vision. I believe that film work is and should always be collaborative between everyone involved for the output to come out well and polished.’
Del Rosario’s work schedule is currently full, as he returns to the stage to reprise his role as a military man whose life gets entangled with a couple in hiding with the new run of the much talked-about theater adaptation of Jun Lana’s movie Anino sa Likod ng Buwan.
When the show had its first run earlier this year, Del Rosario and his coactors Ross Pesigan and Elora Españo all got very good reviews from high-nosed theater critics. For the shows that will run until November 9 at the PETA Theater in Quezon City, Del Rosario will be joined by Edward Benosa, Denise Esteban and Vincent Pajara.
Once he is on stage, Del Rosario says that he is transported to a different universe. ‘At the back of my mind, I am aware that there is a live audience, but in the realms of my consciousness I just swing into the world of my character, and I just allow myself to feel his every emotion, every movement, and every heartbeat. I guess, it’s good in a way because I become my character and that’s who the audience will see.’
For both his roles in the festival film and the re-run of the theater production, Del Rosario will definitely bare not only his skin but also his soul, and he is perfectly okay with it.
‘I am an actor, and I give life to many different characters. I have learned, through years of experience and the continuous guidance of some very wonderful and intelligent directors, how it is to shed off all inhibitions when I perform, whether in front of cameras or with a live audience,’ he said.
Martin del Rosario has won several acting awards in the past, and he deserves to be on top because he is bold, always brave and consistently brilliant.