In high school English literature class, our teacher always talked about storytelling and centering it on a significant human experience. For years, those of us who became writers would, in one way or another, wrestle with the meaning of “significant.” Was a good story something that everyone had gone through and knew well, or did a good story have to be unique, so that our job as writers was to unearth the nuances of every life we were tasked to document? A few weeks ago, I watched an offline screening of “Edjop,” thanks to an invitation by my fellow Inquirer columnist Eleanor Pinugu.
An offline screening is meant to screen a near-complete film: missing scenes are marked by cards to help the audience imagine what the footage will show, and some technical aspects are still tentative pending changes post-production. In the case of “Edjop,” the screening was for the producers to start tapping the private sector for funding. The film is over budget, and it needs a final push for it to be suitable for wide release.
The movie does feel incomplete; but the story is there, begging to be told, wanting a few more breaths to see it to completion. “Edjop” tells the true story of Edgar Jopson, activist and martial law victim, who began as a privileged young man raised in a well-to-do family before he became Public Enemy No. 1 of the Marcos regime.
Jopson was educated at the Ateneo from elementary all the way through to college, had a family who listened to his questions a.