Kaleidoscope World

Exposé of two news photographers covering the People's Revolution in the Philippines.

It is the time of El Niño, a season ruled by superstition and fear. The rain is long in coming, the ground has cracked up dry. The ricestalks are thin and sickly. Villagers go hungry. And a boy dies from a snakebite. The adults splinter. Some pray. Others join a cult to appease earth spirits and wait for the ada, the ricefield spirit goddess of bountiful harvest who dances naked on moonlit nights and signals the need for a virgin’s sacrifice. There are fence sitters, equally pro-church and pro-cult. A landlord’s steward enforces his master’s usury on hapless farmers. A self-righteous priest says rain must first be deserved. Two young women fight for the right to do with their bodies as they please. A bastard boy and a blind girl come of age. Yesterday, they were children.

The title “Kamera Obskura” is a Filipino spelling of the latin “Camera Obscura” which simply means “dark room”. The film’s concept adheres to formalist cinema, where the filmmaker’s thesis is to make a semblance of a vintage film seemingly produced sometime in the late 1920s to early 1930s in the Philippines. The thesis is to conjure up a film from a period that did not really exist in Philippine cinema’s historical cultural heritage as we know it, such as a pseudo-expressionist / experimental Filipino cinema of the silent film era. It is a film within a film. The narrative plays with the idea of a retro-futurist world where a prisoner locked away in a dark chamber for over two decades only sees the reality of the world outside through the small hole in his cell, which projects an image of the city on his wall, the phenomenon of the “camera obscura”.

Every night, Nana Lusing lies on her bed sleepless because she sees a dark figure looming in her room. Who is this shadow? Is this the devil? Her late husband? A manifestation of her anxieties? Or simply a figment of her imagination?

Intoy has had the hots for Doray since they were kids in Kalye Marino, Cavite City, formerly the American Naval Base in Sangley Point. Both marginalized as the long-lasting effect of American abandonment of the said base, Intoy has become Kalye Marino’s best “tahong” caretaker-with-no-angst-about-poverty, while Doray a cheap prostitute-with-no-guilt, tending to her siblings’ needs. Intoy strives to have his own cages of “tahong” so he can have Doray, not for just a night of quickie sex, but forever. But what will he do to when she offers to drop by his hovel-on-stilts to quench his passion, but before it happens Nature has chosen to play a joke on his tahong cage? Will it be goodbye to his tahong business or to his damsel-in-distress and ultimately to Kalye Marino? From Eros S. Atalia’s 2001 Palanca Grand Prize-winning Short Story, Intoy Syokoy ng Kalye Marino is a love tale minus the obligatory romantic sentiments.

Guam, U.S.A. Thursday, November 24, Thanksgiving Day. Alex, a local newspaper photographer, gets into a “green card marriage” with her good friend James, a Guam-born Filipino. Miriam, a former member of the Philippine press and now an established Guam journalist, longs to repair a damaged relationship with her American husband. Ella, a hotel housekeeper for almost 20 years, finds means of sending her 88-year old mother to the Philippines with the uncertainty of coming back. As the island of Guam celebrates this classic American holiday when people count their blessings and give thanks, the lives of the three Filipina immigrants intersect and find themselves at a tug-o-war of sacrifice and significance where they must find their home or must they find it somewhere else.

Circus hijinks surround the barangay of Sta. Maria in the midst of an international murder sensation. Swanie, Sta. Maria’s barangay chair and a distant relative of the killer, tries to gain political points by staging a wake for the criminal-turned-celebrity. Meanwhile in faraway Manila, Joanna, Swanie’s runaway son, navigates his way through labyrinthine bureaucracy, to give a neighbor a proper burial. With these two unrelated deaths, estranged mother and son each bury the dead long shelved in their hearts. Amidst these unspoken family burials, the neighborhoods’ penchant for funeral fiestas, gossip and secrets, bizarre social events and the sheer mix of scandal and inebriation complete the picture of dying the Pinoy way.

A macho dad learns to accept the real identity of his gay son before it gets too late.

Three stories of love starring Sharon Cuneta. The first, "I Love You, Moo-Moo" (directed by Leroy Salvador), is about a young bride who died on her honeymoon; the second, "Ang Silid" (directed by Lino Brocka) is about an interior decorator who investigates a forbidden room owned by a mysterious woman whose sister was murdered; and the third, "Katumbas ng Kahapon" (directed by Emmanuel Borlaza) follows a young woman torn between her abusive husband and her former lover who returned from the US.

This is a true-to-life story of Arsenio Cayanan,an Amerasian whose difficulties as a youth led him to a life of crime.

A young woman recalls how her father (a fallen priest), her mother (a woman with a secret past) and her teenage sister returned with her to live in their ancestral home after the family business failed. She was plagued with mysterious problems of sleepwalking and began a romance with a young man who tried to cure her.

A Filipino teenager is shot to death on the sidewalk of New Jersey, USA. An investigation starts into his death. His family members and friends are interviewed. Along the way, we find out not only more about him but about the community of Filipinos in America in general, including the destructive effect of the drug "shabu" on its youth. The detective who handles the case also has his own personal demons to settle with his violent past.

Salve and Sion is a sister living with their grandparents. Trying to make ends meet, they take in any job even if it's not high paying. Ben is a long-time friend/ admirer of Sion. He supports her in her every endeavor. When Ben's cousin, Carding arrives to Ben's place, he meets Salve and is easily smitten by her charm, when he rescues her from trouble. One day both sisters come face-to-face with criminals, they try to run away from them and report to authorities.

A rich young man hires his classmate to pretend to be his girlfriend to appease his father. Though it is meant to be purely a business arrangement, real sparks fly as they spend time together.

Wade is a spoiled bachelor, who turns his back on sassy girlfriend Maggie when he meets Fe, a hotel intern who looks so much like his ex-girlfriend. Unknown to Wade, Fe’s secret weapon is a love potion, which transforms her into Maggie’s character every time she and Wade meet.

A story of the different false possibilities created by an "intoxicating substance" induced in someone’s life. It's a narrative that completely breaks the moral compass and defies the rules of society. The three characters in the film discover a fiction that transcends moral boundaries.

The story is about a teenage boy living in the Philippines who is being persuaded by his family to go to the U.S. to live a better life but continues to be caught in a web of bad choices. The plot is close to my heart because it tells the story of so many of my friends and family living there now and the struggles they face with poverty, drugs, and violence.

In a quiet, rural Filipino village, sibling rivalry continues through adulthood for two sisters and finally tears their family apart.

Tackles the journey of Michelle Orot as a newly hired SPED Teacher and her struggles after knowing that she has seizure disorders - an epilepsy.

Set in the world of high-stakes cockfighting, gamblers place their money and lives on the line.