A Mother's Story

Kailan Sasabihing Mahal Kita?

November 1985 •Tagalog

A marriage which started on the wrong foot, compromised by her boyfriend agreed to marry family friend in order to save face. In turn he entered into marriage to get away from his aggressive clinging girlfriend. But the truth was that he was really in love with her but lacked the nerve to tell her. He saw the marriage of convenience as the best way to win her.

Kailan Tama Ang Mali?

January 1986 •Tagalog

A women in the underbelly of the city of Manila where making a living is always difficult for the poor and material things do not guarantee happiness. This is a place for adultery as Pilar kept her trysts with her lovers, for prostitution as Elizabeth descends into degradation, for excitement as Chat, the lonely wife keeps up her relationship with hired killer Edu and rape and death for the young sampaguita vendor, Lala. Amidst all these some ray of hope as Rio accepts the affections of her Chinese master.

Maria Labo

November 2015 •English

A popular urban legend about a woman "aswang" who cooked and ate her two children. The legend is popular in the Visayas and in Mindanao

Pati ba Pintig ng Puso?

July 1985 •English

When Aldrin returns from the States, everyone is as ecstatic as his grandfather. But his reason for going home is not because of his lolo but his sister who is in an asylum. His vow is to take her away from their grandftaher who caused the early death of their parents. To avenge for what happened to his family, Aldrin plans a final revenge and that's when Jenna comes into his life.

Palimos ng Pag-ibig

May 1986 •Tagalog

On the outside it looks like a marriage made in heaven. But inside the thick walls of what they call home theirs is a relationship waiting to crumble. They have been waiting a child for so long but the wife does not have the capacity to bear a child. And when her husband cannot take it any it any longer he decides to end his misery once and for all.

Sana'y Wala Nang Wakas

July 1986 •Tagalog

Three women united by friendship. Three women connected by music. Three women divided by fame. They were three women struggling to make a living when fate smiled at them. From anonymity, they were thrust into a world of glittering lights and deafening adoration. But much that celebrity brought them good things, it too, began to destroy them. They became too consumed by their fame that, one day, without them knowing, the friendship that had been their anchor was fast crumbling down?

Balweg: The Rebel Priest

July 1987 •Tagalog

Conrado Balweg, a former priest, fought to protect his people's land and became a beloved leader, but was also hated by the government and admired by women.

Oro, Plata, Mata

January 1982 •Tagalog

The story follows the Lorenzos and the Ojedas, the two land-owning clans in the island province of Negros, who were trying to cope and survive the war that lasted three tumultuous years, where they experienced or witnessed violence, blood, horror, and death. It is structured into three parts: Oro, a life of luxury and comfort in the city; Plata, a still-luxurious time of refuge in a provincial hacienda; and finally, Mata, a toilsome retreat deeper into the mountains. A war not only turned them into miserable people but also turned them into animals.

Kamera Obskura

July 2012 •Tagalog

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”.

Diablo

October 2012 •Tagalog

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 Syokoy ng Kalye Marino

July 2012 •Tagalog

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.

Resident Aliens

July 2012 •English

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.

Requiem

July 2012 •Tagalog

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.

Ante

July 2009 •Tagalog

LV and her family make their living by operating an illegal off track betting outlet. But things haven't been going well for them lately, and the future is uncertain with Sta. Ana Park closing down.

Manila

June 2000 •German

Due to a delayed flight, a group of German flight passengers had to wait in the hall of the airport of Manila. The crowd was quite mixed, ranging from a cultivated eastern German teacher couple up to sleazy sex tourists. As the waiting prolonged, more and more aggressions and long-repressed behaviors shed their way to the surface.

In the Bosom of the Enemy

January 2001 •Tagalog

It's the story of a young woman, whose husband, is arrested by the soldiers of a Japanese garrison, on the suspicion that he is a guerilla. Dizon pleads her case to the garrison's commander, who sympathizes and lets Yllana go; when the commander's wife dies and leaves their son motherless, Dizon, is hired to feed the baby from her own breast.

Deathrow

December 2000 •Tagalog

A neglected and unloved orphan raised by poor relatives in the slums of Manila is wrongfully convicted of murder that resulted from a heist he was compelled to join. Unable to prove his innocence and his minor age, he is thrown into the cruel, perilous and horrifying world of death row where he is introduced to other inmates all awaiting their execution by lethal injection. One of them is a 70-year-old man who detests the jungle of jail and is feared by all the convicts. He would serve as the boy’s protector and savior and in the process touch and shape enormously the violated youth’s life in prison and beyond.

Daddy's Little Darlings

June 1984 •Tagalog

Walang Karugtong Ang Nakaraan

November 1987 •Tagalog

A widower found a strong resemblance between his late wife and the tutor of his daughter. Because he never got over his loss he courted and married her and then proceeded to remake her in the image of his wife. Naive and very much in love she obeyed his wishes and only later realized that her husband was not really in love with her but only with a memory.

Ang Pag-ibig Ko'y Huwag Mong Sukatin

December 1975 •Tagalog

A Filipino drama film by Lamberto V. Avellana.