Squatterpunk

Hapon is an 8-year-old survivor in the slums of modern Manila, scratching out an improvised existence at the margins of society. This rawly shot documentary follows Hapon and his mates as they swagger around their dilapidated universe. Featuring a punk-rock score by director Khavn's band the Brockas, the film captures a carefree spirit in the children that completely belies the squalid conditions in which they live.

Alipato: The Very Brief Life of an Ember

A bunch of 10-year-old kids rob pedestrians and kill without a mercy. But after a failed bank robbery, the dangerous game comes to an end with twenty years of imprisonment. After two decades, they are released but soon begin to disappear one by one.

Manila in the Fangs of Darkness

A man follows a woman through the streets.

EDSA XXX: Nothing Ever Changes in the Ever-Changing Republic of Ek-Ek-Ek

EDSA XXX takes us on a wild ride through the ups and downs, twists and turns in the life of one man’s downfall and the rise to fame of another. The present leader KULOG NEGRO has led the country to progress; his rallying call is championing poverty for the benefit of tourists and film festivals. But the well-meaning leader is a mere puppet in the political arena and someone has just decided that he has to go.

Desaparadiso

What can a family do if someone disappears in a dictatorship? You can’t go to the police for help or information. Many families were affected in this way by the cruelty of the Marcos dictatorship (1972-1986). The film shows one of them as an example of paradise lost.

How To Not Make A Film

This is a special performance by Khavn de la Cruz, performed and recorded during the first day of the online Film Pantun Workshop organised by SeaShorts Film Society.

Nitrate: To the Ghosts of the 75 Lost Philippine Silent Films (1912-1933)

Lost cinema. Lost culture. Lost country. Lost people. How to recreate the past with nothing? Cinema of the impossible. The silent past is a horror film. The smell of nitrate in the morning. How many ghosts can the cinema contain? 75 films. 22 years. What is the numerological significance? Too late. Never too late.

National Anarchist: Lino Brocka

In the Philippines, Lino Brocka is considered a national monument who waged a cinematic battle against corruption and oppression, directing over sixty fiction features between 1970 and 1991, encompassing both lost works and non-political narratives and revealing a multifaceted legacy beyond the political realm, until his untimely death in a 1991 car accident.