At Maculangan

Entremêlant fiction et documentaire, DEATH IN THE LAND OF ENCANTOS suit plusieurs personnages dans les paysages et les villages dévastés de la région de Bicol aux Philippines, au sud de l’île de Luçon, suite au passage du typhon Durian en 2006 : un poète engagé, Benjamin Agusan, revient dans sa région natale, après des années d’exil en Russie, pour y chercher le corps de ses proches et parents. Il y retrouve ses amis d’enfance, les artistes Catalina et Teodoro, mais également les fantômes du passé...

Loving husband Lino is on a mission: his wife, who works as a domestic in Milan, is missing and he's determined to find her. To do so, he enters Italy illegally and takes cover as one of the hundreds of Filipino migrant workers who make their way to Europe.

Pandanggo has three stories with parallel themes converging in one event, the Kasilonawan Festival in Obando: a career woman learning to dance tango who is torn between her dance partner and live-in partner has to choose the man who will satisfy her dream of raising a family; a wife whose wish to conceive a baby boy to make her husband happy brings her feet to the festival, but fate has other plans of bringing the child into her life; and a modern woman who, amidst her medical condition that might render her childless for the rest of her life, finds connection with an ancient lore about fertility.

Sam (Yul Servo), a former soldier unintentionally gets disturb in a robbery gone wrong. Escaping with the bag of stolen loot, he hides inside an abandoned mansion where he meets the mysterious young woman Latia (Julia Clarete), bathing nude inside the homes filthy pool. They begin a passionate and blazing affair even as the crime kingpin Johnny B (Dido dela Paz) and his armed men launch a desperate search for the money.

Originally a three-part experimental film, respectively titled SPIT, WORDS AND OUTAKES..., and OPTIK, combining animation, illustration, found footage and liquid mercury.

This avant-garde, associative collage equates the system’s relationship to Filipino citizens as a marriage. But instead of a wedding full of majestic gestures, we witness a tyrannical system led by a conductor-like figure representing colonial domination and a military regime. The work, which was created under German cinematographer Christoph Janetzko's direction, borrows on archived records from such classic Filipino documentary filmmakers as Nick Deocampo and Ricky Orellana.

A man crawls on the street of Manila at the height of EDSA Revolution.