Noel Miralles
To this day, Ishmael Bernal's movie Himala is still in our town, in our world. This will be reflected in the broader perspective of the majority, of the surrounding events. Beliefs still lie in the truth. Consciousness is still dominant at the level of illusion. The naive, savage, cruel, and selfish politics still prevail.
It is the year 2034 AD and Southeast Asia has been in the dark for the last three years, literally, because the sun hasn’t shone as a result of massive volcanic eruptions at the Celebes Sea in 2031. Madmen control countries, communities, enclaves and bubble cities. Cataclysmic epidemics razed over the continent. Millions have died and millions have left.
In the year 2050, the Philippines braces for the coming of the fiercest storm ever to hit the country. And as the wind and waters start to rage, poets wander the streets.
It is in the culture of the Filipinos that when a person dies, you can whisper and send your wishes to the dead. The film is about a family who happens to take care of their ailing mother / grandmother. They see this as a burden in their lives and they wait for her death so they could whisper their wishes.
A wandering peddler separates from his fellow salesman and becomes involved with criminals in the jungle.
An intimate epic made with uncompromising and austere seriousness that patiently and methodically observes the collapse and hopeful revival of a poor farming clan.
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 terribly cool, hip youth film that throws awareness to the winds of MTV rock and roll, and post Generation- X teenage wasteland fantasies.
