Refrains happen like revolutions in a song
Director John Torres
Countries Philippines
Duration 118 min
Synopsis
She moves to meet him somewhere else. In her desire to be with the young man she sees in a dream, a girl tries to finish collecting debt from villagers on her final day in the town of Guimbal, Panay Island. But as she goes around town, she collects not just furniture and belongings but also dreams, myths, history, and memory spent with the villagers. She leaves. In the neighboring island of Negros, she is hired to play the child of an old maid. In crossing over, she is seen as many things. History writers say she is a revolutionary. Myth says she is an elemental. Other villagers say she is a kept maiden, hidden from the sun, being ripened to tell a love story for everyone to hear. The film is a retelling of fragments of war during the American occupation; the Hinilawod, an epic told by the indigenous peoples of Panay in the Visayas; the villagers’ view of the elementals among them; and lines from the poetry of Eric Gamalinda and Joel Toledo. It is also a retelling in terms of process. Dialogue, shot in the Hiligaynon language, is not translated but used as a tonal guide and a tool for narration. Using unscripted scenes shot where the main character, Sarah, was asked to merely interact with the villagers, the filmmaker discards dialogue and draws meaning from peoples’ faces, voices, and actions, weaving a wholly different story through the use of subtitles and inter-titles.
She moves to meet him somewhere else. In her desire to be with the young man she sees in a dream, a girl tries to finish collecting debt from villagers on her final day in the town of Guimbal, Panay Island. But as she goes around town, she collects not just furniture and belongings but also dreams, myths, history, and memory spent with the villagers. She leaves. In the neighboring island of Negros, she is hired to play the child of an old maid. In crossing over, she is seen as many things. History writers say she is a revolutionary. Myth says she is an elemental. Other villagers say she is a kept maiden, hidden from the sun, being ripened to tell a love story for everyone to hear. The film is a retelling of fragments of war during the American occupation; the Hinilawod, an epic told by the indigenous peoples of Panay in the Visayas; the villagers’ view of the elementals among them; and lines from the poetry of Eric Gamalinda and Joel Toledo. It is also a retelling in terms of process. Dialogue, shot in the Hiligaynon language, is not translated but used as a tonal guide and a tool for narration. Using unscripted scenes shot where the main character, Sarah, was asked to merely interact with the villagers, the filmmaker discards dialogue and draws meaning from peoples’ faces, voices, and actions, weaving a wholly different story through the use of subtitles and inter-titles.