Living in the USA illegally for over 20 years, Miko Revereza reflects on his family's relocation from Manila to Los Angeles in this introspective essay film. Patching together self-portraiture and home-movie footage, his sombre yet resolute voice-over contemplates the weight of postcolonial history and obstructed futures on diasporic identities.

Disintegration 93-96

A voiceless narrator rehashes details about his mother’s affair as he crosses the United States by train. “Mama has two phone numbers. We do not talk about immigration on her Obama phone. For that we use the other number with no data plan.” The linear train ride moving from Los Angeles to New York diverges into unruly directions of consciousness. A multiplicity of voices share thoughts, dreams and histories evoking images far away from the enclosed spaces of this trains interior. While capturing these landscapes and interiors through his lens, the moving images evidently illustrate an undocumented subjectivity, a site of precarious movement, migration and fugitivism in the US.

No Data Plan

Shot on 16 mm and in color, Distancing documents the logistics and poetics of Miko Revereza’s decision to leave the United States and return to the Philippines.

Distancing

An island off the pacific coast of Mexico. There is no one in sight, but we find traces of a bustling past. Interwoven into the soundscape and amorphous space of what remains, the past and future cross paths and we as spectators are invited to join on a journey beyond time.

The Still Side

Profound portrait of immigration, disillusionment, and the elusiveness of home.