Dado Javier

Loleng Hernandez-Javier

At first, there was Tagalog, Gym Lumbera’s short and, to his mind, unfinished narrative about the infidelity that comes between a husband and wife in their twilight years, shot on film and reflecting his own real-life infidelity.. And then there was a storm, a real storm and not a metaphorical one, that flooded his house and submerged, and subsequently damaged, the only copy of Tagalog. This damaged version, entitled English, became the missing piece that completed the film. The new work is named after Taglish, the bastard hybrid, some say corruption, of Tagalog and English, and has become a meditation on love and language and the ways in which we betray and destroy them.

Fidela, a freshly retired school teacher in Baler meets Kenji who is a young Japanese photojournalist. Kenji looks so much of her fiance who never returned after the World War II. The film is about two epic love stories that are four decades apart bound together by one unforgettable son, in one magical place.

A Vietnam vet who specializes in freeing POWs goes behind enemy lines on a rescue mission with a group of mercenaries.

The story follows an aspiring Negros Occidental mayoral candidate who was tortured and killed during election season in 1951.

Surrounded by tensions and secrets, a teenage boy searches for validation and navigates life with a dysfunctional family following an HIV diagnosis.

A feature length autobiographical film showcasing the life story of Melody Contreras-Williams, famed Lyric Video Creator, Artist, and DJ.

A story about three children struggling in a depressed neighborhood with their means of survival arriving from the package given to them by their parents who works abroad.

Sarah is a debt collector who lives among the inhabitants of the village of Guimbal on the island of Panay. She wants to find the young man who appeared to her in a dream and goes to the island of Negros. Here, as she interacts with the inhabitants, Sarah continues her search, gathering memories of life and war, dreams, myths, legends, songs and stories that she takes part in and at times revolve around her. She is the daughter of an ancient mermaid, a revolutionary, a primordial element, a virgin who was kidnapped and hidden away from the sunlight.  “The film is a retelling of fragments of the American occupation. 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 was asked to merely interact with the villagers, I discard dialogue and draw meaning from peoples’ faces, voices, and actions, weaving an entirely different story through the use of subtitles and inter-titles.”

"Mapang-akit" is an offshoot of a documentary project made with an Icelandic filmmaker and uses the outtakes from the Hudas Hudas festival in Antique, where a community bonds over a large effigy of Judas Iscariot during Holy Week. Amidst it is a found story of a man who returns home to his death after pursuing a woman in a neighboring village.