[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]
Pascalina
Year of Release: 2012
Director & Screenwriter: Pam Miras
Producers: Cinema One Originals, Tito & Tita
Cast: Marie Veronica Santiago, Jet Leyco, Anna Vecin, Jessie Silvestre, Randy Punsal, Sanchi Catura, Peewee O’Hara, Cara Eriguel, Alex Medina, Ian Galliguez, Danzen Santos, Marija Vicente, Cora Buenaventura, Rey dela Cruz, Jericho Vega, Jasper Manlangit, Virginia Marcos, Ian Lomongo, Jacyn Esquillon, Ally Lumbera, Teng Cortez, Timmy Harn, Malay Javier, Lili Esquillon, Vicente Diaz, Aila Torre, Kev Abadam, Ei Salcedo, Paolo Domingo, John Arzadon, Divine Aucina, Andrei Lumbera
Pascalina Lagumbay, Lina for short, wakes up on a day packed with a series of unfortunate events. She picks the wrong color for her hair, forgets to shut the faucet, leaves on time for work but has to chase a thief who snatches her bag then cops a feel before he lets go, discovers a new nurse at her workplace station, confronts her boss while red dye streaks her face and uniform—and gets informed that she’s been fired, although her boss pays for the sandwich that she couldn’t buy; her boyfriend Jeff screws her beyond the literal sense, by introducing to her his flirty office coworker who’ll be accompanying him to an out-of-town assignment. She manages to find employment in the same building where Jeff works, but when she meets her sisters for a family get-together, an elderly though unrelated aunt arrives and tells them that their blood relative, to whom she’s devoted, is about to die and needs to pass on her power as an aswang or flesh-devouring monster. No one believes her although Lina, always the pushover, agrees to accompany the lady to visit their sick aunt.
Of the many possibly obscure titles in the canon list, Pascalina will be sure to reward the adventurous viewer setting out to uncover difficult-to-access titles. Its primary distinction lies in purveying an urban-set horror narrative, a rare achievement considering how most successful horror films have to locate themselves in rural wildernesses, the better to distance the viewer from the double wallop of antinatural material packaged in a technologically sophisticated medium: any shred of doubt by the film artists in their material gets automatically aggrandized at the expense of believability in the presentation. Pascalina preempts these pitfalls by bravely harnessing its Third-cinema limitations. As confirmed by the filmmaker (via Facebook Messenger reply on April 23, 2026), it made use of low-end technology during a time when digital production still had to attain its now-standard 4k polish, via the use of the Digital Harinezumi, a plastic toy camera whose manufacturing company halted production a decade ago; the low-resolution imagery might require some playback adjustments—which will nevertheless be entirely worth the trouble. The content is perfectly matched to the technology, with the aswang or flesh-eating candidate introduced as a mousy pushover, bullied by everyone who encounters her, reminiscent of the title character in Aki Kaurismäki’s Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö (The Match Factory Girl, 1990),[1] complete with casually abusive boyfriend. Both dark comedies immerse in developmental detritus and deploy the strategy of enabling identification with central figures disadvantaged by class and gender, so badly treated by people who have to survive by turning a blind eye to any evidence of humanity, that the audience looks forward to their inevitable tipping point. What adds to the movies’s cognitive shock, beyond the negligence visited on it by a critical community confident that it knew better, is the fact that Lina’s pain was also counted as insufficient by political history. A few years after the movie’s release, the larger social horror of murderous extrajudicial violence would descend on a people already stripped of basic decency and barely able to cope with everyday survival.
Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list
Medusae
Year of Release: 2017
Director & Screenwriter: Pam Miras
Producer: Quiapost Productions
Cast: Desiree del Valle, Carl Palaganas, Liz Alindogan, Cris Garrido, Rico Fernandez, Edna Leal, Roberta de Leon, Jocelyn Tan, Rener Concepcion, Ria Miranda, Lee Marvin Torres, Honey Grace Mendoza, Jaime Dominguez, Justin Halili, Nori Ann Napeñas, Ana Velle N. Surreda, Glenda A. Alcala, Jayson A. Leal, Ricky Dator, Elson Leal, Joselyn de Guzman, Leonito A. Orantia, Wilfredo Vilanueva, Onel Matriano, Dante Atimtar, Joselyn Paz, Jimmy Laynes, Reynaldo Map, Rodel Buefano, Junar Luna, Rogelio Kinagpisan, Dionisio Laynes, Mamert Asis, Nono Cabrera, Reynaldo Mapi, Benido Embili, Glicerio Cabrera, Rex Rigodon, Federico Coronel, Romana Verzo, Paterno Calamigan, Tomas Santos, Camille Abigaille Yumang, Ayla de Joya, Gerald Nacua
Since her son Luni had been acting up and was expelled from his school, single mother Alfa takes him to her documentary assignment in a remote fishing village. Luni misses his city friends and easily gets bored by the slow pace of life in the village, so Alfa makes sure to provide him with sufficient sunscreen for his albinic condition and asks him to help her as soundperson during her first interview. Later she quarrels with him when she discovers that he failed to record the answers of the respondent in her first interview. He refuses to accompany her the next day so she locks him in their hut, but when she returns, she finds him gone. A health worker informs her that someone who might be her son arrived with serious jellyfish stings, but when she gets to the clinic, she’s told that he left with another adult. When she checks the closed-circuit recording, she sees Luni leaving with what appears to be her blind twin. She starts worrying about the town’s belief that firstborn children are ritually offered to the sea in exchange for bountiful harvests, but the townspeople tell her to accept her loss just as they accepted theirs in the past.
Medusae encapsulates the predicament of single parenthood, with the further onerosity of a career woman’s situation demonstrated by an initially jarring positioning of extreme samples. In contrast with Alfa, her child Luni is young, male, melanin-deprived, understandably immature; the only definite similarity between them is their fierce intelligence and its resultant stubbornness. Alfa makes an effort to accommodate Luni’s expectations but draws the line in her devotion to her filmmaking career, discovering too late that Luni regards the latter as the equivalent of a rival sibling. She recovers from her anger in scolding him for his negligence in assisting her, but by then his alienation from her (and disappointment in himself) has escalated, and the film, along with her persona, splinters in irrecoverable ways. This schematic description undersells Pam Miras’s confident execution, notably her purveyance of an unsentimental melancholy, appropriate to a recollection of childhood as a domain that can never be revisited once a subject has outgrown it. In the end, the plurality of the titular Medusa extends beyond the motherly options available to Luni; in being as much feminized by his youth and helplessness, and monstrous in the demands he imposes, he becomes as much his mother’s Medusa as her own self-imposed challenge to thrive in the profession that yielded the work that contained their story.
Note
[1] A more contentious point for me is how, despite being an earlier and comparatively impoverished production, Pascalina succeeds in what Lorcan Finnegan’s Nocebo (2022) aspired to demonstrate, although the latter admittedly had global scope and an overt denunciation of neoliberal exploitation. For a discussion of Nocebo’s depiction of overseas Filipino workers, alongside Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness from the same year, see Joel David, “Chaotic Waters and Well-Tempered Specters: The Philippines as Source of Overseas Labor,” Kritika Kultura 43 (March 2024), pp. 222–249, DOI:10.13185/1656-152x.2084.
Back to top
Return to Canon Decampment contents
Go to alphabetized filmmakers list
Á!
ORCID ID 
Ámauteurish! 
Cracked Mirrors
Greatest Performance
Directed & written by Joselito Altarejos
[Click here (recommended) for desktop mode.]
Filmmakers aware of their development constantly set for themselves new challenges, in the hope that they’ll be able to meet these goals and possibly set new, more difficult ones. These stages could be detected in all the outstanding directors of the past, although with the advent of the age of digital production in the present millennium, a new type of goal-setting has emerged: one where the community of filmmakers, consciously or otherwise, embarks on attaining certain ideals as a collective. So far two primary objectives can be tracked. The first, condoned and rewarded by prestige-granting critical groups, is where the directors create conscienticizing works focused on poverty, packaged in self-consciously high-art treatments for foreign film festivals, preferably in Europe.
Left: anxiety-ridden Yvonne Rivera (Sunshine Cruz) takes a public ride to the set of her comeback film project. Right: she arrives at her movie set, wears sunglasses, and projects a happy and confident aura. [Screen caps by the author.]
Left: Katrina (Ahlyxon Leyva), the director’s current squeeze, flusters Yvonne when she asks if she needs to have her breasts enhanced. Right: Katrina dances for the film crew but mainly for Mar Alvarez (Soliman Cruz), Yvonne’s director. [Screen caps by the author]
Back to top
11011Joselito Altarejos, by apprenticing with Ishmael Bernal, Brocka’s contemporary (and for many, his superior) and commencing his filmmaking career the year after Bernal died, may be counted as one of the country’s few direct links with celluloid-era cinema. As such, he managed to stand apart from the aforementioned collective trends, although he also figured in the specialized branch of queer film production that flourished during the early years of digital filmmaking, when inexpensively produced projects could be screened in old-style movie theaters, where gay male audiences could use darkness as an opportunity for cruising. Unlike the average queer filmmaker, though, he worked with mainstream studios and, in a manner of speaking, prepared Viva Films for its successful recent foray into soft-core sex-film production.
Left: after shaming Yvonne in front of the film crew and causing her to walk out, her director Mar visits her in private to supposedly coach her alone, an offer that she resists. Right: at the end of Yvonne’s story, a similar, indeterminate event is recapitulated. [Screen caps by the author]
Left: Yvonne goes on live cam to sing “Paru-Parong Bukid,” as requested by her fans.[2] Right: Drew, Yvonne’s younger lover, uses her live appearance as an opportunity to fantasize over her. [Screen caps by the author]
Back to top
11011Yet GP proffers something that no Altarejos work has foregrounded before, although it might take a second viewing to confirm it beyond the shadow of a doubt: the entire scenario is a throwback to Bernal, Altarejos’s mentor, in the sense that the proceedings unfold unmistakably as a comedy in tragic clothing. Yvonne Rivera, a once-popular performer who put her career on hold for the sake of her marriage, has to return to production when her union fails, ironically with the same abusive director, Mar Alvarez, who launched her to stardom. On the set she meets Drew, a younger soundperson with whom she occasionally enjoys a quickie, who like her has to endure Mar’s temperamental outbursts (in one instance, Mar berates Drew for insisting on noise-free ambient sound, but in their next take the noises accumulate to the point of nearly drowning out the performers’ lines and Mar has to pretend he doesn’t mind). Mar openly flirts with Katrina, a bit player who fearlessly displays her skimpy attire and coquettish teasing, determined to attain fame at any cost.
Left: After a publicity interview (conducted by the real-life director), Yvonne descends her apartment’s staircase in a state of panic over her comeback prospect. Right: unable to sympathize with Drew’s serious financial troubles during her film’s premiere, Yvonne looks for an opportunity for one last fling with her lover. [Screen caps by the author]
Back to top
Notes
Previously published February 24, 2026, in The FilAm as “How Director Joselito Altarejos Sets Himself Apart as a Bernal Protégé.” Greatest Performance is produced by 2076 Kolektib, Pelikula Indiopendent, & StudioX. Many thanks to Joselito Altarejos for providing access and clarifying several crucial questions.
[1] To explicate this paragraph, in order of discussion: In one of my exchanges with the director, he clarified that the use of the same title of an unfinished 1989 film by Nora Aunor (listed in Canon Decampment) is strictly incidental; a sequence breakdown that I made of the earlier film is posted here. From a social-network discussion with Ma Nuno, I gathered the invaluable insight that Yvonne Rivera’s maid, in singing softly to comfort her mistress, could be practicing the healing custom that can be tracked to the predominantly women-led babaylan or native shaman tradition. Another query that could follow for viewers inclined to ponder gender issues: could there be transference in Yvonne’s quiet acceptance of her maid’s ministration? Arguably the women characters in the text are queerer than the males, even if the major ones (Yvonne and Katrina) engage in what might be regarded as counter-exploitation. Finally, the concept of reflexivity in film was brought up by, among others, semiotician Christian Metz, who used the term “mirror construction” in the title of his article.
[2] “Paru-parong Bukid (Field Butterfly)” is a traditional folk song originally known as “Mariposa Bella (Beautiful Butterfly).” The Tagalog version, used twice as a movie title and theme song (first directed by Octavio Silos in 1938, then by Armando Garces two decades later), is necessarily kid-friendly; a parodic variation, titled Mga Paru-Parong Buking (The Outed Butterflies, dir. J. Erastheo Navoa, 1985), about four gay-male professors of whom three are initially closeted, played only on the title and contained its own theme song. The nearly forgotten Spanish-language “Mariposa Bella” though is a more mature number, since it makes explicit the comparison of the butterfly with the native “Malay” maiden, uses richer descriptive imagery, and directly references mi tierra immortal or my immortal land, as befits a song that became popular during the anticolonial resistance against American occupation. See Pepe (José Mario Alas), “‘Paru-Parong Bukid’ Is Actually a Poor Translation of ‘Mariposa Bella’” in Filipino eScribbles: Online Jottings of a Filipino Out of Time (October 14, 2009).
[3] The opening shot of Ang Lihim ni Teresa, Yvonne’s comeback project, is taken directly from her action after her post-interview conversation with her maid, the only instance when a plot moment directly shows up in the fiction that the characters are creating. The shot an is an homage to Ishmael Bernal, who occasionally depicted distressed or giddy women by showing them unsteadily climbing up or down staircases, most famously in his first credited work, Pagdating sa Dulo (Near the End, 1971). The director’s appearance is a reflexive reference to Celso Ad. Castillo’s Totoy Boogie (1980), where the title character watches a TV interview of Castillo discussing the merits of Asedillo (1971), his Fernando Poe Jr. blockbuster. Later in the film, Castillo shows up and makes Totoy his kept man, yet another queer turn from the cis-het filmmaker, whose unfulfilled dream project was to star in his own production of Ang Lalakeng Nangarap Maging Nora Aunor (The Man Who Dreamed of Becoming Nora Aunor); in a parallel development, Totoy himself gets involved with a disco dancer who turns out to be the kept woman of a rich lesbian.
Back to top
Leave a comment | tags: Commentaries | posted in Film Criticism