Cinemalaya 2025: Shorts A and B

 

It's time for Cinemalaya Short Shorts Reviews 2025 edition. This is a very short intro paragraph I have nothing more to say

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Out of all the shorts in this program, I've already seen four, but I've only written about one, in my list of favorite short films of 2024: Maria Estela Paiso's Kay Basta Angkarabo Yay Bagay Ibat Ha Langit, or Objects Do Not Randomly Fall From The Sky. This angry, formally creative short was great then and it's still great now.

On the other hand, I've seen Water Sports several times by now. Much like director Whammy Alcazaren's short Bold Eagle (2022) tackles the (honestly absurd but extremely serious) issue of global warming with even more absurdity. Can love stop the earth from burning to a crisp? Maybe not, but it's a bit comforting to have someone hold your hand as you watch the world die.

As part of deliberations for last year's SFFR awards, I've also seen Miguel Lorenzo Peralta's Please Keep This Copy. There are some similarities, at least in form, to Yoshinao Satoh's Papers (1991). But while papers uses its newspaper clippings to show how these paper records are inseparable from who we are, Please Keep This Copy, through its depiction of teaching materials like CAT (Citizen Army Training) rules and guidelines and other bureaucratic documents depicts how these things are embedded in high school life. It's arguable how successful it is from entrenching young people in bureaucratic and oppressive systems that they will experience in adulthood, as the shots of these papers are juxtaposed with an anxious, liberative energy that seeks to subvert what these papers represent.

And then there's Arvin Belarmino's Radikals. I've seen it a couple times now and I still can't wrap my head around it. It seems to be saying something about the nature of performance and how sometimes it leads into a new version of yourself? This is also a me problem, but I honestly found it too abstract for my own tastes.

Kung Tugnaw ang Kaidalman Kang Lawod touches on the same subject matter as Ryan Machado's Raging, but this time it's a horror film in both literal and figurative ways, the claustrophobic halls of a cargo vessel serving as a prison its protagonist cannot easily escape.

Hasang (Gills) is a very cute film that conjures an Animorphs cover in my dumb brain every time I remember it, but it's also a film about how the desire to transform into something else is an (absurd) expression of unfulfilled desires, and how sometimes returning to the past is unattainable due to how much things have changed.

Figat is very simple in terms of premise, but I have to admit it made me a bit emotional by the end. It's a loving tribute to our parents and grandparents. In their passing, they leave a little bit of themselves before they leave us, and sometimes that little part of themselves they leave behind includes a love and appreciation for one's own culture and traditions.

For many gamblers, the motivation for keeping the chase towards riches lies in false hopes, in the idea that a big win is just around the corner, when it's always the house that has the advantage. Ascension From the Office Cubicle takes a similar approach, with its many employees trapped in jobs that feel more like inescapable spirals, despite a repeated mantra that things are going to get better. The lottery that entices its central character feels like a way out, up the socioeconomic ladder into a better life, but like I said in the first sentence of this short review, in a system where those with capital have all the cards, the house has the advantage.

Insecurity, imposter syndrome, guilt from leaving people behind - they all take the form of something monstrous in I'm Best Left Inside My Head. In the course of a reunion at an orphanage, the claymated, offbeat, sometimes genuinely strange characters of this short act up in delightfully weird (and sometimes funny) ways.

And finally, it's kind of a relief that The Next 24 Hours was the last film I watched in its respective set that day, because, true to form for director Carl Papa, the subject is heavy and emotionally draining. And it should be, as it depicts a woman (Christela Marquez) trying to regain control of her life following a sexual assault, with the persistent vibration of her phone a constant reminder of her trauma. Like in Papa's earlier film Paglisan (2018), the main character's deteriorating mental state manifests when backgrounds start to dissolve into a hazy mush. In the meantime, she navigates cold and uncaring bureaucratic systems that are ill-designed to support her properly.