When the Apocalypse Is Over: Queer Philippine Shorts [In-Person Only]
Still from Whammy Alcarazen’s Bold Eagle.
$14 General Admission
$10 Student/Child/Senior
$7 NWFF Member
About
Programmed by A. E. Hunt
A bombastic explosion of form offers new ways of seeing Philippine myths, pasts, presents, and futures. Without leaving their history behind, the young Filipino filmmakers highlighted in this series abandon the methods of their classically trained or genre-ingrained progenitors. Many of these stories imagine absurd, alienating worlds and lonely characters who long for something outside the limits of the frame. With a form that is heavily motivated by visual effects, unlikely aspect ratios, and a concerted focus on post-production, their body of work—ranging from funny to strange, sexy to unsettling—looks and moves in a way that feels decidedly new.
Ticketing, concessions, cinemas, restrooms, and our public edit lab are located on Northwest Film Forum’s ground floor, which is wheelchair accessible. All doors in Northwest Film Forum are non-motorized, and may require staff assistance to open. Our upstairs workshop room is not wheelchair accessible.
The majority of seats in our main cinema are 21″ wide from armrest to armrest; some seats are 19″ wide. We are working on creating the option of removable armrests!
We have a limited number of assistive listening devices available for programs hosted in our larger theater, Cinema 1. These devices are maintained by the Technical Director, and can be requested at the ticketing and concessions counter. Also available at the front desk is a Sensory Kit you can borrow, which includes a Communication Card, noise-reducing headphones, and fidget toys.
The Forum does NOT have assistive devices for the visually impaired, and is not (yet) a scent-free venue. Our commitment to increasing access for our audiences is ongoing, and we welcome all public input on the subject!
If you have additional specific questions about accessibility at our venue, please contact our Patron Services Manager at suji@nwfilmforum.org. Our phone number (206-329-2629) is voicemail-only, but we check it often.
Made possible due to a grant from Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, in partnership with Sensory Access, our Sensory Access document presents a visual and descriptive walk-through of the NWFF space. View it in advance of attending an in-person event at bit.ly/nwffsocialnarrativepdf, in order to prepare yourself for the experience.
NWFF patrons will be required to wear masks that cover both nose and mouth while in the building. Disposable masks are available at the door for those who need them. We are not currently checking vaccination cards. Recent variants of COVID-19 readily infect and spread between individuals regardless of vaccination status.
Read more about NWFF’s policies regarding cleaning, masks, and capacity limitations here.
Films in this program:
Bold Eagle
(Whammy Alcazaren, Philippines, 2022, 16 min, in English & Tagalog with English subtitles)
Trapped at home in a dark Navotas City apartment with his talking cat, BOLD seeks refuge in the strong arms of strange men as they venture together into the deep nether reaches of the Internet, searching for true happiness. Caught in a tangle of technology and social media, he wonders to his cat about his place in the world. If he spreads his wings, can he fly?
i get so sad sometimes
(Tristan Perez, 2021, 20 min)
Jake is a high school teenager in Pagadian, a town too small for him. He lives with his mother and keeps his circle of friends small. However, at night, he secretly spends his time on the internet with a mature man whose face he still hasn’t seen yet. When this stranger finally promises to reveal his face, Jake can barely contain his excitement…
The Gossips of Cicadidae (Alingasngas ng mga Kuliglig)
(Vahn Pascual, Philippines, 2022, 18 min)
Agapito is a naïve teenage boy who lives with his pushy, macho father, Mang Pedring, in a remote mountain province. Mang Pedring wants Agapito to follow his footsteps in being an albularyo, or folk healer. In the course of Agapito’s training to become the town’s next albularyo, he meets a tikbalang: a mythic creature of Philippine folklore, part horse and part man. In this moment, Agapito feels a love that he’s been longing for for a long time; a love that makes him realize that his conservative, patriarchal household has kept him trapped, and that he wants to leave it all behind.
the river that never ends
(JT Trinidad, 2022, 19 min)
Along a river that undergoes a major change, Baby, a middle-aged transwoman, shuttles between her job as a companion-for-hire for strangers and her duty to her father. As the people around Baby start to disappear, she realizes that she has been left behind in a stagnating city.
Somewhere A Destination
(Celeste Lapida, 8 min)
When a body looks around a space and notices all the wrong things about it, in its rigidness and straight lines, a body starts to desire. This is when queerhood starts: desiring for a better place, somewhere far from present rigidness, somewhere vast and unexplored.