Datu Arellano

Movies

Count
Music
Count is a short essay film that plays with the idea of internalized historical misalignment. It is a probing into the unseen discrepancy that has exponentially grown throughout the centuries. It starts with the author's sons, as they start their online distance learning, in the context of a pandemic raging in the midst of a Drug War, both with fatalities miscounted and uncounted.
From the Dark Depths
Music
A woman mourns the drowning of a young activist that took place years ago. She sinks into herself and recreates a story that coalesces memory, delirium, and forgetting.
The Guerilla is a Poet
Music
The tale of an activist’s journey during the turbulent years of Martial Law, until his capture in the mountains and the dark, nine years of imprisonment that followed, leading to his birth as a poet.
Requiem for M
Sound
Requiem for M is an experimental short documentary in the aftermath of the Maguindanao massacre in which multiple journalists were slain. Dalena captured scenes from the funerals and played this in reverse, in the wistful yearning to turn back time to before the tragedy occurred.