Joy Is My Mother's Name (2021)

It’s December 2020, more than nine months of community quarantine in the Philippines. The idea of nothingness is actual and symbolic. With imposed restrictions in the physical world, how can we tell our personal and collective stories of living under the “longest COVID-19 lockdown in the world”? Confined at home, physical and non-physical boundaries are magnified as the filmmaker attempts to articulate existence through floating in time and space.

In times of necessary physical distancing, ten couples from the filmmaker’s hometown allow the cameras into their homes not to disturb but capture any delicate exchange.

Filming in a Time of Uncertainty is a short documentary film that follows a small team of filmmakers, who are based in the region in Mindanao, as they struggle to shoot a film amidst the trying times of the pandemic. And how they were able to comply with the community's minimum health guidelines, while observing the basic health care, in spite of the intricacies of the film industry’s standard health protocols.

A young entrepreneur meets a group of coffee farmers and finds the inspiration to continue despite the pandemic.

As the global pandemic affects more than half the world, the Family Chan tries to cope with the seemingly permanent quarantine and the claustrophobic circumstance of being together.

A woman with falling hair, anxious about her online work, a child unable to leave her room in a power outage, and a yoga buff with body issues, all encounter an unseen terror while alone in their urban middle-class homes during the nationwide quarantine.

A Manobo tribe flees from fear only to find themselves in another dreadful situation: a lockdown due to the pandemic.

In a period beset by a plague, the visionary’s portal to his soul has been thwarted by the four corners of his abode. With imagination as the only detour, the drifting of thoughts is inevitable. Amidst the overcast, the curtain opens to the apparent truth – truth that no frame can impede a visionary.

In transit, Carlo reminisces the blissful memories of his beloved mother, Joy, who died a few months ago while the country was in lockdown facing a worldwide pandemic. As he returns to his hometown Pampanga to reunite with his family, he will be facing a first birthday without his mother.

A filmmaker’s reflection about his life during the pandemic, as "the flames are climbing up the wall."

A tribute to the people that we fear to lose, and for the ones that we have lost. It is a story about the fear that we have to face as the new normal.

The amazing adventures of Gunam-gunam (Rumi) and Guni-guni (Phantasm). Adapted from the book Auxiliary Materials for Teaching the Filipino Language by Kelly Sta. Ana Nicolas (Philippine Normal College, 1964).

An exploration of how we use the masks as our new faces in these trying times. It shows a perspective of what life is like during the pandemic through poetry, metaphor, movements, and the use of painted masks.

The night before the lockdown, while reviewing some unused footages from my latest film project (Hinulid), a small box from an anonymous sender arrives. The box contains a Bikol translation of the Tagalog long poem, Ibong Adarna, and an egg.