Zoo is a notable union of a powerful story and equally strong visuals to supplement it. In terms of technique, the film follows all the rules of sound, music and camera angles to create an atmosphere of suspense, uncertainty as well as to mount action, and yet, it does not come across as pedantic. The storytelling, instead, is marked by efficiency and seamlessness. While the narrative raises potent, urgent questions about a desperate need of the hour, the approach adopted for the same is simple, making its message all the more impactful in the face of complete absence of garish devices or tools. 

The film is a comment on racism, drawing the viewer's attention to a conversation specifically around police brutality that shook the world and made it sit up the past year. However, it should be noted that it brings in personal experiences, ensuring that it is not simply a macrocosmic narrative about a white and a black man, but also of two people with their own internal, individual struggles and frustrations. Further, the manner of treatment of this dissatisfaction offers a sharp contrast. For instance, a white character, who comes from a space of entitlement owing to his racial identity, is convinced of being allowed the opportunity to inflict violence on another with impunity, even in the face of all calmness and rationality received from the other party. 

Your dissatisfactions are perhaps then allowed to find expression in the violence and cruelty you inflict on others if you are of a certain race, lurks the subtle comment within the folds of the film; like in a zoo where we are all animals, waiting to give in to our bestial sides under the right circumstances. Or worse, since the existing hierarchy is engineered to dismiss the marginalized further to a realm defined by the absolute disregard for their life. 

Though the technique and visual approach of the film has already been appreciated, it is important to mention the same again. The film deliberately drops visual cues regarding what is to come. For instance, it is a beautifully ominous shot of our protagonist peering into a store while metal rods make their presence felt against a glass window, making the scene suggestive of incarceration, a prison. It is precisely after this moment that the tone of the film changes. The plot moves from personal, localised struggles of debauchery and petty thefts to a thematic concern that would come to raise potent questions about systemic racism and oppression. It is especially important to invoke this particular visual image at this juncture because it further asserts the film's title - the reality of a world where a black man is born within the cage a festering society has already chosen for him. 

Additionally, there is an emphasis on the fierceness of youth which is allowed to you depending on your racial identity. The body language of a white man before a potential figure of authority offers a disturbing juxtaposition with that of a black man. 

Within the body of the film rest several significant comments while it continues to maintain its crispness throughout. There is a portrayal of how mindless violence often leads to a cycle of hatred, an action-reaction equation, a cause and effect. One attack on the oppressed can sometimes lead to a retaliation the oppressor did not expect. The film does not take sides regarding this reaction, it only presents it to the viewer in an objective manner. 

What is especially notable about the final product is that it manages to bring in all of these concerns (and more) to encourage a pertinent discussion on the reality of existence determined by your racial identity. The same is achieved organically, without stumbling or using cliches or sentimentalism as crutches. It is indeed in this confident assertion of its thoughts, the consequent clarity of the message and the eventual realisation of these intentions that the success of the film lies.

Zoo | Short Film of the Day

The film opens with Seo-Won, the protagonist, sharing the day-to-day life of her children with another mother. Despite the superfluous mundaneness of the conversation, the lament of a home left behind in a different country becomes apparent. However, before the viewer can declare the film to be the exploration of immigrant identity, the narrative deliberately fractures itself, presenting us with fragments of memory, thoughts, arguments, and forgotten troubles that lie somewhere buried in a life lived long and hard. 

In the process, familial guilt, anger, resentment, loss, but more importantly, the people who get left behind, alongside those who leave, are conjured by the film. However, how much of the memory can truly be trusted? The film presents the question, while emphasizing how, sometimes, memory, no matter how unreliable a narrator, is the only entity that you have left, the only tenuous connection to an even more fragile notion of home. 

Through a competent screenplay and equally complementary performances, the narrative conjures all of this, and some more. It spans an entire spectrum of identity and belongingness, both ideas disrupted by disorienting thoughts, the causes of this disorientation eventually explained at the end. All of this is then very intimately tied with the protagonist's experience of not only having left behind a home but also the relentless efforts of building one in a foreign land.

Home | Spotlight

‘Dear Diary’ is the most lovely splash of colors, ideas, music, and well… old selves. The film is beautifully imagined and performed, with a visual grammar that is steadfast and consistent when it comes to the art and set design. The conciseness of the narrative, almost minimalist in its approach, does more to convey with simplicity than anything else. 
Not devoid of humor, the screenplay brings to life a deliberate, effervescent frivolity that works in its favor most remarkably. We are presented with a protagonist who takes us into her world by the hand. The primary doorway to this realm is the regrettable experiences that she documented in her beloved diary, experiences, and memories that she would now rather exorcise, as she shares herself. 
This journey from remembrance to sharing and acceptance to the eventual expression of the desire to expel them is covered keeping the approach carefully controlled, deliberately lean, and seamlessly entertaining throughout. It would be a wonderful prospect to see more projects and storytelling imagined and conceptualized in this manner.

Dear Diary | Short Film of the Day

The world of the music video is powerful and remarkable. It paints a space of fluidity, and creativity which is then tied together by a voice that refuses to be diminished. Employing silhouettes and ease of movement, brought to life most beautifully by the charge led by Bernie Van Tiel (BVT), the video endeavors to present a moment embedded in Filipinx roots and culture. 
‘Lalaki’ shares a glimpse into a realm that boldly identifies itself with dance, music and words that are left with the viewer long after they are done listening to them. The brevity inherent to a music video works beautifully in its favor, ensuring all ideas are delineated without making the narrative overbearing. 

Further, the storytelling operates predominantly within the space of symbolism, with each image presenting an important metaphor about identity and belonging. As a community’s ethos is presented to you by way of an impactful end result, the video is taken home as a cohesive whole.

Lalaki | BVT | Short Film of the Day

The complexity of some experiences demand more than one medium for an expression. The short film is clear evidence of the same proposition as it ropes in poetry, dance, and the written word itself which forms the body of the narration. In addition to this, it includes a performance that suddenly finds itself in a place in direct contrast with all the lyricism, vastness of setting, and fluidity expressed so far - the confines of a drab corner, marked by its pale greys, where two people sit discussing a letter. The entirety of the narrative becomes a movement predominantly towards this moment in time, one that stands for not only a conflicted relationship between a son and his mother at a microcosmic level, but also the experience of understanding your identity. The idea of home and belonging, and what it truly means to have the same tied to the identity of your parents, or more specifically, as the title suggests, a mother, then becomes the concern at a more macrocosmic level. The film exhibits sophistication in its forward motion, as each of these thoughts is brought to life on screen, allowing the plot a cohesive structure. In the process, it further enables the narrative to share its intentions with an emphatic clarity while coupled with a surreal flow of images all along that more than fulfil their aim of communicating the meaning behind them.

Mother/Land | Short Film of the Day

The title of the film, a portmanteau of Filipino and American, sets the horizon of expectation right at the start. The pursuit to not only belong and find a sense of belonging but also figure out ideas of self and identity, where you came from in order to understand where you are headed, become core thematic concerns of the film. The engagement with all of these remains lucid and earnest throughout. 
Our protagonist is a young boy who finds himself straddling two identities without being sure on which side he truly falls. If on the one hand, he wears Nikes and eats bacon, his connection to the culinary aspect of his Filipino heritage, as well as his strong desire to explore more of it, remains unshakeable, alongside uncertainty and doubts. The narrative shows how the two can indeed co-exist in a person. 
The film presents an engagement with all of this and some more in a unique, authentic voice that is controlled and understated in a notable manner. The final result exhibits more potential in terms of storytelling and screenplay than could be explored in this brief project. It should definitely be interacted with further in subsequent endeavors.

FilAm | Short Film of the Day

The world of the film opens in shadows where a new mother battles sleepless nights, endless chores, and the many demands of a baby who depends entirely on her for their existence. The repetition, mundaneness, and the circular reality that life becomes while raising a newborn form the backbone of the narratorial progression. It further presents a much-needed glimpse into motherhood, often glossed over with upbeatness and a sense of perpetual and irrevocable joy, an approach that diminishes the true sacrifices parenthood entails. 

The edge, the isolation, demands, and pressures of motherhood are capable of pushing a woman to, is portrayed for the viewer with an economy of dialogue and a minimalism intrinsic to the screenplay. Consequently, the film’s shadowy monochromatic realm employed to pronounce this isolation, and the lack of colour in the protagonist’s life, becomes a fitting storytelling device. 
Shot entirely on a smartphone and stripped to its bare bones, minus any bells and whistles, it is simply the power of storytelling and performances that drive the film forward. Its single-member crew, bolstered by skilled actors, ensures that all of these ideas are portrayed in an unmissable manner.

Desperation | Spotlight

The film presents a mosaic of thoughts, experiences, dreams, and aspirations, as well as vulnerabilities and hurt. The fragments are woven together with the deliberate graininess of the visuals, the many pixels constantly dancing across the screen of this Super 8mm visual landscape, which not only lends the end result a notable texture but also a dreamy quality. 

In her pursuit to find her place within the world, the protagonist addresses a character we never see on screen called Kevin. As her different memories and experiences get painted against this free-flowing canvas, a multitude of emotions are presented to the audience. 
The film achieves all of this in its brief duration, as if distilling an overarching pursuit and the many efforts and streams of consciousness that constitute it. The voice that thus emerges is undiminished and paves the path for more such thematic and ruminative endeavours in the future.

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