Families and Counter-Families

by Lukas Förster 

In this essay, I will examine two films by two of the most original and prominent exponents of Philippine independent cinema: Kidlat Tahimik’s Why Is Yellow at the Middle of the Rainbow (1994) and Lav Diaz’s Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004). Both films engage with the history of the Philippines, especially during and immediately after the end of the Marcos regime, by constructing not just family stories, but family histories: histories of families that are set up, quite explicitly if in different ways, as histories of Philippine counter-families, and thus perhaps also as counter-histories of the Philippine family, the Philippine nation. weiter lesen