Balangay

Overview

The setting is an abandoned airport in the Philippines. One of the absolute rock-bottom pits of globalisation, which is temporarily housing the lumads: a rootless and homeless group of modern nomadic people, who are struggling to find a place in the new urban reality. A visiting NGO worker moves in with shamans, large families and small children. They are all on their way to somewhere else, and they are all caught in the dusty and acid-green interiors of what once used to be luxury. Off-screen, a revolution is (possibly) under way, but even here, time seems to have stood still like a scratched gramophone record. 'Balangay' is related to the modern, Asian arts film, where the atmosphere of the location brings a collective character to life. But it is also solidly rooted in the reality which now haunts the threadbare remnants of the international utopias of the past.