Who Invented the Yo-yo? Who Invented the Moon Buggy? While the films acknowledge the economic inequality and power differences that are inherent to capitalist society and the neocolonial order, they also declare that having less does not mean being less: rather, scarcity makes these protagonists more inventive, more clever, more charming. This is to say, Kidlat’s characters have agency. As Tahimik’s films trace the material, cultural, and psychological aspects of life in the Philippines, they articulate a sanguine “Third World” 7 perspective on life in our interconnected, globalized planet.
The worlds of these films – just like the Philippines themselves – are naturally polyglot and multicultural: inflected by myriad Indigenous languages and cultures, by Asian migration, by Spanish colonialism (and especially Catholicism), and by American occupation (via military relics, Boy Scouts and Voice of America propaganda). Like the director, the protagonists in Tahimik’s films tend to be resourceful and plucky, rooted in the Philippines’ provinces while they long for the prosperous and exotic places they’ve seen in the dream machines of cinema, TV and radio.
Susan Sontag declared, “ Perfumed Nightmare makes one forget months of dreary moviegoing, for it reminds one that invention, insolence, enchantment – even innocence – are still available on film.” 6 4 Praised for being “both real and surreal, poetic and political, naive and wise,” 5 Tahimik’s film is a lighthearted, existential comedy about post and neo-colonialism. 2 Realised with a budget of just 10 000 deutschmarks (then about $4 000USD), 3 Perfumed Nightmare eventually premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Prix de la Critique Internationale from the Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique (FIPRESCI), as well as the Ecumenical Jury Prize. Widely considered the ‘father of independent cinema’ in the Philippines, 1 Kidlat Tahimik made his first film Mababangong Bangungot ( Perfumed Nightmare, 1977) with expired film stock, discarded by a German film school.
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