ANTHONY V. OLAES
Growing up in the US, I never wanted to be Filipino. I wanted to be Hawaiian—I mean, people love Hawaii! The Philippines? It was kidnappings and poverty on the news. And because TV was truth to me at the time, I never dreamed of going.
But everything changed when my grandparents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in the Philippines. That trip would shape the next 20 years of my life.
I remember the heat, the humidity, and a distinct smell once we stepped out of the airport. Driving to Cavite, I saw makeshift homes on bamboo stilts, lining the roads. Trash everywhere. I looked at them and thought,
‘Why can’t they throw their garbage away?’
‘Why don’t they get jobs like normal people?’
My grandfather warned us to stay away from them. We didn’t ask why. We just believed they were dangerous, lazy, uncivilized…and that belief stayed with me.
So years later, when my parents decided to retire in the Philippines after 55 years in the US, I was furious. Why would you leave safety? Are you asking to be kidnapped? They’d made it in America. They achieved the American Dream—so why go back?
My dad just said, “It’s time to go home.”
I didn’t understand until one day, while in the Philippines, I was invited to play golf with an uncle. Halfway through, I learned he sold insurance part-time and volunteered the rest. That confused me. Why waste time volunteering?
He told me he helped build homes for people experiencing poverty through an NGO called GK, like Habitat for Humanity, but better. I snapped. “There’s nothing here that’s better than the U.S.”
He didn’t argue. He said, “If you’d like, I’ll show you after golf.”
We drove to a squatter village. I fell asleep in the car and woke up surrounded by shanties. On one side of the road were the shacks, and on the other, small, colorful homes with paved walkways. I was anxious. My grandfather’s warning echoed in my head.
As soon as I stepped out, kids ran up to me, gently placing my hand on their foreheads. ‘Mano po’. I wished I had hand sanitizer. I followed my uncle cautiously as he introduced me to the residents. Everyone smiled. Some invited me in. Others asked if I’d eaten.
I thought it was a setup. Maybe they were preparing to ask for donations. But house after house, it was the same warmth, the same generosity.
Eventually, I wandered off on my own and knocked on a door. The woman inside greeted me like family. And suddenly, a thought hit me:
These people weren’t so different from my aunts and uncles in the States. They didn’t have much, but their love and laughter were familiar. It was home.
I crossed over to the shanty side and sat with a few families. And in that moment, something shifted. I didn’t feel fear. I felt connection. I looked into the sea of shanties and felt, for the first time in my life, completely one with everyone in that community: heart and soul. I came in as an American… but I left a Filipino.
That day, I made a vow: One day, they won’t live like this anymore—not on my watch. And I believed that if the tables were turned, they’d do the same for me.
Years later, I would learn there’s a word for this feeling: Kapwa. It’s a shared identity, a soul-level connection.
That 2006 trip changed my life. I began returning to the Philippines six times a year, raising funds, building homes, and bringing along other Fil Ams (Filipino Americans) who were also afraid to go back. And just like me, every single one of them was transformed.
I wanted to preserve this transformation and share it with more people. So, in 2015, I launched the Filipino School in San Diego. One of its core programs is Filgrimage, a Filipino pilgrimage.
Today, the Filipino School is entirely online through The Filipino Story Studio on YouTube, and a website called TheFilipinoStory.com, where any Filipino—a half, a quarter, or even just a sixteenth—can learn, feel, and become Filipino like I did through the transformative videos that we produce.
There are no doubts anymore. I know who I am. I know where I’m going. The place I once feared now holds a special place in my heart.
Now I understand what my father meant when he said, “It’s time to go home.”
Because this is home, the Philippines isn’t just where I come from—it’s a place where I’ve always belonged, even when I didn’t know it. Every Filipino I meet feels like family… because somehow, they always saw me as one of their own, long before I ever saw it in myself.
Now that I know, I have a lifelong commitment to stand for this family, to build up this home, and to ensure that every Filipino, everywhere, never forgets who they are and where they belong.
The Spirit had brought me home!
Hi Tony,
I saw your video interview with Kidlat in this weeks Positively Filiipino and wanted to compliment you on it. And since you have recently become interested in Kidlat I thought you might enjoy learning a bit more about his “back story” so I attach below a film review I wrote about Eric/Kidlat and his landmark movie Perfumed Nightmare many years ago. FYI, my wife Lilia Villanueva and I are the authors of the Philip Vera Cruz bio and we had a piece in this weeks PF along with your video. Actually Lilia had an additional piece about the Sagay Film Festival “on the beach”.
Kindest regards,
Craig Scharlin
A FILMMAKER AND HIS FILM
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars
Vol 12 #3 1980
by Craig Geoffrey Scharlin
A Film review: MABABANGONG BANGUNGOT, a.k.a. The Perfumed Nightmare, Le Cauchemar Parfume, Der Par fumierte Alptraum, La Pesadilla Perfumada, a film by Kidlat Tahimik, formerly Eric de Guia
I’m writing this review as a new-found devotee of film maker Kidlat Tahimik and as an old friend of Eric de Guia. I say this to layout my prejudices and at the same time to try to explain my amazement at the transformation of my friend Eric de Guia into filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik.
Throughout a beautiful spring and summer in 1970 Eric and I spent many hours together in Paris, walking the boulevards, sitting in open cafes drinking our wine and espressos — most of the usual things people do in Paris plus even romping together at a bizarre “Feliniesque” festival held on the outskirts of Paris in a medieval castle with a real moat. Our favorite meeting place, however, was Eric’s apartment on the Ave. de la Motte Picquet, where Eric had created his own special world.
In those days we talked about a lot of things, even the possibility of his someday becoming President of the Philippines. Why not? Eric seemed to possess the proper credentials for such an ambitious thought: University of the Philippines graduate and student body president, Wharton graduate with a masters in business, and then a research analyst for the prestigious O.E.C.D. (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development). Eric was even a friend of former British Prime Minister Wilson’s family with whom he stayed in London.
However, we had other discussions, more often and of a much more serious nature. We talked about Eric’s frustrations with his coat and tie job, working at the O.E.C.D. preparing an extensive analysis of the fertilizer industry of the Philippines. We talked about a nine hour play he wanted to write, about a woman he loved in Germany, about his desire to bring a jeepney (Philippine mini-bus) to Paris! A jeepney to Paris? There was a passionate fire burning inside of Eric and it wanted to come out. Eric is short, dark, with eyes and smile that literally light up a room. He wanted the people of Paris, whom he had grown so fond of, to understand the Filipino spirit pent up inside him, the one that was crying from deep inside to come out. Would the jeepney do the trick?
I left Paris and didn’t see Eric again for seven years. I visited his family in Baguio, Philippines, several times but our paths seemed to have just missed. I learned from his mother that he had quit O.E.C.D., was working on a play and, yes, had actually taken a jeepney to Paris.
Then to my surprise, two years ago, I noticed quite by accident, an advertisement that the Pacific Film Archives here in Berkeley was showing a film titled “Mababangong Bangungot-Perfumed Nightmare” made by one Kidlat Tahimik. I received a phone call the next day and on the other end was my old friend Eric now referring to himself as Kidlat, saying he was in Berkeley showing his new film and looking for a place to sleep with Fraulein Katrin and their new son, named appropriately, Kidlat. In Paris when I needed a place to sleep it was Eric who opened his apartment to me, and now, seven years hence, I could return the favor.
But the person who came to my house was no longer Eric de Guia, suit-and-tie economist and potential candidate for President of the Philippines, but Kidlat Tahimik, short-cropped, bowl-shaped lfugao (the name for the indigenous tribal people from the northern mountain provinces of the Philippines) haircut, sandaled feet, old baggy sharkskin pants, a huge Ifugao fertility ring hanging round his neck amongst other varied native jewelry, a shirt that was old and quite beyond description. The look in his eye and the smile on his face told me immediately that the fire deep inside had finally burst out.
The transformation of Eric de Guia to Kidlat Tahimik, however, did not completely become clear to me until after I had viewed his film. This is the first film of Kidlat Tahimik who had no formal training in filmmaking. The filming took place in early 1975 in the Philippines and in Europe. Kidlat readily admits that upon finishing shooting in the Philippines and departing for Europe with a mass of exposed and undeveloped footage, he really had no idea what he had captured on film. It was only in the next two years that the story of Kidlat Tahimik and his perfumed nightmare evolved on the editing table in Munich, Germany. All the while, Kidlat was simultaneously learning the metier of filmmaking.
Along the way Kidlat Tahimik has made a movie of major importance. And this is not said subjectively. The kudos have poured in from around the world, prizes from international film festivals have already been presented. “Perfumed Nightmare” had its premier at the Berlin Film Festival on June 25, 1977, where it was awarded the “Prix de la Critique Internationale,” by the FIRPRESCI Jury (Federation Internationale de la Presse Cinematographique) composed of eleven film critics. This is the award presented to the most outstanding film by a new film maker. The film also received the Special Mention of the OCIC (Catholic Jury) at the same festival, as well as the recommendation of the Interfilm Jury (Ecumenical). Vincent Canby, the film critic for the New York Times, listed it as one of the top ten films in the world for the decade of the 1970’s. And acclaimed directors Francis Ford Coppola and Verner Herzog have praised it’s uniqueness. The film was partially edited in Herzog’s editing studio in Germany and Coppola has been so enthralled with Tahimik’s film making skill he has offered his entire production facilities to Tahimik to make a new film.
But the importance of Kidlat’s efforts go far beyond these fine awards and kudos.
First, the film was completed with a minuscule budget of about $10,000 and a gigantic budget of optimistic energy. One story Kidlat loves to tell his audiences is about how his film was talked about at the L.A. Film Festival: “In the Philippines people always say, ‘Oh, you have to see this new American flick; it cost $25 million, it’s really great!’ And then I found myself in the heart of the American film industry, Hollywood, where they actually make these $25 million dreams, and people were saying, ‘You’ve got to see this new Filipino film. It only cost $10,000; it’s really great.’ ”
Kidlat Tahimik has broken all the rules in regards to film making and particularly filmmaking in the Philippines, predominantly Hollywood-oriented, where it is not uncommon today to see a top-rated Filipino movie stamped ‘This film was made in U.S.A.” just to increase the box office revenues. By in so doing, he has presented the world with an amazingly original, engrossing and beautiful work. It would not be too far-fetched to suggest that “The Perfumed Nightmare” is the first truly indigenous Filipino movie.
Secondly, by making this movie Kidlat has thrown off his colonial bonds and given us such a clear and revealing picture of a Filipino, told by a Filipino, from deep in his heart, that we cannot help but marvel at his accomplishment. Rarely has an artist created such an accurate self-portrait.
The film is about a young Filipino, Kidlat, who earns his living driving a jeepney. The jeepney is the Filipino people’s mini-bus. Originally made from the thousands of U. S. army jeeps left in the Philippines after World War II by the American forces, the jeepney is one of the best examples of Filipino native genius adapting to the 20th century. The Filipinos took these discarded machines used for war and turned them into a most useful social vehicle. They lengthened the back so many people can pile in and they decorated the entire vehicle to give it a feeling of life.
One of the most memorable scenes in the movie was shot inside the Sarao Jeepney factory in Manila. Possibly the Rolls Royce factory in England is the only other car company in the world that still really produces hand crafted bodies. Kidlat’s camera takes us on a tour of this most remarkable factory, skillfully blending the melodic beat of Filipino Kulintang music with the pounding and shaping of the jeepney body by the Filipino craftsmen. Kidlat’s voice over comments proudly in the background that at the height of the oil crisis, while the production of international automakers was on the decline, the Sarao jeepney factory was increasing its production to a record number of five vehicles a week!
As the young jeepney driver, Kidlat is obsessed by a dream of visiting America, and especially Cape Canaveral. He always listens to “Voice of America” on the radio in his barrio where he is also president of the Werner Von Braun Fan Club. He writes letters to “Dear Mr. Voice of America” requesting “the first words your great American astronaut said when he landed on the moon.”
Kidlat’s camera follows his jeepney on its daily route giving the viewer a most revealing and intimate impression of daily life in a Philippine barrio.
When you make a feature-length color movie for under $10,000 you don’t hire actors. The people in the movie are all just playing themselves and seem to be having as much fun letting Kidlat capture them in their daily routines as Kidlat seems to be having making the movie.
In the best sense of cinema verite Kidlat uses a flash-back to show the day of his own circumcision at the age of 12. To film this most remarkable scene Kidlat went back to his father’s barrio in the province of Laguna to photograph the actual scene as it still takes place today in a forest just outside the barrio. By juxtaposing such varying images as the “Voice of America” permeating the background noise of the barrio with the poignant circumcision scene, Kidlat helps the viewer better understand the contradictions that play such an important role in forming the gestalt of today’s Filipino.
One day Kidlat’s dream to visit the “promised land” is fulfilled. An American buys Kidlat’s jeepney to take with him as a promotional gimmick and employs Kidlat to accompany him, first to Paris and eventually to America. Kidlat is fascinated by the modern technology of Paris, where his job is filling up the chewing gum ball machines owned by his American millionaire boss. Kidlat befriends a Parisian street vendor of eggs whom he calls Lola (grandmother). She tells him of her fears that she cannot survive the market that is being flooded by cheap synthetic eggs. One day he goes to visit Lola and she is no longer there. The space where she parked her cart is soon to be demolished to make way for an expanding supermarche across the street!
Kidlat also makes a pilgrimage to Germany, the “land of Werner Von Braun” where he helps a pregnant Bavarian young woman in distress, literally assisting in the delivery of her baby in the back of his jeepney. And finally Kidlat is offered the chance to be the first Filipino to fly supersonic aboard the Concorde flight from Paris to New York.
But little by little Kidlat’s colonial-based dream of utopia becomes a perfumed nightmare. He eventually discovers that in the world outside his barrio there are plenty of supermarkets and super technologies but no super paradise.
Kidlat Tahimik has not made a film that deals with political issues per se. If you are looking for a film that talks directly about martial law in the Philippines, the effects of Western imperialist exploitation on a third world country, malnutrition, revolutionary political organizations or even nuclear power plants being built on the side of an active volcano, you are not going to find it in “The Perfumed Nightmare”. Kidlat’s film is a personal tale about the growth and change of one individual.
This is not to say however that “The Perfumed Nightmare” is apolitical. Far from it. Kidlat seems to be acutely aware of the environment in the Philippines he is photographing. He never misses the most subtle nuances with his shots in the Philippines which contrast markedly with his shots in Europe, which seem a bit more staged and stylized. Kidlat can comment most perspicuously on martial law by photographing a marching contingent of uniformed public nurses and commenting that everyone is represented in this parade, even “those who promote uniformity.”
Another example of Kidlat’s skillful eye and use of the understatement to highlight a political and economic reality happens while Kidlat is relieving himself next to his jeepney just off the highway. The camera focused on Kidlat then zooms back to reveal a large billboard just across the road with the familiar American cowboy and the slogan “Marlboro Country” printed in enormous letters.
“The Perfumed Nightmare”, as a highly symbolic morality play, has the audacity to have a good time with some very serious political issues. The American businessman, played by Kidlat’s lanky German cameraman, is attired in the scenes in the Philippines in long black knee socks, khaki shorts, a smallish ranger hat and shades. Over 6’3″ tall, the American entrepreneur, his legs literally pushing his bony white knees right out of Kidlat’s jeepney as he rides to Manila with Kidlat and a jeepney filled with an assortment of people and animals, is poignantly comical. The entire scene becomes even more hilarious when the American, for comfort, chooses to ride on an old rickety bamboo cart being pulled by the jeepney. The Australian film critic Mari Kuttna has compared Kidlat’s style to that of the young Buster Keaton and in scenes such as this Kidlat’s satirical genius is most evident. Susan Sontag felt the movie “makes one forget months of dreary movie-going for it reminds one that invention, enchantment, even innocence, are still available to film”.
Before making The Perfumed Nightmare Kidlat had associated with the German filmmaker Werner Herzog and has even appeared in Herzog’s ‘Kaspar Hauser’ in a cameo role as a roving minstrel. Kidlat’s performance in Herzog’s movie was unique because in it he plays the Ifugao nose flute, one of the most hauntingly beautiful of instruments, in what must be the only exposure of this indigenous Filipino instrument to the Western world. Kidlat has obviously been strongly influenced by Herzog; you see it in the imagery used in telling his tale, the seriousness of his political statements and his humor. Herzog has stated that “The Perfumed Nightmare” is “one of the most original and poetic works of cinema made anywhere”.
Kidlat Tahimik has woven his amazing tale around two sayings which are spoken and symbolically reenacted throughout the film. “You are the master of your vehicle; only you can tell it where to go” is played out by Kidlat, jeepney driver par excellence, and his Sarao jeepney: a Filipino Don Quixote with the jeepney for his trusted steed. But in this tale, the windmills, those illusory foes of fear and misunderstanding most of us spend our lives battling against, are the images of a Filipino’s colonial-life mentality. Kidlat takes us along on his quest to be the master of his own vehicle.
The second saying, “When the typhoon blows off its cocoon, the butterfly embraces the sun,” comes from a Filipino folk tale, and becomes a fulfilled prophecy for Kidlat. Born Eric de Guia in 1942, he continued to sleep in his cocoon of Americanized colonial mentality dreams for “33 typhoon seasons.” By making this film, the sleeping typhoon learned to blow again. Kidlat says, “Seeing myself on the editing table screen, forwards, backwards, a thousand times, a hundred thousand times, I began to understand the nature of my perfumed nightmare.” Thus, Eric de Guia found himself reborn as Kidlat Tahimik. He has seen the reality of his colonial based dreams, his colonial-formed mind’s-eye image of the world. But Kidlat was not destroyed by what he saw. By the typhoon forces of the tale he has told he has been liberated and now can embrace the sun, his Filipino spirit.
To put it quite simply, Kidlat Tahimik has made one hell of a movie. Unfortunately, because of the uniqueness of the product, most distributors are unwilling to take a chance with it and it is unlikely to be viewed in most U.S. cities. Since it was the surprise hit at the Berlin and L.A. film festivals and has been favorably screened several times at the Pacific Film Archives in Berkeley*, as well as highly praised by director Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now) and Werner Herzog, the film will be distributed by Coppola’s production/distribution company Zoetrope. It is possible to obtain a copy of “The Perfumed Nightmare” by contacting Tom Luddy at Zoetrope Studios, 916 Kearny St., San Francisco, 94133.
Kidlat has mentioned that “The Perfumed Nightmare” might be his first and last film. He is still in the process of deciding whether or not filmmaking in itself is a perfumed nightmare. But if he decides to make another film, ideas will not be lacking, for Kidlat is fascinated by the Filipino native genius. He loves to mention during a conversation and often as a parting salutation, “Who invented the yo-yo? Who invented the moon buggy?” For those readers not up on such matters, both were invented by Filipinos. Currently, Kidlat is following up the true story of a Filipino expatriate living in Poland, a genius at designing and building airplanes and other wonderful things out of bamboo. Sound improbable? No more so than a film about a Filipino jeepney driver who dreams that someday he will truly be the master of his own vehicle. Kidlat Tahimik’s dreams, the dreams of discovering a true Filipino spirit, are worth appreciating.
*Since Berlin the film has been shown at the following festivals: La Rochelle, Locamo, Edinburgh, San Sebastian, Toronto, Rotterdam, Johannesburg, Prix de I’ Age d’Or of Brussels, Thames (London), Belgrade, San Remo Festival de Film d’ Autour, Carthage, L.A. International, Havana International Festival for Young People’s Cinema and Hong Kong International.