Miko Revereza

A culmination of several years of shooting, editing, relocation, and reflection—acclaimed experimental filmmaker Miko Revereza forges a personal and profound portrait of immigration, disillusionment, and the elusiveness of home.

Shot on 16 mm and in color, Distancing documents the logistics and poetics of Miko Revereza’s decision to leave the United States and return to the Philippines.

The director turns his own fingerprints into ink stains on a film reel.

A superimposition of footage encompassing travel, architecture, and visual abstraction in which “distances are folded to touch the other side like a folded map.” Silent.

The EDSA revolution brought an alt to a new form of experimental cinema that was emerging during the Marcos regime. This is a recovered excerpt from a video experiment by the almost unknown director Arturo Madlangbayan, as re-edited by Miko Revereza and Raya Martin.

This personal 8mm film looks at and reads Los Angeles and symbols of American popular culture through the eyes of a Filipino immigrant. Through navigational directions, by reciting a list of missing things, or by varying key themes, the film makes visible the gap between the attributes and expressions of diverse cultural identities.

A culmination of several years of shooting, editing, relocation, and reflection—acclaimed experimental filmmaker Miko Revereza forges a personal and profound portrait of immigration, disillusionment, and the elusiveness of home.

Shot on 16 mm and in color, Distancing documents the logistics and poetics of Miko Revereza’s decision to leave the United States and return to the Philippines.

The director turns his own fingerprints into ink stains on a film reel.

A superimposition of footage encompassing travel, architecture, and visual abstraction in which “distances are folded to touch the other side like a folded map.” Silent.

The EDSA revolution brought an alt to a new form of experimental cinema that was emerging during the Marcos regime. This is a recovered excerpt from a video experiment by the almost unknown director Arturo Madlangbayan, as re-edited by Miko Revereza and Raya Martin.

This personal 8mm film looks at and reads Los Angeles and symbols of American popular culture through the eyes of a Filipino immigrant. Through navigational directions, by reciting a list of missing things, or by varying key themes, the film makes visible the gap between the attributes and expressions of diverse cultural identities.

Worn out tapes, glitches in revolt.

A voiceless narrator rehashes details about his mother’s affair as he crosses the United States by train. “Mama has two phone numbers. We do not talk about immigration on her Obama phone. For that we use the other number with no data plan.” The linear train ride moving from Los Angeles to New York diverges into unruly directions of consciousness. A multiplicity of voices share thoughts, dreams and histories evoking images far away from the enclosed spaces of this trains interior. While capturing these landscapes and interiors through his lens, the moving images evidently illustrate an undocumented subjectivity, a site of precarious movement, migration and fugitivism in the US.

I know damn well this video will be consumed on the basis of my otherness, and will further implicate my family for crime of being here, and will continue to bind me into the institutional characterization of a “filipino american artist”. I am exhausted of this performance.

Living in the USA illegally for over 20 years, Miko Revereza reflects on his family's relocation from Manila to Los Angeles in this introspective essay film. Patching together self-portraiture and home-movie footage, his sombre yet resolute voice-over contemplates the weight of postcolonial history and obstructed futures on diasporic identities.

Living in the USA illegally for over 20 years, Miko Revereza reflects on his family's relocation from Manila to Los Angeles in this introspective essay film. Patching together self-portraiture and home-movie footage, his sombre yet resolute voice-over contemplates the weight of postcolonial history and obstructed futures on diasporic identities.

Living in the USA illegally for over 20 years, Miko Revereza reflects on his family's relocation from Manila to Los Angeles in this introspective essay film. Patching together self-portraiture and home-movie footage, his sombre yet resolute voice-over contemplates the weight of postcolonial history and obstructed futures on diasporic identities.

Experimental short.

An island off the pacific coast of Mexico. There is no one in sight, but we find traces of a bustling past. Interwoven into the soundscape and amorphous space of what remains, the past and future cross paths and we as spectators are invited to join on a journey beyond time.