Kiri Dalena

Gikan Sa Ngitngit Nga Kinailadman (From The Dark Depths)

Gikan Sa Ngitngit Nga Kinailadman (From The Dark Depths) by Kiri Dalena is a stylistically collaged film inspired by the true story of a young activist’s drowning. Moving between reality and fantasy, it depicts the story of a dead communist who sinks to the bottom of the ocean into a dreamlike subaquatic utopia. In the film a young woman mourns the death of an activist that took place years ago. The woman sinks into herself and recreates a story that coalesces memory, delirium, and forgetting. The film begins with an underwater sequence in which a woman dances slowly through a field of red flags while holding a larger red flag. Next, Dalena incorporates found footage of protests likely from the era of the 1970s Marcos regime in the Philippines. In the last segment of the film, a woman mourns the death of a drowned man that has washed ashore. While underwater, the dancing woman struggles to reach the floating body of the drowning man, but the force of the ocean prevents her from surfacing. Deeply poetic in both form and content, Gikan Sa Ngitngit Nga Kinailadman is a sobering meditation on political oppression, traumatic memory, and the struggle towards resistance and resilience.