Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan

Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan is an independent filmmaker born of Ifugao and Visayan descent. Eblahan’s works explore themes of trauma, spirituality, and nature told through the cosmic lens of post-colonial spaces and Indigenous identities. The films have been awarded at festivals like Sundance and Clermont-Ferrand, and here in Uppsala Eblahan received the Uppsala Award in Memory of Ingmar Bergman last year. Whether heavenly ethereal or breathtakingly magnificent, these films are both engagingly immediate and quietly intimate, as Eblahan artfully subverts tropes from Western genres and ethnographic films, infusing them with his own voice, allowing his subjects to shine in ways they were previously denied.

Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan will be present at the screening to talk more about his filmmaking.

Screened:
SUN 29/10, 15:00 SLOTTS

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UMBILICAL CORD TO HEAVEN

Set in the present-day Philippines, the film depicts fairies and gods returning to the land as they are called back and remembered by several individuals, proving the country’s constant connection to its rich, complex history.

Philippines 2019 / 13:00 / Director: Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan

REMEDY

In a rural coastal village in the Philippines, Mona trains under her mother to start work as a professional mourner-for-hire. After a botched performance, Mona retreats from her mother’s fury, and seeks out a shaman to cure her inability to cry.

Philippines 2020 / 27:00 / Director: Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan

THE HEADHUNTER’S DAUGHTER

Lynn – an aspiring country singer, and July – her trusty brown horse, endures an arduous descent along the Cordilleran highlands to make it on time to the city for the audition of her dreams. Lynn’s journey leads her on a path where her indigenous identity is confronted by the unseen forces of the landscape’s colonial American past.

Philippines 2022 / 15:00 / Director: Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan

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