Mowelfund Film Institute

A man crawls on the street of Manila at the height of EDSA Revolution.

With interviews with National Artists Lamberto Avellana and Lino Brocka and myriad talents from the Mowelfund community such as Nick Deocampo and Raymond Red, Beyond Mainstream documents the robust energy of nascent independent filmmaking in the country in the 80s. Based on Nick Deocampo's first book Short Film: The Emergence of a New Philippine Cinema (1985), it features the first Independent Film and Video Festival held in the Wave Cinema in Cubao, Quezon City, the first video theater in the country.

An experimental comedy short from the Philippines.

Experimental essay film.

This is the life story of Mother Ignacia del Espiritu Santo, a Chinese-Filipina nun who founded the Congregation of the Sisters of the Religious of the Virgin Mary.

In between harvests, to supplement their income, Judith is sent by her father to catch birds which they would peddle come Sunday outside the church. On their trip to the city, Judith requests that they watch a movie after selling off all the birds. What Judith gets in return is a torotot (trumpet) made out of rolled-up film negatives. The story is set in Bikol where it is a practice among rural folks to surround the perimeter of their farmlands with film negatives to ward off birds eating the newly sown palay seeds.

A juxtaposition of recurring images resulting in a montage of ideas aiming to tackle issues concerning the standard male viewpoint on the female body. How the "female body" counter-attacks is shown.

An optically printed abstract film taken from the outtakes of an action flick mixed with noise, news broadcasts and hardcore music resulting into a raw collage powerfully evoking Filipino politics and culture.

A collage film that finds its meaning from interspersing Lenten rites footage with random images using an optical printer.

A humorous but serious film about the "GARBAGE" in our country.

A historian travels through time from the swampland that one day turned into the squalor that it has become in contemporary time.

A man finds answers and more questions as he looks beyond the water's surface.

Rumored to have used footage salvaged from a commercial studio dumpster, the film is a commentary on Filipino onscreen macho culture and one of the rare surviving works in the brief filmmaking career of Ramon ‘RJ’ Leyran. It was a product of the last Christoph Janetzko film workshop, with a focus on experiments with optical printers, held in 1990.

A family witnesses the transformation of their garbage into a monster.

Suring casts a spell of immense beauty, but is persecuted by humanity. She retreats to the forests, far from the prying eyes of humans. There, she befriends the Kuk-ok, a creature who can morph into any form.

Mental hospital patients mysteriously dies one by one.

A bride walks on the desert. She takes off her bridal ornaments and turns into a harlot. A multitude of people crawl on their bellies, become sick and soon die. A volcano erupts. White ashes of lahar cover the earth. The bride remembers her betrothal and repents--symbolically paving the way for the resurrection of her people. A final bridal march into a new heaven and earth takes place.

An expressionistic story of a soldier’s lament as he lies on his hospital bed 50 years after the Second World War.

A young boy from the province goes to the city for the first time and learns about the urban life through the characters inside a jeepney.