Directing
When Luna, a battered wife, and Bela, an empowered artist, meet for the first time, their hearts will be freed by the people and society that chain them.
"Tungkung Langit" is a title that refers to the god in the Panay epic whose tears become rain, but in the short film, two young children do not weep but offer an intimate perspective into their lives as they speak to each other about their experience during a typhoon that devastated their city and left them orphans. Speaking to each other of their trauma through play and in the smallest of whispers before falling asleep becomes “a means by which these orphans heal”; the film reinforces and envisions this healing.
A young filmmaker is bent on recreating forgotten massacres from Philippine history, but when she begins shooting at a site where 1,000 men, women, and children were slaughtered, angry spirits are awakened and the lives of her team and the local villagers are put in peril.
A woman mourns the drowning of a young activist that took place years ago. She sinks into herself and recreates a story that coalesces memory, delirium, and forgetting.
A musical docudrama about the brave and outstanding Women of Malolos to whom Jose Rizal addressed his famous letter in Feb 22, 1898.
In Alunsina, Dalena explores the potentials and limits of engagement within a community facing trauma. Working closely with human rights organizations, she finds herself documenting the struggles of children and families in an urban settlement severely affected by the government's war on drugs. She engages with another family whose child has resorted to drawing pictures to cope with such tragedy and again confront the complexities in communicating the violence they have witnessed.
The tale of an activist’s journey during the turbulent years of Martial Law, until his capture in the mountains and the dark, nine years of imprisonment that followed, leading to his birth as a poet.
Requiem for M is an experimental short documentary in the aftermath of the Maguindanao massacre in which multiple journalists were slain. Dalena captured scenes from the funerals and played this in reverse, in the wistful yearning to turn back time to before the tragedy occurred.
A 2012 documentary about the making and the legacy of the 1982 drama masterpiece directed by Ishmael Bernal that ended up being one of the greatest Asian films of all time. The revelations about the theory of "Who killed Elsa?" will be answered and also, the impact of the film to the Filipino culture and society.
Children of the land faithfully guards the last harvest from thieves. This poetic film offers a glimpse into the passion and pain of the people's protracted war in the Philippine countrysides--the red saga.
The two-channel video installation captures scenes from the Manila metropolitan area, home to over 12 million people. Since July 2022, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. – son of the former dictator – has governed the Philippines as its president, alongside Vice President Sara Duterte, daughter of Rodrigo Duterte. The collaboration between Kiri Dalena and Ben Brix incorporates aerial images to reveal the city’s dynamic activity from above, while ground-level shots follow individuals through various aspects of daily life and diverse social and urban spaces: They go to school, drive to work, attend cultural events or church services, paint protest posters, play music, or do domestic chores. Many scenes capture spontaneous moments, while others were reenacted with participants, blurring the lines between documentary and drama. - Michaela Richter, Berlin
Magkakapatid is a story about a family that drifts apart due to socio-economic differences. Three siblings, three narratives, one tragedy, wherein a brother kills his own brother, a father struggles to accept a daughter’s marriage, and a daughter who could not mourn. In a situation where even traditions can’t pull them together, a tragedy drags them together.
Life Masks is part of an ongoing series of photographic works and video portraits of political activists and artists in their homes or places of asylum. These works demonstrate mutual trust between the artist and subjects who appear in plaster masks to maintain their anonymity.
