The Long Take: Passage as Form in the Philippine Film

The essay evolves a thesis around the scene in Manila by Night involving a gay couturier (Manay Sharon) and a blind masseuse (Bea) who weave through a dark alley in the city and engage in a meandering exchange. It asks the question: Can Philippine film theory contemplate a different notion of “passage” or “interval” that is not exclusively a function of plot or an always-already marker of time? How does this notion reference the heterogeneous locale intrinsic to it? Using this specific scene as aperture, it probes other examples in the Philippine oeuvre through such films as Maryo J. de Los Reyes’s Gabun: Ama Mo, Ama Ko and Brillante Mendoza’s Kinatay.