No Data Plan
THE PHILIPPINES, USA / 2018 / English, Tagalog / Color / Digital File / 70 min
Director, Photography, Editing, Sound Design: Miko Revereza
Narration: Carolina Fandiño-Salcedo, Aristilde Kirby, Aurora Revereza, Lee Nachum, Miko Revereza
World Sales: Sentient Art Film
Source: Miko Revereza
“Mama has two phone numbers.” An overlapping multiplicity of American voices, threaded through with the director’s own family story, centering on his mother. A journey of film in the space it takes a train to leave California where his family lives, and head to New York where he goes to college. Although he is haunted by the fear of being asked for ID or his immigration status found out by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), this film reveals through his eyes, in scenes of the passengers and stations along the way, fragments of the US that “is not.”
[Director’s Statement] A giant, loud container full of people, luggage, sewage and microwavable food. For three days I stared at moving light passing through the residue on its windows like one long dolly shot from coast to coast. Los Angeles to New York, the great American travelogue in reverse. From its rear window the tracks look like film strips. 16:9 intermodal shipping containers passing narrowly five or eight feet from heads resting on windows sleeping. The Milky Way galaxy seems so small compared to its far-reaching tentacles. A spectre that migrates mountains, trees, crude oil, plastics, glass, French fries and footwear. Everything organized is in displacement. The AC puts me to sleep. I close my eyes and the motion of passing scenery continues. I dream I am at an airport in Manila. I wake up in another state. There are two white Border Patrol vehicles pulled up at both ends of the next station + one unmarked car. The plainclothes officer with the walkie talkie commands the other two. They are right outside my window now. At this point my slow and steady camera movements breaks down. The image stabilizer fails in my hands as if the camera suddenly becomes self-aware of its immigration status.
Born 1988 in Manilla. Experimental filmmaker and undocumented immigrant. Since relocating from Manila as a child, he has lived illegally in the United States for over twenty-five years. This lifelong struggle with documentation, assimilation and statelessness informs his films, DROGA! (2014, YIDFF 2017), DISINTEGRATION 93–96 (2017, YIDFF 2017) and his debut feature, No Data Plan (2018). Revereza’s films have been widely screened and exhibited internationally at festivals such as International Film Festival Rotterdam, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, True/False Film Festival, Images Festival, and Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival. DISINTEGRATION 93–96 was featured and streamed on MUBI.com. He is listed in Filmmaker Magazine’s 2018 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema.