No Data Plan

Miko Revereza
,
US
,
2019
,
DCP
,
70'

Shot on a cross-country train trip from Los Angeles to New York, Miko Revereza’s debut feature turns a familiar cinematic conceit into a conduit for personal reflection. Living in the U.S. illegally for over twenty years, the Filipino-born Revereza frames the three-day journey as a microcosm of the immigrant experience — its dangers, practicalities, and realities. As the film begins, Revereza is boarding an Amtrak at Los Angeles’s Union Station, his small digital camera capturing the mass of bodies as they funnel into the various compartments. Through subtitles, he speaks of his mother and how they communicate under threat of government surveillance: she has two phones, one for routine conversations (an “Obama phone”) and one with no data plan, which they use to speak about immigration-related issues. Proceeding to tell of his mother’s affair with a younger man (a thread that structures and runs throughout the film), he reflects matter-of-factly on his family life and the strange dynamic these circumstances have prompted. In a diary-like manner reminiscent of Chantal Akerman’s late digital films, Revereza shoots passing landscapes and incidental details with equal curiosity, intuitively capturing the rhythms and longueurs of long-distance train travel, as well as the anxieties of anonymous immigrants — anxieties conveyed in overheard phone calls, encounters with ticket takers, and eventually, the presence of Border Patrol officers. Quiet, contemplative, and legitimately brave, No Data Plan is that rarest of things: a personal film with real world consequences. (Jordan Cronk)

 

English & Tagalog spoken, English subtitles

Distancing

Miko Revereza
,
US
,
2019
,
DCP
,
10'

After deciding to leave the U.S. and return to the Philippines, Miko Revereza charted his journey on film, creating superimpositions of intimate 16mm images shot in his home, at the airport, and with his family. A coda of sorts to No Data Plan, Distancing uses personal experience to reflect on the lives of displaced persons throughout the western world.

 

English & Tagalog spoken, English subtitles