05/02/2026
SATURDAY, 5:30 PM after Missing Codec's talk on experimental cinema! + Talkback with the filmmakers after the screening!
SCREENING THIS SATURDAY!
GANGSTERISM{S}
Programme by missingcodec.com
February 7, 2026 | 5:30 PM
Balanghai ni Ikeng Independent Cinema,
Ili-likha Artists' Wateringhole
Admission: 150 PHP
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๐๐๐ง๐ ๐ฌ๐ญ๐๐ซ๐ข๐ฌ๐ฆ{๐ฌ} : ๐๐ข๐ง๐๐ฆ๐ ๐ข๐ง ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐ข๐ฆ๐ ๐จ๐ ๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ๐ ๐๐จ๐ข๐ฌ ๐๐ฅ๐๐ฌ๐ฌ ๐๐ง๐ฑ๐ข๐๐ญ๐ฒ
After being released from warrantless detention, several participants from the September 21, 2025 protests against corruption are being called and charged with either inciting to sedition or sedition โ both non-bailable offenses. Recent reports state that the Department of Justice has now charged more than 90 people, which includes people who were formerly arrested. This situation tells us two things: either the state has now lost all reasoning and are gearing towards a turn towards a full blown authoritarianism, or, that the riots have instilled fear and threat against the waning hegemony of the bourgeoisie and the ruling classes.
Itโs not as if only one of those is true. It would even make more sense that this fear and threat that loom the bourgeois mind after instilling in their imagination the capacity of the lumpenproletariats to shake their very hold to power that their police panics at the sound of their own gunshots. A comrade says it best: after September 21, the bourgeoisie and their ruling bosses faced class anxiety. A recent farcical incident reflects it best: the very presence of the so-called โyoung stunnasโ at the Bonifacio Global City โ the gravitational point of bureaucrat-capitalism and imperialism in the Metro โ threatens the illusion of development that they opt to openly be classist about the scenario.
Within this context, we find the words in the last poem published by the late Edel Garcellano being evoked in Gio Lingaoโs ๐๐ค๐ฌ ๐๐ ๐ฟ๐๐๐ ๐๐จ ๐๐ค๐ฉ ๐พ๐ค๐ฃ๐ฉ๐ง๐ค๐ซ๐๐ง๐จ๐๐๐ก, contrasting footage as he tried sneaking out of police surveillance during the covid lockdowns. Unlike cameras looted by the police on September 21 from unsuspecting student journalists, Lingaoโs filmmaker was able to salvage his footage. What is seen is a perspective from someone being tracked.
Carlo Cieloโs ๐ฝ๐๐๐ supplements Lingaoโs journal with a transitional gaze as he edits footage from Reginald Kira of the September 21 protest in Mendiola. The camera of Kira captures the gravity shifts between protesters and state forces as it pans from left to right, challenging the meaning of power, making discourse out of violence, and violence out of discourse.
What initially attracts Isiah Medinaโs latest feature in this programme is its very title that fits the critique of the โunrulyโ young stunnas of September 21, that, at least for some of the organized left, that what they showed was just a politically disorganized action. The vanguardists would note Maoโs lamentations of the โdangerous classโ that can be โled to become a revolutionary force.โ
Medinaโs ๐๐๐ฃ๐๐จ๐ฉ๐๐ง๐๐จ๐ข contributes to this discussion a cinematic form of the concept beyond its intended narrative. Like the young stunnas, ๐๐๐ฃ๐๐จ๐ฉ๐๐ง๐๐จ๐ข exposes the very contradiction of contemporary political ecology, framed within the attempts of a filmmaker to create a film in an environment where the call of the day is asking for permission. Medina cuts his film to think and to be, as much as the young stunnasโ riot is a necessary intervention to urban history is a struggle to make themselves.
As the lumpenproletariats of the world โ from the streets to cinema โ assert themselves, forcefully shaking the being of the bourgeois standing. The bourgeoisieโs anxiety exposes them, once again, as paper tigers that a flicker of amber can burn.
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