“Harana” is as Filipino as a Filipino movie could be. The short film, which has already bagged numerous awards including that of best actress for its lead star Maqui Farr Jose at the Micheaux Film Festival, will also show its story of diaspora and dreams at this year's Busan International Short Film Festival.
“Harana” is screening at Busan International Short Film Festival
“Harana,” which means serenade, treads on the familiar, albeit evergreen story of Filipinos going abroad in order to build better lives for their families back home. The migrant worker this time around comes in the form of Maya (played by Farr-Jose), a vocalist at a cover band playing at a casino-hotel lounge in Las Vegas. Maya's story is reminiscent of that of Filipino musicians in Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and anywhere else, musicians with voices that can thrill the nights and shake the world, but maybe more importantly for them, voices that could bring back much-needed money for their loved ones in the Philippines.
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What makes the film resonate and relevant for everyone else, however, even with its precious and palpable Filipino-ness, is its universal message of dreaming and defying whatever boundaries could crush those dreams. Maya fights to do more than cover songs, with her renditions not always appreciated anyway by a crowd which has its own tastes, preferences and maybe even prejudices. She writes her own music and by doing so, she finds her way back to the child she left behind.
Farr-Jose is elegant and passionate, though that passion is shown in quiet fortitude, far from how artists and their art are shown in “Whiplash,” or “Black Swan,” with their pursuit of excellence and grandeur turning into soul-consuming obsessions. Farr-Jose's Maya here seems more intent on using her music to tell who she is and to connect with the people most dear to her.
Writer-director Marie Jamora sprinkles some dash of fantasy into “Harana,” which on its own comes across as a more subdued form of a musical. There are the songs and the tunes but none of the usual big, flashy, glitzy performances. There's just a Filipino band trying to find its own voice in a quiet corner and that on its own is memorable and moving enough.
The costumes and the production show the richness and the rust of Las Vegas though, with all its sides captured well. Dreams are not always grandiose and the backdrop's faithfulness to Las Vegas' various vestiges relays this message more clearly and convincingly. “Harana” is all about the heart, the longing for family and creating one's music. It's this simplicity and sincerity which makes it endearing and not just another photocopy of another film about the forlorn Filipino in a foreign land.
