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The Fires We Inherit

On Labor

Workers have long borne the weight of exploitation, precarity, and inequality. From factory floors to picket lines, their struggles blaze a path toward dignity and rights. This forum reflects on labor’s unfinished battles and the collective fires we must carry forward.

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Schedule

  • Date:
  • Time:
  • Location:
  • September 28, 2025
  • 4 PM
  • Sine Pop, Quezon City
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Short Films

Kinakausap ni Celso ang Diyos

By Gilb Baldoza

Fiction | 2024 | 20 mins | Philippines

LOGLINE

After discovering a hidden clause in his work insurance, CELSO, a factory worker, goes extreme and faces a life-altering decision, challenging reality to secure his family’s future.

Kapag Nagwala ang Kalabaw

By Paul Serafica

Documentary | 2024 | 19 mins | Philippines

LOGLINE

Blending Ericson Acosta’s poem “Walang Kalabaw sa Cubao” with urgent voices from today, Kapag Nagwala ang Kalabaw (When the Carabao Gets Mad) captures the struggles of BPO workers in Cubao organizing for their rights. Through weary bodies, streets, and placards, the film reveals why people rise in protest—and how collective action becomes a force against oppression.

Kino Kalye

By Joel Andrei Ramirez

Documentary | 2023 | 20 mins | Philippines

LOGLINE

This documentary is divided into three material productions, specifically the material production of infrastructures, e-commerce, and food. It follows the transformation of the material and the alienated labor that enables it. Through dialectical association of images, spaces of agencies can be rediscovered amidst alienated relationships.

Rod

By Ulap Chua

Experimental | 2023 | 4 mins | Philippines

LOGLINE

Rod recounts the 1985 People’s Strike organized National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW) against the tyrannic Marcos Regime in Escalante, Negros Occidental.

Workers and the Archive

By Mayday Multimedia

Documentary, 2 Episodes | 2024 | 20 mins | Philippines

LOGLINE

A continuing video series produced by Mayday Multimedia featuring photos from the collection of the archiving initiative Philippine Labor Movement Archive that collects, documents, and preserves materials related to the labor movement in the Philippines with the goal of making this rich history accessible primarily to Filipino workers.The initiative is organized by Tambisan sa Sining, Mayday Multimedia, EILER, Balai Obrero Foundation Inc., and Kilusang Mayo Uno.

Featuring veteran labor photographer Boy Bagwis and Emy Sagcal, one of the workers that established the Robinsons Department Store Workers Union.

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Other films we are screening

Tipping the Scales

Southeast Asian Short Films Exhibition and Discussion

You are invited to Tipping the Scales and discover Southeast Asia through its cinema and find in its stories echoes of our own.
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Ghosts of Future Past | On Martial Law

Southeast Asian Short Films Exhibition and Discussion

This year’s Active Vista Human Rights Festival: TRESE calls you to gather, remember, and resist, through powerful films that confront the haunting legacies of Martial Law.
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Ain’t I A Woman? | On Women’s Empowerment

Women’s bodies and voices have long been sites of struggle, contested, and controlled, yet continually resisting. This forum listens to stories that challenge patriarchy and affirm women’s place at the center of shaping just and equal futures.
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FRAMES: Filipino Short Film Competition

This year’s Active Vista Human Rights Festival: TRESE proudly presents the selected films of FRAMES, our short film competition platform amplifying new voices that confront the urgencies of our time revealing stories on different frames of human struggles.
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