Dahil Sa'yo

"Dahil Sa’yo" is a cinematic montage about love, loss, and memory of my lolo through the lens of my lola.

Combining found footage from intimate home videos on Youtube and 1950s Filipino cinema, the montage hops between my lola’s reality, recent past, and dreams (or what might have been the distant past).

Four renditions of 'Dahil Sa'yo' play across, each representing a specific memory & emotion: a piano rendition by a Filipino grandmother posted on YouTube in 2008, acapella cover by the Philippine Madrigal Singers that distorts as the piece progresses, a voice recording of Lola Gide singing what she remembers of the song, and a duet of the song sung by a grandmother and a young lad. The Harana is a practice rooted in the courtship traditions of the Philippines, meaning to ‘serenade’—of which the artist's grandparents are among the last generation to partake in this practice.