Movie Night! ~ The Perfumed Nightmare by Kidlat Tahimik (1977)

In 2018, Kidlat Tahimik (which means “quiet lightning” in Tagalog) was honored with the order of the National Artist of the Philippines in Film, the highest state’s award for artists. The Perfumed Nightmare is his best-known work. Upon its release, critics saw it as a breath of fresh air and it was considered a pioneering work of Filipino independent cinema. Sincere yet conceptual in its formal jugglery, stunning with eccentric aesthetics, it was the distinctive manifesto of a budding director. With passing time, the film, proclaimed by Werner Herzog as one of the most original and poetic works of cinema made anywhere in the seventies, hasn’t lost its rough charm and ability to mesmerize international audiences. Also, because of the heyday of the post-colonial discourse and growing awareness of colonialism’s fateful hereditary, it may be even more apprehensible for today’s viewers than it was for the audiences few decades ago.