Nung nawala ang aso ko
ABSTRACT
Mina, M.M.V (2017). Nung Nawala ang Aso ko, Unpublished Undergraduate Thesis, University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication.
A young girl on the brink of puberty wakes up one morning to find that her pet askal had escaped, leaving her with a wound in her vagina. Thinking her dog had bitten her, she sets out to find traces of it, despite the persistence of her best friend to just let it go. Confused and distraught about her body and what the blood entails, she tries to make sense of herself and her tireless longing. She digs deep into her own flowery crevices to understand, clawing and howling.
The text clings onto the impression of a woman’s childhood—sporadic and muddy when recalled—brought about by the repression within a conservative Filipino family. The feeling of pressure and precaution about one’s self is all the more heightened when speaking of a young girl’s entering puberty, particularly reaching the age of menarche. Using elements of magical realism, anthropomorphism in children’s literature, and the woman’s blood in the lens of Berger’s “Way of Seeing,” the film attempts to provide a visual and atmospheric medium to unravel—and ultimately come to terms with—the weirdness and strange, but curious, discomfort about a young woman’s body and sexual organ.
Keywords: Menstruation, Adolescence, Counter-cinema, Anthropomorphism