Still Lives (2025)
Still Lives is a short film that examines the funeral of Jerhode “Jemboy” Baltazar, a 17-year-old boy killed by police in Navotas, Philippines. The funeral took place on August 16, 2023, in a context marked by heightened media presence and public scrutiny. Utilizing still photographic images and the recorded voice of the victim’s mother, the film engages with the visual and sonic textures of grief within a heavily mediated space. Framed against the broader political backdrop of Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-drug campaign and the subsequent rise of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the film situates individual loss within ongoing patterns of state violence and impunity. Rather than offering a linear narrative or didactic message, Still Lives explores the complexities of posthumous representation, archival ethics, and the tension between witnessing and spectacle. It reflects on the saturation of images of suffering in contemporary media environments and considers the implications of documenting grief in contexts where visual exposure does not guarantee justice. The film operates within the intersecting domains of political memory, diasporic return, and mediated mourning, raising questions about the responsibilities and limits of representation in the aftermath of state-sanctioned violence.