In his film Perfumed Nightmare, Kidlat Tahimik carefully stitched together a winding series of thought provoking images and turned them into a vehicle for his onscreen alter ego, who embodies the desire to witness the “progress” of the developing world. Tahimik’s direction is both poignant and surreal, speaking to the audience through metaphors that make us laugh as well as makes us think about how they relate to our own lives. Tahimik’s sense of humor and the bits of his personality he chose to showcase really made this film unique. His thoughtfulness paid off. I could sense how much care went into making this film for the right reasons, not to make money but to say something important about what radical imagination can teach us.

The film and its form is a story of morality and transformation, the way we harness our available resources towards certain change. The jeepney, a wartime vehicle introduced by the United States army, ended up being the most democratic mode of public transportation in the postwar Philippines. For Tahimik the jeepney is a metaphor that works on many levels as it travels with him from his home village to the streets of Paris. The jeepney represents cultural resourcefulness, a country’s ability to adapt and reuse. This idea of taking something from a darker period of history and turning it into something celebratory really resonated with me and made this one of my favorite films that we’ve watched so far.

The jeepney looks like junk. It is outdated and looks like it could break down at any moment, yet it represents the unique spirit of Tahimik’s community, and a culture’s capability to thrive. With Perfumed Nightmare, Tahimik pays tribute to the kitsch and thus balances his sharp critiques with an exuberance that tells us it is okay to laugh, to find the redeeming qualities in something that looks like junk, is fraying on the edges, but gets you from one place to another.

Although, Tahimik was disillusioned when he finally saw the developed world and how it sacrificed certain values, like traditional commerce being taken over by the supermarket, he made a film that floods this sacrifice with the rivers of possibility. He does resign as president of the Werner von Braun club, but maintains that he will continue to find his own way in life, to choose his own vehicle.

At the end of the film, he imagines the industrial chimney as a rocket ship, his own “bridge to the stars.” The last image is a stamp of him sitting on the detachable chimney flying towards the moon. We saw his frustration with the incinerators, but just like the jeepney, every scrap can generate value, can become a vehicle that crosses whatever bridge lies ahead.