Bar Laika and Images Festival present: Stephanie Comilang, Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso (Come to Me, Paradise)

Bar Laika and Images Festival are pleased to present Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso (Come to Me, Paradise; 2016, 25:46 minutes) by Stephanie Comilang.

Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso (Come to Me, Paradise) is a science-fiction documentary set in Hong Kong. The film focuses on the lives of three domestic workers—Irish May Salinas, Lyra Ancheta Torbela, and Romylyn Presto Sampaga. Every Sunday, the Filipina domestic workforce gather for a day of rest and socialization in Statute Square, located in the business and retail district, Central. The film is narrated from the perspective of Paraiso, a ghost played by a drone (voiced by Comilang’s mother who immigrated to Canada in the 1970’s) who speaks of the isolation that results from being uprooted and thrown into a new place. Paraiso’s reprieve comes when she interacts with the women and feels her purpose: to transmit their vlogs, photos, and messages back home. When the women return to work during the week, Paraiso is forced back into isolation and left in an existential rut.

The film refocuses the social life of the women and animates the repose from domestic caregiving by presenting technology as a pivotal way for the women to connect—to each other but also to loved ones. In this counter-portrait of geopolitical alienation, economic migration, and the role of public space, the material of civic presence and vapor of telecommunication are meshed. As the drone protagonist transcends the film from her futuristic vantage, we are offered a layered commentary on the conditions of social life tethered to futuristic apparatuses and antiquated regimes of labor.

Stephanie Comilang is an artist living and working between Toronto and Berlin. She received her BFA from Ontario College of Art & Design. Her documentary-based works create narratives that look at how our understandings of mobility, capital, and labor on a global scale are shaped through various cultural and social factors.

This screening is presented by Steffanie Ling, Artistic Director at Images Festival.

For more information, contact laika@e-flux.com.