30/11/2022
Director Rhadem Musawah , a q***r, indigenous, Filipino filmmaker sat down with Pride@PH’s Louise Delvaux to explain Tulipa, his most recent film.
Director Rhadem Musawah and producer Chris Sta Brigida Kopp spoke to Pride@PH from the lobby of a hotel in Denmark — one of their many stops across Europe as the film Tulipa is screened across borders and languages. Their appearance is illuminated by windows where sprawls of Copenhagen streets lie below. Their attire ready for tonights screening of Tulipa at the Kulturhuset Kastrup Theatre.
Tulipa is a film about intersectionalities, particularly between the identities of q***r, Filipino, and migrant. The lines separating these identities often blur into each other, producing nuanced perspectives that are not only unique but also surrounded by misrepresentation in modern media.
“I realized while doing those advocacy programs in the Philippines […] that we rarely highlight the voices and make our migrant workers, Filipinos abroad, LGBTs, as part of the movement,” says Musawah.
In Tulipa, Muswah turns his storytelling prowess to the narratives of four Filipino migrants. In each of his subjects he captures their shared anguish at sacrificing the rural comfort of their Filipino provinces in exchange for the autonomy of the sprawling Dutch cities.
“Filipinos [leave] the country not just because of the financial reason, they also leave because they want to feel secured,” adds producer Chris Sta Brigida Koop whose story is one of the four shared in the film.
Musawah likens the Filipino LGBT migrant culture to the 16th century import of tulips into the Netherlands, an allusion and nod to the film’s eponymous title. “Tulips are not originally from the Netherlands — it’s basically from Turkey“ Musawah explains, “the Netherlands created a safe-space for the tulips to grow, to flourish, to propagate,”
Even after the freedoms found abroad, q***r OFWs still ache for their homeland, but fail to return in fear of lacking SOGIE legislation. This dilemma reflected in Tulipa makes its message a rallying cry for q***r Filipinos everywhere: to pass the anti-discrimination bill at the Philippine Senate.
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