In this, his 1977 feature-film debut, director Kidlat Tahimik, who is widely regarded as the father of independent Philippine cinema, stars as a Filipino jeepney driver who wants to emigrate to America to become an astronaut. Dreaming of an idealized version of the West, he chairs the fan club of the rocket designer Wernher von Braun and is a devoted listener of Voice of America. Traveling in his colorfully decorated extended jeep he arrives in Paris, where his illusions can’t survive.
Director: Kidlat Tahimik. AKA Perfumed Nightmare
Writer: Kidlat Tahimik.
Stars: Mang Fely, Dolores Santamaria, Georgette Baudry, Katrin Muller, Hartmut Lerch, Kidlat Tahimik.
Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize in the 1976 Berlin Film Festival and was released by Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios in the US, this world cinema classic is thematically urgent and ideal viewing in the age of digital media-driven film-making today.