Turumba

Director: Kidlat Tahimik

1983 / 94min / 16mm

The manufacture of paper mache figurines, traditionally tied to a festival that lends its name to Tahimik’s slyly funny docufiction depicting the creeping westernization of the Filipino village of Laguna, becomes big business when one family, inspired by a visiting German entrepreneur, starts a mini-factory for export of the baubles, cranking out 25,000 souvenir Olympic-themed mascot Waldi dachshunds to ship off to the 1972 Munich Olympics. “Unfolds in a gradual and deceptively deadpan style… [Has] an insinuating, almost offhanded humor that by no means undermines the seriousness of the villagers’ plight.” —The New York Times

16mm print courtesy of Les Blank Films

Part of Art Cinema, Olympiad, and the World