Hiraya: A short feature

• Main Authors: De La Cruz, Andrea Lei M., Miranda, Alissandra P., Miranda, Anastassia P.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2017
• Subjects: Goddesses > Drama; Lesbians > Philippines > Drama; Communication
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/7861
• Institution: De La Salle University

Hiraya is a live action fictional narrative on video that tells the story of a child who believes a visitor to be a diwata. The story explores the wonderment of the child through her connection with the visitor and the truth that goes behind it. The estimated total running time of our short feature is 13 minutes. In the context of the Filipino society today, many children are riddled with tales of coming from foreign lands. We aim to promote local fables and folklore through our film with the main focus being on a 7 year old child who is told about the story of a more commonly known diwata, Maria Makiling. Maya, the main character, has been entranced by Anita, believing her to be a diwata throughout the entirety of the film. The imagination of a child is powerful at that age specially with children creating imaginary friends or characters inspired by the stories they learn at home and at school. Furthermore, we seek to push the norms of society by having our film's subplot to be on the relationship of a lesbian couple instead of a normative heterosexual couple. To achieve the desired output, our execution is through scoring and cinematography instead of relying on special effects and animation. It relies on the point of view of Maya as we want to give the audiences a view on her perspective on the situation. This was done to further establish the wonderment Maya invokes through the presence of Anita.