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Tawa
In Production at CSV |
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DirectorRomeo Candido | | One of the classic traits of being a Filipino is the ability to laugh in the face of adversity. TAWA is the Filipino term for laughter, and for Haniely Pableo, adversity is something she knows quite well.
What Han Han calls a "typical Filipino immigrant experience" in Canada provides a unifying lens on the subjects she confronts on the album. At age 7, Han was separated from her mother, who moved to Kuwait and then Hong Kong as a domestic helper. (Robert Bolton. Huffingtonpost.ca Sept 03 2014).
With a gambling addicted father, an absentee mother, her older sister was the only constant as they moved slum to slum. With great determination and perseverance, she beat the odds, graduated Salutatorian at her high school, and at 21 she was reconnected with her mother in Toronto where she immigrated under Canada's Live-in Caregiver Program. Han Han would find training as a registered nurse and would eventually find work in the operating room of an Ontario hospital, a far cry from where she came from. This is where her ‘typical immigrant’ tale ends, but where her true story begins.
Haniely was never actually exposed to much hip-hop; She cites Nirvana and Bon Jovi as the bands that she idolized. But, through a series of random connections, she found herself at the Kapisanan Philippine Centre where the PSL (Poetry as a Second Language) class was taking place. Soon she began expressing her experience through poetry, and when her poems were put to music, she discovered that she had a natural flow and cadence that was reminiscent of traditional rap, which was originally a rebel music made from a place of marginalization. Unlike the hip hop of women today, where more emphasis is on the size of their booty and on having a good time, Han’s songs are throwbacks to a time where hip hop was the voice of struggle, and now Haniely, aka Han Han finds herself the a voice of all the immigrants who are caught between two worlds, two identities, and two destinies. With the recent talk about the changes to the live in caregiver program, potentially robbing migrant caregivers the chance for permanent residency, Haniely’s message is even more important. And after the completion of her first full length album, it seems that a new chapter of her life is about to unfold.
TAWA will mix interviews, archival footage, performance footage, re-enactments, and artistic interpretations of her music in a multifaceted collage that will try to piece together who this layered and complex woman is, and document her transformation from silent outsider to relevant artist. From the slums of the Philippines to the suburbs of Ontario; from the operating rooms of the hospital to the stages of the clubs; from a quiet provincial girl, to a fierce hip hop warrior. Tawa will be a film that will redefine what the ‘typical immigrant experience’ is, and will shine a light on the most unlikely of heroes, who against all odds, has a song to sing, and a defiant laugh that will ring throughout the world.
| | Year: 2015
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