The sounds of wind and pelting rain never leave Joanna Vasquez Arong’s To Calm the Pig Inside, a poetic and tragic documentary short eligible for this year’s Oscars. Super Typhoon Yolanda was one of the most destructive storms the Philippines has ever seen, and the people left behind are haunted by unseen ghosts and desolation.
The short begins with a playful image of kids sliding around a makeshift slip and slide as the rain gently comes down. The narrator tells us that she used to look forward to monsoon season–it was one of her favorite times of the year. We don’t see that playfulness for the rest of the film as the super storm rages on sometimes in still photography and sometimes through firsthand footage.
The President of the Philippines seemed to talk down the number of people who were killed by Yolanda. Initial claims that over ten thousand were dead but he, for some reason, claims that emotions are causing people to assume the numbers are so high (which he assures viewers is more realistically around 2,500). Bodies go unidentified and not included in the counts of the official dead.
The black and white photography makes Arong’s film that much more effective. Stories about this storm will be passed on from generation to generation but there is both an ominous and reflective quality to how Arong presents them to us. The sounds of the film keep humming. We are always on guard as if the wind will strengthen and we will have to seek cover. That hum is unsettling.
Trauma will get passed on but it doesn’t seem possible that the memory of Yolanda will ever fade. The ferocity of this storm shows that Mother Nature is unpredictable and unforgiving and Arong gives focus to the many experiences and stories that can be recorded.