Bontoc Eulogy 1995

The unnamed narrator, Marlon Fuentes, a serious Filipino-American immigrant, looks back on his days in the Philippines and steadily pursues questions about the mysterious disappearances of his grandfathers. His curiosity becomes a driving force, pushing him to research his family history and to search for the fate of relatives he never fully knew. Through his voice-over narration, the film grants audiences a private window into his internal conflict about belonging, heritage, and the weight of memory as it stretches across generations. The storytelling unfolds through a tapestry of vignettes and visual fragments centered on the World’s Fair, with some scenes that appear to be archival footage themselves, while others are presented as carefully staged reenactments that illuminate what people once believed to be the past.

The film opens with the narrator contemplating his own children and then returning to childhood in the Philippines, where he wrestles with the ache of not feeling fully at home in either country. He longs for a solid footing in his personal history, a way to anchor his sense of self in a lineage that seems partly fractured by displacement and time. In his attempt to make sense of his ancestry, he recounts the lives of the two grandfathers who shape his questions about identity and memory. Emiliano, his first grandfather, fought in the Philippine Revolution of 1896 and the Philippine–American War of 1899, and he died in the trenches, his body never found. The narrator speculates that Emiliano may be buried in one of the mass graves outside Manila, leaving a haunting void at the edge of the family story.

The other grandfather, Markod Enrico Obusan, adds a different, more expansive dimension to the narrative. Markod was an Igorot warrior whose people encountered American strangers when the colonial project first pressed into their villages. Initially wary, the Igorots eventually encountered Americans who invited them to come to the United States to showcase their culture. Markod, at the time a young chief known for his hunting and warrior skills, agrees to travel with his people to America to participate in the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. The journey begins aboard a ship toward San Francisco and continues by train to St. Louis, where two companions even perish in a brutal cold in a boxcar. In St. Louis, the Igorot delegation helps build a village display that recreates elements of their homeland, turning the fair into a sprawling stage where visitors view a “Philippine reservation” as part of a broader spectacle of “exotic” cultures.

Within this setting, a large audience comes to see the living Filipinos as part of a spectrum the fair marketers call progress—from “barbaric” to “civilized” and Christian. Markod is lauded for his skill and presence, and the exhibit is designed to convey not only cultural richness but a narrative of modernity that the fair seeks to project. Yet the film makes it clear that such displays carry a troubling gaze: the people on display are watched, categorized, and curated for the amusement and education of paying crowds, a dynamic that raises ethical questions about representation and humanity.

Amid the bustle of the fair, a troubling incident occurs: a sick baby girl born to an African couple at the exhibit is taken away and never seen again, an event that unsettles the exhibit’s leaders and alarms the people who help run the show. The father’s account of the disappearance adds to the sense that the fair’s orderly facade hides underlying tensions and potential injustices. Markod watches in growing unease as more fragility emerges among the exhibited communities; two Igorot men vanish as well, leaving the community in mourning while the public remains largely unaware of the personal toll behind the spectacle.

Markod’s longing for home intensifies as the noise, light, and artificial atmosphere of the fair overwhelm him. He longs for the quietness of the mountains and the sounds of nature he knows so well. In a moment of desperation, he attempts to escape into the surrounding woods, hoping to return to a life unbound by exhibition. Instead, he awakens in the company of unfamiliar American faces, and he is placed under solitary confinement to prevent further attempts to flee. The narrative then shifts to a chilling archival thread: after the fair ends, records show an Igorot man’s death and a mangled body, leaving open questions about whether this could be Markod or someone else who shared his fate, and about where his remains finally rest.

The film also alludes to a broader, unsettling pattern in which the remains of some individuals associated with the exhibition were displayed or repurposed in ways that modern audiences might find troubling. One archival thread suggests that the remains of two Filipinos were examined in a manner that raises ethical concerns about who controls the narrative of a people’s bodies and histories. These moments deepen the central inquiry: how do institutions of display shape memory, and what is lost when a community’s story is co-opted for public consumption?

As the narrative progresses, the archivist’s lens returns to the present, tracking the traces of Markod’s possible fate through scattered records and fragmentary evidence. Yet the ending remains deliberately unresolved: the precise location of Markod’s body—or even a definitive account of his ultimate fate—remains unknown, leaving the narrator to continue his pursuit of connection and truth. Throughout, the film relies on a mix of staged scenes, documentary-like segments, and reconstructions to illuminate how memory, the gaze of the spectator, and the search for belonging ripple through generations. The narrator’s journey reveals that history is not a static record but a living, evolving inquiry into kin, place, and identity, one that asks how a family makes sense of its past when the lines between fact, memory, and representation are never fully clear.

Ultimately, the film offers a contemplative meditation on diaspora and ancestry: it invites viewers to consider how the stories of forebears—their courage, their fear, and their choices—continue to echo in the present day, shaping how a grandson sees himself and his own children. The unresolved final image lingers with a sense of responsibility to remember, to search, and to question, even when the answers remain elusive.