“HITO” is a banana punk science fiction film about a young girl living in a dystopian society where history holds no meaning and the cheapest fish costs 3,000PHP (55 USD) per kilo. So in short it’s just a normal day in the Philippines during the 21st century LOL just kidding or not..!
If I were to describe HITO it would be this massive amalgamation of things that I like and despise mashed together into this unstable radioactive blob of a film- and to be completely honest it started out with the very stupid idea of creating a creature film that involved an oversized talking catfish with legs…
But of course we couldn’t leave it at just that….
So throughout development we began combining these weird science concepts, one of them was inspired by the strange experiments conducted by the United States concerning Dolphin communication through the use of LSD. Add to that this bizarre project by the Marcos dictatorship in the 70’s to bring African wildlife to a small island in the Philippines named Calauit so that they could create an exotic petting zoo.
But most importantly at the heart of the film are the very real stories of people I know who had survived the social and political instability in my country from the Japanese and American occupation to Marcos dictatorship and beyond- people who were abused, repressed and tortured but still fought back.
In the end this weird cocktail of real life strangeness became HITO, a banana punk simulation designed to recreate the not so average life of an average Filipina schoolgirl and her fishy new friend…ENJOY!
