Remnants of A Revolution
A FILM BY Cha Escala
Post-PRODUCTION GRANT - SPRING 2018
A son contemplates on the life of his aging father, Jose “Ka Pepe” Luneta, who is one of the founders of the Communist Party of the Philippines and is said to have led the brutal tortures and executions of his fellow rebels who were falsely accused of being military infiltrators. Ka Pepe, now 75 years old, is a political asylum seeker in Germany. When he fled from the Philippines in the 90s, he left a son behind.
This documentary is a record of a father and son’s journey to confront a violent past. It is also a son's terrifying quest to acknowledge his father's role in the suffering and murder of perhaps innocent victims. It is, above all, the testimony of a father, who admits to his son and to the world, the dark legacy he keeps.
Remnants of A Revolution gives us an inside look at the untold purging within the most popular Communist movement of Southeast Asia through the eyes of the son of an alleged executioner. On a deeper level, it subtly aims to be an exercise of empathy toward a person whose dark past precedes him despite the passage of time. And, toward his son who knows and carries the burden of the moral dilemma of his loving father, Ka Pepe, the executioner.