Bridging Our Stories

When Alma Manabat Parker watches Filipino dancers perform tinikling, jumping in and out of the clanking bamboo poles with timed precision, she can’t help but compare it with the challenge of balancing her two worlds as a Filipina in Ketchikan, Alaska.

Palo Alto-based director Rafael Bitanga’s CAAM-funded documentary Bridging Our Stories follows Parker, now a head coach of the Ketchikan High School Dance Team, as she learns that her childhood Filipino Community Dance Center has been demolished – and is now a parking lot.

After spending decades turning back on her heritage to assimilate as an American, she travels back to the Philippines to learn the traditional indigenous dances, so she can pass an uncolonized version onto the next generation. Bitanga was a 2024 CAAM Fellow and the winner of 2024 CAAM Ready, Set, Pitch! competition.

Plays in

Revival & Reconnection

In these three CAAM and ITVS funded short documentaries, reconnecting with cultural lineage and histories paves the way…