I’m a writer and filmmaker exploring inequality, power, and hope within systems and relationships.
Before you get to my work…
My stories are often born from questions I have about myself, my relationships, and the world around me. I’m endlessly fascinated by the ways larger systems, societal or familial, influence our interpersonal lives.
The intentions behind my work are rooted in curiosity and liberation. This is because, as a 1.5 generation queer Filipina-American, alterity was a constant that pushed me to search for new ways of living and connecting. In this tumultuous path towards liberation, through character and narrative structure, I actively investigate every detail, especially my own complicity in the very systems I am questioning.
Whatever form that takes, from short films to a coming-of-age television series, exploring the causation between our lives and the systems we live in has always been the foundation of the stories I want to tell.
A Better Future
a coming-of-age drama series centering on Mae Tolentino, a straight-A high school Junior who’s always chasing after success.
Developed with BAVC Media (2021) and Lambda Literary (2023).
The Smart Kids Don’t Know
an essay about growing up in the American education system.
published in Speakeasy Magazine (2023).
a Pushcart Prize nominee (2023).
For Jude
a poem made in collaboration with Swinburne University’s graduate short film “Jude”.
Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices
One of 12 Screenwriting Fellows selected for a week-long retreat to develop writing craft, form community, and perform a live reading of our work.
Featured in Lambda Literary’s mini documentary about the retreat.
Challenging Norms in Storytelling
Facilitated a creative storytelling workshop with Filipinx Arts Collective, Tagalikha.
How can we, as Filipinx creatives, tell our stories when traditional narrative models don’t always serve us? Through the medium of television, we will explore how we can challenge norms in our creative practice, seek out alternative patterns, and reshape narratives in our image - ones that are unapologetically ourselves and the world as we know it.
Creators are always making something new. Sometimes out of joy, sometimes out of pain. The pandemic pushed all of us to find new ways of being to survive. In that process, we found the systems in place in our governments, societies and workplaces were built against that.
Through a portrait series, Graphic Designer, Loisse Ledres, captured creators’ stories who have chosen to build a new path forward, one that serves them, their family, and their communities.