Special Delivery, dokumentaryo ni Howie Severino

Special Delivery

A documentary by Howie Severino

Airing date: April 30, 2012

 

Who uses snail mail these days? You know, the hand-written letters with stamps mailed at post offices that seem so quaint now. 

 

Howie Severino and his documentary team find out by immersing themselves in the postal services in Negros Occidental province, where they follow a mailman named Achilles as he delivers much-anticipated mail. Most excited recipients agree to open their letters and read them for the camera, mostly warm messages from overseas. But one letter delivered to a family playing tong-its bore bad news about a loved one. 

 

From his family's archives, Howie discovers a letter to his late grandfather in 1946 from an older sister then living in the family's hometown of Silay in Negros. It's written in a vintage form of Hiligaynon. Howie finds the old post office where it was mailed and finally has it translated, opening a window to the family's bittersweet past.