Families of Philippines

Roger Bresnahan reviews Families of Philippines, directed by Eleanor Marquisee (2011, 30 minutes)

The Families of the World series, which has garnered a large number of awards, offers an introduction to various countries through visual images, daily activities, and narration by a girl and a boy in the age-range of the target audience – elementary through middle school. Daily activities of the narrators, the economic situation of their families, the social fabric of their communities, the activities of school life and recreation, and the gathering and preparation of food effectively convey the message that the world is really just peopled by ‘kids like us.’

Through this predictable formula, the series can easily lend itself to comparative social studies, especially with the online teacher’s guide containing a compendium of economic and societal data. The images provide a rich understanding of how people live and dress in their ordinary lives. The narrators are a 12-year old boy named Khim, who is in the first year of high school, and a 7-year old girl named Shahani, who is in middle school. Khim lives with his grandparents in a coastal village on the island of Cebu, and Shahani lives with her parents and a younger sister in a market town in Bulacan on the island of Luzon, 50 km north of Manila.

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