‘Excuse Me Miss, Miss, Miss’ now streaming at Sundance

The Sundance Film Festival opens Thursday, January 28. Unlike previous editions, this year’s festival takes place virtually.

Another novelty comes in the form of Excuse Me, Miss, Miss, Miss, which, according to its digital archives, is the first Filipino short film to ever play at the 43-year old festival.

From Southern Lantern Studios, an independent film outfit that has constantly swept local awards with films like Women of the Weeping River and John Denver Trending, comes this offbeat dark comedy about the banal lives of department store salespeople. In it, a contractual sales lady teeters between regularization and termination. The film itself teeters between the surreal and somewhat real, ultimately exposing the nature of labor practices in the Philippines.

“It became a welcome respite from John Denver to do something light,” said screenwriter Arden Rod Condez, whose Cinemalaya-winning directorial debut was a harrowing study on the realities of cyberbullying. Hot off the heels of his big win, Condez then earned QCinema’s short film grant to make Excuse Me, Miss, Miss, Miss with longtime creative partner Sonny Calvento as its director. To complete the Southern Lantern trinity, the film was produced by Sundance Institute alumnus Sheron Dayoc.

“It feels surreal to be back in Sundance, this time as a producer, but I am even happier above all for Sonny Calvento,” said Dayoc. In 2011, his Women of the Weeping River script first brought him to Park City for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, a program that has cultivated classics like Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. Dayoc would later meet up-and-comers Condez and Calvento at Bing Lao’s scriptwriting workshop and the rest was history.

Still courtesy of Southern Lantern Studios

“We share almost the same sensibilities and taste in films, making it easier for the three of us to collaborate on projects. We switch roles based on the tone and the requirements of a project,” said Calvento, when describing the synergy that propels Southern Lantern Studios. He and Condez each had about a decade of television writing experience with ABS-CBN by the time they formed Southern Lantern Studios with indie veteran Dayoc.

Now the young, homegrown production company can add Sundance to their many accolades, with Excuse Me, Miss, Miss, Miss making the cut over close to 10,000 short film submissions from around the world. As this year’s sole Filipino representatives, Southern Lantern Studios joins the ranks of Sundance veterans Auraeus Solito and Ramona Diaz, whose A Thousand Cuts premiered at last year’s festival.

“One programmer told me that it’s really the energy of the film and its weirdness that caught their attention,” said Calvento, who has already started writing his next feature script, Mother Maybe. Meanwhile, Sheron Dayoc is taking his next directorial project, 6th Finger, to the coveted Berlinale Talent Project Market with fellow indie producer Alemberg Ang. It seems there is no stopping Southern Lantern Studios when it comes to world-class storytelling.

The 2021 Sundance Film Festival runs virtually from January 28 to February 3, 2021.

For more short films from Southern Lantern Studios, watch Sheron Dayoc’s The Shoemaker now on Rappler Act One. – Rappler.com