Trailer for Son of God, which screened at the Boston Underground Film Festival.
A dwarven, towheaded, Filipino Christ child, carried by burly, diaper-clad heralds, bellows in the din of a Black Nazarene parade that he is the son of God. He’s dressed like a baroque cherub and has magical hands that can tear away your cancer. His small form floats across a sea of thousands, whose hands reach towards religious curiosities like him that pepper the scene. His followers, clad in white, kneel and chant before him with stern fervor.
It’s a spectacle that’s at first quite foreign to many in North America, but upon further consideration is just a more exaggerated form of the kind of fevered pageantry observable in a charismatic church. Or outside of a Planned Parenthood. However, for the many millions of faithful in the Philippines, these brushes with the divine are a real and coveted part of daily life in a world without welfare. In the absence of resources is a high demand for miracles; the son of God has the market cornered in the marvel-making progeny-of-Christ department.