Thy Womb

Live birth. Shaleka is a midwife and is married to Bangas-an but they cannot have children. They are Muslims and she therefore wants to find him a second wife so she can give birth to a child.

They live on the mobile homes on Tawi Tawi Island and are Bajau, that is, sea nomads, traditional fishermen, in a wonderful unspoiled sea filled with children playing and guerrillas shooting. The nature is beautiful and fertile, economic precariousness is evident, and for families the dowry that the future husband must bring is a source of livelihood. They manage to find a young and beautiful woman upon payment of 150,000 pesos dowry along with gold and other gifts.

Sterility and fertility, tradition and culture, resignation and dignity of a people adapted to a majestic geography and a conflicting reality. The midwife first wife will give birth to Bangas-an's son by decreeing the fulfillment of the second wife's condition.

The preservation of umbilical cords, the total vision of childbirth, the slaughtering of a calf, the purification of a woman for marriage.

Important is the happiness of the husband: women are to bring children into the world, otherwise they do not justify themselves. A male will be born and God's will is confirmed.

We are officials of the species, nothing more.

The irony of fate, the magic of life, the spell of reproduction: Mendoza's ethnographic documentary-film portrays the beauty of nature, the cruelty of a culture that is also religious, the inviolability of a dutiful condition. Full of love and pain for his land, a poem, a magical, tale, a fierce portrait.