Hikaru Murakami

BY BENJIE BERNAL

THOUGH SHARING a similar name, Hikaru Murakami (4 AB COM)—Hiks, as her friends call her—is not the Japanese novelist you’re thinking of. But if they have something in common, it’s that they both tell compelling tales—Hiks just tells them through film. Over her college life, she has become a well-known filmmaker on campus, thanks to her distinct style and advocacies.

Vision in action

Hiks got her first camera in her senior year of high school. After dabbling in stop motion and music photography, she realized that she had yet to make full use of her camera’s video feature. When she entered Ateneo, Hiks applied as a cinematographer for Loyola Film Circle (LFC) and as a photographer for the Company of Ateneo Dancers (CADs). She also applied for The GUIDON’s Photos Staff, but was placed in Video Production (VP) instead. This twist of fate cemented her path towards filmmaking. In the next years, she would help lead the production of LFC’s O-Films, Under the Stars films, and a slew of viral videos made for The GUIDON as its VP editor.

But alongside these org collaborations, Hiks has pursued her own passion projects. Her personal films respond to what she sees as a flawed status quo. “I really try to focus on strong emotions or a strong stand that I want to convey to an audience,” she explains. “And that usually comes from my own advocacies.”

As a queer woman, Hiks is aware of the discrimination faced by women and the LGBTQ+ community as well as the evolving conversation on mental health. Her frustration with these issues manifests in many of her short films. In a film she did for a digital filmmaking class, two lesbians are having sex when an angel appears to judge them. “It’s supposed to be a com 47 mentary on lesbian rights,” she says. “In the end, they push the angel down to hell.” Hiks is no stranger to creative symbolism now, but she used to wonder exactly how she should tell these stories of struggle. Her mentor, director Sherad Sanchez, helped her embrace a more free-flowing approach. “What [Sherad] says is that, if you’re a queer filmmaker yourself, when you put it out there, your queer experiences will show no matter what,” Hiks explains. “So I guess that’s what I’m trying to do now. I don’t have to make everything so explicit—let people have an interpretation.”

Constant exploration

It’s no surprise then that Hiks’ striking films are dubbed “experimental”—a quality which, in part, sealed her fellowship to the Ninth Ateneo Heights Artists Workshop. Many of her personal projects play with a bewitching array of colors, imagery, and music. Hiks uses these to bravely shed light on taboo subjects. One example is Overture (2017), which features a boy hallucinating as he drowns in a bathtub. Rapid clips of mysterious figures, expressions, and objects cut into each other as the instrumental rises to a crescendo. The film is colorful yet enigmatic in depicting how memories can suffocate. Another piece, Ma, Okay Lang Ako. (2018), grapples with the self-acknowledgment of mental health. It does so in just one minute, and it was a finalist in the Cinema One Originals Minute Student Film Competition of that year. With her style being so distinct, Hiks has had to navigate her way through directing a team. “When I first started making films, I was stricter with what I wanted,” she admits. “But it eventually toned down when I started getting positions in orgs.” For her, directing is about ensuring cohesion rather than forcing a vision. As LFC Production Core Deputy, Hiks learned to “hear everyone out” in every collaboration—and she has since grown to love being a friendly mentor to younger crew members. Despite the breadth of her filmmaking experiences, Hiks isn’t sure about getting into the industry right away. “I know that I don’t have the connections, and I don’t know where I’ll end up aside from maybe advertising or something,” she says. But even without a traditional platform, she is sure to pave her own path. And she always has, because Hiks admits that she often breaks the rules before learning them. “Professors and mentors scold me a lot because I don’t watch a lot of film, and because I don’t look up to anyone,” she adds. The fact is, Hiks doesn’t really need to. Her process may be unorthodox, but that has only made her films braver—just as she has been in telling stories that matter, frame by careful frame. Hikaru