One day when Nelson filmmaker Carlo Alcos was a child growing up in Langley, B.C., he scrubbed his skin very hard in the shower, trying to make it more white.
He did this despite the fact that he seemed to fit in at his school and in his community. He fit in even though he was one of the few non-white kids.
"No one was bullying me. I had lots of friends, I wasn't ostracized, I didn't feel like an outsider ... no one was making me feel this way, but I still was. It was internalized somehow."
He describes a school class photo, one of many archival photos used in his new film entitled Outsiderness.
"The photo is so stark, there's me and one other brown kid and there's like 30 students."
Alcos names the shower memory as one of the formative moments that led him to make the film. Outsiderness will premiere at The Capitol Theatre on June 19.
The film explores the question of what it means to belong.
"I was born in Canada, I grew up in Canada, I feel very Canadian, I am Canadian, but at the same time, there's a part of me that doesn't, that feels a little on the outside, you know, especially when you get the question, 'Where are you from?'
"The question seems really benign, and I get why people ask that, but when you're constantly asked that for your whole life..."
He says being asked that question so frequently is a subconscious message that he is not really from here.
"And that has an effect."
In high school in Surrey, in a very diverse student population, Alcos says he did not fit in with new immigrants from the Philippines. He did not want to associate with them because "I was ashamed of that part of me."
He describes being in a "liminal space," not fitting in anywhere.
Outsiderness, three years in the making, used family photos from his childhood and before his birth, along with conversations with other second generation Filipinos as well as recent immigrants. Alcos says it is not a typical talking heads interview style, but rather conversations happening on screen. He took a trip to the Philippines as part of the process, his first trip there since he visited once as a child.
There he spoke to family members he had only met as a child.
"They embraced us with open arms. It was awesome. They showed us a really good time. We did a big karaoke night, which is a very Filipino thing to do. Karaoke is very Filipino."
In the Philippines he met the Filipino psychologist Carl Cervantes, whom Alcos had already been connecting with online. Cervantes practices what he refers to as Indigenous Filipino psychology, or psychology through a Filipino lens rather than a Western perspective.
The film includes a conversation with Cervantes in the Philippines and with Alcos' parents in Vancouver.
Partway through the filming, Alcos says he settled into a personal feeling of what it means to belong.
"It's mentioned in the film, it's like a contentment, an acceptance of the way things are, and like the real answer is an internal sense of belonging. Being comfortable with who I am. I realized this part way through the making of the film."
Filipinos in Nelson
Alcos says when he moved to Nelson in 2010 there were hardly any Filipino people here but there has been an influx in the past few years.
The 2021 census showed that Tagalog and Punjabi were Nelson's fastest-growing languages. There were 90 residents whose mother tongue is the Filipino language Tagalog, which grew from 40 speakers recorded during the 2016 census.
Alcos works part time as the executive director of the group Intercultural Kootenays, whose goal, he says, is to make the community safer for everyone.
"Because there are a lot of people who would argue that there is no racism here. But there are people who experience racism, like on a daily basis, especially kids in schools."
Alcos has worked on a variety of film-related projects in the Kootenays. He did sound recording and sound design for Southern Interior, Amy Bohigian's sketch comedy TV series about Nelson. He has done sound recording for part of a CBC Nature of Things episode filmed in the Kootenays. He worked with the Toronto Blue Jays on sound recording for a video at Queen Elizabeth Park in Nelson, and he does videography and sound recording for a variety of non-profit organizations in the Kootenays.
Admission to the premiere of Outsiderness is free, but with a donation requested at the door for families affected by the Lapu-Lapu Day tragedy in Vancouver in April.
The evening will open with Ahon (“Rise” in Tagalog), a 20-minute documentary about the K8 Mountaineering Club of Alberta, an all-Filipino group embracing the outdoors in the Canadian Rockies. Directed by Kimberley-based filmmaker Trixie Pacis and edited by Alcos, Ahon sets the stage for the night’s themes.
A Q&A with both filmmakers will follow the screenings.
