Kidlat tahimik is a renowned director, actor, screenwriter and producer.

He is also
called “the father of the Philippine independent film”, and the founder of the “Philippine
New Wave”. He is an influential commentator on post-colonialism and the inequality of
the power in the world, who has been discovered by Wener Herzog from the West,
claiming that Tahimik’s films from the 70’s can be considered as the most open-minded
work of their times. Together woth Francis Copolla, Herzog helped him to present his
most famous, partly autobiographic work Perfumed Nightmare. His mixture of diary film,
documentary techniques and cinematic essay have already become a film classic. Since
his debut, Kidlat Tahimik has earned a reputation of an inventor, whose sharp critique of
the gap between the rich and the poor and other social issues builds on gentle humour,
ordinariness as well as a passion for children’s games and word puns.

Film: Why is Yellow the middle of the rainbow? (1994)

After spending close to a decade in Germany, where he made a trio of successful
features, Tahimik returned to the Philippines and embarked on a pair of even more
ambitious projects: the deeply moving, ten-years-in-the-making Why is Yellow the Middle
of the Rainbow?, which parallels the context of the film, Artist’s background and Society
and Politics, Economy, and History because it tackles the growth of his eldest son with
the rise of the democratic movement in the Philippines. The film according to author and
professor Christopher Pavsek, “defies summary simply because of the sheer volume of
ground it covers.” The film questions what it means to be a post-colonial Filipino, where
the director had to wait until his oldest son was old enough to narrate a large portion of
the film, creating an epic film diary spanning the decade of the 1980’s as seen through
the eyes of Tahimik and his family. What is singularly unique about this film is the
pervasive use of children, whose point of view is the focal point of the picture, as the film
is a coming-of-age essay that coincides with a child growing up, curious and inquisitive,
asking questions about the world around him, where the director acts as a father-figure
narrator, where the film is largely a dialogue between father and oldest son, Kidlat de
Guia, who ages noticeably as the film progresses.

References:
http://cranesareflying1.blogspot.com/2014/10/why-is-yellow-middle-of-rainbow-
bakit.html
https://www.tiff.net/the-review/kidlat-tahimik-godfather-of-the-filipino-new-wave/
https://dafilms.com/director/9725-kidlat-tahimik