Film Independent’s Fiscal Sponsorship program opens the door to nonprofit funding for independent filmmakers and media artists. Donate today and help bring Bridging Our Stories to life.
 

Logline

When the last Filipino community center in Ketchikan, Alaska, becomes just a memory, a 50-year-old Filipina who spent her life resisting her heritage travels to the Philippines to rediscover her roots, preserving her community’s disappearing culture, and teaching indigenous Filipino dances.

Synopsis

Bridging Our Stories follows Alma Manabat Parker’s journey from cultural shame to becoming a cultural bearer for the Filipino community in Ketchikan, Alaska. As Filipino elders are aging and passing away, Alma is in a race against time to save her community’s disappearing heritage. Alma applies and receives grants from the Alaska Humanities Forum and Rasmuson Foundation, catalyzing her physical journey to the Philippines, reckoning with generations of colonial trauma and cultural disconnection.

Alma embodies the immigrant paradox: brought to Alaska at eight months old, she spent decades rejecting her Filipino identity to assimilate into American society. As she reflects, “I don’t want to be that Filipina person. I want to be an American.” Now teaching Filipino dance to youth in Ketchikan, where Filipinos comprise 10-12% of the population through cannery work and military service, she confronts a devastating reality: she’s perpetuating the same colonized perspective that limited her own cultural understanding.
 

Meet the Filmmakers

Rafael Bitanga — Director/Producer
At age six, Rafael’s creative journey started when he used his mom’s film camera to capture his older sister during a dance performance in the Philippines. Early exposure to the arts sparked his creativity, which came into focus years later. As a 7th grader in Kodiak Island, Alaska, he documented the life of a retired Filipina nurse and teacher.

Since then, he has been committed to filming unscripted documentaries centered on overlooked stories (particularly Filipina/o Americans in Alaska). Rafael represented the Kodiak History Museum at the National Arts and Humanities Youth Programs Award, where Michelle Obama highlighted his contributions to photography and filmmaking. Rafael’s work has garnered support from the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the Alaska Humanities Forum. Beyond film projects, he teaches filmmaking to youth and educators across Alaska through the nonprofit See Stories.

The power of film and service fuels him to uplift others with dignity. Rafael is a Coca-Cola, Horatio Alger, and Live Más Scholar, who holds a B.S. in Hotel Administration from Cornell University. As a CAAM Fellow, Rafael received mentorship from Tadashi Nakamura. Rafael is the winner of the 2024 CAAM Ready, Set Pitch.

Lailanie Gadia — Producer
Raised in Guam, Lailanie Gadia is a Filipina American community builder, producer, and financial professional based in Los Angeles. She founded her film company, Mango Stories, where she is driven to bring impactful stories to life. She is the Operations Director at the Asian American Documentary Network (A-Doc), supporting 1,800+ filmmakers and film professionals where she helped series produce Emmy-nominated and Silver Anthem award-winning 2022 Asian American Stories of Resilience and Beyond shorts.

In addition to Bridging our Stories, Lailanie is producing 2025 CAPE Julia S. Gouw Short Film Grantee, Rachel Leyco’s short, Milk & Honey, along with several other projects in development. Her credits include Third Act (Sundance 2025), and Dive Bar (2019), which was featured onboard Alaska Airlines for two years. Lailanie was named a 2023 Documentary New Leader and participated in the 2021-2022 Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics Impact program.

She graduated from Loyola Marymount University and serves on the API Alumni Association board. She is also a proud member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, Gold House Futures Network, Film Independent, Global Impact Producers Alliance and the Documentary Producers Alliance. She previously had a six-year career in mortgage banking and remains passionate about financial well-being.

Diana Diroy — Editor
A Sundance Documentary Edit and Story Lab Fellow (2022), Diroy is the editor of the feature documentary Standing Above the Clouds (2024), which world-premiered at Hot Docs and won the Bill Nemtin Social Impact Award. In 2019, she edited the short version of the film, which won Best Documentary Short at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. Diroy also edited Fire Through Dry Grass, Best Feature Documentary at the BlackStar Film Festival, a New York Times Critic’s Pick, and part of POVʻs Season 36 on PBS.

In 2021, Diroy was selected for the Sundance Art of Editing Fellowship and in 2018 was a selected fellow for the Karen Schmeer Diversity in the Edit Room Program. When Diroy isnʻt creating, she teaches video editing at UC Berkeleyʻs Graduate School of Journalism and has previously taught youth at the Bay Area Video Coalition and the Educational Video Center in New York. She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and continuously strives to collaborate, build community, and make magic with other creatives locally and remotely.

Tadashi Nakamura — Advisor
Tadashi Nakamura is an Emmy-award winning filmmaker and the Director of the Watase Media Arts Center, a production company of the Japanese American National Museum. Tadashi was named CNN’s “Young People Who Rock” for being the youngest filmmaker at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Now with over 20 years of filmmaking experience, his films include Nobuko Miyamoto: A Song in Movement (2024), Mele Murals (2016), Gotham Independent Film Award-winning Jake Shimabukuro: Life On Four Strings (2013), A Song for Ourselves (2009), and Pilgrimage (2006).

His latest film, Third Act (Sundance 2025), is about his pioneering filmmaker father, Robert A. Nakamura, and his current battle with Parkinson’s Disease. Tadashi has an M.A. in Social Documentation from UC Santa Cruz and a B.A. in Asian American Studies from UCLA. He made the DOC NYC ‘40 Under 40’ list in 2019 and was a 2020-2022 Firelight Media Documentary Lab Fellow and a 2022-2023 Sundance Asian American Fellow. He was a mentor for the 2024 CAAM Fellowship and recipient of the 2024 Rockwood Documentary Leaders Fellowship.

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Contact

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