Skip to main content
Vilcek Foundation
  • About
    • About

      The Vilcek Foundation raises awareness of immigrant contributions in the United States and fosters appreciation of the arts and sciences.

    • Our Mission
    • Our Founders
    • Our Team
    • Press Center
    • Contact
  • Prizes
    • Prizes

      The Vilcek Foundation Prizes celebrate extraordinary achievements in the arts and sciences.

    • About the Prizes
    • Prize Recipients
    • Vilcek Prizes

      Awards immigrants with a legacy of major accomplishments.

    • Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise

      Recognizes young immigrant professionals for outstanding achievements.

    • Vilcek Prize for Excellence

      Celebrating intellectual and cultural leaders in the United States.

    • Marica Vilcek Prize in Art History

      Honors art historians, curators, and fine arts professionals.

  • Art
  • Grants
    • Grants

      Grants awarded to 501(c)(3) cultural, educational, and philanthropic organizations in the United States.

    • Grants

      Learn more and apply for a grant.

    • Grants History

      Explore a list of past Vilcek Foundation grantees.

  • Events
  • News
Sign Up Search
Home > News > Miko Revereza: “How does an undocumented documentary filmmaker document themself?”

Miko Revereza: “How does an undocumented documentary filmmaker document themself?”

News | March 22, 2021
Tags
directing director documentary film Philippines photography
Share this page
Share this page on X Share this page on Facebook Share this page on LinkedIn

Miko Revereza points his lens towards the camera with a smile on his face.

“How does an undocumented documentary filmmaker document themself?” asks Miko Revereza. “It was kind of a riddle that I was going through to create my own living documents—a sort of DIY documentation.”

Known for his short films and installations, Miko Revereza’s work ties the personal to the political. His work explores his own experience of being an undocumented immigrant in the United States, and plumbs the depths of identity, the self, and perception. The experimental filmmaker is the recipient of a 2021 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Filmmaking.

The DIY ethos grows out of both creative resilience and an economy of necessity. It holds value as the driving force for artistic innovation—creating something out of nothing—and the development of new creative and technical approaches to work. It takes on a more resolute meaning, however, for those who are unable to access resources as a result of discrimination or marginalization in society. Immigrants—particularly undocumented immigrants—must find ways to provide for themselves and one another outside of the structural systems in the United States—systems that were not designed to support those most marginalized.

“Diaspora communities in the United States have a DIY ethos to surviving,” says Miko. “If you have this limited set of resources, you have to figure it out.”

Miko Revereza stands in front of a large window with a view of the city behind him.

Miko was born in Manila, in the Philippines, and moved to the United States as a child with his mother. As a high school student, Miko became aware of the fact that his immigration status was undocumented. This information shaped Miko’s reality: His status limited the options available to him with regards to employment, obtaining a driver’s license, or attending college.

Already deeply interested in photography, Miko immersed himself in the medium, and his interests grew to encompass filmmaking and video. “It felt like a forum or a medium for rebellion,” says Miko. “It wasn’t bound to rules. The more you broke the rules, or created new ones, the more it was celebrated.”

Miko Revereza sitting on the metal stairs of a warehouse inspecting his camera.

As a young adult, Miko was able to obtain legal status in the United States through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Established through executive order, however, the program has been subject to abrupt changes due to shifts in U.S. governmental leadership and political sentiment. The program—which was created to support young individuals of undocumented experience—has been characterized by its precarity.

Miko’s film Disintegration 93-96 navigates and explores this precarity, highlighting Miko’s recollection of his own childhood, his relationship to the United States, and his experience of immigration. Miko’s footage is interspersed with footage from VHS tapes his family sent to their extended family in Manila when Miko was a child. In one scene, a young Miko is seated next to his father as he speaks through the camera to his family: about money, about California, about their immigration status. Miko’s voiceover follows: “There’s a reason they call us dreamers. They projected this dream, this hallucination, this delusion our whole lives. After every year, we either became more resilient or more apathetic towards it.”

Miko Revereza stands in front of a bright window looking into his camera.

It is the resilience and creative resistance of Miko’s work that makes it precisely so powerful. His poetic and subversive films thrum with raw emotion and human vulnerability. A co-founding member of the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective, Miko is part of a growing community of undocumented artists and filmmakers advocating to support the visibility, inclusion, and presence of diverse immigrant artists in front of and behind the camera.

Miko receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Filmmaking for the ingenuity and urgency with which he bridges the personal and the political. His work challenges audiences to rethink aspects of both documentary filmmaking and the immigrant experience.

Tags
directing director documentary film Philippines photography
Share this page
Share this page on X Share this page on Facebook Share this page on LinkedIn

Related News

September 25, 2024

New American Perspectives at HIFF 44

The Vilcek Foundation hosts a cohort of immigrant filmmakers and centers their work at the Hawai’i International Film Festival.
Program title graphic:
March 15, 2021

Rodrigo Prieto: “Being a foreigner gives you a certain perspective”

Rodrigo Prieto receives the Vilcek Prize in Filmmaking for his emotionally riveting and technically masterful cinematography.
Rodrigo Prieto in a white button-down framed by set lights.
March 1, 2021

Juan Pablo González: “You allow the place to tell you what it is.”

Juan Pablo González receives the 2021 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Filmmaking for his nuanced and resonant documentaries about rural Mexico.
Juan Pablo González standing in a cellar surrounded by barrels.

You may also be interested in

Miko Revereza

Miko Revereza receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Filmmaking for the ingenuity and urgency with which he bridges the personal and the political, in works that challenge us to rethink aspects of both documentary filmmaking and the immigrant experience.
Portrait of Miko Revereza

Juan Pablo González

Juan Pablo González receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Filmmaking for the artistic rigor and deep emotional engagement that he brings to his immersive and intimate explorations of his hometown in rural Mexico.
Portrait of Juan Pablo González

Nanfu Wang

Nanfu Wang receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Filmmaking for the impact and courage of her riveting documentaries, which are lucid and unflinching in confronting the consequences of systemic oppression and corruption in China.
Portrait of Nanfu Wang

Join our mailing list

Sign Up
Vilcek Foundation
21 East 70th Street
New York, New York 10021

Phone: 212.472.2500

Email: info@vilcek.org

  • About
    • Our Mission
    • Our Founders
    • Our Team
    • Press Center
    • Contact
  • Prizes
    • Prize Recipients
    • Vilcek Prizes
    • Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise
    • Vilcek Prize for Excellence
    • Marica Vilcek Prize in Art History
  • Art
  • Grants
    • Grants History
  • Events
  • News
  • Careers
Connect with us
  • Connect with the Vilcek Foundation on Facebook
  • Connect with the Vilcek Foundation on Instagram
  • Connect with the Vilcek Foundation on X
  • Connect with the Vilcek Foundation on LinkedIn
  • Connect with the Vilcek Foundation on Youtube
  • Connect with the Vilcek Foundation on Vimeo
  • Privacy Policy
  • Accessibility Statement
© 2025   Vilcek Foundation
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok