Documentaries
About the Series
Threaded Traditions, are a series of three documentary films that journey into the heart of Philippine weaving. Created by HABI: The Philippine Textile Council the series was made possible through the collaboration of weaving communities, filmmakers, scholars, and cultural institutions from across the archipelago.
Established in 2009, HABI: The Philippine Textile Council is a non-governmental organization devoted to preserving, promoting, and enhancing Philippine textiles through education, communication, and research. HABI envisions a Philippine textile culture that is vibrant, diverse, and very much a part of our modern present, one in which the artisans behind every cloth, and the traditions they carry, are seen, valued, and sustained.
Threaded Traditions grew from a shared conviction between HABI and the Mahalina Foundation, the foundation established by our founder, Mercedes U. Zobel, who was among the funders and supporters of the series.
Filmed across Panay Island, the Cordillera highlands, and the ancestral lands of the Bagobo-Tagabawa in Davao del Sur, the three films follow the making of a textile from plant to fiber to finished cloth, and enter the lives of the artisans who keep these traditions alive.
In keeping with the values we hold at the Center, the films do not speak on the weavers’ behalf; instead, they give the makers space to tell their own stories, of inheritance and innovation, of patience and prayer, and of the quiet resolve to place an ancient craft into younger hands.
We invite you to watch, to listen, and to help us carry these threads forward.
Threaded Traditions |
Memoirs of a Textile: Inabal of the Bagobo-Tagabawa
Among the Bagobo-Tagabawa of Davao del Sur, in the shadow of Mount Apo, weaving is understood not as a mere craft but as a gift from the divine. The inabal, an abaca cloth whose name means “woven on the loom”, is said to come through dreams, its intricate patterns rising from a sacred place within the maker; a design that is not meant for you, the elders teach, will simply never take shape beneath your hands.
Memoirs of a Textile follows this living tradition from the harvest of raw abaca to the finished cloth, luminous with colours drawn from the flowers and forests of the community’s ancestral home. At its heart lies a tribute to the late Salinta Monon (1920–2009), the revered master weaver honored as a National Living Treasure in 1998, and to her granddaughter, LoveLove Monon, who now carries that legacy forward, living proof that a tradition once thought to be fading is being taken up anew. It is a quietly moving portrait of memory, inheritance, and the enduring bond between a people, their land, and their loom.
Threaded Traditions | Ikat of the Cordillera
In the highlands of the Cordillera, the mountainous heartland of Northern Luzon where the Bahay Ugnayan Research Center makes its home, weaving remains a way of life, and few techniques are as demanding or as spellbinding as ikat. Long before a single thread meets the loom, bundles of yarn are bound and dyed, again and again, so that the pattern is written into the very fiber; only when the weaving begins does the design at last reveal itself, as though by revelation.
Ikat of the Cordillera traces the journey of this remarkable cloth through the communities that have safeguarded it across generations, from the gathering of natural dyes, drawn even from the earth and mud of the mountains themselves, to the ritual blankets and everyday garments in which Cordillera identity is worn with pride. Produced in collaboration with the region’s own scholars and cultural institutions, the film is at once a record and a celebration: of a craft that resists all easy imitation, and of the elders and weavers determined to see it passed safely to the next generation.
Threaded Traditions | Textiles of Panay Island
On the island of Panay in the Western Visayas, once the beating heart of Philippine weaving, whose gossamer piña was prized in the royal courts of nineteenth-century Europe, three extraordinary textile traditions endure side by side. Textiles of Panay Island follows them all: the luminous piña spun from the fibers of the pineapple leaf; the handwoven hablon that becomes the patadyong, the beloved Visayan wraparound skirt; and the panubok embroidery of the Panay Bukidnon, whose stitched motifs keep alive the Hinilawod, one of the longest oral epics in the world.
Told in the words of the artisans themselves; “your body should be in synchrony with your mind,” says master piña weaver Raquel Eliserio at her loom, the documentary carries us from plant to pattern to finished cloth, revealing how every design holds within it the life, land, and imagination of its maker. It is a portrait of a community that has weathered every turn of fortune, and of the elders who continue to bridge the traditional and the modern, one thread at a time.
With Gratitude
The Threaded Traditions series would not have been possible without the generosity, knowledge, and trust of many hands.
Our deepest thanks belong first to the weaving communities who opened their homes and shared their traditions: the Bagobo-Tagabawa of Davao del Sur, the peoples of the Cordillera highlands, and the artisans of Panay Island. To the master weavers, embroiderers, and elders, and to the young weavers now taking up the loom, we owe an immeasurable debt. These stories are yours, and it has been our privilege to help carry them further.
We are grateful to HABI: The Philippine Textile Council for its vision and stewardship in producing the series, and to the filmmakers, scholars, and cultural institutions whose care shaped each film, among them the Mahalina Foundation, the Museum Foundation of the Philippines, CORDITEX, the Cordillera Textiles Project, and Museo Kordilyera, together with all who lent their expertise and support.
We honor, too, the memory of Salinta Monon, and of every weaver whose life’s work has kept these traditions alive.