Raymond Reds＇s early short films are not only amongst the very best films ever made in the Philippines but also some of the most original and allusive shorts in film history. Reds＇s background in painting and photography(he studied at the National Art Center) helps to explain his visual flair, but not the thematic depth and richness of his work. Enemy(Kabaka)(1983)is oblique autobiography disguised as elegiac science-fiction:it shows young men trained as Guardians of the Stars of the Eatern Skies confronting their worst enemy. State of Being(Kamada)(1984)seems at first more realistic:in a magically conjured 1950s,a music student in need of somewhere quiet to practice rents a room-which already has a mysterious occupant. The Yawn(Ang Hikab)(1984) manages to evoke both Borges and Beckett:an insomniac and a deep sleeper share a bunk bed. The skies(1988) is another parable:a man dreams of self-powered flight. And Pepe(1989) turns a Kafka-like satire of bureaucracy into a very Eastern meditation on death and rebirth. Red combines pop culture, film history, philosophy and a very Filipino nostalgia for bygone times in films that are bygone films and fashion.