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The Philippine Consulate General screened The Helper, a crowd-funded feature-length documentary focusing on Hong Kong’s migrant domestic workers, after work at the Chancery on 9 August 2018 to appreciate its message and assess how it could be best be promoted for wider screening in Hong Kong and the Philippines.

“I think no one came out of that screening untouched by the plight of our fellow Filipinos who make a tremendous sacrifice when they leave their own families back home to work in Hong Kong,” said Consul General Antonio A. Morales after seeing the 106-minute film that had a sold-out 11-week run in Hong Kong cinemas in 2017. “Everyone was crying,” he added.

Consul General Morales met with the film’s director and producer Joanna Bowers last month to discuss how screenings among government officials, the consular corps and the general public in Hong Kong, the Philippines and Southeast Asia could enough raise awareness to improve the plight of some 380,000 foreign domestic helpers (FDHs) in Hong Kong.

Filipino household service workers (HSWs) drive the narrative in most of the diverse stories chronicled in “The Helper,” which uses interviews of employees and their families, employers, volunteers, social workers, and other people they care for and who care for them to show the often ignored contribution these women make to Hong Kong society. 

The main stories show The Unsung Heroes, a 50-member choir of Filipino HSWs who find themselves in practicing for a concert at Hong Kong’s popular Clockenflap music festival; Liza Avelino, a late-blooming adventurer who conquers Imja Tse in Nepal, and Nurul Hidayah, who overcomes solitude, legal and financial woes as an Indonesian single mother.

“The Helper” film was made internationally available last month for viewing on cable in Hong Kong, the U.S. and Canada, as well as through video on demand (VOD) aboard Cathay Pacific flights, for download on iTunes, GooglePlay, YouTube and Vimeo, among others, and for purchase on DVD and BluRay on Amazon, Target, Barnes and Noble and Best Buy.

Bowers, who raised HK$700,000 for the film in 30 days on a Kickstarter campaign, premiered the film in May 2017 at the Asia Society Hong Kong with the support of the European Union Office to Hong Kong and Macau and investment bank Goldman Sachs. She is also seeking distributors for the film in the Philippines and Indonesia.

Consul General Antonio A. Morales, the officers and staff of the Philippine Consulate General in Hong Kong gather at the start of the screening of “The Helper”, a crowd-funded feature-length documentary focusing on Hong Kong’s migrant domestic workers, at the Consulate Chancery on 9 August 2018.
The officers and staff of the Philippine Consulate General in Hong Kong avidly watch at the Chancery Public Area on 9 August 2018 “The Helper”, a crowd-funded, 106-minute documentary that shows the plight of the territory’s 380,000 foreign domestic helpers through individual stories of the challenges and travails faced by Filipino and Indonesian workers and how they overcome through the inspiring combination of grit, pride and determination and eventually not only contribute to Hong Kong’s economy but also help their own families back home.

 

At the end of the screening on 9 August 2018 of “The Helper”, a crowd-funded, feature-length documentary focusing on Hong Kong’s migrant domestic workers, many of the officers and staff of the Philippine Consulate General appeared teary-eyed and touched by the individual stories that made up the 106-minute film directed by Hong Kong-based British filmmaker Joanna Bowers.