Ditsi Carolino's 'Minsan Lang Sila Bata' is a documentary film about child labor in the Philippines. It tackles about how and why these children work at a very young age.

When I was watching the film, I thought it was a really old film because it was in black and white all throughout the film. But eventually I learned, it was released on 1996 and I'm sure colored video has already been used at that time. I guess the black and white filter was used because it was introduced as a documentary story gotten from taking photos and we all know the beauty of mono images. With black and white, there is nothing else to distract the scene and more subtlety of tones to the emotions of your subject. 

I can say it's a well-made documentary film. I tried making a documentary film before for one of my subjects and it's not easy at all. It's hard in a way you don't know where your story is going. You can know your concept but not what will be the next scenes and stuff. 'Minsan Lang Sila Bata' tells a story that is not easy to make a story about. One wrong point in your film and it can be a protest against the government or an insult to these children's parents. 

The narration of the story is, as well, very smooth-flowing. They have random children's stories from different parts of the country weave into one story of child laboring yet it never felt messy. These different experiences shared by the children are great eye-openers to the viewers, like me. I realized how hard must this be for these child workers but got no other choice because of poverty. I am not rich but at least, I am able to go to school unlike these children who must have missed all the friends, the fun and the learning in school. It gives me a reason to not complain about what I eat today because somewhere out there, there are children who work ten times harder than me just to have food to eat. 

"Ang ugat daw ng child labor ay ang kahirapan. Totoo, pero nalilimutan ng mga magulang na habang hindi nakakapag-aral ang mga anak nila dahil sa trabaho ay lalong lumalabo ang kinabukasan nila."

You can watch the docu film on youtube: