Reel Time: Salat (Bone Dry)

Responding to a Philippines National Nutrition Council’s study that determined that two out of 10 Filipino children are malnourished, GMA’s Reel Time series produced this unflinching documentary that makes the statistics heartbreakingly human. It focuses primarily on Vina Navarro, a widowed mother in Manila who struggles to feed herself and six small children on the pittance — the equivalent of about 48 cents per day — that she makes peeling garlic cloves. The video is remarkably intimate, capturing up-close the Navarros’ subsistence life in their cramped living quarters and the surrounding slums. We see her oldest child, Mary Rose, who’s the size of a 5-year-old at age 10, crying because she doesn’t want to go to school without bathing. Food, not “frivolities” like soap, is Vina’s foremost concern, and we see her pride when, after a good day’s work, she brings home a single pack of instant noodles for her brood to share. For personalizing the problem of hunger in the Philippines and also putting it in a global context, a Peabody Award goes to Reel Time: Salat (Bone Dry).