Valencia Diary is the chronicle of a southern Philippine village at a time when daily life was charged with tension at the impending collapse of the Marcos regime. Like Gary Kildea's earlier Celso and Cora-set in Manila-this film takes as its main subject the histories and philosophies of a handful of ordinary people. The location is barrio Sinayawan in the Valencia district on the central plateau of Mindanao Island. The village is a rice-growing community of pioneer settlers established in the 1950s. Most Valencia farmers migrated here from the land-starved islands of the north and central Philippines. From the early 1980s the district became a fierce battleground in the struggle between the New People's Army and the Marcos military.... The film alternates color and black-and-white sequences corresponding to the mixed use of 16mm and Video-8. The miniature format was used for the highly responsive shooting style it afforded....