Friday, June 20, 2025

Abdulbasit S. Hadji Abdullah | Under the Crescent Moon / 2022

a sword that cuts through the ties of love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Abdulbasit S. Hadji Abdullah (screenwriter and director) Under the Crescent Moon / 2022 [15 minutes]

 

The short film by Pilipino writer and director Abdulbasit S. Hadji Abdullah is yet another example of the age-old split between the spiritual and the physical played out in cultures that have not yet been able to recognize LGBT behavior as a form of normative love.


     Abby (John Gerad Majen), from a conservative Muslim family, is a high school student highly attracted to and close to revealing his love for his best friend, Jerryl (Francis Ramil Fernandez). Jerryl speeds Abby to his morning prayers and school on his motorcycle, the two sharing meals and the little free time Abby possesses, the couple flirting with one another, and even holding hands, but evidently have carried it no further. Yet we easily perceive that they are clearly in love and almost at the verge of openly expressing what they latter describe as “this thing” between them.

     But with his religion intervening, Abby finally makes a decision to break-off with Jerryl, believing their growing relationship to be an affront to Allah. It is a tearful breakup for both boys, particularly for Abby, who finally explains to Jerryl his decision, Jerryl trying to argue that they’ve done nothing wrong, that they’re just friends.


     Abby, however, fully sees the implications of their relationship, asking outright, “Are we just friends?” and bringing both boys to the open recognition of their true “friendship.” Yet, of course, it is just for that reason, steeped as he is in religious dogma, that Abby must go it alone, leaving both to deep loneliness in their small Philippines town, and which will surely lead Abby to unhappy life with probably an arranged marriage of which he and his wife will remain forever resentful.

     Yet Abdullah does move in that direction and does not preach or even fully question Abby’s harsh decision. Thousands of such relationships have been broken up not just by societal and family pressures, but religious beliefs of various faiths as well. And there are very few, except for liberal-minded protestant groups that have fully embraced the LGBTQ+ community, and even that seems at times to be gradually eroding.

      Even though most religious groups tout “love” as among their major tenants, gay love does register in their minds as a legitimate form of love’s expression. Why is quite inexplicable since these religions came into being in a time when there was no such thing as something called “homosexuality,” and men, particularly Muslim men, often kept company with both young men and women. One need only recall the ending of Paul Bowles’ fiction The Sheltering Sky; or recall the popularity of the dancing boys of Afghanistan (the subject of the short film When You Hear the Bells from 2015).  Over the centuries, limitations have increasingly been put upon gay sexuality, particularly that involving men.

 

Los Angeles, June 20, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2025).

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