John Torres films fragments and diaries. He set off and looked at his own country, the land outside the city, like an alien. He posed questions to himself about grand themes such as inequality and colonialism, but kept it personal. Read along with his diary.
John Torres is a film maker who always films. Just like a poet who always has a notebook and a painter who always has a sketchbook with him, Torres always has a camera with him. He doesn't write scripts, but collects fragments and puts them in a particular order.
After his city film Todo Todo Toros, this is a real countryside film. His protagonist, the girl Sarah, moves among the inhabitants of Guimbal on the island of Panay and improvises her scenes. She collects debts and possessions, but also people's dreams, stories and memories. She moves to the island of Negros in order to meet the man of her dreams and then she takes on various roles. The film maker also follows his dreams and collects stories and poetry. The great poets Eric Gamalinda and Joel Toledo are quoted, but also dialogues in the original Hiligaynon language are included untranslated in the film for their sound, as music. An unusual approach. A kind of experimental anthropology in his own country.
PROGRAMMER NOTES
John Torres is a filmer of fragments. He films hundreds before he selects and orders them into a film. This undoubtedly means that many fragments do not get used. Possibly because they were not good or unusual, but possibly also because they just didn't fit. Some of these fragments can be seen on the Internet. A while back, I saw such a fragment by Torres in which he followed a small Cambodian girl near the tourist attraction Angkor Wat. A beautiful, small, rounded film. I was happy to have found it again. It's on the site of John Torres on Multiply (not as big as Facebook, but better for saving and showing films). You can see it here: http://johntorres.multiply.com/video/item/5.
I seem to remember that I had seen it previously with a text or voice over, but here is the pure fragment. A girl takes empty plastic bottles from rubbish bins and collect them in a large rubbish bag. Child labour the way that much child labour is around Angkor Wat.
The film maker is obviously charmed by the lively and energetic empty-bottle girl and made a fragment on the spot that is basically a film in itself. Maybe it doesn't fit in anywhere because it is so charming. And a little painful, of course. This girl should have been at school wearing a uniform. You can see all of that in this fragment, because that's how Torres films.
GjZ