Study on Lukas in Lukas the Strange
Village miracles caught on tape: images of a river that must be crossed to erase heartaches, imagined with a boy who has never experienced sorrow.
John Torres
Director
Also Directed by John Torres
Sarah is a debt collector who lives among the inhabitants of the village of Guimbal on the island of Panay. She wants to find the young man who appeared to her in a dream and goes to the island of Negros. Here, as she interacts with the inhabitants, Sarah continues her search, gathering memories of life and war, dreams, myths, legends, songs and stories that she takes part in and at times revolve around her. She is the daughter of an ancient mermaid, a revolutionary, a primordial element, a virgin who was kidnapped and hidden away from the sunlight. “The film is a retelling of fragments of the American occupation. Dialogue, shot in the Hiligaynon language, is not translated but used as a tonal guide and a tool for narration. Using unscripted scenes shot where the main character was asked to merely interact with the villagers, I discard dialogue and draw meaning from peoples’ faces, voices, and actions, weaving an entirely different story through the use of subtitles and inter-titles.”
A film inspired by birds, planes, and flight. Based on a poem by Filipino writer Allan Pastrana.
TAWIDGUTOM is an experimental love poem composed of images that recur and repeat themselves.
The unfinished movie of the late Celso Ad Castillo now a Cinema One Originals documentary film.
Black-and-white sequence of contemporary urban life, jittery images recorded by a 1940s motion-picture camera, and a sleepy narration of words, written by Filipino poet and singer Lourd De Veyra.
Black-and-white sequence of contemporary urban life, jittery images recorded by a 1940s motion-picture camera, and a sleepy narration of words, written by Filipino poet and singer Lourd De Veyra.
A small town in the Philippines is turned upside down by the arrival of a film crew that has everyone excited. Meanwhile, 13-year-old Lukas finds his own world overturned when he is told that his father is a tikbalang (half horse, half man). His father’s disappearance leaves Lukas to try to unravel the mystery of his own heritage and his own nature.
Basically an artist is also a terrorist, the protagonist thinks in an unguarded moment. And if he is a terrorist after all, then he might just as well be one. Not an instant product, but an experimental feature in which diary material is brought together to form an intriguing puzzle.
John Torres repurposes documentary footage captured from the sets of various Filipino productions (including the likes of Lav Diaz and Erik Matti) into an eerie, elliptical sci-fi narrative about human avatars controlled by apps.
"Mapang-akit" is an offshoot of a documentary project made with an Icelandic filmmaker and uses the outtakes from the Hudas Hudas festival in Antique, where a community bonds over a large effigy of Judas Iscariot during Holy Week. Amidst it is a found story of a man who returns home to his death after pursuing a woman in a neighboring village.
