Los Angeles Filmforum and Whammy! Analog Media present John Torres: Poet of Philippine Cinema.

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Filmforum has commissioned five artists to make new work, generously funded by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, and over the next year will be presenting the premieres of the works, including discussions with the artists. We are delighted to welcome John Torres from the Philippines for two public screenings, one at Whammy! Analog on June 30, and one at 2220 Arts on Sunday July 2. The screening at Whammy! is the US premiere of his latest feature film People Power Bombshell: The Diary of Vietnam Rose (2016). The screening at 2220 Arts will include the newly commissioned film and additional shorts.

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SYNOPSIS

People Power Bombshell: The Diary of Vietnam Rose is a self-reflexive slow fever dream of a film that lies close to documentary but also seems like a new form. Connecting with actor Liz Alindogan and some twenty rolls of film she had from an unfinished film by Filipino director Celso Advento Castillo, Torres edited and created a new soundtrack, re-uniting the original cast members to provide commentary while watching the film decades later. The original work, shot in the 1980s, while Oliver Stone’s “Platoon” was also filming nearby in the Philippines and the People Power movement was forming that would lead to the overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos, followed a desperate group of Vietnamese attempting to escape on a boat bound for the Philippines during the Vietnam War, but with some lurid erotic moments and splashes of violence. The edited work identifies the heart of that film as an expression of existential angst of a never-ending journey, but overlaid with beautiful film decay and with editorial comment of the gossip and politics of the film’s creation.

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“John Torres is the poet of Philippine cinema.  A poet with his own rules and ways of working.” -International Film Festival Rotterdam

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"...Torres is not only one of the best Filipino directors of his generation, but also one of the (already fulfilled) promises of contemporary cinema." -Festival Internacional de Cine UNAM

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John Torres is an independent filmmaker, musician and writer. He has made more than a dozen short films and five features. His work fictionalizes and reworks personal and found documentations of love, family relations, and memory in relation to current events, hearsays, myth, and folklore. He teaches at the University of the Philippines and Ateneo de Manila University and conducts filmmaking workshops and co-organizes artist talks and screenings in Los Otros, a Manila-based space, film lab, and platform committed to the intersections of film and art, with a focus on process over product. A special focus of his works has been shown at the Viennale, Seoul, Cosquín, and Bangkok.

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dir. John Torres, 2016, digital projection

100 min

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7:30 doors

8p screening

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Masks are still required at Filmforum shows - N95 or KN95.

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Los Angeles Filmforum screenings are supported by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts & Culture, the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles, and the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts.  We also depend on our members, ticket buyers, and individual donors.

Los Angeles Filmforum is the city’s longest-running organization dedicated to weekly screenings of experimental film, documentaries, video art, and experimental animation. 2023 is our 48th year.

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Memberships available, $40 Student $75 Individual, $125 Dual, or $225 Silver Nitrate 

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