People Power Bombshell: The Diary of Vietnam Rose

In the country of his birth, Celso Advento Castillo (1943-2012) is lauded as ‘the Saviour of Filipino cinema’. His oeuvre of more than 60 films is highly original and extremely diverse. He has made thrillers, action and horror films, and in the 1970s also put ‘bomba films’ on the map: erotic drama in which he was able to also tell stories – often with a moral. In the 1980s, he worked on a feature film with the then 19-year-old actress Liz Alindogan, the sexy promise of the moment. Unfortunately, financial and logistics problems meant the film was never completed.
More than 30 years later, John Torres used 20 recovered film rolls from this project to make a documentary. Mixed with found footage and with a new overdub, this is a making-of film with a mysterious twist. A homage to the master, but also to the power of cinematic imagination.