Vapor Trail (Clark)

(John Gianvito, US 2010, 264 min., DCP, Tagalog w/subtitles)

Vapor Trail (Clark) is a documentary essay exploring circumstances of toxic contamination around the former US military bases in the Philippines as the locus for a meditation on historical amnesia, colonial privilege, and the consequences of unchecked militarism. Interweaving both cinema verité and interview footage of Filipino victims and their families, environmental spokespersons, and community activists, along with early photographic material pertaining to the Philippine-American War, partisan songs, historical texts, and landscape photography, Vapor Trail (Clark) is an attempt to construct a work capable of rendering some measure of this human and environmental tragedy and the complexities of its remedy.

“Neither patronizing nor simplistic, the scope and humanist grandeur of Vapor Trail (Clark) raise eternal questions about our collective responsibility to history, the efficacy of organized political action, and the hellish effects bureaucratic capitalism has had on developing nations.” – Film Comment