Vapor Trail (Clark)

An investigation into the ecological disaster caused by a US military base on the Philippines – and its victims, their world. A humble act of solidarity, a defiant work of remembrance, a rallying cry to rise and resist, a cinematic prose poem.

In his 1901 tract ‘To the Person Sitting in Darkness’, written in protest against the Filipino-American War, Mark Twain wryly observed that there ‘…must be two Americas: one that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive’s new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him… then kills him to get his land.’

John Gianvito’s epic Vapor Trail investigates what the US does to that land. Take Clark Air Base, once the biggest US military facilities on foreign territory. When the Philippine Senate voted out the presence of US military bases on its land in 1991, the former self-appointed ally forgot to properly clean up the mess it had made, turning huge parts of the island of Luzon into an eco-disaster of monstrous proportions. Vapor Trail (Clark) is a humble act of solidarity, a defiant work of remembrance, a rallying cry to rise and resist: a cinematic prose poem. —Rotterdam Film Festival