Dabawenyo TV reporter wins Best Film award in New York fest

DAVAO CITY, Philippines — A 30-year-old GMA 7 Davao TV reporter here won the Best In Short Film International Category in the recently-concluded New York Independent Film and Video Festival (NYIFVF).

John Paul Seniel’s Latus bested 60 other entries that came mostly from North and Central America as well as from Europe by more seasoned film directors.

Seniel said the organizers of NYIFVF are now in the

process of negotiating with the Cannes Film Festival organizers that the awarding be held in Cannes in May.

Latus (Beating) was shown last November during the Los Angeles leg of the NYIFVF, which Seniel attended.

Seniel, a graduate of the Holy Cross of Davao College, told The STAR that filmmaking has always been his first love.

He said he is thankful to the management of GMA Network for allowing him to make short films on the side. His full-time job is as reporter and host of Isyu Karon, a local documentary program in Davao City.

“I am glad that GMA has also been supportive of my first love which is film making. It is in film making that I am able to tell more stories about what we cover every day as a reporter,” Seniel said.

He explained that what he fails to show on TV because of the limitations, he is able to convey through his short films. He has already done several.

He described Latus, which he did in 2008, as a story about street children and domestic violence.

Latus conveys basically the message that it is against corporal punishment at home. The story revolves around two best friends who both experience corporal punishment in their own homes and how they cope with the struggles both in school and at home.

The film, which was also in done in cooperation with the Tambayan Center for Street Children’s Rights, Inc., was based on the stories of the adolescent street girls in Davao City.

“I would say that these street children were the writers and the actors themselves in their own stories in Latus,” Seniel said.

He further explained that street violence could be an extension of the domestic violence these children also experience in their own homes.

Latus was also Seniel’s first entry to Cinemalaya in 2009.

Seniel’s first foray into film making was Torture, which won Best Picture and Best Director awards in the First Guerilla Film Festival in 2003.

And the following year, 2004, Seniel was commissioned to direct a documentary about autism. The film Amuma, Hands for Nobody participated in the NYIFVF, and garnered rave reviews which paved the way for his making Latus.

In 2007, Seniel was hailed as the Most Promising Filmmaker in the Mindanao Film Festival.