Summary

First begun in 2006, WAKE (SUBIC) completes the documentary diptych, FOR EXAMPLE, THE PHILIPPINES, the first part of which, VAPOR TRAIL (CLARK) was released in 2010. Collectively this nine-hour essay explores 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 cinéma-vérité 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, both films are an attempt to construct a work capable of rendering some measure of this human and environmental tragedy and the complexities of its remedy.