A professorial lecturer at Far Eastern University recently bagged a Special Mention award for his documentary screenplay at the 3rd Dreamanila International Film Festival.
Maria Leonor, a short documentary written and directed by Seymour Barros Sanchez in the form of an open letter, delves into the Filipino voter’s psyche as it trains its sight on the Office of the Vice President’s pandemic response efforts. It is an offshoot of his ongoing full-length project Leading Lady funded by the Centre for Global Business of the Monash Business School in Australia.
Sanchez currently teaches Screenwriting, Documentary Production, Production Management and Film Marketing at FEU under the Digital Cinema track. Collaborating with him on Maria Leonor are voiceover narrator and producer Eloisa Espino Sanchez, creative consultant Richard Soriano Legaspi, sound designer, graphic artist and editor John Lanbert Rafols, music composer Tonton Hernandez and singer Jaycee Belmonte (Tuloy ang Laban), sound recordist Darwin Novicio, camerapersons Ariel Alarcon and Charles Cajayon, and production manager Kristin Joy Bactad Jor.
Founder and Executive Director Archie Del Mundo shared at the Dreamanila awards night a statement he signed with head of festival programming Joselito Altarejos, associate programmer Robert Cerda, and creative director Lemuel Lorca, “Even the age of modern pandemic cannot simply stifle their sustained growth – and films have become, more than ever, a powerful tool to document lived experiences.”
Only 56 films were selected to compete out of more than 500 submissions to the festival, which had International Full Features, International Short Features, Philippine Shorts, and Screenwriting categories. Altarejos and Lorca, both award-winning filmmakers, and film scholars Cerda and Jerrick David comprised the Dreamanila film festival jury and board members.
The festival had 15 competing films during its inaugural run at the Dream Theater of the then Carl Balita Productions in 2019.
