Giacomo Gex’s “The Treasure Hunter,” which had its world premiere this week within the Newcomers Competitors at Thessaloniki Documentary Pageant, follows the director’s greatest good friend, Jack, as he searches for treasure within the Philippines. It’s a story paying homage to Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo.” Selection debuts the trailer right here.
In line with native legend, throughout World Struggle II the Japanese Military took booty they’d looted from throughout South-East Asia to the Philippines and buried it at numerous areas. Jack, funded by his father, determined to affix the various treasure hunters on the archipelago. “The Treasure Hunter” follows Jack as he plows tens of millions of {dollars} into this quixotic search, digging at numerous websites, based mostly on native rumors.
Though most of the scenes within the jungle had been shot underground in caves and in shafts dug within the hope they might result in caves, Gex didn’t undergo from claustrophobia. The hazards had been actual sufficient, however the filmmaker’s give attention to getting the photographs he wanted drove him on.
“I’m not somebody who’s filmed in warzones or excessive circumstances, however I’ve been in doubtlessly harmful conditions,” Gex tells Selection, sitting on the jetty in Thessaloniki, a Greek port metropolis overlooking the Aegean Sea. “One in all my first brief movies was a few repossession agent in Los Angeles, and he would carry me with him to very harmful areas in L.A., and would inform me to not get out of the automotive, however I knew that for the shot and for the movie, I needed to get out of the automotive, and I needed to be with him, and I felt very unsafe.
“Usually, after I’m behind the digital camera, I’ll neglect in regards to the realities round me and neglect in regards to the risks, as a result of I’ll have this phantasm that I’m protected behind the digital camera as a result of I’m so targeted on the shot and so targeted on capturing the scene and framing the shot in order that I can get the scene that I would like and get the protection that I would like, that each one sense of hazard can disappear, and I had this identical sensation within the jungle.
“The Treasure Hunter”
Courtesy of Gex Movies
“After we went into the caves and underground, there have been very transient moments the place I might minimize the digital camera and instantly notice I used to be 10 meters underground, mendacity on my stomach on the ground on this cave that I couldn’t even sit up in, feeling the dampness and remembering that there are snakes within the Philippines. The king cobra is a quite common snake there, and it’s very harmful. A whole lot of the locals carry round charcoal tablets in order that when you get bitten, you eat these, and it absorbs the poison out of your bloodstream.
“I used to be very conscious that that was a risk so in these transient moments, I remembered that, sure, there could possibly be a snake nest in there, and since they’re digging, they might worsen it and threaten the youngsters of the mom snake, and it may assault us. However I might say much more harmful than that’s the potential that the cave collapses since you’re fiddling round with it and also you’re knocking about on the rocks, and none of this has a construction. It’s simply purely pure. And a whole lot of these caves had been left over from earthquakes, in order that they weren’t essentially stable. And so, sure, there have been risks like that, however then I might go behind the digital camera once more and neglect about that, after which I might be okay.”
Jack’s hunt for the treasure is seen as compulsive, nearly an dependancy, which triggered conflicting feelings within the filmmaker. “As his good friend, many instances I put the digital camera down, and hugged him. However in lots of moments, I wished to place the digital camera down, however I couldn’t, as a result of I knew that I needed to movie what was occurring and let it unfold. That’s the very difficult factor as a documentary filmmaker – you’re continuously battling with the ethics of it. However I felt it my obligation to seize the implications of dependancy and what it may well do to him and everybody round him. I felt it necessary to point out that, and sure, I did inform him many instances to cease, and I additionally informed him that he ought to search counselling.”
Jack’s obsessive search, and Gex’s dedication to seize it, brings to thoughts Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo,” and Gex acknowledges that Herzog was an early affect on him as a filmmaker.
“The Treasure Hunter”
Courtesy of Gex Movies
“There was one thing about his foremost character, however extra in regards to the soul and spirit of Herzog in that movie that penetrated me in a robust means. I really feel like I absorbed that, and it was undoubtedly a unconscious affect. I by no means tried to repeat it or emulate it in any means, however there was one thing that Herzog did with the jungle and Fitzcarraldo himself. And there was one thing about this quest of the unattainable that was nearly futile and nearly for nothing … properly, for us, for nothing, however for the character all the pieces. And there was that similarity that I spotted with Jack.
“Each time I’m struggling and I really feel sorry for myself throughout any a part of the method, I all the time do not forget that Herzog pulled a real-life steam-boat over a mountain. If he may do this, I may most likely do something.”
It was when Gex spoke to Jack’s father in London that the concept of a movie based mostly on this search started to take form. “I began speaking to his father with cigarette smoke rising up within the shadows, and this voice with a gravitas to it, and instantly I noticed this picture of him in entrance of the digital camera,” Gex says. “I hadn’t began filming him but, however he was telling me in regards to the story and I noticed there was one thing about him that was extraordinarily compelling, and even deeper than Jack, as a result of he’s clearly an older man, and he introduced a far higher seriousness to it, as a result of there’s one factor – a younger man operating across the jungle as a result of he’s obsessed with treasure – and one other factor is that this middle-aged, or greater than middle-aged man, with a complete household, who’s placing his life on the road and taking massive economical dangers for this treasure. And it was at that stage the place I used to be like, ‘This isn’t just a bit movie operating across the jungle following my good friend. That is greater than that, and I’ve to have him on digital camera.”
Giacomo Gex taking pictures “The Treasure Hunter” within the Philippines.
Courtesy of Andrew Fuchs
Jack’s father hated being filmed and didn’t wish to be interviewed, however Gex managed to get a four-hour lengthy interview with him, however he didn’t get anything. “He didn’t ever wish to be interviewed once more, though I attempted and tried and tried and tried.” Lastly, when Jack’s father moved to Mexico, Gex determined to show up on his doorstep to get an interview with him, however two weeks earlier than he was alleged to go to Mexico, he bought a name from Jack to say his father had died.
“It was at that stage after I realized that that was the movie’s ending. I didn’t know what the ending could be for a few years, and lots of people informed me I used to be loopy and that when you don’t have an ending, you don’t have a movie. There is no such thing as a movie when you go on perpetually with him simply looking. Individuals would get bored with simply watching him search. However when his father handed away, I had this intuition that the circle was closed.”
Regardless of the tragedy of the dying, Gex sees it as having a constructive aspect. “It was not only a unhappy, adverse ending, as a result of it was, in a means, cathartic for Jack. It was like this weight that was lifted off him, and clearly it was very unhappy, however I feel he grew to become way more his personal self and his personal man. He was extra of an impartial human being, and freer. It was what I noticed as a good friend.”
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