Well, they had us at “I miss you.”
The viral Instagram Live catch-up between powerhouse loveteam Bea Alonzo and John Lloyd Cruz, the one which set Pinoy social media on fire a couple of days ago, wasn’t really just a chat, but an unorthodox take on filmmaking, its director and writer Antoinette Jadaone announced on Instagram last night.
Read: Pinoy fans wax nostalgic after actors Bea Alonzo and John Lloyd Cruz catch up via live stream
Titled Love Team, the convo between Cruz and Alonzo is a project produced by Unconfined Cinema, the brainchild of Erwin Romulo and Philbert Dy, which reimagines the boundaries of films. The idea was first introduced in this year’s Art Fair Philippines.
Jadaone said the concept “was founded on the idea of exploring what else cinema could be, freeing our stories to be told outside of the traditional spaces and conceptual boundaries set by the last century of the medium.”
“In this unprecedented time of quarantine, in a time when movie production is impossible, we found it especially pressing to find ways to tell our stories. ‘Love Team’ is a love story – whether romantic or in its other forms – told entirely within Instagram. It is a story of our times,” she added.
Aside from Romulo and Dy, Love Team was produced by Jadaone’s husband, fellow director Dan Villegas.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B_j_zDxBU4w/
“Love stories have always had their place in Filipino cinema, and we wanted to bring the feelings that those movies inspire to a platform that has become more relevant and utilised (sic) in this time of quarantine – social media, specifically Instagram,” Jadaone said.
The Palanca award-winning director said that social media has potential for “all sorts of new possibilities for storytelling,” and revealed that the live stream was a story that was two weeks in the making which was adapted “to real-life events, integrating our genuine sentiments over the state that we’re in.”
“This is a platform where we all share little bits of ourselves….Using the various features of Instagram, we attempted to tell a story of two people reconnecting in a trying time; separated by distance, but united in their memories,” she said.
Fans of the couple had waxed nostalgic and swooned over Alonzo and Cruz’s exchange, and many wished that the onscreen chemistry was a real thing, especially after they both sang You Are My Sunshine, and expressed how much they missed each other.
“We are in a culture where the usually distinct line between reality and make-believe blur. We started this story by stating that ‘any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is intentional.’ And that remains true. It was the only way this was possible,” Jadaone said.
Best known for her work in the hit rom-com television show On the Wings of Love, and box office hit That Thing Called Tadhana (“That Thing Called Destiny“), the 36-year-old director invited fellow storytellers to take a cue from the experimental flick.
“The Unconfined Cinema invites filmmakers and artists to join us in exploring the possibilities of our cinema. Not just on Instagram, but on every stage imaginable,” Jadaone said.
