BASED IN MANILA, PHILIPPINES.
SHOOTS, SCORES AND FILMS ELSEWHERE.
WHERE ELSE?
Guj is a self-taught creative professional, being left-brained for the majority of his life. (read: a notoriously elitist primary school + his country’s premiere science high school + a Computer Engineering degree from his country’s premiere state university + a promising career in blue-chip, Palo Alto Silicon Valley-based multinational tech company). Did I say left-brained? That’s basically zero college units and zero workshop hours allotted for photography and filmmaking. To date.
In 2009, Guj¹ started his own brand from scratch, through trial. and error. and blood. and sweat. and tears. and shhheesh — finally — after a few years and forty plus destinations later, he found his own niche: intimate destination weddings and adventure elopements on tropical beaches, in the southern part of the Philippines. Here’s a gratuitous elevator pitch: Guj knows all the islands of El Nido, Palawan like the back of his hand - as good as any local boatman - but you can talk to him as if he was your next-door neighbor in Williamsburg (except for the fact that he has a Californian accent). Oh, you’re from Spain? ¿eres de España? Lo siento. He only has the vocabulary, syntax and semantics of a four-year-old kid from Madrid.
Guj’s achievements are on the extreme ends of the critical-commercial spectrum, from being the only Filipino filmmaker in PDN Rangefinder Magazine’s 20 Emerging Artists to Watch in Film and Video, down to having one of his videos featured in Good Morning America. (Wait. I shouldn’t have said that. Not my proudest moment, I know.) He has traveled the world and has done a number of noteworthy side projects including documentaries, music videos and an international filmmaking workshop. Arguably, he’s the second best photographer-filmmaker that you’ve never heard of.
“Hey — it’s Enrico Pallazzo!”
— FOOD Japanese. Uni and otoro sushi in particular. And dry-aged rib eye or porterhouse. Peter frickin’ Luger. And pizza with burrata. MUSIC Prog. CProg. Seattle Grunge. Bay Area Thrash Metal. Strictly “Kill”, “Ride”, “Puppets” and “Justice” only. MOVIES In no particular order: Eternal Sunshine…, Lost in Translation, Scott Pilgrim + Baby Driver, American History X, Mulholland Drive, Amelie, In the Mood for Love, The Royal Tenenbaums, My Neighbor Totoro + Princess Mononoke, Sicario, The Beach, The Raid, City of God, Babel, Old Boy, Kakabakaba Ka Ba?, Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite), Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, The Warriors, Parasite. PLACES Shinjuku. Omotesando-Shibuya-Jingumae. Daikanyama. Tenjin. Norrebro. 3rd Arrondissement all the way up to Canal Saint-Martin. SoHo. Nolita. Wan Chai. Causeway Bay. Yau Ma Tei (Kubrick!) Tiong Bahru. Khlong-Toei. Watthana. Jordaan. Corong-Corong in El Nido. General Luna, Siargao. FOCAL LENGTH 35mm. AESTHETIC Filmic, matte and vibrant in warm, natural light. Think: Ambrosia, not Kinfolk. INFLUENCES Edgar Wright. Danny Boyle. Wong Kar-wai. Michel Gondry. Chivo Lubezki. Neal Morse. Mike Portnoy. John Myung. Tyler Brûlé. Joseph Prince. The two dudes from The Bible Project. Michael Rood. Frank Viola. Alex Ross. Paul of Tarsus. Seth Godin. Tim Ferriss. Summer Murdock. Saul Leiter. Diane Arbus. Fan Ho. GEAR Leica. Dji. Topo Designs. Apple and Huawei. Blackmagic Design. Sony. Voigtlander. Asics Tiger. Suicoke. Sandisk. COLLECTIONS Gestalten coffee table books, The Monocle Travel Guide series, Criterion Collection blu-rays, stuff from Aesop and MUJI. Anything by designed by Dieter Rams. Indie zines (Magazine B + Magazine F, Ambrosia, Musotrees, Standart) GAMES Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto and Fallout Series OTHERS ‘80s and ‘90s popular culture GUILTY PLEASURE / DEEP DARK SECRET I watched CLOY/It’s Okay… on Netflix during the COVID-19 lockdown and I actually enjoyed them. Here’s a [finger heart] to prove it. Another one? Amidst the plethora of Sepultura, Metallica, Pink Floyd, Rammstein, Rage, Alice in Chains and Dream Theater tracks in my Spotify playlist, there’s probably one or two Spice Girls tracks there.
TL;DR? No problem.
¹Well. Not exactly “he”. Guj believes that everything is by Grace and by Grace alone. And Grace, by definition, is essentially unmerited and undeserved.
² Or ones that pretend to be written in the third person when it is obviously meta.