Rey Ventura's prose startles with the subtle force of cinematic images: From the "rustling leaves" that signal the return of the rebel forces to the Aeta hill tribes in the Philippines to the "standing men" or day laborers populating the alleyways of the Kotobukicho district of Yokohama. As both filmmaker and writer for over 20 years, Ventura has captured images of displaced people across Asia.

Ventura, 49, shrugs off any pronounced political agenda: "It's visually more interesting, the people on the outside," he says. "Basically, I am personally interested in stories about people on the margins or the edge of society. I never had a character who was not on the margins."

His most well-known work, "Underground in Japan," published in 1992, unfolds as a series of vignettes centered around his own experiences as an illegal worker for one year in Kotobukicho. Ventura's panoramic pen focuses on the Filipino men and their invisible world: the prostitutes and nurturers who support them, how it feels to see Filipino women caught in the "water trade," the fight for work constrained by alliances built on hometown ties.