Daang Dokyu 2020 Festival Book (DokBook)

DAANG DOKYU

A FESTIVAL OF PHILIPPINE DOCUMENTARIES

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Daang Dokyu: A Festival of Philippine Documentaries

Copyright Š 2020 by FilDocs, inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher.

Published and exclusively distributed by FilDocs, Inc. fildocsociety@gmail.com First printing, 2020

Printed in the Philippines

Cover image is taken from Recuerdo of Two Sundays and Two Roads That Lead to the Sea (1969), produced and edited by Bibsy Carballo, photographed by Romy Vitug, and written by Emmanuel Torres.

DAANG DOKYU A FESTIVAL OF PHILIPPINE DOCUMENTARIES

2020

CONTENTS Note from the Editor

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‘Sandaan, Isang Daan Getting the Community Together: The Road to Daang Dokyu Monster Jimenez

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Prompting the Imaginings of Futures:The Reason for Daang Dokyu Jewel Maranan

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On the Near-Impossibility of Programming Over 100 Years of Philippine Documentary: Curating Daang Dokyu Teddy Co

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Daang Dokyu Program Opening Week: Martial Law, Never Again

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Ecology: Ang Lahat ng Bagay ay Magkaugnay

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Nation: "Perception is Real, Truth is Not"

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Taboo: Off the Record

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Localities: Dagat ang Pagitan

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Future: Ganito Tayo Ngayon, Paano Sila Bukas?

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Reality Check

Daang Dokyu Partners' Recommendations

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Stories, Histories In the Uncanny Resemblance of Reality, the Philippine Documentary Finds Itself in a Portmanteau of Cultures Nick Deocampo

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Herein Lies Movement: Locating the Documentary in the Philippine Digital Cinema Landscape Adjani Arumpac

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Thinking About Philippine Political Documentaries Today Patrick F. Campos

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Resisting Dominance and Oblivion: Reflecting on the Documentary Practice in Mindanao Gutierrez Mangansakan II

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Views, Interviews The Documentarist Is a Hungry Poet: A Prose in Three Parts Sari Raissa Lluch Dalena

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New Kartilya ng KKKL Produktions Kidlat Tahimik

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Toward Impact Distribution: Further Lessons from Sunday Beauty Queen Baby Ruth Villarama

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Collection, Recollection A Nation Without Memory: How Martial Law Changed the Landscape of Television Documentaries Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala

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Confessions of a Reluctant Documentary Filmmaker Ed Lingao

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I Choose the Mountain and I Will Never Stop Climbing: Notes from a Stubborn Documentary Filmmaker Chiara Zambrano

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Now Soaring With the Wind: A Conversation with Asako Fujioka

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About the Authors

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Festival Team

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Acknowledgments

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Schedule

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NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

It was all set.

Daang Dokyu: A Festival of Philippine Documentaries. March 16-21, 2020. UP Cine Adarna.

Documentaries old and new, spanning more than a century; forums and masterclasses, with the brightest speakers and practitioners in their fields; and, most importantly, audiences from all over the industry: students, professionals, cinephiles, moviegoers, onlookers, bystanders. A festival true to its name: an embarrassment of riches, a unity of experiences, a gathering of stories.

And then Covid-19 happened.

This DokBook, as the Daang Dokyu team lovingly call it, was intended, among other things, to accompany festival goers, a tangible item to remind them of the physicality of encounters even in this massively digital world. Serving both as a program for the festival and a collection of essays and memoirs and proofs of life, this DokBook was stopped at the printers. But no one can stop it now—as no one can stop the festival coming to life in this online edition, and as no one can stop the spirit of the Filipino documentary maker in these difficult times.

This is not, as some might claim, Daang Dokyu’s second life.

This is the life of the documentary practice as experienced by the festival itself: an action happening alongside history, and happening because of it. With the passing of the Anti-Terror Bill and the climate of chaos and narrowing freedom in the midst of a global pandemic, titles and premieres have been added to the original lineup, programs and themes have been sharpened, and talkback and industry sessions have been bolstered and highlighted. Needless to say, time is also a festival programmer.

Every documentary produced since the invention of photography and cinema has always had an identifiable relationship with time and space; and Daang Dokyu, and this book by extension, stands no less as a document of this moment, of a society hoping to endure more challenges of history and celebrate more gatherings toward a meaningful purpose, whether side by side in person or between squares on the screen.

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Daang Dokyu is a festival of Philippine documentaries, a coming together of creators and audiences, a celebration without forgoing the value of criticism, a looking back as much as it is a looking forward. It traces the history of our movies through the documentary, but more importantly it follows the footprints of the Filipino story for the past 100 years through the moving image.

Monster Jimenez writes about the origin story of Daang Dokyu, from a small get-together in 2015 to the creation of Filipino Documentary Society (FilDocs) in 2019. Jewel Maranan contemplates on the significance of doing Daang Dokyu now— now more than ever. Teddy Co talks about the painstaking curation process, detailing the long and difficult journey toward the creation of the program. At the heart of these essays is the Daang Dokyu festival directors and curators' staunch belief in the importance of memory, community, and confrontation.

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April 19, 2015. Several Filipino documentary makers met up for a picnic in UP Diliman to discuss their wish lists for the industry. Originally called Dokyupeeps, they launched a Facebook page for the organization and created the network for fellow documentarists in the Philippines.

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ORIGIN

Getting the Community Together THE ROAD TO DAANG DOKYU MONSTER JIMENEZ

Documentary filmmaking is terribly difficult and lonely.

You need the obsessive quality of a zealot and the perseverance of a commuter on EDSA during rush hour.

Yet you cannot do it alone. It is still an industry that requires money, expertise, and commerce. No wonder then that the filmmaking community is so small, and the number of active documentarists even smaller. After a picnic and several informal meetings, a group was eventually formed in 2015. I’ve always thought Ditsi Carolino came up with the cheeky name Dokyupeeps, only to be told that I coined it myself.

The growing number of people requesting to join Dokyupeeps’s Facebook page indicated interest in documentaries. It was where we shared announcements for deadlines on festivals and funding cycles. It turned into a virtual bulletin board containing important information about the documentary world. People also used it to obtain recommendations for credible pitching venues and production workshops, get suggestions for reliable production people, inquire how to get face time with a VIP or politician, and ask advice on the best places to apply for

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funding grants, trustworthy sales agents to contact, and hellish commissioning editors to be avoided.

As for me, the best thing that came out of the group was the chance to bond with like-minded people. Again, the community was small so we had known each other before, but this relationship allowed us to train our shoptalk to the things we wanted to do for and about documentaries.

I found three sisters in particular: Jewel Maranan, Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala, and Baby Ruth Villarama.

Women run the docs.

If there is 1 woman for every 10 directors in narrative filmmaking, I estimate it would be the opposite in today’s documentary world. Even in television where executive producers run the shows, they are mostly led by women.

Documentary practice requires rigor, perseverance, and an unflinching look at the world. The methodology is compatible with women’s natural inclinations. Most stories compel us to focus on the underdogs, give credence to the wronged, and amplify muted voices. Women, in different ways, live this world of imbalance. It makes us curious, at times indignant, and sympathetic to characters.

In addition, a documentary is bound to be more than just the work itself. An effective documentary can change minds, lead to reassessments of policies, and create discourses. Its space resides in the real world, reflecting the times, affecting all those who are in the film and those who have seen them. Documentaries pick up pieces and traces of ourselves. And some of these forgotten bits of ourselves have been captured by these works.

Frankly, this is what we have long wanted to do: to develop an audience that appreciates nonfiction, start a dialogue between television and independent documentarists, and find a way to get the community together.

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ORIGIN

We knew of course that it wasn’t going to be easy.

We needed to find funding, films, and friends to help us. After one of our endless meetings I remember Kara said, “Nothing is going to happen unless we’re actually convinced it’s going to happen.” So, we all played along: Jewel drafted a rationale and program. Baby Ruth whipped a deck and presented it to NCCA (National Commission for Culture and the Arts). I made a budget.

And in true production fashion, there was a long standby time—over two years!—before Kara eventually found funding. Then we all had to hurry.

Formalizing a nonprofit organization was born of necessity. FilDocs, or The Filipino Documentary Society, was created not just for legal purposes: It was also a commitment to the cause. We wanted to show stories that would inspire Filipinos to understand themselves better, know more about their history, vote wisely. The result of our collaboration—Daang Dokyu, referring both to the over 100 years of Philippine cinema and the “docu” way—is a festival that celebrates Filipino stories. It is not only about the most awarded or most popular works; it is about films and images that hold pieces of our identity, our fears, our hopes, our peculiarities.

The films are programmed into distinctly Filipino topics.

We do not want to bank merely on the strength of the titles, we want to conflate the works so that themes arise. We do not want a retrospective or a celebration, we want people to get introspective as they watch films about extrajudicial killings, the Martial Law era, the Marawi siege, the Japanese invasion, news archives from the 1950s, prostitution, child labor—the overlooked, the taboo, the milestones, and the future of our country.

And to provide longevity to the festival’s vision, we want

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to offer this program, just like an open source template, as a curated design to other alternative spaces. We have learned that a lot of people are curious about documentaries but do not know where to start.

It is also a great excuse to watch all the documentary gems out there. We cannot wait to share them with the rest of the “dokyu peeps” and all those who want a dose of real stories.

June 17, 2019. Festival directors Monster Jimenez, Jewel Maranan, Baby Ruth Villarama, and Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala got together to talk about plans for the festival. They committed to form FilDocs (The Filipino Documentary Society) and laid out Daang Dokyu’s path for the next few months.

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RATIONALE

Prompting the Imaginings of Futures THE REASON FOR DAANG DOKYU JEWEL MARANAN

The circumstances surrounding the birth of Philippine cinema, including the arrival of film in the country, must have been continuously beleaguered with uncertainty, just as the circumstances surrounding its centenary. Under the rule of a new colonial power that had just won supremacy over the new republic—after decimating the local army, the remaining forces of the revolutionary movement, and a huge population of Filipino civilians—it was unclear what the future held for the budding nation. How far was independence and selfgovernance, it was not yet known in 1919. Today, a century hence and fifteen turns at the much-desired governance after, it is still dangerously unclear what kind of rule and force hold power over us, and what past brought us here. How far we should look back in finding answers, it is not yet sufficiently interrogated.

When the way forward is obstructed, we take a moment to look back. It is often claimed, however, that Filipinos never learn from the past. It is often asserted that Filipinos are forgetful. What is not said enough is that looking back is not simple. No one is born with the memory of the previous generations. The memory of a nation is not the sum total of the memory of its people. It is not comprehensively accessible in the workings of individual memory. We access collective

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memory mediated through our families, the educational system, our culture, or official memorialization. However, a nation’s memory, when officialized by the powers that be, tends to revolve around the centers of culture, economy, and politics and obscures or hegemonizes the peripheries. As soon as it is officialized, the memory is killed, considered resolved, and contained in a box of ceremony, either commemorative or celebratory, and revisited for a facade of history—a box that can now be wielded whichever way, even in ways that reverse the essence of the original. This is the form of national memory that is accessible to many because it is the form of memory that is given right of way. But like real highways we pass repeatedly, we go through these memories thoughtlessly, as though external to us, as though they were hardly connected to where we are going and where we have been, even as they continue to overdetermine the repetition of our trajectories.

Much like the many areas of history that had been officialized, the centenary of Philippine cinema came with a proclamation in November 2018. It did not help that this came just two years after the same government officialized the reversal of a national memory by allowing a hero’s burial for a deposed dictator who led the country to one of the darkest chapters of its post-colonial history. It did not help that the proclamation came from the same government that had outdone the said dictator in weaponizing government institutions in the mass killings of fellow Filipinos, revealing the futility of the democratic institutions fought for with blood and sweat for over a hundred years.

But history is viscous. Officialization may offer temporary containment, but when people are willing to reclaim their history, it offers opportunities for subversion.

And in the celebration of the hundred years of Philippine

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cinema, it is a source of hope that the film community has not fallen short in claiming its history and its reflections.

In asking how far we should look back in moving past the historical cloud we are now under, it is simply opportune that our colonization came with cinema, and now it offers us a concrete measure. The greater opportunity is that the documentary has been with us since the very beginning.

The underappreciated power of the documentary lies in its capacity to offer material fragments of memory and usher us into a space of visibility between the past and the present.

Images of our lands and seas, our people, our colonial past, our unfinished revolutions, our attempts at nationhood and selfhood, had been captured and recaptured in documentary works from one decade to another, from the documentarists long gone to the documentarists now tracing their roots and their trajectories. In these works lie artifacts of our lives and of the generations before us, proposing a rediscovery, an approximation of realities that may not have been ours to live but to which our individual and collective histories and fates are inevitably linked.

The presence of a documentarist promises that someone is chronicling; the absence means many things. The images produced contain two layers of artifacts—the realities captured and the person capturing them—and both have implications on our reflection. Scenes become evidence of people, objects, events, and circumstances as they happen.

Through the presence of the chronicler we are taken to the scene and experience how it is to inhabit that particular place and moment. And because the image is connected to a body that is actually making it, it contains an affective quality, like an empathic hand that carries us from our own time to another’s, whispers to our ears like a phantom, and walks us into a scene with a red string, helping us understand how an

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image long gone matters in the present.

Every documentarist makes films for an imagined future—however near or distant, but often distant. When we shoot a scene, we know it will come to life in a different time, not the same night, maybe in a year, two, three, or ten.

The documentarist subliminally lends us this imagination of a future. Watching a documentary makes us think ahead, be it an action for a social cause, an encouragement to externalize loneliness, recreate beauty, or yearn for a different future. The documentarist initiates a loop of action, a loop of motivation, that potentially translates as a web of learning and of imagining. This loop of action bounces far into the future, for as long as it can materially be found. This is the power that lies in the hand of the documentarist. And with probably the largest number of active documentarists now more than ever, we have never been more ready to capture and affect the spirit and longings of the times.

These appreciations prompted the conception of Daang Dokyu. We want a festival where we can look at our documentary images and the images made of us, in a way that allows them to speak back from various times in the past century and make us reflect on their discord and continuities to our present, or on our current progress and entanglements in relation to our past. We imagine a celebration that serves the public on one hand and the documentarist on the other—so we may find community in our history, and have a concrete grasp of the power of the images we make today, their capacity for timely interventions, or for slow release in time.

Ultimately, we attempt to lift our documentaries to a place where they function for a difficult world that actually needs them. In tracing our documentary history, the point of interest is not simply its context in Philippine cinema but the

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backdrop of social histories and social continuities through which our documentary heritage arose. Likewise, in observing the 100 years of Philippine cinema, we refuse to confine the celebration in the movies, in the community, practice, and future of filmmaking. We want to point to what cinema and documentary have recorded: one hundred years’ worth of the stories of our lives, answers to our pressing questions today that are just lying somewhere on tape, an expansive memory waiting to be owned, made sense of, and passed on. The centenary of Philippine cinema is 100 years of the Filipino story told in the moving image. And we want to point to what it can do outside of its current containment. The festival and its components—six weeks of curated film programs

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that provoke discourse, talkbacks that reconnect the film world to the world at large, and a festival book that offers a constellation of existing viewpoints—are so designed to harness these long-kept wisdom which documentaries and the stories of their making can tell this generation and the next.

The documentary swells as it flows through historical time which constantly expands its contextuality. As it swells it magnetizes the essence of newer and newer times and frees itself from aspects of its capturing that cannot keep up. It is composed through the gaze of its maker but is able to evolve outside of it. It can be owned by the generation that finds it.

We may think of documentaries as our wells to the past. But they are also prompts for the imagination of a future. The audience of documentaries from decades ago extends to us today, and the audience of documentaries made today extends far into the future. Daang Dokyu is a way of extending our hands, as an imagined future of someone who chronicled history for us in the past, affirming that we need it. Daang Dokyu is a way of signaling the future that we have them in mind.

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CURATION

On the Near-Impossibility of Programming Over 100 Years of Philippine Documentary CURATING DAANG DOKYU TEDDY CO

How does one attempt to program a festival of documentaries that covers more than a hundred years of their making?

The answer would be akin to the experience of diving into the sea without a life vest, hoping that somebody throws a lifeline or salvavida and a rescue boat passes by.

Fortunately, we are at land and not at sea, so the metaphor is not quite apt, but one gets the idea. Programming Daang Dokyu has turned out to be a real, difficult challenge.

There has been no precedent in putting up such a sampling of documentaries made by both Filipinos and foreigners over the past one hundred years, and the attempt to even survey its history is made more daunting by the lack of key resources—the lack of an accessible database of articles and filmography, the absence of a properly functioning national film archive, and the time constraints in building a comprehensively curated program.

The Daang Dokyu festival directors—Kara MagsanocAlikpala, Baby Ruth Villarama, Monster Jimenez, and Jewel Maranan—have rounded up three curators who have been key observers of the documentary scene in the

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past five decades and whose combined mental database of documentaries about the Philippines would run up to 90 or more years of conscious viewing. The range of works covered would span from the early twentieth century to the present.

These three curators are Sari Dalena and Adjani Arumpac, both documentarists and professors, and myself, an archivist.

The key vision of the festival directors is to round up enough touchstone works that would tell the story of the Filipino people once put together. A curatorial rationale is articulated and five paramount themes are enumerated to guide the curation: a) NATION: An inquiry into the concept of the nation through narratives of histories, trajectories, and absences. b) GENDER: Expanding notions of gender in relation to history, agency, capital, spaces, and the lack thereof. c) LOCALITIES: Representation of regional characterization to expand identification and establish geopolitical affinities. d) ECOLOGY: Redefinition of the concept of environment to dispel the binary notion of man and nature in the context of repeating natural disasters brought upon by man himself due to unbridled exploitation. e) FUTURE: Pondering on the future of the documentary and discovering its new forms and permutations.

The selection process is daunting due to the unavailability of numerous films, especially those shot on celluloid by early filmmakers from the prewar era up until the 1980s, many of which if available would only have video copies. Television documentaries archived by their studios

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With the Daang Dokyu festival directors and curators during the press conference in February 2020, with Prof. Roland Tolentino and Aswang director Alyx Arumpac.

are of more recent vintage (the 1990s onward), fortunately kept in the libraries of TV stations still in business. The acquisition and research team of Kristine Kintana, Cris Bringas, and Brontë Lacsamana, are assigned to retrieve copies of various documentaries and get permission to have them stored in hard drives, which are then reviewed by the curators. They are culled from the archives of libraries and institutions (UP Film Institute, Philippine Information Agency, ABS-CBN, GMA-7, Cultural Center of the Philippines) and the collections of filmmakers who have generously provided screeners of their works. An open call is also made, resulting in over a hundred submissions of material unheard of previously, all of which have been stored in Daang Dokyu’s archive, now with more than a thousand titles. Collection and collation of various documentaries is done from November 2019 to February 2020.

In the end, the works selected for the festival are of

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historical importance (if available) and those that are relevant due to the topicality of their themes. An important ethical consideration is determined early on by the festival directors and curatorial team: Since almost all of them are practicing documentarists, none of their works would be programmed to avoid conflict of interest. This leaves out important documentary titles such as Batas Militar and Sunday Beauty Queen.

Programming them chronologically is also eschewed, in favor of a more dynamic intermixing of works from various eras being set together in one program, in counterpoint with each other that would create correlational dialogue across time and across disciplines.

It has taken seven curator meetings from the end of October 2019 to mid-February 2020, practically less than four months, to retrieve, thresh out, refresh, filter, whittle down, and enhance the hundreds of titles that have been considered. And the several iterations of documentaries discussed, deliberated on, argued pro and contra, lobbied for and biased against, and shaped into the final program menu can now be watched, reflected on, and savored in Daang Dokyu.

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CURATION

With the Daang Dokyu festival team.

With the Daang Dokyu curators: Sari Dalena, Adjani Arumpac, and Teddy Co.

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Daang Dokyu Program

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A total of 45 documentaries have been selected from more than 300 titles, combining the very old and the very new, from as early as the 1900s to as recent as August 2020.

Seven of them are having their Philippine premieres, fresh from their screenings in international film festivals; one is coming home 32 years after its overseas release; and one is never seen before, a 1929 documentary exhumed from the foreign archives.

Devastating, enlightening, controversial, surprising, funny, heartwarming, entertaining, and perplexing— this is the richness and diversity of experience that Daang Dokyu offers.

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19 - 23 SEPT

OPENING WEEK

MARTIAL LAW, NEVER AGAIN At first glance, this lineup of films is about Martial Law, its continuing legacy of violence, plunder, and divisiveness. But looking further, it is also about the scheme and shamelessness of those in power whose victim, ultimately, is the ordinary Filipino. A much closer inspection reveals that this program is about the Filipino's elusive freedom—our unfinished struggles to break free from our oppressors and be treated with dignity—rooted in our colonial past and continuing through our attempts at nationhood.

There is no moving on because we are still in the thick of it.

We are not simply dealing with memory but with a rolling and raging history. That is why through decades of restlessness, we are constantly being asked to rise and take a side.

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OPENING WEEK

19 - 23 SEPT

MARTIAL LAW, NEVER AGAIN

Marcos: A Malignant Spirit Hosted by Angelo Castro Jr. prod. ABS-CBN News 1989 | 63 mins.

Containing rare footage and recorded conversations, this documentary about "the plunder of a nation" looks into "the inhuman manner in which Marcos and his henchmen systematically drained the economy [...] in their greedy and unrelenting quest for fortune."

Mendiola Massacre dir. Lito Tiongson prod. AsiaVisions, through IBON Foundation 1987 | 20 mins.

Mendiola Massacre is a newsreel of the massacre in Mendiola Bridge on January 22, 1987. The protest action for genuine agrarian reform by peasant organizations led by Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) resulted in the deaths of thirteen farmers and injuries of hundreds of civilians.

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A Rustling of Leaves: Inside the Philippine Revolution dir. Nettie Wild 1988 | 112 mins.

A chronicle of the three points of a political triangle—the legal left, the illegal (armed) revolution, and the enemy which threatens them both: the armed reactionary right. It is 1987. The dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos has just been overthrown. Newly elected Philippine Premiere

President Corazon Aquino struggles to wrench control of the country from her own military. A Rustling of Leaves poses the key question facing the revolutionaries and the Filipino Left: Should the People’s Movement continue the guerilla war, or do they dare enter legal politics and reveal the hidden face of the revolution?

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OPENING WEEK

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OPENING WEEK

19 - 23 SEPT

MARTIAL LAW, NEVER AGAIN

Imelda dir. Ramona Diaz 2003 | 103 mins.

For the first time, Imelda Marcos tells her own story on film, from being a young beauty queen in the 1950s to becoming the First Lady of the Philippines in the 1960s, until the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 with the People Power Revolution. Foregrounding the narrative is not just Imelda and her obsession with power but also the lasting influence of her family on Philippine society even to this day.

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Alunsina dir. Kiri Dalena 2020 | 41 mins.

In Alunsina, Dalena explores the potentials and limits of engagement within a community facing trauma.

Working closely with human rights organizations, she finds herself documenting the struggles of children and families in an urban settlement severely affected by the government's war on drugs. She engages with another family whose child has resorted to Philippine Premiere

drawing pictures to cope with such tragedy and again confront the complexities in communicating the violence they have witnessed.

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OPENING WEEK

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Eco

WEEK 1

2 - 8 OCT

ANG LAHAT NG BAGAY AY MAGKAUGNAY

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logy daangdokyu.ph

Adversities have both destroyed and shaped the nation.

Along the way, the Filipino people have taken it upon themselves to rebuild their homes and lives. With a mix of archival and contemporary images, ANG LAHAT NG BAGAY AY MAGKAUGNAY puts together documentations of individuals and communities in the face of tragedies and calamities. From visions of colonial and capitalist exploitations to pictures of struggles by indigenous peoples against life-threatening development projects, we map the ecology of extractive practices to debunk dangerous notions of Filipino resiliency.

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ECOLOGY

WEEK 1

2 - 8 OCT

Native Life in the Philippines dir. Dean Worcester 1914 | 37 mins.

Made in collaboration with the government photographer Charles Martin, Native Life in the Philippines is a comprehensive ethnographic documentation of Philippine tribes at the end of Dean Worcester's term as Secretary of the Interior for the insular government in the Philippines. With this archival record, he aimed to secure the United States colonial government support in keeping control of a colony of "primitives" and to argue against independence.

Glimpses of the Culion Leper Colony and of the Culion Life dir. Merl La Voy 1929 | 36 mins.

This is one of the earliest representations of the Philippines in moving images. Stored in the British Film Institute archives, this administrative reconnaissance film exhibits the Culion leper colony in the Philippine Premiere

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province of Palawan and is being shown for the first time in the country.

Balikbayan #1: Memories of Overdevelopment Redux VI dir. Kidlat Tahimik 2017 | 160 mins.

Spanning more than three decades of work that show the profound and playful fluidity of his process, Kidlat Tahimik’s most recent feature bears both sides of his esteemed artistic fixtures: the positioning and exploration of the Filipino in the physical—the circumnavigation of the globe by Enrique, the slave of the colonizer Ferdinand Magellan—and in the spiritual: brewing the memories of homeland into reality, a journey backward being as complex and significant as a journey forward.

Pagbabalik Sa Tribo dir. Howie Severino prod. The Probe Team, PCIJ 1999 | 40 mins.

Howie Severino, who grew up on the American East Coast, returned to the Philippines and found work as media journalist. As he follows the story of filmmaker Auraeus Solito’s rediscovery of his tribal Palawan roots, Severino likewise interrogates his own notions of seeking identity and community as Filipino.

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ECOLOGY

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ECOLOGY

WEEK 1

2 - 8 OCT

Sabangan dir. Jose Cuaresma, Frederico Espiritu, B. Libres, R. Gruta, L. Fisher, through IBON Foundation 1983 | 29 mins.

Remontados are one of the ethnic groups who live in the forests of Sierra Madre. The Remontados in Tanay, Rizal, in the eastern part, stand their ground in opposition to the proposed KaliwaKanan Dam, a project of the Marcoses funded by the World Bank.

Dam Nation dir. Grace Simbulan 2019 | 4 mins.

Dam Nation documents the struggle of the Dumagat of Quezon Province and Tanay, Rizal, against the building of Kaliwa-Kanan-Laiban Dam or the New Centennial Water Source project of the Duterte administration. The dam will flood 300 hectares of forests and communities in the eastern Sierra Madre mountain ranges, destroying their means of living.

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Siyanan dir. Summer Bastian 2017 | 20 mins.

Siyanan looks into the disappearing traditions among the indigenous peoples of Bontoc, Mountain Province. It takes up where the sons of Lumawig, the supreme deity of Bontoc-Igorots, left off in the quest for finding their father/cultural hero.

Pinatubo: Pagbangon Mula sa Abo Hosted by Noli de Castro prod. ABS-CBN News 2011 | 28 mins.

Noli de Castro looks back twenty years later on the catastrophic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in June 1991, putting together video footage of the days leading up to the tragedy and recollections of survivors years after it. With characteristic accessibility and emotional force, it covers a wide spectrum of discourses ranging from the abuse of nature and displacement of natives to the spirit of community and resilience in one of the darkest times in Philippine history.

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ECOLOGY

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ECOLOGY

WEEK 1

2 - 8 OCT

Balud dir. Francis Solajes 2014 | 7 mins.

Someday, the sea will devour our land. Balud is a response to Typhoon Haiyan, which wiped out the director’s hometown in November 2013.

Ang Pagpakalma sa Unos dir. Joanna Arong 2020 | 19 mins.

Intertwining myths and video diaries, Ang Pagpakalma sa Unos ponders on the devastating impact of Typhoon Yolanda on Tacloban.

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Tungkung Langit dir. Kiri Dalena 2013 | 20 mins.

Apolonio, 12, and Analou, 9, lost their parents and three siblings to Typhoon Sendong, which devastated Iligan City in Northern Mindanao. They speak to each other of their trauma—through play and in the smallest of whispers before falling asleep—small but significant means by which they heal.

The War We Were Not Taught About dir. Jin Takaiwa 1994 | 113 mins.

The narratives of Filipinos and Japanese soldiers who lived through the Japanese Occupation trace the destructive effects of the war that lasted decades after.

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ECOLOGY

daangdokyu.ph

ECOLOGY

WEEK 1

2 - 8 OCT

Bird Hunt The Atom Araullo Specials prod. GMA Network 2019 | 43 mins.

In this special documentary by Atom Araullo, he explores the many endangered bird species in the country, covering important environmental issues such as poaching, mining, and deforestation.

34

Bullet-Laced Dreams dir. Kristoffer Brugada, Charena Escala 2020 | 29 mins.

Bullet-Laced Dreams follows the Lumad children in Mindanao as they escape from military rule due to the incessant armed conflicts between the government and communist rebels.

The rising tensions have also separated 14-year-old Chricelyn Empong from her family, but she vows to fight for her right. In the evacuation site, Chricelyn Philippine Premiere

and her classmates continue studying and protest for the end of Martial Law so they could return to their homeland. She says the only way to regain their way of life is to defend their right to education.

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ECOLOGY

daangdokyu.ph

WEEK 2

Na

9 - 15 OCT

"PERCEPTION IS REAL,TRUTH IS NOT"

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We interrogate not only historical memory but also the

documentarist’s complex relationship with truth and view of reality. The challenge lies in presenting documentary, using identity, politics, and nationhood, and in determining the scope and significance of these immortalized artifacts, largely unseen, underappreciated classics for new audience engagement. By looking at these foundational films that defined the genre and shaped our national imagination—whether direct cinema, propaganda, essay films, mockumentaries, or experimental and hybrid forms— one feels a strong desire to trace the vigilant spirit of the documentary filmmakers who preserved our history’s transformations and collective experiences. “PERCEPTION IS REAL, TRUTH IS NOT” aims to speak back to us from various times in the previous century and make us reflect on their discord and continuities to our present, or on our current progress and entanglements in relation to our past.

37

NATION

WEEK 2

9 - 15 OCT

Yanan dir. Mae Caralde 2013 | 60 mins.

Ka Yanan, a member of the revolutionary armed movement, died during an encounter with government troops and was survived by a son and two daughters. In Yanan, the filmmaker shows how the revolutionary’s children, grown into young adulthood, cope with their grief and pay homage to their departed parent.

38

Aswang dir. Alyx Arumpac 2019 | 85 mins.

As soon as he won the presidency, Rodrigo Duterte kept his campaign promise: He set in motion a machinery of death to execute suspected drug users, pushers, and small-time criminals.

Aswang follows people whose fates entwine with the growing violence during the first two years of extrajudicial killings in Manila.

May Istorya nga Tayo, Patay Naman Tayo The Probe Team dir. Howie Severino 2001 | 13 mins.

"Rarely do we get a chance to think about what is really worth dying for," Howie Severino begins. "I recently got this chance on the island of Basilan."

The broadcast journalist, in the middle of gunfires in the city, reports on the hostilities in Lamitan, Basilan, in the siege that happened in 2001.

39

NATION

daangdokyu.ph

NATION

WEEK 2

9 - 15 OCT

Sa Mata ng Balita: The Birth of Philippine TV, The News and Many Firsts, Unos at Puntos sa Bagong Milenyo dir. Ricardo Trofeo prod. ABS-CBN News 2003 | 128 mins.

Sa Mata ng Balita looks back on the 50 years of Philippine television history. From the rise of President Ramon Magsaysay to the Oakwood mutiny during President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, this expansive documentary featuring interviews with some of the country's esteemed broadcast journalists shows that the history of television is also the history of the nation.

Tupada '92: The Philippines in the Year of the Elections dir. Fruto Corre 1995 | 35 mins.

Tupada '92 is a coverage of the 1992 Philippine national elections that juxtaposes the hysteria of the campaign season with the precarious state of 31 million Filipino voters. Unsure of what the future holds, the documentary inserts a seer’s ominous visions, including the return to power of the Marcoses.

40

A Rustling of Leaves: Inside the Philippine Revolution dir. Nettie Wild 1988 | 112 mins.

A chronicle of the three points of a political triangle—the legal left, the illegal (armed) revolution, and the enemy which threatens them both: the armed reactionary right. It is 1987. The dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos has Philippine Premiere

just been overthrown. Newly elected President Corazon Aquino struggles to wrench control of the country from her own military. A Rustling of Leaves poses the key question facing the revolutionaries and the Filipino Left: Should the People’s Movement continue the guerilla war, or do they dare enter legal politics and reveal the hidden face of the revolution?

Mendiola Massacre dir. Lito Tiongson prod. AsiaVisions 1987 | 20 mins.

Mendiola Massacre is a newsreel of the massacre in Mendiola Bridge on January 22, 1987. The protest action for genuine agrarian reform by peasant organizations led by Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) resulted in the deaths of thirteen farmers and injuries of hundreds of civilians.

41

NATION

daangdokyu.ph

NATION

WEEK 2

9 - 15 OCT

Marcos: A Malignant Spirit Hosted by Angelo Castro Jr. prod. ABS-CBN News 1989 | 63 mins.

Containing rare footage and recorded conversations, this documentary about "the plunder of a nation" looks into "the inhuman manner in which Marcos and his henchmen systematically drained the economy [...] in their greedy and unrelenting quest for fortune."

Maid in Singapore dir. Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr. 2004 | 47 mins.

Overseas Filipino workers, more so those who break their backs in Singapore, have always lived under the large shadow left by the death of Flor Contemplacion and her fate as a domestic helper in a foreign country. In this documentary, Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr. explores what’s beyond this shadow, the lives of Myla, Vhickie, and Bing that revel in small joys and deep sadness; the empathies of places such as Lucky Plaza, Orchard Road, and St. Andrew’s Cathedral where their hopes and dreams are recollected; and the solidarity of spirit that defines the Filipino.

42

Queer Transnational Love in the Time of Social Media and Globalization dir. Adrian Alarilla 2017 | 20 mins.

In this theoretical study in video form, the filmmaker analyzes the possibilities and impracticability of queer, transnational love. Using found footage, he retraces the story of his love with the research subject in an effort to work through the trauma of ending a relationship.

The Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heroes of The United Farm Workers Movement dir. Marissa Aroy 2014 | 29 mins.

The Delano Manongs tells the story of organizer Larry Itliong and a group of Filipino farm workers who instigated one of the American farm labor movement’s finest hours–The Delano Grape Strike of 1965 that led to the creation of the United Farm Workers Union (UFW).

Although the movement was known for Cesar Chavez’s leadership and considered a Chicano movement, Filipinos played a pivotal role in it.

43

NATION

daangdokyu.ph

WEEK 3

16 - 22 OCT

Ta OFF THE RECORD

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Some documentaries make it look easy—the immersion in the lives of people, the intrusion in the lives of those who would otherwise remain unknown and unseen. This reality, however, is mediated, filtered, and selected.

Armed with maturity and commitment to the subject, the documentarist in OFF THE RECORD uses the camera as a guide to explore intimate and difficult spaces, and the consent given to it allows for a profound examination of social problems, modern anxieties, and systemic oppression, many of which are repeated in history, in various timelines of human relationships. The personal has always been political. But more importantly, in the lives of those in the margins and are often marginally represented in the media, the political has always been and will always be personal.

45

TABOO

WEEK 3

16 - 22 OCT

All Grown Up dir. Wena Sanchez 2018 | 62 mins.

A filmmaker closely follows her teen brother as he starts a new life in college.

Her brother is smart but a bit of an oddball, and he finds it hard to navigate the world like a normal teenager. As she observes his progress, however, she notices similar traits with her own daughter. This makes her question her ability to help the people she loves the most.

Dory dir. Beverly Ramos 2017 | 20 mins.

Dory is about a 101-year-old trans woman who walks around the streets of Tondo, Manila, where she works as a beautician. As she faces her twilight years alone, she ponders whether her long life is a gift from God or a curse.

46

Dreaming in the Red Light dir. Pabelle Manikan 2019 | 86 mins.

In Angeles City, we get inside the lives of two women: a mother who’s a former worker in the Red Light district and her halfGerman teenage daughter, as they make small everyday choices to improve their conditions. Dreaming in the Red Light is a film that intimately observes how women try to survive when their options are few and far Philippine Premiere

between.

47

TABOO

daangdokyu.ph

TABOO

WEEK 3

16 - 22 OCT

Oliver dir. Nick Deocampo 1983 | 66 mins.

The first installment in Nick Deocampo’s Ang Lungsod ng Tao ay Nasa Puso trilogy, Oliver follows a female impersonator who supports his family by performing in Manila’s gay bars during the Marcos dictatorship. It is one of the most compelling illustrations of the fluidity of sexuality, as well as of the power of human agency in times of hardship.

Invisible prod. ABS-CBN News (Docu Central) 2019 | 50 mins.

Still considered a taboo topic, mental health is usually associated with craziness, mental derangement, or lack of faith. In this documentary, ABS-CBN hopes to destigmatize mental health by taking a more optimistic approach with stories of recovery and redemption.

48

Mga Batang Mandirigma The Probe Team Documentaries dir. Cheche Lazaro prod. Probe Media Foundation, Inc 2004 | 53 mins.

The Probe Team traces the roots of two Muslim youths who are currently studying in the U.S.: Khalid Dimaporo and Romina Bernardo. More than another war story, this is a tale of two individuals who are out to discover what it means to be a Muslim of their generation. Both come from prominent political clans in Mindanao but consider themselves “modern Muslims,” having been raised and exposed to different cultures in other countries.

Documented dir. Jose Antonio Vargas 2013 | 60 mins.

Documented chronicles the various journeys of the Pulitzer Prize­– winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas: his journey to America from the Philippines as a child; his journey through America as an undocumented immigrant and, eventually, an immigration reform activist; and his journey inward as he Streaming for 72 hours only until October 19, 9:00 AM

reconnects with his mother, whom he has not seen in person in over 20 years.

49

TABOO

daangdokyu.ph

Loca WEEK 4

23 - 29 OCT

DAGAT ANG PAGITAN

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lities daangdokyu.ph

What makes the Filipino? In defining the Filipino identity, we acknowledge the diversity and differences of an archipelagic nation. We seek to understand this concept through documented stories from more than 7,000 islands, told in over 150 languages. These works in DAGAT ANG PAGITAN, collectively termed as regional films, feature the various topographies, advocacies, perceptions, and cinematic styles born of the teeming traditions in the various places one calls home. By piecing together narratives of human struggle to overcome and own their lived spaces, we embark on an inquiry into the concept of nation that binds these myriad identifications into one.

51

LOCALITIES

WEEK 4

23 - 29 OCT

A is for Agustin dir. Grace Simbulan 2019 | 73 mins.

Agustin is a tribesman close to his forties who loves to sing but has never had the opportunity to learn to read or write. When he finds out his boss cheats him out of his wages again, he decides to enroll in grade 1. Over time, however, Agustin becomes increasingly torn between two realities: the children's world in school, and the harsh reality of the world outside. As the needs of his family mount, he must decide whether to continue his own quest for selfimprovement or to pass the opportunity on to his son, the next generation.

Walang Rape sa Bontok dir. Mark Lester Valle and Carla Pulido Ocampo prod. GMA Network 2014 | 120 mins.

Two women, both victims of sexual abuse, yearn and search for a utopia where women can live without being sexually violated. By chance, they encounter a study by renowned anthropologist June Prill-Brett, which mentions that the Bontok of the Philippine Cordilleras have lived for eras without a term, nor concept, nor incidence, of rape. At last, a utopia, where the most heinous of gender crimes is unheard of. Or is it?

52

Gilubong ang Akon Pusod sa Dagat dir. Martha Atienza 2011 | 32 mins.

Gilubong ang Akon Pusod sa Dagat (My Navel is Buried in the Sea) explores the relevance of the sea and its relationship with and impact on those who use it as a source of livelihood. Through a three-channel video projection, the work proffers varying scenes and perspectives in simultaneity, briskly balancing alternating rhythms in settings and emotions throughout its duration.

Himurasak dir. Francis Solajes 2017 | 5 mins.

Himurasak shares stories from communities in Tacloban affected by Typhoon Yolanda, from the collective memory and experiences of the locals themselves.

53

LOCALITIES

daangdokyu.ph

LOCALITIES

WEEK 4

23 - 29 OCT

Ang Pagbabalik ng Bituin dir. Sherbien Dacalanio 2012 | 40 mins.

Ang Pagbabalik ng Bituin documents a domestic helper’s Ro-Ro (roll-on, roll-off) trip from Metro Manila to Cabadbaran, Agusan del Norte.

Budots: The Craze dir. Jay Rosas and Mark Limbaga 2019 | 23 mins.

Budots swept the entire nation by storm. But few people knew that the dance craze originated in Davao City before it went viral on social media.

An internet bum and a small group of people in his community started it all.

54

Panicupan dir. Bagane Fiola 2016 | 13 mins.

Panicupan, a barangay in Pikit, North Cotabato, is one of the "Spaces for Peace" where Moro, Lumad, and Christian settlers have joined hands in upholding their harmonious relationship amid the conflict between the government forces and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

A House in Pieces dir. Jean Claire Dy, Manuel Domes 2020 | 65 mins.

A war between government and ISISaffiliated jihadists in Marawi, Philippines, forced hundreds of thousands to flee from their homes. After the war, residents struggle to rebuild their homes and live in a destroyed city.

The film unfolds as an emotional journey weaving together the stories of its Philippine Premiere

protagonists over a period of two years.

Displaced couple Yusop and Farhanna and their children yearn for freedom, income, and comfort after returning to their city. Nancy, a once wealthy woman, has to cope with the loss of her home in an evacuation shelter where she will have to remain for years. An anonymous driver with striking insights shuttles back and forth between places and stories around a city which will never be the same again.

55

LOCALITIES

daangdokyu.ph

WEEK 5

Fu

30 OCT - NOV 05

GANITO TAYO NGAYON, PAANO SILA BUKAS?

56

ture daangdokyu.ph

Where else can documentary filmmaking go? Which directions, out of the many, can it still take? What role does technology in this rapidly evolving information age play in the kinds of documentaries being produced?

GANITO TAYO NGAYON, PAANO SILA BUKAS? provides glimpses of exciting possibilities, challenges, and explorations of new and unseen territories—illuminating not only for the spirited lives they contain but also for the criticality they spur, as they reflect on the social contexts of their subjects. With a sharp consciousness of the post-truth era, these works are pockets of cinematic contemplation that ask the audience to evaluate every interpretation of truth and every exposition of lie.

57

FUTURE

WEEK 5

30 OCT - NOV 05

Alunsina dir. Kiri Dalena 2020 | 41 mins.

In Alunsina, Dalena explores the potentials and limits of engagement within a community facing trauma.

Working closely with human rights organizations, she finds herself documenting the struggles of children and families in an urban settlement severely affected by the government's war on drugs.

Beastmode: A Social Experiment dir. Manuel Mesina III 2018 | 90 mins.

A social media experiment involving the altercation of two Filipino celebrities goes viral and exposes the festering wound of Filipino institutions and society—from traditional media and social media to entertainment, business, and politics.

58

For My Alien Friend dir. Jet Leyco 2019 | 73 mins.

Dubbed as a “documentary of brief encounters,� For My Alien Friend is a philosophical musing on the nature of being. Leyco uses footage from the mundane to create an honest depiction of humanity, using an alien friend as a filmic device that serves as the driving force of the narrative.

59

FUTURE

daangdokyu.ph

FUTURE

WEEK 5

30 OCT - NOV 05

We Still Have to Close Our Eyes dir. John Torres 2019 | 13 mins.

Repurposing documentary footage taken from the sets of Filipino film productions (including those of Lav Diaz, Erik Matti, Dan Villegas, and Dodo Dayao), the filmmaker gathers these peripheries and turns them into an uncanny narrative about human avatars Philippine Premiere

controlled by apps, with images of police, prisoners, and fascism.

Retrochronological Transfer of Information dir. Tad ErmitaĂąo 1994 | 11 mins.

Inspired by the works of physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and philosopher Enryo Inoue, this 16mm film documents the experiments of a modern-day scientist who attempts to communicate with Jose Rizal, the Filipino national hero executed by the Spanish in 1896.

60

daangdokyu.ph

31 OCT - NOV 02

#HUWAGMATAKOT HALLOWEEN RERUN

Aswang dir. Alyx Arumpac 2019 | 85 mins.

After winning the critics' prize in International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2019, Aswang was supposed to premiere in the Philippines as the opening film of Daang Dokyu in March 2020. The pandemic, however, did not stop it from reaching its audience. On July 11, in a collaboration between Daang Dokyu, the Aswang team, and Dakila, Aswang screened for free via streaming across the country for two days, seen by thousands of people and discussed heavily on social media platforms, which came at the height of the public's clamour against the Duterte government's Anti-Terror Bill. A talkback session was also organized called “The Creation of Aswang� referring both to the film and the tragedy of today, with the director Alyx Arumpac. Hosted by Cheche Lazaro and Lourd de Veyra, it featured Nerissa Balce, Karen Gomez Dumpit, Carlos Conde, and Brother Jun Santiago as speakers.

Streaming for 48 hours only until November 2, 9:00 AM

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19 SEPT - 05 NOV

Re Ch

INDUSTRY SESSIONS, MASTERCLASSES, AND Q&As 62

ality eck,

daangdokyu.ph

The Daang Dokyu Program is complemented by debates, discussions, and open forums on the issues reflected in the programs' themes, as well as the most relevant and pressing concerns of the documentary community and industry.

Featuring some of the most admired practitioners in the academe and in the fields of cinema, television, media, and social sciences, these talkback sessions, lectures, and masterclasses are open to students, enthusiasts, educators, and the general public.

63

19 SEPT - 05 NOV September 19, 8:00 PM

REALITY CHECK

Martial Law, Never Again

Every year, we remember the atrocities of Martial Law under Ferdinand Marcos, through commemorative programs and street protests in support of the victims and survivors, yet every year we also seem to be getting closer to what we fear most: another government hungry for totalitarian power, this time with Rodrigo Duterte’s use of force to stifle freedom and blatant disregard for human rights. In this Reality Check, we make connections with these two leaders, analyze the possible reasons for the continuity between then and now, and discuss why the public must be very concerned.

Ed Lingao Moderator

INDUSTRY SESSION

Sundance: Filmmaking in the Time of COVID As one of the most prominent institutions at the forefront of independent cinema, the Sundance Film Festival has launched several programs to connect with film artists all over the world since the start of the pandemic. In this Industry Session, Sundance programmers speak with Filipino filmmakers to share their programs and seek to understand experiences in making documentaries in the Philippines in general and in the time of Covid-19.

Monster Jimenez Moderator Ania Trzebiatowska Moderator

Miguel Reyes Researcher

Sudeep Sharma Programmer

Kiri Dalena Filmmaker

Stephanie Owens Associate programmer

Joel Lamangan Filmmaker Chel Diokno Lawyer

64

September 26, 9:30 AM

daangdokyu.ph October 3, 8:00 PM

October 10, 8:00 PM

REALITY CHECK

REALITY CHECK

There is no stopping the global climate crisis from happening, and the Philippines, along with other developing countries, is in a vulnerable position.

Environmental issues have always been urgent, thanks to the tireless work of our scientists and advocates, but still immensely neglected. In this Reality Check, we examine the roots of our vulnerability to calamities, how colonialism and our post-colonial servility have destroyed our natural environment and, in the process, taken advantage of the ancestral domains of our indigenous people.

Images carry force and persuasion, and they are used to obtain political strength. What is the viability of images in advancing meaningful change or their vulnerability to be controlled to gain influence? When does truth become propaganda and propaganda become truth? How can documentaries be used to counter and further historical revisionism? In this Reality Check, we examine the nature of truth and historical narratives as told in moving images.

Ang Lahat ng Bagay ay Magkaugnay

Howie Severino Moderator Kidlat Tahimik National Artist for Film Giovanni Tapang Dean and professor Neen Sapalo Social and cultural anthropologist

"Perception is Real, Truth is Not"

Boy Abunda Moderator Ramon Guillermo Scholar Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr. Film scholar Ramona Diaz Filmmaker Nicole Curato Sociologist

Francis Solajes Filmmaker

65

19 SEPT - 05 NOV October 14, 2:00 PM

WORKSHOP

Documentary Filmmaking 101 Aswang director Alyx Arumpac talks about the challenges of making the first documentary film and seeing it develop from a personal idea to a work seen by the wider public. This session will serve as a practical guidance to the essential parts of the creative process.

with Director Alyx Arumpac

October 16, 3:00 PM

INDUSTRY SESSION

TokyoDocs & In-Docs on International CoProduction This Industry Session puts together two important Asian organizations doing substantial work on documentary production and networking: TokyoDocs and In-Docs. Moderated by Kenichi Imamura, whose considerable experience in all aspects of documentary production has made him a pillar in the industry, the panel speakers include producers Akiko Tabakotani and Mandy Marahimin and filmmaker Bryan Brazil who will share their involvement with TokyoDocs and In-Docs as well as the films they have made in the process. Imamura will also talk about opportunities for co-production with NHK Enterprises and give advice on pitching work to Japanese broadcasters.

Imamura Ken-ichi Moderator TokyoDocs & NHK Enterprises Bryan Brazil Filmmaker, My Little Dancing Shoes Akiko Tabakotani Co-Producer, My Little Dancing Shoes Mandy Marahimin In-Docs, Producer, A Man with 12 Wives

66

daangdokyu.ph October 17, 8:00 PM

October 21, 4:00 PM

REALITY CHECK

MASTERCLASS

Growing in significance over recent years is the attention given to mental health and how it affects people across ages, genders, and social classes. In this Reality Check, we raise some of the sensitive questions related to mental health and how society and aspects of our culture intersect in this ongoing conversation.

Nick Deocampo, one of the country’s most prolific and revered historians, gives a masterclass on the beginnings and movement of documentary filmmaking in the Philippines, through two World Wars, and from revolution to revolution.

Off the Record: Mental Health and Identity

Historya ng Dokyupelikula

Nick Deocampo Filmmaker, historian, author, professor Chiara Zambrano Moderator Naomi Fontanos Writer, educator

with an introduction by Deputy Speaker Loren Legarda

Shamaine CenteneraBuencamino Artist, mental health advocate Ma. Regina Hechanova Professor

67

19 SEPT - 05 NOV October 23, 8:00 PM

MASTERCLASS

State of Journalism in the Philippines This panel of veteran journalists will discuss the current state of journalism in the Philippines as well as the challenges in developing in-depth journalism in an increasingly repressive environment for the media. The session will also serve as a guide to young journalists and a dialogue from one generation to another.

Roby Alampay Moderator Ging Reyes Journalist, news executive

October 24, 8:00 PM

REALITY CHECK

Dagat ang Pagitan Whether it’s 7,107 islands or not, the Philippines as an archipelagic nation is not without its repercussions. Bodies of water separate lands, and lands separate people—these physical margins allow for differences of diverse nuance: language, customs and traditions, ethnicity. This varied landscape is mirrored in the varied filmmaking cultures across the country, as seen in the growth of regional cinema in recent years. In this Reality Check, we examine documentary works made in the regions and talk about the experiences of making them from different vantage points. We also emphasize the significance of this growth to the advancement of a more inclusive national cinema.

Maria Ressa Journalist, author John Nery Journalist, columnist Shiela Coronel Journalist, professor

Mike Tan Moderator Tito Valiente Film critic, anthropologist Bagane Fiola Programmer, filmmaker Jay Rosas Programmer, film critic Keith Deligero Festival director, filmmaker Teddy Co Film archivist, curator

68

daangdokyu.ph October 30, 8:00 PM

October 31, 8:00 PM

MASTERCLASS

REALITY CHECK

GMA Public Affairs presents a talkback session with three of its award-winning journalists and documentarists. Raffy Tima, Atom Araullo, and Kara David will share their knowledge of and experience in storytelling, mobile journalism, and documentary making.

Modern-day activities have depended so much on the internet and digital technology that it is impossible to go through the motions of every day without them. In this Reality Check, we focus on the impact of the internet, social media, and digital technology on the direction of filmmaking, as well as on democracy and the future of our society in the current climate of disinformation and imbalance.

GMA Network Masterclass

Raffy Tima Journalist

Ganito Tayo Ngayon, Paano Sila Bukas?

Atom Araullo Journalist

Mae Paner Moderator

Kara David Journalist

Jet Leyco Filmmaker Manuel Mesina III Filmmaker John Torres Filmmaker Quark Henares Filmmaker Nica Dumlao Digital rights specialist

69

02 - 15 OCT

DAANG DOKYU PARTNERS' RECOMMENDATIONS THE BEST OF GMA NETWORK DOCUMENTARIES

ABS-CBN RECOMMENDED DOCUMENTARIES

Reel Time: Isinulat sa Tubig

'Di Ka Pasisiil

2016 | 43 mins.

2017 | 27 mins.

In a village in Sorsogon, children cross the waters and trek the mountains for hours just to get to school, and to get the high school diploma that can help them give their families a better future.

I-Witness: Alkansya 2012 | 30 mins.

A boy from Eastern Samar works every day without rest—catching fish, collecting sea shells and washing cars, and scouring the seabed for sea cucumbers: all for a measly income to fulfill a dream.

Two reporters describe the realities of the siege in Marawi in 2017 as well as the experiences of both civilians and journalists in the conflict that ravaged the city.

The Last Manilaners 2019 | 27 mins.

Through the open-door policy of President Manuel L. Quezon, thousands of Jews fleeing persecution from Nazi Europe found refuge in the Philippines, allowing them to survive the Holocaust.

Trip to Quiapo The Atom Araullo Specials: Babies4Sale.PH 2019 | 38 mins.

Somewhere on Facebook, there is a scheme perpetrated by “adoption pages” that sell babies for 35,000 to 40,000 pesos, given up by their desperate mothers.

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2020 | Ep 1: 16 mins., Ep 2: 14 mins.

The Quiapo of Ricky Lee's scriptwriting manual is not only a district of dusty streets but also a repository of memories and stories as well as the sanctuary of the writer himself.

To view the entire series, please use the iWantTFC app.

16 - 29 OCT

RAPPLER DOCUMENTARIES

My 14-Year-Old Daughter Married a Stranger 2019 | 9 mins.

Three days into the new year, Fatima learns that her relatives have sealed her marriage to an older stranger.

Her mother, a child bride herself, is powerless to stop it.

THE BEST OF PROBE PRODUCTIONS

Bahay na Pula 2003 | 27 mins.

The ancestral house “Bahay na Pula” in Bulacan is known for its appearance and ghost stories, but during World War II it was a Japanese garrison where women were raped repeatedly.

Rape Within the Family: The Philippines' Silent Incest Problem

Children Betrayed

2017 | 14 mins.

Child prostitution was thought to have ended in the 1980s with the massive crackdown of pedophiles, but in the mid-1990s it persisted and found new victims in the helpless street kids in the city.

Incest rape happens far more often in the country than official data shows, but it remains an unspeakable secret within families–leaving girls to suffer repeated abuse for years inside their own homes.

Threatened Paradise: Saving Dinagat Islands' Habitat From Mining 2020 | 10 mins.

Even before the pandemic, the biodiversity of the Dinagat Islands has long been threatened, as the place has long been embroiled in a delicate dance between economics and the fight for conservation.

1995 | 14 mins.

Our Power 2019 | 29 mins.

In Lamao, Bataan, progressive groups and residents complain about the harmful effects of a private-owned power plant.

71

23 OCT - 05 NOV THE BEST OF THE PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM

THE NATIONAL COMMISSION FOR CULTURE AND THE ARTS SUPPORTED DOCUMENTARIES

Toxic Sunset

Ang Pagpakalma sa Unos

1993 | 29 mins.

2020 | 19 mins.

In 1993, a year after the last U.S. troops left the Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark Air Base, the shadow of the American military presence in the country remained large and looming.

Intertwining myths and video diaries, Ang Pagpakalma sa Unos ponders on the devastating impact of Typhoon Yolanda on Tacloban.

Papogi

Dreaming in the Red Light

2004 | 147 mins.

2019 | 86 mins.

Several of the most popular Philippine presidents—Manuel Quezon, Ramon Magsaysay, Ferdinand Marcos, and Joseph Estrada—have captivated the voting public not only with their charisma but also through a masterful manipulation of mass media.

In Angeles City, a mother who used to work in the Red Light district and her half-German teenage daughter make small choices to improve their life conditions.

Dayaw: The Spirit of Maratabat Lives On 2018 | 27 mins.

Angkan: The Maguindanao Clans 2013 | 29 mins.

Ed Lingao takes a deeper look into the political, social, and economic influence of the various clans that have lorded over Maguindanao in the last few centuries.

72

The Dayaw team led by Deputy Speaker Loren Legarda travel to Marawi in time for the sacred celebration of Eid’l Fitr to explore the Maranao’s culture rooted in the historic city, as the people of the city rebuild their lives after the siege that has befallen them.

“ The world may be at a standstill but art and culture continue to thrive. Artists are finding ways to express, no matter the circumstances.

People find ways to be creative, because it’s just how we’re built. But of all the forms, I hold documentaries to the highest regard. It sheds light on all the issues that I feel passionately about—climate change, overlooked regions, war-torn areas, sacred traditions, women and children. Stories are important to be passed on and screened. It is important to have a deeper appreciation of issues beyond the headlines.

It is a privilege to support Daang Dokyu, a festival that focuses on the Philippines’ true stories, where we can reflect and review how we’re doing and how far we’ve come.

— Deputy Speaker Loren Legarda Now is the Time (2009) Buhos (2010) Dayaw Series (2015-2020)

Stories, Histories

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Emerging from this weaving and interweaving of stories and histories is a portrait of the Philippine documentary very much similar to a portrait of the nation, filled with the travails and triumphs that have come to define its people and their experiences, weathering the most difficult wars and battles and enjoying the most rewarding freedoms and opportunities.

In these essays, Nick Deocampo, Adjani Arumpac, Patrick F. Campos, and Gutierrez Mangansakan II— educators and practitioners who have long been pushing for the development of the documentary practice—look back on the past to understand the present. They carry the optimism that in every trailblazer like Jose Nepomuceno, Ben Pinga, Jojo Sescon, and Ditsi Carolino, there will be people like them in the future who will continue forging new paths.

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Early representations of the Philippines took the form of fake newsreels showing the American conquest of the country in Advance of Kansas Volunteers at Caloocan (1899), produced by the motion picture studio of inventor Thomas Alva Edison.

Deocampo photo collection.

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In the Uncanny Resemblance of Reality, the Philippine Documentary Finds Itself in a Portmanteau of Cultures NICK DEOCAMPO

The history of the documentary reflects the history of the emerging Filipino nation. Told in it are narratives of colonization, struggle, and the life Filipinos lived since their independence. Film’s arrival in 1896 coincided with the struggle to break free from the country’s colonial ties with Spain. If this arrival were to be considered its birth, then film might be seen as twin to the birthing of Filipino nationhood, when the first cry for independence was uttered in the same year. Both developments mirrored each other’s image as if gazing into the looking glass and finding each other’s visage there. Among films, none revealed a more uncanny resemblance to Filipino reality than the documentary.

So many births attended to cinema’s delivery. There was the birth when film first arrived. A birth when the first film show was held in Escolta in 1897. Another when the first film was shot by an itinerant cameraman in 1899; when a film studio was built by a Filipino in 1917 signaling film’s Filipino ascendancy; when the first locally produced newsreel was taken in Cebu in 1918 and the first full-length

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fiction film was produced in Manila in 1919. And still there were more firsts. And more births. Our growing film historiography befits the continuing discovery we make of a medium that only a century ago we professed to be a site for our national identity, endearing it as our national culture.

In this continued awakening, one more history is added as we reflect on the documentary as the mirror of our national selfhood.

The first film shot in the Philippines was a documentary, if by documentary we mean a film that captures images of reality. It was not Filipino, as it was shot by an American itinerant cameraman, Elias Burton Holmes. The film remains nameless but it was among the assorted shots he took when he came to the country in 1899, his travel urgently instigated perhaps by the sudden outbreak of the Philippine-American War. Claims of earlier footage taken by the Spaniard who first brought motion pictures into the Philippines, Seùor Francisco Pertierra, remain only as mere speculation. Holmes’s footage were actual images of the islands and the natives, however overtaken by images of U.S. soldiers colonizing the Philippine archipelago. This is the first reflection we see in the looking glass: a distracted image of

Actual footage was shot about the Philippines when filmmakers came to the American colony, such as C. Fred Ackerman shooting this early traffic scene in Escolta. Deocampo photo collection.

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Elias Burton Holmes took the first images of the Philippines when he first arrived in March 1899. His take on Escolta showed the colonial atmosphere of Manila’s business district. Deocampo photo collection.

the natives because someone else shares the view in the shape of colonizers. In its half-century of growth, this became the story of the documentary—a visual portmanteau of layered images where the colonial smudges the native.

The documentary is a ruthless witness to the past. It tells in images tales that reveal, but even in the absence of image, truth slips through the fingers of untold narratives. Image in the documentary has the power of truth, and when the image is absent, truth speaks loudest. Absence makes what is not there all the more real. The absence of natives in newsreels showing American troops defeating native freedom fighters does not mean no blood was spilled. For every triumphant film like Advance of Kansas Volunteers at Caloocan (1899) celebrating U.S. victory over unseen (because of their unreal screen presence) revolutionaries, it is haunted by the real lives of Filipinos dying in battlefields to defend the country.

Films made during the early years of U.S. colonization showed images of power over Filipinos. This became the trope dominating film narratives produced for as long as

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Military images of U.S. soldiers marching to fight local freedom fighters dominated the films taken by Holmes. Deocampo photo collection.

America ruled the country. These images would only be challenged by the coming of the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World War. The narrative, however, remained the same. The trope of conquest never changed, only the players did. When the U.S. soldiers reconquered the country after the war, the trope intensified even more, favoring the returning Americans as “heroes.” Documentaries were there to keep the memory for posterity. Victory parades gave a picture-perfect recall of the triumphant return. But films of that period also exhibited scarring memories, lest they also be forgotten—the bloody battles, scenes of ruin, the welcoming arms of Filipinos, unknowing that they were being duped several times over by the American promise of independence.

The production of documentaries spiked in periods of war. American colonization was war, and so was Japanese invasion. As an offspring of colonialism, film was an ally in warfare. Rephrasing Paul Virilio: the film camera is no less deadly than a gun. While rifles and tanks kill and

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maim, films colonize consciousness and conquer peoples, insidiously. From the start, when American soldiers came to our shores and General Emilio Aguinaldo battled them for our independence in 1898, the production of newsreels (progenitors of present-day documentaries) increased and their sales soared in the emerging American film market by the 1900s. American film studios—from the one owned by the film inventor Thomas Alva Edison to his rival, the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company—all competed to make films to satisfy America’s burgeoning consumer market. In this scenario, Filipinos were not only defeated in their homeland. Images of their defeat were even sold in the markets of victors, for $50 a reel. Somebody’s tragedy was someone else’s fortune. A spike in film production attended to the growing interest that America’s colonization of the Philippines had among predominantly white American filmgoers. This interest was matched only by a similar rise in film production when the Second World War broke out.

Conversely, when a regime of peace reigned, it was time for America to forget its once colonial ally, slumping the production of war movies, dumping documentaries on the side, forgetting there was the Philippines. The country is only best remembered in times of war. Any kind of war.

When finally the “Filipino” film was born, it was delivered into a colonial world. No such thing as “native” birth, nor was it even an act that was immaculate in its inception. Born of hybrid cultures, through the insemination of the native by the foreign, the cinema that resulted from the union could not but be a creole. Film was ever so colonial, and, ironically, one trying to become native. It was condemned to a life finding an identity it already lost before it was born. When cinema became Filipino is ever going to be every film historian’s conundrum to resolve. Not yet free

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but shackled to its American ruler, a native came along who was bred under an earlier colonial master—Spain—but who desired to lay his hand over the motion picture machine like one taking the bull by the horns. In 1917, the Hispanic Filipino Jose Nepomuceno, an educated elite by all standards of his time, put up his first movie company, Malayan Movies.

He did this after selling his photographic equipment in exchange for a revolutionary device that allowed images to move.

In staking his future with film, Nepomuceno conquered a piece of the colonial, although the colonial merely lurked inside the machine ready to unleash its foreign influences once the native was conquered, but only after he learned how to use the moving picture. Another perfect portmanteau beckoned when the native and the colonial combined to feed on each other for their survival. Film beguiled him, film captivated her, film conquered the Filipinos as a nation.

As they could only want for more, the West (particularly Hollywood when it was time to dominate the world film market came) flooded the colony with its high-valued commodities—the films. They came into the country, tarifffree, to a people who loved to be entertained, clueless of the precious dollars flying out of the country and remitted to Wall Street banks.

Until the elite among the natives made cinema their own, lured by a slice of the profit which Hollywood siphoned out of the country in buckets. The entire nation agreed with their bakyas. Wooden-clog wearing patrons trooped to movie theaters to watch larger-than-life figures dancing, crying, fighting, and making magic on the silver screen.

They were entertained—that was all that mattered. After the granting of independence in 1946, film became the site of “national identity.” It was a popular tool for nation-building.

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This movie ad changed Philippine film history with a claim that a newsreel was shot in 1918 reputed to be taken by a homegrown filmmaker. The claim was later validated to be by the Filipino film pioneer Jose Nepomuceno, after an interview with his son, Luis, who said his father made a documentary before making a fiction film, Dalagang Bukid, in 1919. A similar claim was made by Joe Quirino, Nepomuceno’s biographer. Deocampo photo collection.

Film became Filipino. Without seeing the contradictions in their act, and not cautioned by its consequences, the nation baptized what their native filmmakers produced with the selfowning “Filipino cinema.” This happened even if all of film’s material economy that made the business possible, from negatives to cameras to projectors, were never produced by their own. They thought owning the image was all it took to make cinema “Filipino.” They failed to realize there was a price to pay for it.

Filipinos are of a farming culture, but with movies, their desire was now swayed by a product of the industrial. They dreamt of snow on parched earth. They sought Tinseltown in their makeshift barns passing off as movie factories. But why not? Modernism was at their country’s doorstep. Now owning the foreign, the foreign became native, slipping under native skin surreptitiously. As the foreign took on native form, there needed to be an infrastructure to sustain its mass replication. It had a name. It was called the “movie industry.”

For the high-maintenance industry to survive, it had to lead,

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and to lead meant to monopolize the market. It became intolerant of rivals, like films of other sizes and persuasions.

It peddled fiction rebuking those that called for reality as reality to be shown, like documentaries. The fiction film industry disdained the reality conjurer, but only if it could not profit from it. Sadly, it never did, it never had a chance to prove itself. So it came to pass that cinema in the Philippines became a monocropped industry only for fiction films. This led to films of other forms and styles to become marginalized, ignored.

This became the fate of the documentary.

The documentary under the colonial took a long time coming into the hands of native filmmakers. The mission to conquer native imagination had to be made through fiction.

Jose Nepomuceno shot the first locally Fiction films were the produced newsreel in the Philippines. perfect Trojan horse for Deocampo photo collection. the foreign to penetrate the innermost sanctum of native fantasy. With the end of the Second World War came a major turning point for documentaries. A veteran of the Death March resurrected his photographic career and left for New York as a scholar.

As the period in-between wars gave a moment of peace, only a few documentaries were produced. There were no reasons for anyone to do them, no time to know Philippine “reality.�

It was during this time that a government pensionado left the country to study filmmaking, reversing the time-honored flow

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of film moving from West to East. Similar to Nepomuceno’s taking the film bull by the horns, a film neophyte, Benedicto Pinga, dared to step on to film’s birthplace, New York. It was in the nearby West Orange county in New Jersey in 1893 when Edison, with partner W. K. L. Dickson, first invented the moving picture machine. There in the Big Apple was where Pinga studied documentary, his film of choice. In press releases covering his arrival, he vowed to use film to fight communism in the war for propaganda, as the Cold War split the world into two. War, at this time, remained an impetus that drove men toward cinema. Pinga was one Filipino who finally broke out from his colonial cocoon hardly knowing he was only to fly inside a colonial gilded cage. Bigger but no better. Inside his newfound world, he fluttered among the gods, meeting the Flahertys and visiting Hollywood, cementing his resolve to promote the nonfiction film.

When Pinga returned to the Philippines, he became a prophet too few believed in. He spoke in a different tongue. He talked about a cinema that invoked “truth.” The moviegoing public refused his calls for documentary to be patronized. None needed truth when Hollywood dumped fiction films that looked like “truth” by the hundreds in local movie theaters. Fiction was the celluloid truth Filipino moviegoers wanted to believe in. More so, its local clone. Tagalog movies offered spadesful of entertainment to masses of viewers and they were happy enough with their virtual “truth.” Leave the real truth to tabloids, or radios, or even television. Pinga’s documentary cause lay buried underneath the avalanche of a popular film culture soaked in Hollywood and Tagalog movie entertainment, where Filipinos had no room for films that wanted to show reality, let alone truth. There was simply no place for documentaries to grow in the enchanted world of entertainment.

Pinga was unbowed. He did what no one else before

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“

The textbook answer is John Grierson’s definition: “The documentary is the creative treatment of actuality.” It’s a useful guide, although some may argue that Titanic is a creative treatment of actuality. Which it is. But its material is not actuality. It uses the artifice of film—script, actors, design, effects, etc. Grierson underscores the treatment of actuality—actual people, places, events. Another useful definition is Bill Nichols’s: the documentary is “an argument about a historical reality.” So, the documentary is not merely a creative treatment; it is an argument. What does the filmmaker want to say about a historical reality, e.g., extrajudicial killings under the Duterte administration? The documentary goes beyond documentation. The filmmaker must have an argument, a message, a thesis, if you will. An even more useful idea is Dirk Eitzen’s proposition. He doesn’t ask “What is a documentary?” but “When is a documentary?” His theorizing brings him to the conclusion that the documentary is that form of film that is susceptible to the question, “Might it be lying?” A good insight, indeed.

We don’t ask that question when we watch a fictional film. We know that it is an illusion, a lie. But not with a documentary.

Truth is at the core of the documentary—or, more accurately, a truth that is seen from the perspective of the documentary filmmaker.

The work may be questioned, “Might it be lying?” But, in the end, the audience trust that the filmmaker is truthful.

What is a documentary film? It is that form of film that enjoys the audience’s trust that it is not a lie. Unfortunately, there are filmmakers who break that trust.

–Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr. Superfan (2009) Habambuhay (2019)

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him did. He organized festivals, conducted workshops, and held conferences to promote the “other” cinema—the documentary, a cinema as strange as truth is strange to a liar. He continued his advocacy with little to show for his success except for a trail of records offering a different path toward achieving another form of cinema. Were there takers?

Lamberto Avellana was one who took the documentary on the side of his distinguished film career, although sadly it was this side of Avellana’s career that had been left unappreciated, even unknown to many. Who remembers Avellana’s El Legado (1960) and La Campana de Baler (1961), both prizewinners in Bilbao, Spain?

Hurting furthermore, the few documentaries produced, despite Pinga’s untiring campaign, were works of compromising integrity as they flirted with U.S. funding (in making Cold War propaganda), capitalist advertisement (promoting gasoline products like Esso and Caltex), government information campaign (agrarian programs), and touristic promotions (nativist cultural festivities). His one shining accomplishment was the short film he produced,

Soul of a Fortress was an antiwar documentary that won the silver prize in Bilbao, Spain.

It was directed by Ferde Grofe, Jr. and produced by Benedicto Pinga. Deocampo photo collection.

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Soul of a Fortress (1965), directed by Ferde Grofe, Jr. It is an audacious work combining a powerful antiwar message contained in experimental film form, a silver prize winner in the same Bilbao film festival where Avellana won. Beyond that, nada. For all his hard work, only a stash of newspaper clippings remained of Pinga’s pioneering stand to wedge the documentary into the minds of a public numb with entertainment cinema. Perhaps Pinga was too early for his time, or he came home to a wrong crowd. Worse, Pinga’s zealous advocacy was inopportunely erased as a major social trauma convulsed Philippine society.

The declaration of Martial Law in 1972 changed not just the face of Philippine politics but of Filipino cinema as well, more so disfiguring the documentary. With society gripped under the tight control of the military under the dictatorial rule of President Ferdinand Marcos, cinema fell under the machinisms of authoritarian power, like everything else in society then. Documentaries turned into propagandas. The autocratic state had power over images that were produced, and those images could only favor the regime. They were images of the military, display of wealth, and pompous celebrations. The country reeled in poverty, the peasants and the working class were oppressed, and the value of human life debased. The documentary was lost in the obfuscated world of Marcos-mania.

But underneath the dark regime came the rumblings of discontent. I personally saw it coming and became part of its unfolding. Because of this I became a witness to the changing times, surprisingly finding in the documentary an ally in my own personal film journey as I navigated my way through the turbulent times. Growing up twenty years under the Marcos regime made me see the quality of life turning for the worse.

By happenstance, my film training in Paris in 1982 prepared

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me for a life in documentary. Like Pinga a generation ago (although we hadn’t met yet after I returned from abroad), I also went into a frenetic activity of organizing workshops, holding film festivals, conducting seminars and conferences, writing books, and speaking in public fora to promote a cinema which I thought was sorely marginalized but was urgently needed in giving an option to improve local film culture. In pushing for an alternative cinema, I created a niche by devoting my life to making documentaries. Unlike in Pinga’s time, I came home to a brewing social storm. While society came in disarray, so did the collapsing movie industry.

All around me there was a call for radical transformation.

In a society asking for renewal, my call for change in cinema had chances to be heard. Politicizing the documentary came in a concert of other radical voices.

It was an uphill battle. With no archive to have old documentaries guide my own, I felt orphaned by the lack of a documentary tradition in the country.

I was not even aware of Pinga’s generation until, researching for my first book on short films, I discovered the accomplishments of this forgotten film pioneer. The lack of any documentary Benedicto Pinga was a pioneering figure in the promotion and advocacy paradigm did not prepare of documentary after returning from me for the social storm his studies in New York and visiting that was gathering, where Hollywood. Deocampo photo collection.

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my resolve to have the documentary as the weapon to wage my film war with the social forces around me galvanized in the face of overwhelming odds.

While making my first documentary Oliver in 1983, I found a subject that made me commit to a lifetime of documentary filmmaking. It became a film that embodied the repression happening under the Marcos administration.

The film, in its courage to uncover the sordid realities behind the facade of Marcos’s New Society, marked a new face in Philippine documentary. For what was Philippine documentary before the film? It was turned into propaganda by the Marcos regime. While there were sparks of courageous political documentaries made before, such as Bibsy Carballo and Romy Vitug’s Plaza Miranda Bombing (1971) or Rowena Gonzales’s Tatay Na, Nanay Pa (1982), they were one-off works that failed to sustain a continuous production of committed works from the filmmakers. No one seemed to have the courage to break the long spell that had befallen the documentary under the military rule. In making Oliver, it was only the start of a film trilogy that recorded the numbered days of the tyrant until his downfall.

I became hooked on doing it. My engagement with it would last for the next thirty years. I did documentaries outlasting seven presidents occupying the Malacañang Palace, touching on subjects that shaped modern Philippine history.

As Marcos tightened his grip on power, and as society descended to chaos, politicizing the documentary became a response to the society that called for social transformation.

I was not alone. AsiaVisions was one organization that made its own series of documentaries addressing political change in films like Arrogance of Power (1983) and No Time for Crying (1986). Communication Foundation for Asia (CFA), despite being religion-driven, took a stand against social

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injustice by supporting films like A Spark of Courage (1984).

And there were a few others who stood up in bold courage to document our changing lives. Blame our lack of archives if these valuable film documents are now lost.

When the People Power Revolution happened in February 1986—a period akin to war except it evaded bloodshed—another spike in documentary production was once again seen. This time the films were produced locally.

From CFA’s People Power: The Philippine Experience (1986) to my autobiographical film, Revolutions Happen Like Refrains in a Song (1986), documentaries with similar themes were made. In Baguio, Kidlat Tahimik filmed his version of the People Power in Why is Yellow the Middle of the Rainbow? (1994). Perhaps not surprisingly, the movie industry hardly produced any film to show their role in the raging revolt. None was produced by industry folks, and no one wondered why. It was the amateurs, the documentarists who rose up to the challenge. True to form, they documented history as it unfolded. But sadly, again, with no archive to keep the films and analog videos that were shot of the phenomenal event, many of these works had disappeared.

The coming of the 1990s was a period of relative calm, and documentaries took a slump in production.

But this could be said mainly about celluloid. Something revolutionary was happening outside the traditional photographic film medium. The arrival of video portended the end of film as we knew it as chemically based. Video threatened film’s prominence, and it was during this turn of the century that transformation happened. In its analog form, moving images became more accessible to filmmakers and there was a relative boom in amateur documentary filmmaking transpiring mostly among students. Almost every class with access to video equipment produced one. Schools

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Nick Deocampo captures the carnivalesque atmosphere of the People Power Revolution that ousted the dictator Ferdinand Marcos and catapulted Cory Aquino to presidency in Revolutions Happen Like Refrains in a Song (1987). Deocampo photo collection.

were the new movie studios—students produced videos, including documentaries.

At the onset of the new century, a new technology revolutionized the course of Philippine cinema. With video turning digital, the documentary experienced a boost it never had before. Digital technology came in varied forms, allowing both the professional and the amateur the opportunity to produce documentaries. Moving into digital technology, did the Philippine documentary change? The search for a “Filipino” identity continues as it faces the challenges before it. Ditsi Carolino and her cinematographer Nana Buxani, picking up the small-gauge camcorder, produced heart-rending accounts of exploited children and women with films such as Mula Pabrika Hanggang Fukuoka (1999) and Bunso (2004). Their documentary Minsan Lang Sila Bata (1996) helped lobby a law against incarcerating minor child offenders inside adult prisons.

As digital technology marches ahead, the production of documentaries continues to increase. Themes expand.

Quality improves. Recognition widens. It was long ago

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when foreign cameras made images of the native land. Now it is common to find images of Filipinos in foreign lands in documentaries made about their lives. One outstanding work is Sunday Beauty Queen (2016) by Baby Ruth Villarama which made history by becoming the first and only documentary to win the Best Film award in the annual Metro Manila Film Festival. This is made more remarkable because it is a film derby exclusive only to commercial fiction films.

By some opportune occasion when the festival competition rules were changed (then later rescinded to return to the old ways), her documentary got into a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be shown commercially alongside fiction films. Her triumph only showed that, if given a chance, documentaries could be no less outstanding than fiction films.

As more awards are given to digital documentaries, local and international recognitions are showered upon these works. Local award-giving bodies that traditionally recognize only achievements by fiction films now regularly hand out awards for documentaries as well. Among the most deserving of these recent honors is Sa Palad ng Dantaong Kulang (2017) by Jewel Maranan. It is a powerful image of the country mired in poverty and want. Works like this make documentaries no longer innocent. But documentaries never were—ever since the colonizers had shared the view with the natives. As digital video allows the documentary to spread across the archipelago, regional filmmakers discover facets of Filipino life that create a parallax from the fantasies that commercial movies show: the war in Mindanao, ecological disasters in mining sites, corruption in government.

Documentaries never promise to show a beautiful world.

They ask people to understand why it is not.

The documentary is now in the nation’s hands.

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“ I’ve learned that the documentary is a process of forming and refining intentions and negotiating with yourself what you consider most important, how far you are willing to extend yourself, and to really (crucially) think about the consequences of your decisions on others.

I think the documentary is much more than its final product. It is an entire process, and the makers must understand that the creation is only half of it. The meaning-making starts way before the editing room, but right there, while you observe, listen, speak, and negotiate with your surroundings. It makes you see your place in this system, and as holding up a camera means you are somehow still in a place of privilege, it should already give an idea what a deeply unjust and unfair system it is. This entire documentary process just changed, consumed, and humbled me. –Alyx Arumpac Aswang (2019)

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“ A documentary is typically defined as nonfiction storytelling that tries to capture reality to influence society’s certain beliefs and behavior. However, any definition of it will always be relative to the filmmaker’s experience and sociocultural orientation.

My journey to documentary filmmaking became an unconscious endeavor of self-discovery as a filmmaker and especially as a person. It is a creative process of dissecting the anatomy of one’s motivation and purpose in articulating narratives, which one deeply connects with.

As a Mindanao storyteller, the search for that elusive truth will always be confusing and daunting, but it is fulfilling because of the humble space in which people who often go unnoticed get to be seen and heard.

My people’s narratives are no longer a distant reality to me, but I’ll always have an endless pursuit of that unattainable understanding of human complexities.

—Sheron Dayoc Beautiful Women (2008) A Weaver’s Tale (2009) The Crescent Rising (2015)

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Still from Bunso (2005).

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Herein Lies Movement LOCATING THE DOCUMENTARY IN THE PHILIPPINE DIGITAL CINEMA LANDSCAPE ADJANI ARUMPAC

Film studies locate the beginning of film history in the first commercial screening of the film and not of its invention. David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson’s Film Art titled the first chapter “Film as Art: Creativity, Technology and Business,” (2008, p. 2) indicating an ontology of film as a commodity. This is supported by film historiographies, such as Barry Salt’s comprehensive analysis of the historical evolution of film where technological innovations—including shots, camera, film stock, lighting, and acting—are results of reconfigurations and enhancements to improve commercial studio practices (2009). According to Salt, “it should be noted that only under capitalism is technology innovation possible, as the record of the last hundred years shows.”

(2009, p. 66). Ironically, the Anglo-American body of film theory that burgeoned in the 1970s “derived from Lacanian psychoanalysis, Structuralist semiotics, Post-Structuralist literary theory, and variants of Althusserian Marxism” (Bordwell and Caroll, 1996, p.xiii) built on this film-ascommodity ontology. This intellectual force shaped film studies, fetishizing the “subject-position” (Bordwell and Caroll, 1996, p.1) within the screen, whose elements have

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been preselected and predetermined by commercial studio historiographies, as indices to the larger social reality. For this reason, criticality in film studies bolsters and benefits the commercial. Within this paradigm, where innovations are referential to the commercial studio, the documentary is relegated as a form that precedes (actualités) and succeeds (avant-garde) film art—both positionings outside the center.

In Philippine cinema, film criticism preceded film studies.

Under the umbrella of a mass communications college, film studies was offered as an academic degree in 1984 (University of the Philippines Film Institute, no date). Prior to this, Philippine film has been defined by a film criticism practice led by film journalists and award-giving bodies.

(Campos, 2016, p. 157). The academe has a considerable influence partly due to its members who were part of the award-giving bodies as well. Two of the most influential critics groups are both academia-based, the members of which are mostly university professors. The Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino (MPP) was established in 1976 at the height of Martial Law in the country. Although MPP members had varied backgrounds and interests, the volatile milieu when they united informed the institution’s resistance as a nationalist stance and thrust (Lumbera, 1976).

On the other hand, the Young Critics Circle (YCC) was founded in 1990 as a multidisciplinary group for evaluating art and eventually concentrated on cinema. In January 1987, protests led by students and farmers broke out over the new administration’s inadequacy in addressing agrarian problems caused by Martial Law nepotism and corruption, on top of oligarchic abuse. State forces retaliated by violently dispersing the protests, resulting in the death of thirteen farmers. The Mendiola Massacre became the watershed of the Filipino’s disenchantment

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with their hard-fought democracy (Curaming, 2013).

YCC embodies the introspective criticality of this time of national disappointment, opting to take a formalist stance in its appraisal of the nation as represented in Philippine cinema. To sum up, locating the socio-historical relevance of local film critics—the members of MPP and YCC, as well the individual scholar, historian, or critic not affiliated with either but whose work fills the spectrum in between— is essential to substantiate rigor in their discipline. The authority of film critics comprises the force of their influence in surfacing and historiographizing the type of films recognized. Therefore, they have the power of enabling film production outside the film industry.

Digital technology revolutionized and democratized Philippine filmmaking in the 2000s (Hernandez, 2014).

The accessibility of filmmaking tools provided a new model of production that revived a stagnating film industry and facilitated the rise of digital independent filmmaking, and in this milieu Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival was identified as the site of growth (del Mundo, Jr., 2014).

Established in 2005 to create a platform for digital independent filmmakers, Cinemalaya captured a large audience market of students and casual moviegoers.

However, this model of marketization of independent cinema also spelled its inevitable commercialization by “top-billing huge celebrities, playing safe with subjects and treatment, and generally equating growing profits with the success of the festival” (Flaviano, 2017, p. 20). Barely two decades after lauding its arrival, film critics now lament the failure of the promise of digital independent filmmaking increasingly co-opted by commercial industry production.

In the wake of the failure of indie, focus is now given to regional cinema, a flagship project of the Cultural Center of

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the Philippines and National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) initiated in the early 1980s. The thenchairman of the Cinema Committee of the NCCA Mike Rapatan indicated that “the digital revolution had resulted in the democratization of cinema. This in turn has aided regionalization, allowing filmmakers from the provinces to come up with movies that better reflect the culture and conditions of their immediate environment” (Babiera, 2013).

However, flourishing cinemas outside of Metro Manila antedating digital technology (Tan, 2019) readily challenge this view.

The teleological perspective of digital technology as the harbinger of cinema revolution in the Philippines is a misnomer. Conversely, the accessibility of digital technology only made visible and intensified Philippine cinema latency.

Digital as agency echoes Walter Benjamin’s concept of the decay of aura of art/authority through mechanical reproduction and hence the seeming provision of autonomy of expression (2007). But freedom is naught when property relations underlying the newfound avenue of autonomy remain. This misidentification of digital technology as agency indirectly paved the way for the perceived failure of the indie. The same construct is being deployed to regional cinema. Needless to say, the dilemma indicates a deeper quandary already outlined by Benjamin. Philippine cinema has been defined, informed, filtered, and guided by decades of normative criticism where “theory played an economic role in legitimating” (Bordwell and Caroll, 1996, p. 37) the formation and deployment of the digital independent cinema phenomenon (Flaviano, 2017). It has been through this path before, with the film critic Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr. proclaiming his diagnosis of the film industry in a 2003 article titled “The Film Industry Is Dead! Long Live

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Still from Yield (2018).

Philippine Cinema!” The repeated requiem for Philippine cinema points to the failure of the practice of Philippine film criticism that frames profilmic emancipation through the immanently problematic lens of film-as-commodity ontology.

The heavy disappointment over Cinemalaya, for example, is but a function of anchoring notions of “freedom on free trade” (Cubitt, 2004, p. 11).

Meanwhile, the increasing recognition of Philippine documentaries stemmed from its position of marginality where it was able to develop autonomously from the film industry. In 2018, the revived Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences Awards (FAMAS) included documentaries in major awards and technical awards sections (Claro, 2018). Yield, an ethnographic documentary about child labor that took the Best Documentary prize, was also awarded Best Editing and nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, competing against commercial industry and independent full-length feature productions (FULL LIST: Winners, FAMAS Awards, 2018). This trajectory by the FAMAS followed in the footsteps of the MPP that opened the Best Documentary category in 2011 (34th Gawad Urian

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Winners, 2011), with the inaugural honor given to Kano: An American and His Harem. In 2014, QCinema International Film Festival awarded the Best Film prize to Nick and Chai, a documentary about a couple reeling from the loss of four children to Typhoon Yolanda (Paulino, 2014). In 2018, YCC hailed Sa Palad ng Dantaong Kulang as the best film of the year. Despite these triumphs, however, the documentary is not a homogenous practice in the Philippines and hence needs to be unpacked further.

The film historian Nick Deocampo traces the development of the documentary to the brothers Jesus and Jose Nepomuceno, owners of the first film production studio in the country commissioned by the U.S. government to make newsreels and travelogues between 1921 and 1922. These documentaries comprised the earliest alternative cinema by virtue of their production without commercial studio funding (Deocampo, 1985). This definition of alternative cinema was shared with the early phase of digital independent cinema in the Philippines. However, as previously discussed, the eventual hold of the commercial industry on digital independent filmmaking put a muddled separation between the alternative and independent cinema communities.

Nevertheless, alternative filmmaking is an identification not without its inherent contradictions. While these films were produced without local commercial studio financing, a bigger disciplinary body—that of the U.S. colonial government that controls the machinery of the most powerful commercial film industry, Hollywood—bankrolled the production of the Nepomuceno documentaries. This intrinsic conflict in Philippine alternative cinema (independence from local commercial backing but otherwise enabled by foreign funding) reincarnated in alternative cinema at the turn of the century enabled by digital technology. The resurgence was

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collectively branded as the Philippine New Wave (Tiongson, 2013). The filmmaker Lav Diaz, for example, maximized low-cost and portable digital video camera and nonlinear editing suite to make the nine-hour opus Evolution of a Filipino Family, one of the longest films of all time (Koehler, 2004). These digital alternative films found recognition in international film festivals, (Fielder, 2012) through which their filmmakers were able to secure foreign funding and grants for their next works.

Documentarists have likewise taken the transnational path of the Philippine New Wave due to the lack of funding opportunities in the country. A significant number of documentaries are now being developed through international film funding (Frater, 2018; IDFA, 2018; Hammond, 2018). Aswang (2019), a film about the extrajudicial killings brought about by the state-sanctioned drug war, was supported by some of the biggest coproductions and festivals around the world, including the IDFA Bertha Fund, the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, and the Berlinale World Cinema Fund. It was the first full-length documentary produced and directed by a Filipino directly tackling the subject, almost three years after Duterte’s presidency.

In retrospect, digital technology enabled both Philippine independent and alternative filmmakers in the production of works and their subsequent recognition—the former in the local film community and the latter in the international film community. But where distribution enters the equation, capital becomes the definitive factor for further development.

Independent filmmaking is co-opted by the commercial industry, whereas production of international co-production documentaries that rely on foreign funding is subject to complex cultural economic interplays (Lim, 2018).

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Documentarists employ stamina and willpower to pursue vision amidst external creative filters and international market interventions, on top of the usual production negotiations. The dispersal of documentary production to the margins and outside the country pertains only to a point in the spectrum of Philippine cinema latency. This general trend proves the need for radical reimagination in order to realize an emancipatory profilmic discourse.

But how does one start to even imagine this utopia? A promising lead is the study of failed utopias. The film factory of Soviet Russia, as the name suggests, is a dismissed site of critical reading on film production due to its “overdetermined categorization and periodization” (Taylor and Christie, 2005, p. 1). Normative film studies texts elucidate Dziga Vertov’s 1929 film, Man With a Movie Camera, as a paean to the emergent industrial society, embodied by the camera whose eye captures everything. It is ultimately presented as a binary story of Vertov’s revolt against the Hollywood narrative structure. These narratives fail to highlight the grounded material conditions that he had to address which led to his distinct aesthetics. Vertov was enlisted by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee to work in the film and photo division of agit-trains in 1920 (Heftberger, 2015). Agittrains were locomotives permanently assigned to distribute propaganda material, including educational films, to teach the peasantry about the new revolutionary government system (Taylor and Christie, 2005). The daily registers of the film screenings made by Vertov included “detailed comments on the audiences’ reaction” (MacKay cited in Heftberger, 2015, par. 14). Accordingly, when he perceived that the film material was not able to fully explain the message, Vertov mediated with his own commentaries. His two-year intimate immersion in the agit-trains with his audience, followed

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Still from Man With a Movie Camera (1929).

by the experience of working on Kino-Pravda newsreels for the next seven years, informed his discipline which manifested in Man With a Movie Camera, where “the wish to be understood without words” (Heftberger, 2015, par.

15) was translated as rigidity in filmic structure for efficient communication. Herein lies movement in Vertov’s work: precision editing for continuity of narrative impelled by a desire to fully connect with the audience of his films.

This movement was the same impulse that pushed Vertov’s contemporary, Alexander Medvedkin, who helmed the Soviet cine-trains in 1932. Much like the agit-trains, the cine-trains were employed for propaganda distribution. But their specific task was to shoot the labor of the peasantry and then quickly develop and screen these film documentations so men and women could see and critique themselves, through which they learned to work better in their respective industries. Working round the clock with eight cameramen, Medvedkin’s group produced 25,000 meters of film and

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Shinsuke Ogawa and the filmmaking collective Ogawa Pro.

created 116 films (Heftberger, 2015). Medvedkin was eventually forgotten, only to be resurrected by the French filmmaker Chris Marker in his documentary about the cinetrains, The Train Rolls On (1971). Herein lies movement: through the time and distance covered by the connection between Medvedkin and Marker, whose shared interest was in cinema as resistance. Marker’s artistic inclinations coincided with his political awakening when he became a member of the left-wing cultural organization Travail et Culture (Lupton, 2005). Armed with whatever technology available at the moment, he documented unrest—from the protests in France in the 1960s to the farmers’ revolt against the usurpation of their lands for the construction of the Narita International Airport in the 1980s, as well as the many other spaces in between and after (Alter, 2006). Herein lies movement in Marker’s works: traveling through places to connect the spaces of dissent and reveal the same blueprint of power behind injustices.

In the same space, but prior to Marker, was the Japanese

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filmmaker Ogawa Shinsuke who created a self-sustaining documentary commune in a farm after chronicling the Sanrizuke farmers’ protests from 1968 to 1973. Educated by the post-war Japanese state Civil Information and Education (CIE) film program, which showed social realities through films to an audience mainly of children (Nornes, 2007, p. 7), Ogawa established the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, one of the longest-running documentary film festivals in the world that connects filmmakers in the Asian region (‘About YIDFF,’ no date). Herein lies movement in Ogawa’s works: the documentation of time and tempest and the persistence of this vision through documentary-pedagogy.

The visions of these filmmakers precede and accede film, as defined by film studies, by virtue of their exchange value that is not dependent on flows of capital. And perhaps this is where the task of the Philippine film critic “to work at a moment prior to the constitution of either the model or the represented as a given” (Cubitt, 2004, p. 5) can begin. The current global trend in documentary distribution is called

Aswang, the first full-length documentary on the Philippine Drug War made by a Filipino filmmaker.

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“impact production,” (Renninger, 2013) where a film is valuated as aggregate data of the interactions it has made in the real world such as outreaches and partner organizations.

Not unlike Vertov’s agit-trains and Medvedkin’s cine-trains.

Not unlike the documentaries Bunso (2005), a narrative following the dismal lives of children inside a prison, and Sunday Beauty Queen (2016), a story of the losses and longings of domestic workers based in Hong Kong—both of which enabled the passage of bills protecting minor delinquents and overseas Filipino workers. Not unlike the People’s cinema produced in the country, a spectrum through time of moving image campaigns against the Martial Law of Marcos to the current Drug War of Duterte, most of which are unknown in institutional film spaces and yet screened in myriad grassroots communities and freely distributed in online spaces.

Movement, in all its meaning defined by trajectories of the documentarists discussed, is “the only truth in cinema… its ephemeral occupation of the present” (Cubitt, 2004, p.

22). By focusing on it, the critical eye moves beyond diegetic semiotics toward real-world interactions and valuations.

A thorough revaluation of the place of the documentary in Philippine cinema makes for a case of its dissolution.

Currently, the MPP and FAMAS recognize documentary and short film as categories that cannot vie for major awards allotted for fiction features. Where “critical and cultural capital decides inclusion” (Tolentino, 2008), these constricting parameters by local award-giving bodies determine and shape a notion of national cinema. Divisions are needless when cinema is gauged through its use value and anchored on its merits as a “discursive function and social contract” (Plantinga, 1996, p. 311). Where film ontology starts “not with things but with the relationships

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Still from Sunday Beauty Queen (2016).

and especially with change� (Cubitt, 2004, p. 5), cinema unfetters itself to autonomously discern the paradoxical force that primarily rationalized its being in the tumultuous 1960s. Through this self-reflexive framework, the digital as a category ceases being a mere enabling technology. It becomes a tool for surfacing and, consequently, critically inquiring the bottlenecks that hinder Philippine cinema. The dual vision provided by the digital in our contemporary times—both its pervasiveness and absence—point to a divide that goes beyond cinema. This digital divide, among others, has made visible the continuity of power, social, and economic relations that traversed all notions of revolutions in the country.

Cinema can be used as a positive force that harnesses the negative laid bare by the digital. At its most valuable, cinema is a pedagogical and resistance imperative. But in order

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to engage, cinema must transcend itself as a product of historical introspective overdeterminations.

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Alter, N. (2006) Chris Marker. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Benjamin, W. (2007) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Arendt, H. (ed.), Zohn, H. (tran.) Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books.

Bordwell, D. and Carroll, N. (eds) (1996) Post-theory: reconstructing film studies. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Bordwell, D. and Thompson, K. (2008) Film art: an introduction. 8th ed. Boston: McGraw Hill.

Cabagnot, E. (2008) ‘The Road To Cinemalaya. Some Random Rants On Pinoy Indie Cinema,’ ASEF culture360. Available at: https://culture360.asef.org/magazine/road-cinemalaya-some-random-rantspinoy-indie-cinema/ (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

Campos, P. F. (ed.) (2016) ‘On Poetics and Practice of Film Criticism in the Philippines - A Roundtable Discussion’, Plaridel, A Philippine Journal of Communication, Media, and Society, 13:1, pp.

148–184. Available at: http://www.plarideljournal.org/article/round-table-discussion-poetics-practicefilm-criticism-philippines/ (Accessed: 20 February 2019).

Castells, M. (2000) The rise of the network society. 18th edn. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Christie, I. and Taylor, P. R. (2005) Inside the Film Factory: New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema. London ; New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

Claro, M. (2018) ‘The Birth of FAMAS Awards 2018’, Facebook. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/ FAMAS2018/posts/the-birth-of-famas-awards-2018by-miguel-claroit-was-almost-instinctive-everyone/417699395302326/ (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

Cruz, K. de la (2012) ‘Philippine New Wave: Home-grown, all-natural, no preservatives added’, Inquirer. net. Available at: https://entertainment.inquirer.net/45877/philippine-new-wave-home-grown-allnatural-no-preservatives-added (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

Cubitt, S. (2004) The Cinema Effect. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Curaming, R. (2013) ‘The End of an Illusion: Mendiola Massacre and Political Transition in Post-Marcos Philippines’, in Ganesan, N. and Kim, S. C. (eds) State Violence in East Asia. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, pp. 209–229. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/2147174/ The_End_of_an_Illusion_Mendiola_Massacre_and_Political_Transition_in_Post-Marcos_Philippines (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

Del Mundo, Jr., C. (2003) ‘Philippine Movies in 2001: The Film Industry Is Dead! Long Live Philippine Cinema!’, Asian Cinema, 14:1, pp. 167–174. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/272274567_Philippine_Movies_in_2001_The_Film_Industry_Is_Dead_Long_Live_ Philippine_Cinema (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

Del Mundo, Jr., C. (2014) Making Waves: 10 Years of Cinemalaya. Quezon City, Philippines: Anvil Publishing, Incorporated.

Deng, O. (2018) ‘Documenting the Rise of Documentaries,’ Hexagon Crimson. Available at: https://www. crimsonhexagon.com/blog/documenting-the-rise-of-documentaries/ (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

Deocampo, N. (1985) Short Film: Emergence of a New Philippine Cinema. Quezon City, Philippines: Communication Foundation for Asia.

Deocampo, N. (1994) ‘From Revolution to Revolution, The Documentary Movement in the Philippines’, Documentary Box, 5. Available at: https://www.yidff.jp/docbox/5/box5-3-e.html (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

Enriquez, A. (2013) ‘Indie films stake Philippine cinema claim’, BBC, 10 October. Available at: https:// www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-24427927 (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

Fielder, M. (2012) ‘Philippine New Wave,’ The List. Available at: https://film.list.co.uk/article/42953philippine-new-wave/ (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

‘Film awards in the Philippines’ (2019) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index. php?title=Film_awards_in_the_Philippines&oldid=881738988 (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

Flaviano, E. (2017) ‘Contesting a National Cinema in Becoming: The Cinemalaya Philippine Independent

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Film Festival (2005-2014)’, Humanities Diliman, 14:1, pp. 1–35. Available at: https://www.academia. edu/15467993/Contesting_a_National_Cinema_in_Becoming_The_Cinemalaya_Philippine_ Independent_Film_Festival_2005-2014_ (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

Frater, P. (2018) ‘South East Asia’s Purin Fund Expands in Spring Funding Round’, Variety, 1 May, Variety, Available at: https://variety.com/2018/film/asia/south-east-asia-purin-fund-expands-springfunding-1202793387/ (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

‘FULL LIST: Winners, FAMAS awards 2018’ (2018) Rappler. Available at: https://www.rappler.com/ entertainment/news/204537-list-famas-2018-winners (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

‘Gawad Urian Award’ (2018) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gawad_ Urian_Award&oldid=876133038 (Accessed: 21 February 2019).

Hammond, C. (2018) IF/Then Heads to Jakarta, Tribeca Film Institute. Available at: https://www.tfiny. org/blog/detail/if_then_heads_to_jakarta (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

Heftberger, A. (2015) ‘Propaganda in Motion. Dziga Vertov`s and Aleksandr Medvedkin`s Film Trains and Agit Steamers of the 1920s and 1930s’, Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures of Central and Eastern Europe, 0:1. doi: 10.17892/app.2015.0001.2.

Hernandez, E. (2014) Digital Cinema in the Philippines 1999-2009. Diliman, Quezon City: The University of the Philippines Press.

‘History’ (2012) Young Critics Circle Film Desk, 6 August. Available at: https://yccfilmdesk.wordpress. com/history/ (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

‘The IDFA Bertha Fund concludes February selection 2018’ (2018), IDFA. Available at: https://www.idfa. nl/en/article/98881/the-idfa-bertha-fund-concludes-february-selection-2018 (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

Kaufman, A. (2017) ‘Documentary Sales Are Surging, But What’s Driving the Competition?’, IndieWire, 18 April. Available at: https://www.indiewire.com/2017/04/documentaries-sales-netflix-amazon-hulububble-1201806552/ (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

Koehler, R. (2004) ‘Evolution of a Filipino Family’, Variety, 29 September. Available at: https://variety. com/2004/film/reviews/evolution-of-a-filipino-family-1200530676/ (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

Lim, M. K. (2018) Philippine Cinema and the Cultural Economy of Distribution. Switzerland: Springer.

Lumbera, B. (1976) ‘The Manunuri | Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino (MPP)’, Sagisag. Available at: http://www.manunuri.com/the_manunuri (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

Lupton, C. (2005) Chris Marker: Memories of the Future. London: Reaktion Books.

Nornes, M. (2007) Forest of pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and postwar Japanese documentary. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (Visible evidence, v. 18).

Paulino, V. (2014) ‘Grand winners at QCinema filmfest,’ Philstar.com. Available at: https://www.philstar. com/entertainment/2014/11/13/1391032/grand-winners-qcinema-filmfest (Accessed: 24 February 2019).

Plantinga, C. (1996) ‘Moving Pictures and the Rhetoric of Nonfiction: Two Approaches’, in Post-theory: reconstructing film studies. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press (Wisconsin studies in film), pp.

307–324.

Renninger, B. J. (2013) ‘How Do We Measure the Impact of Documentaries?: Data from the Puma Impact Award Nominees’, IndieWire, 12 November. Available at: https://www.indiewire.com/2013/11/howdo-we-measure-the-impact-of-documentaries-data-from-the-puma-impact-award-nominees-33061/ (Accessed: 25 February 2019).

Salt, B. (2009) Film Style and Technology, History and Analysis. London: Starword.

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Manila: The Japan Foundation.

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“

When I became a college screenwriting instructor, one of the things I helped clarify in class was how to differentiate narrative fiction films from documentaries.

My students threw a top-of-mind quip. “Documentaries are screen content that tackle real-life stories.” I threw back a trick question: “Is Rizal by Marilou Diaz-Abaya a documentary?” Their blank stares meant I had to answer it myself.

I recall teaching them prior that narrative fiction films affect us because of our suspension of disbelief. We momentarily believe that it is not Nora Aunor declaring a miracle, but Elsa. It is Kevin Cosme quaking as the train passes by, not Dolphy. It is Rizal writing down the “Mi Ultimo Adios,” not Cesar Montano.

Conversely, documentaries are films that—entirely or largely—would make you suspend your suspension of disbelief, via showcasing actual people, events, and objects. To wit: Nora Aunor actually talks about the miracle of surviving a car crash in the documentary Himala Ngayon (dir. Sari Dalena, Keith Sicat). Real slum-dwellers along the PNR tracks eke out a living in Riles (dir. Ditsi Carolino).

We read Rizal’s genuine penmanship in Jose Rizal: Ang Buhay ng Isang Bayani (dir. Butch Nolasco).

This definition expanded when a film I co-edited, Dapol tan Payawar na Tayug 1931 by Chris Gozum, was screened in the New Asian Currents section of the 2019 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. It was then that I finally grasped the term “creative documentary” fully. In many ways, Tayug 1931 is a narrative film, screened as such at QCinema 2017. But one extended and pivotal part of it—a twenty-minute revelatory climax along its two-hour length—involved a series of still photos synched to audio interviews of the actual descendants of Pedro Calosa and the actual people of Tayug.

And so today, this is my definition.

Documentaries are audio-visual materials, with journalistic and/or creative representations of actual people, events, and objects which—entirely, largely, or at any major and extended portion along its total running time—would make you suspend your suspension of disbelief.

–Carla Samantha Ocampo Walang Rape sa Bontok (2014) Pag-Ibig at Mga Umiiyak na Baboy (2019)

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Thinking About Philippine Political Documentaries Today PATRICK F. CAMPOS

He presented himself with propositions…and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them. […] It needed athleticism of mind, an ability at one moment to make the most delicate use of logic and at the next to be unconscious of the crudest logical errors. Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain. ―George Orwell, 1984 Art does not do politics by reaching the real. It does it by inventing fictions that challenge the existing distribution of the real and the fictional.

—Jacques Rancière, “Contemporary Art and the Politics of Aesthetics”

The following are thought fragments or coordinates for mapping the historical context and epistemic situation within which we produce and consume political documentaries in the Philippines today. As the form of the writing evinces, they are not meant to be exhaustive nor systematic but rather suggestive and hopefully productive of further conversation.

I. In 1991, as the first Aquino government was about to close without achieving its promised systemic economic, political, and social change, the Marcoses returned to the Philippines. From their years in power to their years in exile,

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there had been no scarcity of documentation and analyses of Ferdinand and Imelda’s brand of repressive autocracy and crony capitalism which plunged society in poverty and ignited resistance and waves of protest that coalesced into a show of the people’s power in 1986. Fact-based researches on the family’s excesses have only accumulated since then.

But no special court convicted the kleptocrats or disqualified them from ever running for office again. The oligarchs that took over after the Marcoses did not or could not sever the family’s ties from power, and the Marcoses’ allies, clients, and loyalists welcomed them back jubilantly.

In 2003, Ramona S. Diaz’s Imelda gave the ex-first lady screen time to ramble on about her bizarre philosophy and twisted interpretation of a depthless history. With unprecedented documentary intimacy, the darkly comic film abstracts the calcified lies that the vainglorious Imelda had been spinning for decades. The film was widely acclaimed and did exceptionally well at the local box-office in 2004—the year, it should be interjected, when Facebook was launched. It elicited from certain moviegoers scorn for Imelda but caused no widespread agitation.

In January 2020, Lauren Greenfield’s The Kingmaker (2019) premiered simultaneously at the University of the Philippines Film Institute and the Cultural Center of the Philippines, where it was received with “jeers, laughs, tears” and chants of “never forget, never again to Martial Law!” In the film, Imelda, now much older, is mouthing the same grand lies mixed with the same little anecdotes. But an utterance made twice does not mean the same—time is of the essence.

The Marcoses have been back in power for almost thirty years now (Bongbong Marcos was first elected in Congress in 1992). The remains of Ferdinand have been given a

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hero’s burial by President Duterte, who publicly thanked Imee Marcos for her contributions to his presidential campaign and declared his willingness to step down from the presidency if Bongbong wins as vice-president. Duterte is the first social media president, elected at a time when control and conformism in the internet condition offline behavior and online algorithm legitimize power.

In the concluding scene of The Kingmaker, Imelda utters her resolve as though she was reciting a personal mantra: “Nobody can stop me. I always got my way. Now is the important thing. The past is past. There are so many things in the past that we should forget. In fact, it’s no longer there.

Perception is real and the truth is not.”

Old lies, new prophecies—the choice is ours.

II. The best documentaries emerge in the crucible of crisis—personal or social—as forms of struggle to record one’s voice over the din and resist unjust power against the odds. Political documentaries made by Filipino artists

Still from Imelda (2003) directed by Ramona S. Diaz.

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and activists self-aware of why and for whom they make films emerged in conjunction with the rise and fall of the repressive state of the Marcoses and continued through the Aquino administration and beyond alongside the return of what has been variously characterized as “cacique,” “elite,” “oligarchic,” and “bourgeois” democracy.

Beside their industry counterparts like Lino Brocka (Bayan Ko, 1984) and Mike de Leon (Sister Stella L., 1984), who were making their politicized features in the mainstream, documentarists like Kidlat Tahimik (Bakit Dilaw ang Gitna ng Bahaghari? 1983-1994) and Nick Deocampo (Revolution Trilogy, 1983, 1985, 1986) and film collectives like AsiaVisions (Arrogance of Power, 1983; Mendiola Massacre, 1987) and AlterHorizons (EdJop, 1986; Kaigorotan, 1986) unflinchingly documented the times amid political and artistic ferment. They continued to produce films through the 1990s, but their works were not easily accessible because of their medium (Super 8, 16mm, home video) and because the threat of censorship always loomed large.

With the arrival of digital technology in the 2000s, the documentary saw renewed productivity, expanded approaches, and diversified sources. Experimental filmmaker Sari Dalena and academic Camilla Griggers collaborated on the hybrid documentary, Memories of a Forgotten War (2001), which revisits the Philippine-American War in the context of 9/11. In House Under the Crescent Moon (2001), Moro filmmaker Gutierrez Mangansakan II documented his sense of personal displacement in his own grandfather’s house as the government launched an all-out war against the Moro International Liberation Front.

Ditsi Carolino, who had made a number of significant documentaries in the 1990s, released Riles (2003) and Bunso (2005) in collaboration with photographer Nana

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Still from Bakit Dilaw ang Gitna ng Bahaghari? (1983-1994) directed

by Kidlat Tahimik.

Buxani, marking new milestones for Filipino cinéma vérité.

In the former, the filmmakers follow a family in search of a new home in the slums, and in the latter, they chronicle the daily life of children in prison with adult criminals. In television, Probe Productions and GMA’s long-running series, i-Witness (1999-present), mainstreamed and set the standard for incisive documentaries on history and current issues addressed to the mass audience.

New political film collectives continued to put on record human rights violations committed by the state as well as the ongoing peasant struggle for land with films such as Southern Tagalog Exposure’s Alingawngaw ng mga Punglo (2003) and Tudla’s Sa Ngalan ng Tubo (2004). From film school emerged young filmmakers such as Adjani Arumpac (Walai, 2006), Jewel Maranan (Kung Balatan ang Bawang, 2008), and Cha Escala (Ang Pasko ni Intoy, 2009), who related the travails of people whose stories lie beyond public consciousness.

Crisis also informed the early full-length experiments

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of John Torres, with Todo Todo Teros (2006), which interweaves video diary footage with the conceptual proposition that artists can be terrorists, and Years When I Was A Child Outside (2008), an essay film that juxtaposes the financial crisis with the his own family’s domestic crisis.

These films produced in the first decade of the twentyfirst century no doubt set the trajectory for Philippine documentary in the succeeding years. At the same time, we can appreciate how these productions that creatively and critically questioned the terms of old debates and assumptions about what makes a good documentary were part of the global flourishing of the documentary in the 2000s, the decade when it began to pervade all media platforms (cinema, television, streaming, social media). In the Philippines, the ambiguous comingling of crisis and market opportunity as impetus for documentarists intimate a future for the documentary that is ebullient as it is implacable. All it is waiting for is its public.

Still from Years When I Was a Child Outside (2008) directed by John Torres.

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III. The reinvigoration of the documentary in the 2000s paralleled the blunting of realism as a mode of political filmmaking in the Philippines. During the Marcos years, social realists unveiled before the audience what was carefully concealed by draconian censorship and statecontrolled media. Concerned artists fearlessly chose the idiom of realism despite the menace of imprisonment, torture, and forced disappearance it could invite from a tyrannous government afraid of dissent.

But in the post-Marcos society, especially in the increasingly digital-based and participatory media culture of the 2000s, social decay, political corruption, impunity, and moral bankruptcy are no longer suppressed. In a society where bleak “realities” constitute everyday visual culture, the aesthetic meaning and political efficacy of realism become highly problematic. This assertion is best exemplified by the ambivalent cinema of Brillante Mendoza, contemporary cinema’s foremost realist.

Mendoza’s films are frequently described as documentary-like for their formal reliance on long takes and handheld camerawork, their narration of the stories of the disenfranchised (e.g., illiterate Agta refugees, foster-care families, landless peasants), and the visceral immediacy of their depiction of abjection. His works feign a disinterested ethnographic stance premised on merely presenting social ills by paying close attention to the implications of the mundane—arguably the same disposition many Filipino documentaries aim for.

But the cracks on the discourse of realism as a political aesthetic were revealed when Mendoza received the best director prize from Cannes for Kinatay (2009), a film about policemen summarily executing a petty drug pusher. The

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film was extolled by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, during whose presidency the Philippines saw a sharp rise in the occurrences of corruption and human rights violations. In an official press statement, Arroyo proclaimed, “Director Mendoza’s winning movie depicts social realities and serves as an eye-opener for moral recovery and social transformation, which my administration has been pursuing even early on in my Presidency.”

The same epistemic crisis that permitted Arroyo to openly coopt Kinatay obtains today. Mendoza’s later works, especially those that can be clearly associated with the bloody war on drugs waged by the Duterte government, such as Ma’ Rosa (2016), the Netflix series Amo (2018), and Alpha: The Right to Kill (2019), parade as reflections of reality but are incapable of critiquing the conditions of such a reality. Mendoza’s appropriable realism, which no longer reveals but dissimulates, alerts us to the necessity of summoning a skeptical public that questions “jargons of authenticity,” to borrow Theodor Adorno’s evocative phrase.

The growing awareness of large-scale and networked systems of disinformation primes media users to habitually distrust the documentary image. This level of skepticism is now expected and should be honed among all media consumers, including consumers of realism and documentaries.

IV. Thus, it is the worst time to make documentaries, and it is the best time to make them.

As part of the global affective economy, the documentary is being harnessed for many different functions. It is a sophisticated form of entertainment, whose market potentials are staggering. It is a means of propaganda and

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advertisement for any and all kinds of causes, from climate change and identity politics to corporate social responsibility and electoral politics. As such, the documentary is and will continue to be highly contested, a field from which viewers cannot look away and which political documentarists cannot afford to lose.

Today, the quest for truth and the need to defend it are oriented but confounded by the sustained activity of producing the real. For every Amo or Alpha that invests in the reality of Duterte’s war on drugs that has killed thousands, the truth-searching mode of “biased” or “balanced” documentary is activated by work after work after work whose cumulative density reshapes the distribution of reality.

Consider—watch them closely and reflect upon—this long but incomplete list of cinematic, broadcast, and investigative documentaries whose titles alone connote echoes of bullets and long nights of wailing: ABC News’ Inside Controversial President of the Philippines’ Bloody Drug War (2016);

Still from Ma' Rosa (2016) directed by Brillante Mendoza.

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Turkish Radio and Television’s Duterte’s War on Drugs (2016) and Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines (2016); France 24’s The Philippines’ Ruthless War on Drugs (2016) and Duterte’s Bloody War on Drugs (2017); Coconut TV’s Double Barrel (2016); Vice News’ The Drug War Death Squads of the Philippines (2016); SBS Australia’s Getting Away With the Murder of Filipino Drug Dealers (2016); China Global Television Network’s Operation: Drug War (2016); Univision Noticias’ Inside the Philippines’ Bloody War on Drugs (2017); Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Horror of the Philippines’ Drug War (2017) and The Fight for the Philippines (2017); NBC Left Field’s The Kill List (2017); Russia Today’s Project Duterte: Law Enforcement or Mass Murder? (2017); British Broadcast Corporation’s Deadliest Place to Deal (2017); CBS Broadcasting’s In-Depth Look at the War On Drugs in the Philippines (2017) and Duterte’s Bloody War on Drugs (2017); Journeyman Pictures’ A War on Two Fronts in the Philippines (2018); 60 Minutes Australia’s Licensed to Kill (2018); CNA Singapore’s What Lies Ahead for the Philippines’ Duterte? (2019); Frontline PBS’s On the President’s Orders (2019); Al Jazeera’s Hitmen, Dealers and Duterte’s War on Addicts (2016), Guns, Goons, and the Presidency (2016), Duterte’s War on Drugs and Those Reporting It (2017), and Duterte’s New War (2020); The Atlantic’s Duterte’s Graveyard (2020); Alexander A. Mora’s The Nightcrawlers (2019); Alyx Ayn Arumpac’s Aswang (2020); and Ramona S. Diaz’s A Thousand Cuts (2020).

A social environment populated by such documentaries invite or condition the public to question what they see, even as the documentary form continues to harbor both the desire and the promise to apprehend reality no matter how momentarily. But offering a singular reality is now not a tenable goal. The documentary’s promise of fidelity to reality

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and the anxiety it produces for failing to guarantee certainty are the productive aporia from which documentarists and activists can launch a sustained problematization and reinvention of the documentary as a prophetic (in the biblical sense) form and practice.

The documentary, then, should be reflexive, acknowledging rather than concealing contradictions even in its very own constitution. This stance necessitates aesthetic risk and innovative experimentation that can counterbalance the monoform of the authoritative Documentary narrated by the voice of God or the cognitive dissonance brought about by too much noise. The political documentary today should not presuppose or demand from the viewer unquestioning belief but rather offer her a space for ethical reflection ultimately requiring decision. It must not falsely promise exclusive truth, but provide an occasion to set in motion what Alain Badiou referred to as the truth-procedure, or the collective work of producing truth, not simply by representing reality, but through the process of struggling through multiple interpretations of the real. The problematic optimism of thinking that a single event or work can communicate the truth is the abandonment of the truthprocedure. But as long as the filmmaker as well as the viewer recognizes the epistemic crisis and the apparent impossibility of overcoming such a crisis, then the truth-procedure ever goes on and the fire of hope remains alive.

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“

DOCUMENTARY 108 A documentary is a fakery that manipulates and conceals the truth in order to reveal it.

A documentary is a lie that tells the truth to reveal another lie.

A documentary is a turtle that hides inside a snake to become a sunflower that blooms in the desert moon.

A documentary is what.

What is documentary a.

Is what a documentary.

Is a documentary what.

A what is documentary.

What documentary is a.

Documentary is what a.

What a documentary is.

A documentary is not a document.

A doc is a doctor.

A doc is a duck.

A dox ducks.

A doku is big.

A doco is loco. —Khavn Philippine New Wave: This Is Not a Film Movement (2010) Pahinga (2011) EDSA XXX: Ganito Kami Noon, Ganito Pa Rin Kami Ngayon (2012)

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Resisting Dominance and Oblivion REFLECTING ON THE DOCUMENTARY PRACTICE IN MINDANAO GUTIERREZ MANGANSAKAN II

In 2019, I wrote an essay that sought to survey the film output from Mindanao and to locate Mindanawon cinema in the celebration of the centenary of Philippine cinema. One of the grueling tasks was to ascertain the first Mindanawon feature film, and when I used “Mindanawon” it had to fit a specific set of criteria. Mindanawon refers to a filmmaker who is born and raised in the island, or one who is born in another part of the country but whose parentage can be traced to Mindanao, and who now endeavors to discover his roots. A Mindanawon film is independently produced outside of the Philippine commercial cinema apparatus and deals with the different issues in or about Mindanao, as well as those that arise due to the social realities in the island such as diaspora and transnational identity. So I had to journey back to 2006 and imagine the circumstances surrounding the production by a graduating student of the University of the Philippines Film Institute who presented her documentary thesis to a panel of advisers and fellow students in October of that year.

I began this essay by citing an earlier endeavor to anchor me on the task of surveying the documentary practice in

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Stills from Obscured Histories and Silent Longings of Daguluan’s Children (2012) by Gutierrez Mangansakan II.

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Mindanao. I surmise that there are reels and tapes out there, undiscovered, forgotten, or decaying somewhere that contain chronicles of important historical events as well as recordings of the personal and the mundane. I am imagining this because of the abundance of archival photographic materials on Mindanao accumulated in half a century of American colonial government. I also grew up seeing documentary reels of my grand uncle’s career in the military and Congress. I am also keen on knowing how Mindanawons framed themselves using this technology as opposed to images and narratives that outsiders captured and, through the language of editing, how these represented them to a world that is unaware of Mindanao’s own people, culture, and reality.

But with the absence of motion picture evidence, I have turned to Zamboanga (dir. Marvin Gardner a.k.a. Eduardo de Castro, 1936) by examining the first ten minutes of the film which to me seems to be a solid work in visual ethnography. It looks into the lives of the inhabitants of Zamboanga—the Tausugs and Badjao. You see coconut trees line the beach, houses on stilts, fish and seaweed being dried under the sun, the vinta boats. This is thus far the only accessible record of what Mindanao looked like in moving pictures back then. It became a valuable resource in conjuring what Mindanao looked like before in the production design of my own films.

After Zamboanga, except for the narrative films made by Manila studios on Mindanao, there is a vacuum of fifty years until a Mindanawon experimental documentary emerged in the 1990s. By then a whole expanse of historical events has been left unrecorded by the moving picture camera— from the aftermath of the Second World War to the massive exodus of Huk rebels and their families, to Mindanao forever tilting the demographic balance favoring Christian settlers

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from the North to the native Moro and Lumad people of Mindanao, that would eventually result in the Moro feeling neglected and disenfranchised, leading to a nationalist Moro consciousness that erupted in 1968 after 68 Muslim trainees were killed on Corregidor Island which is now known as the Jabidah Massacre, to the Tasaday discovery in 1971 and the dark days of Martial Law. If there were documentaries on Mindanao made then, they were produced by progressive Leftist movements to capture the horror of the military regime under Ferdinand Marcos.

Beginning in the 1980s, documentaries in Mindanao were primarily a result of Mass Communication thesis requirements that were usually television style ten-minute features that delved on social issues such as poverty, prostitution, child labor, development aggression in Lumad areas, and similar problems. But in 1991, Jojo Sescon of Iligan City made the experimental documentary Yuta (Earth), which won Best Short Film at Gawad Urian, Film Academy of the Philippines, and Gawad CCP Para sa Alternatibong Pelikula at Video. It was a product of the experimental cinema workshops organized by the Mowelfund Film Institute (MFI) and Goethe-Institut that saw Filipino filmmakers in the 1980s and 1990s trained in the form by German experimental directors.

Trained in MFI myself, I made my first short documentary House Under the Crescent Moon in 2000.

It was my reflection on my grandfather’s house in Maguindanao which became an evacuation center during the height of the all-out-war declared by President Joseph Estrada against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

It won Best Documentary at the Gawad CCP Para Sa Alternatibong Pelikula at Video in 2001, and was screened at the 2003 Singapore International Film Festival. I would

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produce a slew of short documentaries on the armed conflict in the next ten years.

In 2006, the first Mindanawon feature—a documentary—was produced by Adjani Arumpac as an undergraduate thesis at UP. Walai is a summoning of memories of four women who once lived in the infamous White House of a fallen feudal lord in Cotabato City. This early we could see the beginnings of Arumpac’s documentary signature, tackling the vast issues of Mindanao’s conflict from a domestic lens through the familial tales of cousins, uncles, aunts, and other relatives. This would be more pronounced seven years later, in 2013, when Arumpac directed War Is a Tender Thing, a meditation on the armed conflict through the memory of her own parents’ failed marriage. It received a Special Mention at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival.

Back in 2009, I started filming a “documentary.” The final form was so different from what I intended. I was plagued with the question: How does one capture reality that is replete with magic realist elements? It was deeply rooted in the core of our Southeast Asian-ness, the blurring of myth and reality in our narratives. It was something I grappled with on a daily basis. Not wanting to eschew this part of my identity, the film took a new form. It was a sensuous, observant, and nuanced portrait of life in a remote fishing village in Cotabato Province, my father’s hometown, weaving staged scenes with documentary footage that captured the constant rhythm of arrival, departure, and waiting. This characterizes the lives of the people in the village who are deeply rooted in traditional beliefs and practices, but forced by poverty to abandon their community to search for a precarious living, while constantly menaced by an impending war. In 2012, after three years of filming and

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editing, I released Obscured Histories and Silent Longings of Daguluan’s Children, which won Best Film and Best Director at the Cinemanila International Film Festival.

Through production grants from GMA’s CineTotoo Documentary Festival, two documentaries from Mindanao were produced in 2014. Charliebebs Gohetia’s Kung Giunsa Pagbuhat ang Bisayang Chopsuey follows the struggles of a team of Tchoukball players in Davao City as they prepare for a tournament abroad, while Nef Luczon’s Migkahi E Si Amey Te, ‘Uli Ki Pad shows how a tribal community in Bukidnon addresses the issue of succession after the death of their chieftain.

In 2015, actor and production designer Perry Dizon made Of Cats, Dogs, Farm Animals and Sashimi, a sliceof-life documentary on rubber plantation workers in

Adjani Arumpac shooting War Is a Tender Thing (2013).

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Still from Forbidden Memory (2016) by Gutierrez Mangansakan II.

Zamboanga Sibugay. It garnered a Special Citation at the Taiwan International Documentary Festival in 2016.

Labor was also the theme of Soil of Dreams (2016), a film by Jeffrie Po about men displaced by Typhoon Sendong who continue to labor along the banks of Cagayan de Oro River. Molding the documentary fold via his own style and temperament, Po infuses performance art in this work, the first in a series of collaborations with the artist Nicolas Aca. 2017 was a landmark year for documentary production in Mindanao with three features produced. I returned to the practice by making Forbidden Memory. On September 24, 1974, nearly 2,000 residents of Malisbong and neighboring villages in Palimbang, Sultan Kudarat Province, in southern Philippines were killed by the Philippine military forces. For 40 years, the survivors and families of the victims lived in relative silence. It was only when a fact-finding mission to search for claimants of a compensation deal for victims of Martial Law under Ferdinand Marcos did the story of the Malisbong massacre start to unravel. But for the survivors to claim compensation, truth must first be established. And

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while memories of the murder remained vivid in their minds, the military maintained that no operation was conducted in Malisbong during that time. Forbidden Memory summons remembrances of the fateful days in September 1974 and examines the policy of genocide perpetrated against the Moro people from Bud Dajo to Malisbong.

In the same year, Nawruz Paguidopon released God BLISS Our Home, a personal account of the director himself, who is originally from Cagayan de Oro City, living on his own in Manila at BLISS, a former government housing project that has become a shelter for local migrants, city workers, and university students. It mixes animation and images captured through a selfie stick that provides an exciting layer to a film that examines his life and family. Meanwhile, Liryc dela Cruz made Notes from Unknown Maladies, an intimate portrait of the director’s 94-year-old grandmother, who lives in isolation and has been suffering from mental illness for almost five decades. Shot in black and white, the film deals with old age and loneliness with immense restraint.

Having been born in Sulu, a province that has been rocked by more than its share of armed violence, the filmmaker and his parents reflect on the Tausug identity and conundrums of diaspora in Mountain to Cry for (2018), an essay film by Khurshid Kalabud, Jr., who has since then become a resident of General Santos City. Juxtaposing travel footage of a vacation in Singapore and a conversation with his parents, Kalabud unearths the reason their family left Sulu and examines what element of his birthplace he still carries with him, like the fleeting glimpse of Bud Tumantangis mountain, the last thing people see when the boat carries them away from the island. In 2019, Mark Limbaga and Jay Rosas teamed up to

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make Budots: The Craze. Budots is a popular music form that originated in Davao and generated its own subculture after more than a decade in existence. The filmmakers tracked down the creator of the music, DJ Love, who continues to remix budots music to come up with new incarnations accompanied by dance videos uploaded online for his huge crowd of followers.

So now we anticipate the new documentaries from Mindanao, an island rich with stories and filmmakers who continue to question and present these stories with unique approaches that express their identities and realities, making Mindanawon cinema an exciting frontier in the vast cartography of our national cinema.

But as any other frontier, trajectories of documentary practice from Mindanao will go beyond the trendy notion of the “creative documentary,” in itself as formulaic as a Star Cinema flick, rejecting not only modes of documentary making but also the images and narratives that the outsiders have made of them, an object of exoticist fascination, not necessarily an “other” but a subject that can be molded to suit a hegemonic agenda. The idea of the national cinema and its celebration can be an undertaking of the center to maintain its power over the periphery. But as new technology allows the periphery to become its own center, locating Mindanawon cinema in the greater scheme of things is its own liberation.

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Views, Interviews

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What drives the documentarist to produce a work and persevere? What role does society play in the shaping of an artist? How does the personal become the political and the political become necessary for change?

Filmmaker Sari Dalena shares her experiences in making her own documentary films with some of the most fascinating Filipino rebels: Jose Maria Sison, Nick Joaquin, and Ishmael Bernal. In his trademark humor and wisdom, Kidlat Tahimik, the muchrevered father of Philippine independent cinema, writes his filmmaking manifesto and urges the artist to resist the colonial and listen to the cosmos. Baby Ruth Villarama, who gambled and made history with Sunday Beauty Queen, recalls the fateful year of 2016 and its aftermath, and why the long and difficult ride has been worth it.

These are clear and discerning voices, lucidly spoken, that deserve to be heard.

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Memories of a Forgotten War. Setting up for the Bud Dajo massacre scene, Patikul, Jolo, Sulu. 1998.

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The Documentarist Is a Hungry Poet A PROSE IN THREE PARTS SARI RAISSA LLUCH DALENA

I. The earliest documentary films I recall seeing as a young girl, in addition to National Geographic wildlife movies, were the haunting Holocaust documentaries on Nazi concentration camps and the horrifying footage of thousands of children starving to death in Africa: The image of the fly-infested ears of a dying African boy led to many sleepless nights and nightmares. I also recall the morning when the whole family gathered to watch the arrival of Senator Benigno Aquino and the shock at his assassination being captured live on national TV in 1983.

I took formal film studies at the UP Film and AudioVisual Communication Department. For my student project, emboldened by my interest in the underground music scene in Quezon City, I began following Filipino indie bands like Eraserheads, Yano, and The Youth, using an analog video camera. I submitted the edited tape “DREDD Experience� and made the mistake of not getting it back. During summer breaks, I attended 16mm experimental workshops at the Mowelfund Film Institute where we watched the films of Maya Deren, Stan

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Brakhage, and other forms of alternative cinema.

My first foray into long-form documentary filmmaking was with a TV documentary called Jamming on an Old Saya (1995), a theater-fashion show concocted by writer Gilda Cordero-Fernando. She wanted something different and unconventional. It was magical and exciting working with Gilda as she never repeated herself.

Around 1996 or 1997, Pittsburgh-based FilipinoAmerican video artist Camilla Griggers came to the Philippines looking for a collaborator to work on a personal documentary project about the Philippine-American War of 1899. Camilla had seen my 16mm experimental short films and was particularly moved by my dance film, White Funeral (Puting Paalam, 1996), about the concept of the Philippine nation set against the background of a deserted lahar landscape. She wanted to retrace her Filipino roots, to establish her sense of identity. Her personal take on the Philippine-American War intrigued me, where she took the

Shooting Memories of a Forgotten War. Ilocos Sur. 1998.

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national/political and made it highly personal. From my end, I hardly know anything about the atrocities that took place over a hundred years ago. I’d heard stories of the taking of the Balangiga bells as war booty, but not about the Balangiga Massacre that turned Samar into a “howling wilderness.” I did not know that years after the official end of the Philippine-American War, American colonial troops massacred thousands of Muslim men, women, and children in an extinct volcanic crater at Bud Dajo, Sulu, in 1906. Our collaboration Memories of a Forgotten War was born, and the rest is history.

I would continue to co-direct documentary films with two of my closest collaborators: my sister Kiri, with The Guerrilla is a Poet (2013) and Women of Malolos (2014), and partner Keith Sicat, with Tuklas Sining: Philippine Cinema (2009), Himala Ngayon (2012), Ishma (2012), and History of the Underground (2017).

The Guerrilla is a Poet started as a surprise meeting with Jose Maria Sison at the train station in Utrecht. We had a long chat and it was his birthday the following day. He proposed a biopic on his life, and I accepted. I submitted the script to various film festivals and received a production grant from the CineFilipino Film Festival.

Thus, a poetic documentary film on the revolutionary life of Sison framed by his famous poem (“The Guerrilla is Like a Poet”) began production. It follows Ka Joma’s journey from the turbulent years of Martial Law until his capture in the mountains and the dark nine years of solitary confinement, leading to his birth as a poet.

Guerrilla was the most challenging of all the projects I’d worked on. With a low budget, filming entailed shooting interviews of Ka Joma, living in exile with his wife Julie in The Netherlands, and bringing a small crew to the guerrilla regions in the countryside. I got to

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Very first meeting with Joma Sison at the Utrecht train station, February 2010. Keith (Sicat) and I were surprised that he came to fetch us.

experience the place and the people, talking to them and hearing their stories, and Kiri was a fantastic co-director and cinematographer for being able to capture their revolutionary spirit.

Himala Ngayon is important for me, as Himala by Ishmael Bernal tops my personal list of best Filipino films. As the film commemorated its 30th anniversary, we revisited the location in Ilocos to look for the remaining surviving extras out of the thousands who participated in the stampede scene. Nora Aunor revealed stories about her dreams and premonitions, her drunk driving accident that occurred during the shoot, and how her legions of fans in Ilocos housed the thousands of extras who came in droves for the climactic moment. The most poignant interviews came from the extras—especially the elderly and the handicapped—who were part of it.

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II. Whether making fiction or nonfiction films, the process is similar. I love doing research while writing the story, then going to the field for more research that leads to discovering new things. And then imagination kicks in to add layers of meaning.

Part of my background is in experimental film and design, and I bring a lot of that to the documentary form. By not being limited to veritĂŠ or observational cinema, varying cinematic modes overlap or intersect. In this sense, I am not a purist and I am not against creating fictional films. Fiction is an essential tool in recreating stories that may have mysteries in their lexicon of facts. If a piece of footage, archival photograph, or artifact does not exist, you have to build that world and bridge the gap through other means, be it through dramatization or even animation.

Coming from a family of artists—my father is a painter, my mother a sculptor—my visual arts background influences my choice of subject matter. I am naturally drawn to the life and works of artists, writers, historical figures, revolutionaries, and pop culture. I am picky with the subjects

Shooting Himala Ngayon (2012) with Kiri Dalena.

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I follow; there must be a strong personal connection to it, otherwise I will not find it worthwhile to pursue.

My choice to not engage in purely verité forms is also a result of my awareness of my physical limitations—I am hard of hearing and have poor memory. My body is too weak for verité’s immersive demands to capture the essence of each moment, its realness and raw authenticity. As a way to cope with these restricted faculties, I lean toward creative treatments of actuality, taking the cinema verité style into hybrid forms of personal and creative documentaries.

Many of our local documentary filmmakers utilize the observational mode to capture powerful stories of the voiceless, the marginalized, and the oppressed. Sadly, we lack good documentary films about history, art, and culture that our academic programs and cultural agencies should be producing for education and public service. The important work and contribution of artists, literary giants, even national heroes, are hardly documented. The poor state of archiving and cultural preservation in this country has an effect on our short memory and shallow understanding of our own identity and cultural heritage.

For most of my films, history and literature are my primary focus. I am constantly asking questions, looking for ways I can help shed light on important issues for younger generations of Filipinos and their sense of identity. And because this type of documentary often tends to be boring, run-of-the-mill, and archaic, I play with form, add personal touches, and merge the subjective with the objective. I often find small, personal histories more interesting than broadstrokes chronicles.

In the essay “Pinay Power in Philippine Cinema” published in 2018, I wrote about my observations and musings on the contribution of women to Philippine cinema.

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Memories of a Forgotten War. With co-director Camilla Benolirao Griggers.

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Women clearly dominate the realm of documentaries. This year I had the opportunity to be part of the Daang Dokyu curatorial team, a festival run and organized by the leading documentary filmmakers in the country, all of whom are women. I asked them why female filmmakers feel more at home with documentaries than with fiction films, and they cited creative autonomy and flexibility in shooting schedules. More emphatically they said that women innately possess patience and compassion—nurturing traits that are essential to building genuine connections with subjects in the nonfiction filmmaking world.

Documentary truth, no matter how objective it may seem, is not absolute truth. This subjectivity may be a limitation to the medium, but it is something I embrace.

Documentary filmmakers are not strictly like historians or scholars that argue on absolutes in the topics they serve.

Documentaries have specific perspectives. Accepting this has opened up creative ways in which to tell truthful stories.

And like all art, limitations can have positive effects. The very nature of cinema being a predominantly collaborative medium makes the production of each film a unique and amazing communal experience.

Shooting Ka Oryang (2011) with Keith Sicat.

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III. Personal documentary films have been making a strong impact on young filmmakers. These cinematic “selfie” movies chronicling personal tribulations go beyond narcissistic musings and commit full disclosure about the system in which they are living.

The direction of documentary filmmaking in the Philippines seems to be in good hands. The collective effort by archivists and filmmakers in the acquisition and tracking down of important, lost films is also paying off. Meanwhile, fascism, fake news, and a culture of impunity are being perpetuated in all fronts of arts and culture and mass media, dividing the artists, scholars, historians, and filmmakers. It is in this milieu where documentary filmmakers play a vital role in developing a dialogue with the audience.

It is not only the photojournalists but also the young documentary filmmakers (and even some fiction filmmakers inspired by real events) who are putting a spotlight on these current issues. It is the citizen photographers/journalists/ documentarists on the street who reach out for their camera phones to capture digital snippets that lend immediacy to images of disaster, crime, and injustice, posted on social media at such a lightning speed that they are reconfiguring the documentary tradition of these times.

I intend to continue working on films focusing on artists and literary figures—I actually have two or three projects that are in various early stages of production, mixing interviews, archival material, and creative reenactments.

Hopefully these would capture the interest of audiences so that more films of this type can be created, and we can share the cultural bounty that the Philippines can offer to anyone willing to listen.

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Sandata ni Lapu-Lapu at ni promdiboondocks Indie. KT meets Lapu-Lapu in Cebu. Photo by Kidlat de Guia.

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New Kartilya ng KKKL Produktions KIDLAT TAHIMIK

Hah? Kailangan ng article para sa Dok Book? Assignment ni Kidlat sumulat ng personal manifesto? Para sa Centennial o ‘Sangdaan Taong Dokyu?

Ano bang frame ang expected sa promdi-boondocks Indie na nakabahag? Anong POV ba dapat ang tono ng manifesto: As a Tatay talking to his indie offsprings? Or bilang kapit-bisig member ng Dokyu Aktibista? O promdi-pulpit na parang heavenly voice—galing sa Order ng National Artist? Or breast-beating chauvinist ng Docu-Tribu?

Hoy! Siguraduhin munang ka-tribu ninyo itong septuagenarian na lolo! Mahirap ma-classify si Kidlat Tahimik: Indie Storyteller na anti-Aliw-wood! Screenwriter ng films na walang script! Family Documentarist starring sons and apos! Doctorate sa Blockbuster Films (‘yung PhD Diploma, performance prop lang!). Bamboo Cinematographer (patented na ba ang digi-BambooCam niya?). Production Designer na Anti-CGI (EFX niya, hanggang analogue woodcarvings lang!). O Ifugao Actor? (pang-Oscar daw ang Bahag?)

Wow. Halo-halo CV! Mahirap i-kahon si Kidlat Tahimik (KT)! Wa focus!

O sige, all of the above—itong senior citizen as oral transmitter ng Mababangong Bangungot of da first 100 years. (Hey, ‘di ako generation ni Luis Nepomuceno—77

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years pa lang ako!)

So, G na ba?

Tanggapin ang personal manifesto ni KT bilang cardbearing member ng “Katipunan ng Gurang na Bondok DocuMentors” (KGB-mentors).

Adjust natin ang title. How about: Ang Dating DaangDokyu by KT. Bow!

Framing da 16MM Framer Okey, alam ko na ang frame ko. Ayaw ko holierthan-ikaw sermon. Ayaw ko suntok ng Clenched-Fist Dokumenatarist. Just nostalgia clips galing sa Dating DaangDokyus ni KT. Promdi start, alamin natin: Walang script ang mga KT films. Shoot from the hip. Bang! Bang! Bangungot! Walang “Direk”-syon (in da sense ng word DIRECTOR). Basta, Bathala-Na shooting. Kung anong pumasok sa lens—‘yun na ‘yun din ang lalabas na palabas ng Dating DaangDokyu.

Teka muna. May kaunting Direk-syon pala. Yes, Directed by Sariling Duwende Ko (SDK Films). Images as they happen, when they happen, kung paano nag-happen.

Ang Genius ng Indio para sa indio-genius films (Still from Bakit Yellow ang Gitna ng Rainbow? 19801994)

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Ifugao Viewfinder: pangframe ng local story! (Still from Balikbayan #1, 19792017)

Pero piling-pili ang eksena sa editing ng Sariling Duwende Ko. Importante, captured ang visuals sa celluloid film.

Hoy, BFF millennial! Alam mo ba kung ano itong dinosaur tech na tinatawag na “16mm film”? Spaghetting naka-pulupot sa reel—‘pag tumatanda, nagiging amoy-suka?

Or vinegar syndrome.

Bathala-Na Dox vs. Fake Dox Storytelling ni KT, Bathala-Na ang daloy. Nakabatay sa totoong flow of images. Ito ang backbone ng Dating DaangDokyu: Kapa-kapa storytelling. Hayaan ang daloy— where da wind blows. Ganoon bago nauso ang fake docs at peke-dox.

Bathala-Na is not fatalism (which is bahala-na). Mataas ang Bathala-Na mindful filmmaking. Getz? When we film, ito’y biyaheng kaugnay si Inang Kalikasan. It’s a road film or Lakaran—tungong Liwanag. Co-director natin si Kosmos kaya hindi trip lang.

Pagdating sa The-End, may Kaliwanagan. Cosmicstreaming ang script. Direk-syon galing sa Kataas-taasan! Si KT, medium lang sa paggawa ng dokyu. Hindi siya Direktor with a capital D. Sa wakas, swak na dokyu ang labas—kahit ‘di kasingslick ng Netflix dox. Sa 1st glance, ito’y dokyu about da crazy mind ng isang krazy Kidlat. Sa 2nd glance nadocument din ang daloy-isip ng Kosmos. (Napaka-generous

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Bamboo Kameraman ng 1st Circumnavigation. Kidlat Tahimik’s 35-year filming of Balikbayan #1—natiis ng BambooKam. Photo by Kidlat de Guia.

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ng Universe, ‘di ba? Naghahandog ng filmable eksena, for us mortals to shoot. Not just formula-bytes.)

Ang Non-Formula Film School ng SDK SDK Dokyu-Making = minimal shooting plan + tacit tiwala sa cosmic-script + todo bigay ang aking brain/brawn.

Plus, brown wisdom ni lolo’t lola. Yes, obra na patok sa looban ng ma-Kapwang kaluluwang kayumanggi (sobrang connected sa Kapwa audiences).

Ito ang Lakas. Ang inner drive sa SDK storytelling guided by our Kapwa orientations as Pinoys. ‘Yung indigenous core values ang lumilikha ng Pinoy Dokyus: Stories how our Kapwa-SELF includes the Kapwa-OTHER. Kasali ko ang mga Kapwa ko sa daloy ng buhay ko. Ang audiences at ako ay iisa.

Eh paano kung ang dikta ng industrial society ay kanya-kanya. “Ako-muna” ang uso ngayon, ‘di ba? Ruggedindividualists ang bida ng biopics para gawing idolo ng kabataan si Bill Gates ng Pinas. Palibhasa pinagsasabong tayo ng isang bagong Diyos na tinatawag na AKONOMIYA. Da more ang “ako-muna” damot, da better for GNP, ‘di ba?

Da more wasak ang ma-Kapwang communities.

Kapag AKOnomic Profit ang sole drive sa pagbuo ng pelikula, nawawala ang katutubong lakas ng kulturang maKapwa. Kapag 500% profit is da only drive for producing Patok-sa-Takilya films (PST), ‘yun na rin ang demise ng Kapwa storytelling.

Superheroes and AKOnomic Films “Man! Sigurado super-kita ang movie? PST surefire formula? Sige, shoot it!” Ibasura ang mga culturally enriching scripts. Ibagsak ang mga alamat ng dakilang

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Indie promdi-Cordi vs.

Captain PST. A playful moment with my mortal colonial enemy Captain America.

ninuno at mga saga ng sariling bayani! Palibhasa mas PST si Wonder Woman, Batman, Spiderman.

Sa tsunami ng Marvel superheroes, na-sideswipe sina Maria Makiling, Bernardo Carpio, Papa Isio, Macli-ing Dulag, Ibong Adarna, Lapu-Lapu, at Princesa Bulakna. Ang daming epiko tungkol sa Bathala ng Kalikasan, protectors ng gubat at ilog at bundok na ‘di na naririnig ng kabataan. ‘Yung kwentong orally transmitted ni Tandang Apo Gano sa Dap-ayan (sa ilalim ng sagradong pine tree) ay nasa DELETE box. Palibhasa nag-take over na ang bagong storyteller: si Apo Cineplex.

Yes, PST producers ang monopoly kwentoteros sa milenyals (Exterminators and Massacres genres).

Dapat ma-getz: ang PST Films ay nakakabobo.

Sambayanan brainwashed by piling-pili films. Palibhasa those PST gatekeepers (cineplexes, 24-hour TV, Netflix) sila ang Diet Gods ng Fast-Food-Flicks. Pushers sila ng addicting films crowned with Golden Statuettes for best-acted Sex-nViolence.

Ayun! Na-Corona Na. Na-Virus Pa. Hoy, Indie storytellers, iwas tayo sa PST epidemic.

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Sugod! Wind Goddess ng Ifugao! Buwagin si PST Goddess. At Berlinale, me and my installation of Inhabian blowing down Marilyn. Photo by Kidlat de Guia.

Sugod mga kapatid! KT at an anti-mining rally in front of the Supreme Court.

Photo by JJ Landingin.

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(Priority sa next 100 years.) Patatagin ang loob Indie.

I-quarantine ang storyboards promdi nCoV formulas ng Fast Food Films. Dapat i-recognize ang kalabang virus na-infect na ang kaloob-looban ng colonized direk.

Dito bilanggo ang PST direk, sa echo chamber ng PST industry. Ang branding nila: “Cool-na-Cool” ang Sex-nViolence flix. “Ako ang Tarantino ng Pinas! Super-Cool!”

“Famous na FAMAS awardee ako… ‘Yung CGI sa peneeksena ko, nasindak ang PST jury ng MMFF!” “Bagong docudrama ‘Ampatuan Massacre 6’—ang body count sa wakas, pang-Guinness record!”

Alas, heto ang daloy-isip ng copycat film industry. Supertrending ang Hollywood blockbuster at ating kolonyal clones ng Aliw-wood. Da best PST direks, non-stop supplying da PST screens.

May pag-asa pa ba ang pelikulang Outside-da-PSTKulambu? Kapatid Indie! Ganito kami noon. Paano tayo ngayon? At ang tribung nexGen bukas? QuoVadis?

Paano mag-trending ang ma-Kapwa Indie films? Paano mag-increase ang tribe ng culture-friendly dokyu? Paano maging-viral #PST!AliwwoodFilmsBulok? Tayong Indies, kaya ba nating ituloy ang laban ng KKK? Para ibuwag ang

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“Ganito kami noon...Paano tayo ngayon?... Sugod!” Yamagata YIDFF collage by KT, 1995.

Frame grab from KT tribute video to Berlinale Forum@50.

Split-screen by Kidlat de Guia.

kapit-sa-utak ng dayuhang AKOnomiya?

Kartilya ng KKK at ang Kalooban ng Indie Hoy, BFF millennial! Alam mo ba, ang mga KKK, bago naghimagsik, sila’y kapatirang ispiritwal. Yes, a spiritual brotherhood! Hinahanap nila ang Liwanag. Guided by Kartilya ng Katipunan—na sana’y maka-inspire sa kalooban ng nexGen Indies!

Mga Katribu sa DaangDokyu! Lakas loob! H’wag hayaan ang Imperial PST ma-monopolize ang movies para sa nexGen. Kagaya ng KKK, isadiwa natin na tayo’y kapatiran na naghahanap ng Liwanag! Armas natin ang kamera. Sandata ang projector para ikalat ang ka-Liwanagan sa sambayanan. H’wag i-surrender ang storytelling sa PST na b’wisit.

Itaas ang Bandila ng BambooKam ng SDK! Mabuhay ang KKKL! Katipunan ng Kamera sa Ka-Liwanagan!

Papasukin ang Liwanag sa lens ng BambooCam. Shoot natin ang ma-Kapwang kuwento ng kultura natin!

Sugod mga kapatid!!!

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“

XOXO These are hugs and kisses. <3 This is a heart.

We want something to preserve what’s left of us, that we exist. And in existence, we live, we love, feel pain, enormous pain, we giggle, we fear, we hate, we laugh, we laugh with no hesitations, we fail, yes, we will fail a lot.

This is us.

We learn from things, from images and ideas, from living things.

We are obsessed with our image. The preservation of image—our actions.

143 means “I love you.”

PTJ means “Patay Tayo Jan.” We were here before us, before them. We will always stay—without a name, a gender, a class.

Our insecurities, our never-ending securities, they burden us, they help us.

We realize what we are all made of: A speck of dust.

A liter of blood.

A face.

A face that no one will remember.

Something familiar.

— “I bought a second-hand analog camera, I took a picture of it using my smartphone. I post it on Instagram.”

56 likes. 2 comments.

There will be a time in the distant future when everyone will be capable of creating stories and images without the concept of consumerism.

Everyone who has an image-making device can just create and create and create with her own knowledge of language.

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And yes, people will say it’s the ultimate death of cinema. But it is not. It will only be the beginning of a new era. And it will be the end of Capitalism.

Images in one vacuum.

— iPhone Notes titled “Random Thoughts” Aug 23, 2016 IMO, the best stories are not told by any medium such as cinema, literature, music, or arts, but told by your own imagination or dreams or memories, or the one which you heard—from a conversation.

— Desire/Conflict I want to make an art that connects and disconnects at the same time. An art that keeps you from your own reality, but also gives you a path to an uncertain kind of experience.

— We are storytellers. Our stories lie within our very own experience that digs deeper from our personal life—for people around us to appreciate, to explore, to listen.

— As I’m writing this inside a plane bound to Manila from Australia, the sun rises. I’m changing the time now on my smartphone. It’s 5:12 am. It’s 8:12 am in Melbourne.

My girlfriend, Sheen, looked out of the window, amazed by the orange-red beauty. She immediately took my phone and snapped a photo.

Impulse, I suppose. It could be the first sunrise of 2020—for her, for us.

Documentary is a proof of life.

IMO means “in my opinion.”

–Jet Leyco Ex Press (2011) For My Alien Friend (2019) Genuine Love (2019)

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Film screening and outreach at the Quezon City Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Prisons Philippines (May 15, 2017).

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Toward Impact Distribution FURTHER LESSONS FROM

SUNDAY BEAUTY QUEEN BABY RUTH VILLARAMA

As we enter a new decade in Philippine cinema, film distribution unrolls multiple facets of possibilities in developing and sharing stories, no longer monopolized by one specific commercial formula. The widening mental isolation brought about by the shallow pursuits of selfimposed noises is creating desperate pleas for genuine connections. It is becoming more apparent every day as Gen Zs tune further away from the mainstream fare to a more personalized paradigm of belonging.

With pocket-size cameras, fast cuts, and quick uploads, the attention span of viewers is disintegrating in specs of flashbacks and BuzzFeed clips. The original 15-minute short is now considered too long. What becomes of long-form content?

While variants of local documentaries are shoved from primetime view in formulaic reportage, the more familiar medium of the internet is shifting the conventions of documentary filmmaking and distribution around the world.

The internet is now a strong market equalizer unlocking the commercial power of documentaries, and believe it or notâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; impact.

In an interview with The New York Times, Netflixâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

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head of documentary programming Lisa Nishimura asserted that while television ratings exist because of ads, and theatre box-office has become so reliant on first-day returns, the internet experience has warped the perceptions of what the audience want. In 2016, over 68 million people watched documentaries on Netflix, creating an avalanche of impact on audience preferences.

In the same year, we made a small documentary called Sunday Beauty Queen, which challenged the game of narrative hardliners.

Some said that the 2016 Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) was a flukeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a one-time utopia that would never happen again. Others believed it tilted local film distribution for good and there was no turning back.

This is the dream of Daang Dokyu: to create a road for documentaries of different forms and expressions to be accessible to more audiences and open the gates to enlightenment of perspectives for the Filipino viewer.

Although documentaries produced independently mostly rely on festivals to create the necessary noise

Senate hearing on the impact of Sunday Beauty Queen on the Filipino film community.

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Film screening and talk with overseas Filipino workers in Toronto, Canada (April 28, 2017).

for social change, filmmakers and decision makers are pushing the boundaries to imprint films on the cultural memories of people in more ways than oneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;be it through educational platforms, alternative screenings and annual inter-agency partnerships, or more festivals. Our generation holds the highest number of community film festivals being mounted in a single decade.

But your questions and concerns are as good as mine.

Can a documentary film achieve financial success and social impact at the same time? Can a dream of an evolved cultural movement live on in the midst of our realistic nightmares?

The biggest irony about being a filmmaker in the Philippines is that for a nation with rich, colorful stories, support for documentary cinema remains scarce. We are the Cinderellas of the more dazzling world of fiction films. The general sentiment in our highly capital-driven community would go: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Why watch stories portraying reality when people want to escape from it?â&#x20AC;?

The decision to tell the story of my missing mother through Sunday Beauty Queen is a leap of faith against

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Film screening for Filipino domestic helpers and migrant officers in Taiwan (May 21, 2017).

several odds. What started as a personal journey of coming to terms with my own vulnerabilities turned into a search for the missing identity of a country savaged by centuries of colonial bondage, capitalist structure, and disgruntled outsiders echoing an inner longing to be free.

Determined to mount the film as a social mirror, Sunday Beauty Queen aimed to reach two spectrums of impact: audience and decision makers. After its world premiere at the 2016 Busan Film Festival, it reached an impasse: How do you bring a documentary made in Hong Kong back home?

While the ultimate goal is for the film to be seen by as many viewers as possible in every appropriate screening platform, the only platform that fits it is the commercially driven MMFF. Designing an impact strategy to champion the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work force through a documentary film is like building a bridge to the moonâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;impossible, difficult, and the odds are

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hardly in our favor. But the sickening apathy is turning into an inertia. After several back-and-forth and brainstorming sessions, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Invisible Crownâ&#x20AC;? campaign was launched and the decision to enter the MMFF became inevitable.

The production team bit the bullet and paid the P50,000 fee to apply for the MMFF selection. The cost of MMFF submission is ten times higher than in any other festival in the world. It is a hard-locked structure exclusive to giant producers who are not afraid to burn P50,000 in their pocket change. It is an unfortunate rule because instead of receiving more films for consideration, the festival limits itself only to a certain type of films. Local producers and directors in this age still go through a vicious, feudal way of film distribution, floating around Manila on fake smiles showcasing the thrills of Philippine showbizlandia.

Watching the trailer of Sunday Beauty Queen over and over gave us the spin to survive the bullet. The women featured in the film are from good families, have earned college degrees from decent universities, and are independent thinkers. The hard life in the Philippines has not been kind to their dreams, so they committed the ultimate sacrifice of cleaning the toilets of other nations in order to give back home. The documentary film we made for four years clearly

The Philippine Consulate in Hong Kong with Hong Kong legislation signed an agreement to improve their policies for foreign workers.

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goes beyond us as storytellers.

The impact is much bigger than the cancerous leeches of the film industry. The film is not a story that elicits pity because this is the last thing we want people to remember about the Filipino diaspora. We, the Filipino people, are not slaves. We are natural voyagers who choose to rise against a predetermined destiny.

The essence of Daang Dokyu is to break the walls of known conventions of documentaries in the Philippines. Like our people, documentaries are not slaved within television documentaries on late-night airings, nor in obscure slow art cinema exclusive for film connoisseurs. It is more than a visual aid for education or hypnotic installations for museums. Documentaries are all that and more, and in whatever form nonfiction films are presented to the public, they also hold a strong impact on the tides of time in our history. They are made not merely to creatively document a moment in time. Every image in them defines us as artists

Producer and editor Chuck Gutierrez (left) and director of photography Dexter dela PeĂąa (right).

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Film screening and talk for Filipino overseas workers in London (July 15, 2017).

and as people in history.

They say that it takes a village to make a film. I myself realized that it takes the best people across the sea to build a local-to-international momentum for an underdog documentary film to see the light of day. The opportunities to submit Sunday Beauty Queen to pitching forums in Southeast Asia were an oasis to our seemingly hopeless rollercoaster rides. The programs of In-Docs in Indonesia, TokyoDocs in Japan, and the Asian Network of Documentaries in South Korea were important for their invaluable support in connecting the film to global champions who brought the story closer to actual policy makers and community activists. We might have lost our innocence in producing it, but we gained lifelong friends from fellow artists, and even from strangers who understood what we were trying to do.

The women featured in the film also realized the power of the medium they were given. Daddy Leo, the

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Collaboration with the International Organization for Migration for screenings in Hong Kong (June 2, 2017).

pageant organizer, and some of the filmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s protagonists were given their long-overdue platform to be recognized as modern-day heroes. Their personal stories as domestic workers are so much richer than what I am sharing with you right now.

If one is sensitive enough, the truth of an oppressive system can be seen in both the real and reel. And the truth is we cannot end oppression if we do not end it ourselves within our own bondage.

It is every documentary filmmakerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dream to create the opportunity to change the future narrative of our present realities and start using the medium of stories in reviewing our legacy as human beings with a very limited time in the world.

The power of cinema can cut through endless debates and open a strong cultural movement to rally on. I lost my mother to migration and social injustice, and in my work as a filmmaker and educator, it remains a constant struggle to push documentary films as a tool to help mend holes for

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those left behind and those seeking to be found.

To you, future reader, may you find the courage to rise and realize that when you choose to speak the truth, you have nothing to lose but our common chains.

Film screening for Filipino domestic workers in Malaysia (September 4, 2017).

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Collection, Recollection 168

It is impossible to think of the documentary without the dangers, both physical and political, that come with the making of it. Lives are risked, and what is recorded on camera is only a small part of the bigger picture, a piece in a jigsaw that cannot reach completion. Contained in these essays are accounts of battles won and lost, of people withstanding the ravages of time, and how their writers have witnessed them.

Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala attempts to piece together memories of Philippine TV documentaries, a substantial portion of which have been lost and gone forever, and asserts how the Martial Law in the 1970s irreversibly changed the futures of Filipinos. Ed Lingao shares his experiences covering the wars in the Middle East and in Mindanao, and his reluctance to being called a documentary filmmaker. Chiara Zambrano remembers her time in the Siege of Marawi and how it has made her realize the importance of carrying on. Finally, Asako Fujioka of the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, a major platform for many Filipino documentary makers, recalls meaningful encounters with the Philippines and its artists, and believes the Philippine documentary tradition is one of the most vibrant and significant in the world.

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Danny Gozo interviewing Senator Ninoy Aquino in Iloilo, March 1972.

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A Nation Without Memory HOW MARTIAL LAW CHANGED THE LANDSCAPE OF TELEVISION DOCUMENTARIES KARA MAGSANOC-ALIKPALA

1970.

Danilo “Danny” Gozo, acting on a tip from Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., traveled with a news team from ABC-5 to Oro Centro and Ora Este, two barangays in the town of Bantay, Ilocos Sur. Several days ago, Vincent “Bingbong” Crisologo had come down on these areas with his private army called “saka saka” (barefoot) and razed the two barangays to the ground for allegedly supporting his family’s political rival. The raid had killed one woman and rendered all the families living there homeless.

With the help of a young councilor named Luis “Chavit” Singson, Gozo evaded roadblocks and arrived in Bantay in the early morning. There he was met by a village of traumatized women and children. All the young men had already gone into hiding.

Crisologo was a staunch political ally of President Marcos, but the exposé forced Malacañang’s hand. Defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile flew in by helicopter to assure the safety of the villagers and to offer to bring them to Manila.

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The villagers refused and opted to travel by land with the ABC-5 news team instead.

Gozo did his report on camera, reading his spiel from a piece of cardboard tied to the tripod of the Arriflex. Prior to this, the 16mm film format did not record sound and reporters were never heard. Gozo’s two-part documentary for ABC-5 titled Horror in the Hills was instrumental in Malacañang’s withdrawal of support for Crisologo. In 1972, Crisologo was sentenced with double life imprisonment for arson. But the wheels of politics continued to turn. In 1980, he was granted absolute pardon by Marcos.

Nevertheless, the political fortunes that Gozo’s documentary helped to shape would far outlast the documentary itself. No copy of Horror in the Hills exists— the documentary, like many other news material of that era, was left to rot when Marcos shut down ABC-5 after declaring Martial Law in 1972. *** The Philippines had a rich, colorful, and spirited journalistic tradition in the decades leading up to the shutdown of the press in September 1972. While its neighbors grappled with dictators, race riots, and interminable wars, the country’s journalism community forged ahead with a rambunctious and, some say, licentious free press.

For the TV pioneers, it must have been nothing short of exhilarating. Few had formal training in TV, and people could afford to make mistakes. Newscasts had none of the gloss and sophistication of today—no soft lights, no makeup, no images in the backdrop to enhance a story, save for a blank white wall behind the news anchor. Sometimes a

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newscaster would read the newspaper on air or a news wire freshly ripped off the teletype.

News features or mini docs were recorded on 16mm film, edited and narrated live by the news anchor from the studio. The anchor had to synch his reading of the script with the images projected on a blank wall behind him. Sometimes TV studios would do live score on live narration.

For ABC-5, its first documentary in color was The Rites of Summer, featuring Holy Week practices around the country, produced by Bibsy Carballo and shot by Romy Vitug in 1968. They produced more documentaries, including Recuerdo of Two Sundays and Two Roads That Lead to the Sea in 1969. Carballo described the latter as â&#x20AC;&#x153;the story of people whose lives and deaths, joys and sorrows, were

A scene from Recuerdo of Two Sundays and Two Roads That Lead to the Sea, a documentary by Bibsy Carballo, Romy Vitug, and Emmanuel Torres.

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inexorably chained to the sea.” Archived in New York, this is probably the only surviving television documentary produced before Martial Law. Carballo and Vitug also produced Life in Bilibid Prison, the first insider story, but they were best known for their work on the Plaza Miranda bombing of the opposition’s political rally that killed nine and injured nearly a hundred.

Competition among networks brought news teams to places outside the Philippines. Marita Manuel, writer and editor for ABS-CBN, led a team to Paris to produce a story on the riots in the Latin Quarter in 1968. ABC-5 sent Max Soliven to cover the Vietnam War. It was a time of revolution and change, of rising ideals and falling governments. ABS-CBN reporter Orly Mercado, who considered himself then a Marxist-Maoist, said his most memorable documentary was Where a Thousand Flowers Bloom, a feature on China Orly Mercado covering the opening of produced in 1971. This was a the Philippine Congress in 1970. dream story because he was able to show the viewers for the first time a Filipino perspective on China. “I was 25,” Mercado recalled. “Conflicted as a revolutionary beginning to enjoy my testosterone high in really dangerous times.”

Carballo summed up the years before Martial Law: “It was possibly the best times of our lives, when one was young and adventurous, and there was nothing too

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difficult to attain.”

Martial Law would change all that. *** When Martial Law was declared on September 21, 1972, all media outlets were padlocked and many archival films were left to rot. “Government stations took over the ABSCBN complex and ransacked the place,” Mercado shared.

“Records, tapes, and a critical part of Philippine broadcast history [were] trashed. It pains me every time I recall those times. It seems like we are a people who don’t value records or documents of events in our national life.”

A few months later, television stations reopened, but government and Marcos cronies took ownership of all except for GMA Radio Television Arts, now GMA Network. Media owners who had been Marcos critics were jailed, including Chino Roces of ABC-5 and Eugenio Lopez Jr., the son of the founder of ABS-CBN. News no longer presented a plurality of opinions nor reflected the true state of affairs. Instead it only reflected the affairs of the state. All TV stations were required to have newscasts and the first two items had to be news issued from Malacañang. Censors were in place to keep the media in check. Documentaries were propaganda. The true state of the nation was seen in underground cinema and documentaries by foreign correspondents.

The legacy of two decades of television news and documentary coverage was lost, with hardly a trace of recorded history. There are few surviving films and videos from the 1970s and early 1980s and less than a handful from the late 1960s.

Can you imagine the volumes of stories we lost? Did we miss anything that would have made a difference in the

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story of our nation? Can a nation with no memory ever have imaginings of the future?

Documentaries on the Philippines produced for the cinema seemed to have had a slightly better fate. The oldest of them, produced by foreigners more than a hundred years ago, have been preserved and stored in film institutes and libraries abroad.

But the death of an older generation of broadcasters gave birth to a new one. Jaime Fabregas, the host of the government-sponsored arts and culture magazine show Metro Magazine, was once taken in for questioning by the National Bureau of Investigation. The authorities felt the show was inciting to sedition when it featured a Martial Law anniversary celebration of song and dance at Odette Alcantara’s Heritage Gallery in Cubao, Quezon City.

Alcantara’s place had been a watering hole for a lot of artists and writers who discussed art and politics.

In 1984, Maan Hontiveros, the producer and cohost of Ms.Ellaneous, the first all-female magazine show broadcast on GMA and the government station PTV 4, invited the opposition leader Senator Jose Diokno to the talk portion of her show. Parliamentary elections were coming up and Diokno advocated a boycott. When Diokno and Hontiveros were on the set ready to roll, ten minutes before showtime, PTV 4 had a power outage. That was the end of Ms.Ellaneous.

Others found creative ways to broadcast the truth. Tina Monzon-Palma, the first solo female news anchor on GMA, would read the Malacañang-approved news items, but her facial expressions reflected how she actually felt about the news.

During the ten-and-a-half-hour funeral of Ninoy Aquino, the government forbade media from showing the millions

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of people in attendance. The GMA newscast found a way to escape the censors and broadcast the historic funeral in its late-night newscast for a few seconds. The following day, they were reprimanded. *** When the Marcoses were removed from power after the 1986 People Power Revolution, there was a voracious appetite for news and documentaries on the corruption, excesses, and human rights Ging Reyes working as floor director for abuse that took place during the dictatorship. President Corazon Aquino on a Tokyo State visit special in 1986.

When ABS-CBN reopened in the same year, Ging Reyes, now the company’s head of Integrated News and Current Affairs, was a young production assistant working on the documentary Marcos: A Malignant Spirit. She was shocked to see a U.S. customs video of jewelry owned by Imelda Marcos on a conveyor belt: large, limitless pieces of diamond chunks that kept rolling by. Having grown up during Martial Law, Reyes said the video changed the way she looked at the world.

Marissa Flores, Senior Vice President for News and Public Affairs at GMA, said those years under Marcos instilled in her generation the importance of the “spirit of questioning” and made them more relentless in the pursuit of truth.

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The first investigative news show after Martial Law was The Probe Team, founded by the producer and host Cheche Lazaro and journalists Maria Ressa and Luchi Cruz-Valdes.

Broadcast on ABS-CBN and GMA, the show set the bar for high production values and introduced many breakthroughs that are standard today.

One of its reporters, Twink Macaraig, wrote in 2003: “The Probe Team brought sensibility to programming when local TV, bewildered by its newfound freedom following Martial Law, still thought the best way to deliver news was to have it mouthed by a well-coiffed head, center framed in a medium shot, immovable behind an officious desk. Probe came into being when TV production was structured such that reading a story had little to do with writing it and writing a story had little do to with covering it and covering a story had little to do with experiencing it.”

When the EDSA People Power euphoria was on the wane, fewer documentary specials were produced. This was a reminder of where documentaries stood in any private TV station through the years. They existed only if management supported it. They never got the advertising support in the way entertainment shows did. Advertisers always felt the audience was too niche. For this reason, the documentary and news magazines were often relegated to the late night slot. Reyes said: “It’s something you do because you have an obligation, it’s your mission, your duty, you have to devote time and resources.” Flores added that some news magazine shows had to reformat as infotainment in order to survive.

Since 1986, only ABS-CBN and GMA, the industry leaders, have been consistently investing in the documentary.

Just when TV executives thought no one was watching documentaries anymore, the unexpected happened. In 1997, Batas Militar: A Documentary on Martial Law in the

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“ Documentaries are about discovering and exploring the different faces of reality and other people’s “truths” that are beyond what is factual. It is not so different from fiction films in this pursuit of truth.

The difference is the people on camera are not professional actors, but real people who are also in a way playing a role. The best ones (as with fiction films) happen when the portrayals look genuine and authentic enough and the truth just lays itself bare sometimes without the audience realizing it. Another difference with fiction films is the element of surprise—and this is what I look forward to the most when it comes to filming documentaries. With fiction films, the element of surprise is embedded by the filmmaker for the audience to experience. But in documentaries, you can both be the filmmaker and the audience, and I find that space so sacred and exhilarating.

—Anna Isabelle Matutina Magdalena (2013) Orphan (2017)

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GMA Network on coverage at the former U.S. Naval Base in the early 1990s. From left to right: Marissa Flores (standing), Jeannie Gualberto, Lorenzo “Jun” Fronda, and Rogelio “Pitong” Nomus (inside the van).

Philippines by the Foundation for Worldwide People Power broadcast on ABS-CBN. As the first extensive account on the Marcos dictatorship, the show rated 29 percent, the highest ever for an independently produced TV documentary, a rating usually garnered by a hit comedy or drama show.

It was a triumph for the creative form that had always struggled with viewership.

The following year, Ditsi Carolino’s Minsan Lang Sila Bata aired on GMA. A documentary on child labor, it was shot in cinema verité style and marked the first time a film of its kind was shown on Philippine television. It was unlike the fast paced, narrator-driven documentaries that

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viewers then were used to.

Broadcast journalist Howie Severino said that it was Minsan Lang Sila Bata that inspired the network to create the country’s first full-length documentary TV show, i-Witness, in 1999. Today when most TV documentaries are no longer host-driven, the show has retained a narrator on camera. “I don’t see anything wrong with having a narrator or a voice over,” Severino said. “The genre can accommodate so many different kinds of styles. That’s why I think you can’t really insist on one definition of a documentary.”

A decade later, in 2008, another breakthrough became talk of the town. Storyline, created by producer Patricia Evangelista and director Paolo Villaluna, looked like cinema.

It had no narrator, and it had the strong stamp of a director and cinematographer, in a typical producer-driven TV documentary set up.

By the late 2000s, video streaming changed the status quo. Looking back, when TV became popular, watching a favorite program was an event. The family, the neighborhood, the food, the family pets, gathered around the TV set and the world came to a halt, at least briefly. With replays few and far between, viewers had only one chance to watch a show before it got lost in the ether. The arrival of VHS and Betamax heralded the start of the change in viewing habits, at least until the seismic changes brought about by video streaming services like YouTube, which introduced audiences to video on demand, video at any time, video anywhere, and more importantly, video by anyone.

“Our documentary show is no longer just a TV program,” Severino said. “We are content. Everything we do is on YouTube, so don’t even bother staying up if you have work the next day. Go to sleep if you need to sleep. Wait a couple of days. And if it ends up on social media, it ends up

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on YouTube. And sometimes we show our documentaries in schools, in auditoriums, because it’s content. It’s no longer a TV show that when you go to the bathroom you’re going to miss something.”

ABS-CBN created its own content platform and launched iWanTV in 2010, later relabeled as iWant. It allowed users to watch live video streaming or on-demand content by ABS-CBN on any screen or device. As of 2020, the platform has more than 11 million registered users.

But it was Netflix, the dominant company in the on-demand media industry, that disrupted the television business. Introduced to the Philippines in 2016, viewers got access to all kinds of documentaries produced like movies.

Some were serialized like drama anthologies. They were also written differently because writers did not have to produce cliffhangers before leading to a commercial break.

Local filmmakers have to compete with this new variety that the audience are exposed to. As a result, teams led by ABS-CBN and GMA started to change their storytelling styles. Reyes said they do not want their documentaries to look “uniform.” She encourages experimentation and unpredictability.

ABS-CBN had set up an in-house training academy for its filmmakers, and iWant plans to enrich its documentary strand by commissioning original documentaries or acquiring existing titles. On the other hand, the next step for GMA is to produce more documentaries on the 4K format for a direct-to-theater release here and in festivals abroad. They will also continue to invest in their DigiDocus, documentaries shot on mobile cameras. Furthermore, GMA will soon host a documentary convention to scout, develop, and mentor the next generation of filmmakers, and there are plans to revive the Cine Totoo Documentary Festival.

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Reyes and Flores agreed that the Philippines has not reached the point where video streaming is a viable platform for documentaries, but it is clearly headed there in the next five years. What will hasten this shift are cheaper data and devices and faster internet speed. Until that time comes, watching free TV is still the choice for most people who cannot afford the data or the time it takes to download a show.

Meanwhile, documentary filmmakers have taken advantage of the leaps in technology and software.

Smartphones offer better quality than the film cameras of yesteryear, at a miniscule fraction of the cost. Anyone can be a publisher or distributor with social media and technology tools. And the output, once uploaded on social media, can last forever. *** Which brings this story back to Danny Gozo, Horror in the Hills, and the death and destruction of hundreds of the country’s journalistic TV output of the first two decades. If a postscript would be written of Gozo’s documentary, it could read like this: Bingbong Crisologo, sentenced to two life imprisonment terms for arson, was pardoned by his old ally President Marcos. He became a pastor and eventually served three terms as a congressman of Quezon City.

Crisologo ran for mayor of Quezon City in 2019 and lost, but not after being apprehended and then released for alleged vote buying.

Chavit Singson, Gozo’s guide in Bantay, made a name for himself as the kingpin of Ilocos Sur, leading a

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colorful and hedonistic lifestyle with wild animals and yellow submarines. He later got involved in a huge jueteng controversy with President Joseph Estrada.

Ninoy Aquino was assassinated when he returned to Manila after a three-year exile. His death galvanized the public’s opposition to Marcos.

Juan Ponce Enrile later became the administrator of Martial Law, before launching a failed coup against Marcos in 1986, which evolved into the EDSA revolt. In the succeeding years, he would be linked to many coup attempts against President Cory Aquino.

Enrile served several terms in the Senate before retiring, but not before he was charged with plunder for the pork barrel (PDAF) scam in 2013.

Few people remember the past of these politicians who would be voted into office several times because there are very few powerful images to remind us of what they were and what they did. We could learn a lot from that past, if only we had something with which to remember. Perhaps history would have been different, if we did not lose nearly thirty years of television documentaries and news features.

Today viewers have limitless access to a library of stories meticulously filed online. Watching these documentaries can educate us about our past. It can help us define and decide who we need to be. It can sharpen our instinct to recognize a mistake that should never be repeated.

It can help us create a path of hope for ourselves and for our nation. Documentaries keep the truth alive. And we need to keep documentaries alive so that the truth can be told.

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“

We all love stories. Thankfully our world is full of incredible, life-changing tales. To me, a documentary is an opportunity to share a remarkable story in the language of film, where a viewer is able to walk in someone else’s shoes. To experience a world far and away, a life foreign and yet the same. To challenge ourselves, open our eyes, and see through a lens that offers a different perspective. Of diverse cultures and dissenting opinions. Powerful stories that open our hearts and minds. And if we’re lucky, they will change our lives. Inspire us, terrify us, enable us to experience laughter, tears, outrage, agony, and joy. Break our hearts and then heal us. Move us to take action, motivate us to be the best version of ourselves, and create impact beyond our wildest dreams. All this in 90 minutes of pure wonder.

—Marty Syjuco Give Up Tomorrow (2011) Almost Sunrise (2016) Call Her Ganda (2018)

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With a Northern Alliance fighter on top of a wrecked Russian truck at the demolished Jalalabad airstrip in mid-November 2001, after the Northern Alliance drove away the Taliban. Actually we were never really sure that we were with the Northern Alliance. We just assumed we were because they were not trying to shoot us or shoo us away.

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Confessions of a Reluctant Documentary Filmmaker ED LINGAO

I have never really been comfortable being called a documentary filmmaker.

There, I said it out loud.

I have never seriously thought of myself as one, channel branding and fancy introductions notwithstanding. I tend to do “quick and dirty” long forms on politics, conflict, and current events, where shots can at times be badly composed and jiggly (“I-roll mo lang, dali! Ako bahala sa iyo!”) and the audio largely incidental. I hate travelling with too many people (“Ako na lang ang magmamaneho.”) and too much equipment (“Kailangan mo ba talaga ng tripod?”). I love to travel very light, sometimes with only one poor cameraman (“Tayong dalawa lang?”) who has to make do with my idiosyncrasies (“Diyan tayo matutulog!?”). Many times I travel alone with a cheap standard-definition video-camera (“Mayroon pa palang ganiyan?” or “Sa tatay mo iyan?”).

I do not plan shots or story flow, and sometimes I do not plan the coverage at all (“Bahala na si Batman!”).

I want to capture that brief moment of spontaneity, when anguish, grief, or joy flashes through a man’s face. And that astounding but honest soundbite when a man forgets he is the subject of an interview and begins talking to you as if you were the only other person on earth. Only then would

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I would want to write and marry words and pictures and sound into something that people call a news documentary.

Hitchcock once said that in feature films, the director is god. In documentary films, God is the director.

More recently, James Tiberius Kirk, occasionally known as William Shatner, said: “The process of making a documentary is one of discovery, and like writing a story, you follow a lead, and that leads you to something else, and then by the time you finish, the story is nothing like you expected.”

I love discovery. I love learning just as much as I love telling a good story. That is why I chose journalism. And that is why I make “documentaries” in the raw, as tools of discovery and self-discovery for myself, and as a medium of storytelling and discovery as well for others. Although there are many excellent documentaries built around stunning

With MNLF rebel leaders in Saranggani, Southern Mindanao, in 1997.

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visuals, well-directed shots, and huge investments in time, resources, and personnel, there are many more stories best captured in the midst of conflict and confusion, stories of intense urgency that needed to be told yesterday or today, but not tomorrow. Sadly, there do not seem to be enough people willing to tell these stories, if only because of the time and dedication involved.

But does it have to be one or the other? Some see it as a dichotomy, that one has to choose between having full control like a feature film, or letting the leaves blow with the will of the wind. There are those who say it is not so much a conundrum as it is a careful balancing of production and editorial values, of the power of studied beauty and the strength of immediacy and relevance. To paraphrase my favorite quote from the investigative journalist Malou

Hanging out from the hatch of a Belgian Pandur armored personnel carrier in Afghanistan in 2004.

With Belgian paratroopers on patrol in Zarshak district in Afghanistan in 2004, while the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) tried to stabilize Afghanistan from the Taliban.

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March 2003. Standing beside several white clad “martyrs” or foreign fighters who pledged to fight to the death for Saddam Hussein during one of the last proSaddam rallies before the start of the Iraq War. They were widely assumed to be foreign suicide bombers.

Mangahas: It is about making the important interesting, and the interesting relevant. It is about telling a story with a sense of mission, and a sense of purpose that goes beyond the number of viewers you can ever hope to get. Yet at the same time, it is about making that effort to reach out, to compete with the millions of other “more interesting” topics out there.

There are a million good ways to tell one story, but you only get one shot to tell it well. In the age of social media and YouTube sensations, there are a million other stories out there competing for eyeballs and attention, and you would rather be loved or hated intensely, rather than be ignored ignominiously.

With today’s fancy equipment and editing software, it is easy to fall into the trap of relying on production values to

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Standing on top of a wrecked and rusted Iraqi T72, presumably destroyed in the first Iraq Gulf War outside the Iraqi town of Safwan in Southern Iraq. To get to the area, we had to pass through several mined areas, into the part of what the Iraqis called the Graveyard of the Tanks.

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pull in the views. The challenge is to make important stories compelling enough to watch in the competitive multimedia world. In 1999, we travelled to East Timor to talk to Filipino priests who were dodging armed militia members, only to discover that we had been upstaged by the arrest of the actress Anjanette Abayari on drug charges in Guam. In 2001, we nearly got killed in Afghanistan and barely escaped with our lives, only to be upstaged again, this time by the murder of the actress Nida Blanca. Not that these stories were any less important than the ones we sought to coverâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it just shows how fickle-minded the publicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s appetite can be.

Remember that today a ten-year-old kid unboxing toys could easily get more views than a documentary you risked your life to make. That alone is frustrating, and a little terrifying.

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Matanog, Maguindanao, 2001.

Marines barricaded themselves inside the Matanog Municipal Hall as angry residents surrounded it during the hotly contested 2001 ARMM elections.

Amidst the wreckage of a Russian Mi-24 Hind in the destroyed runaway of Jalalabad Airport in mid-November 2001, just days after the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance rolled into the town to depose the Taliban. Jalalabad had been used by Bin Laden as his base.

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But in the end, it is about telling good stories, stories of the good and of the bad, stories that leave us aglow with wonder, and stories that leave us gasping in the darkness. It is about the stories we collect, not the storyteller who collects them. It is about the stories we tell, not about the teller’s storytelling. It is about capturing moments and ideas, forms and formulas, beauty and barbarism, strength and despair; and how we capture people’s imaginations with these moments, and how we move them into thinking, wondering, speaking.

And perhaps even acting.

The author Shannon Alder said that if you were born with the ability to change someone’s perspective or emotions, never waste that gift. It is one of the most powerful gifts God can give.

Sometimes it takes only one person, one viewer, to say, “Hey, fuck, I can’t forget your story. But I can’t seem to remember your name.” And then it all suddenly comes into sharper focus.

It all suddenly becomes worthwhile.

Screengrab of myself going live for TV Patrol just a week before the start of the Iraq War on a rooftop in Baghdad. I was showing to the audience a small pink hand muppet named Honkers that belonged to my daughter. I brought that muppet as a good luck charm.

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“

Dalawang dekada na akong bahagi ng i-Witness, isa sa mga unang TV documentary programs sa Pilipinas, pero hanggang ngayon kinakabahan pa rin ako kapag tinatawag akong “dokumentarista.”

Natatandaan ko pa ang unang dokumentaryo na aking nilikha. Hindi ko pa lubusang naiintindihan kung ano nga ba ang isang dokumentaryo.

Isa lang ba itong mas mahabang news report? Mas malalim na magazine segment? Isang uri ng pelikula pero tungkol sa tunay na buhay? Hindi malinaw sa akin.

Kaya sa loob ng dalawang dekada, ako’y nagbasa ng mga libro at natuto sa mga kapwa ko mamamahayag. Pero higit sa lahat, ako’y nagpakalubog sa kuwento ng mga karaniwang tao.

Natuklasan kong walang iisang pamantayan o kahulugan kung ano ang dokumentaryo. Ngunit kung pagbabatayan ko lang ang aking karanasan sa loob ng dalawampung taon, ito ang aking napagtanto.

Ang dokumentaryo ay isang kuwento kung saan kasama ang manonood sa pagtuklas ng mga katotohanan ng mundo. Isang salamin ng lipunan mula sa punto de vista ng iba’t ibang nilalang. Nakakapukaw ng damdamin pero hindi pilit na dinadramahan, nakapagmumulat ng isipan pero hindi pilit ang pangangaral.

Makalipas ang dalawang dekada, patuloy akong nag-aaral, patuloy kong tinutuklas ang kahulugan. Pero kung may isang bagay na sigurado ako, ito ay hindi ito dapat tungkol sa akin. Ako lamang ay isang tulay, isang mikropono, isang salamin. Ang tunay na kuwento ay sila, at hindi ang dokumentarista.

“You are not the story, you are just the storyteller.”

—Kara David Buto’t Balat (2005)

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Marawi. Photo by Noel Celis.

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I Choose the Mountain and I Will Never Stop Climbing NOTES FROM A STUBBORN DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER CHIARA ZAMBRANO

I had been tracking the movement of the Maute brothers, the chief perpetrators of the Marawi siege, for roughly two years before they attacked the city. They started with small but lethal roadside bombings, the sporadic killings of Christians, and by raising the black flag in what looked like isolated incidents. The forces on the ground spoke of something “different” about this group that troubled them— the fearlessness in their eyes as they faced the military, the black flags and ISIS tutorial videos they would find hidden in their lairs, and the fact that in 2016, they attacked their own hometown of Butig, Lanao del Sur, where they all grew up, where they still had homes. Baffled soldiers would chase them, only to find the ISIS flag raised in elementary schools where the Philippine flag used to be.

My stories got little attention then. But I kept at it, chipping away at their identities, their family ties, connections to Jemaah Islamiyah, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the local government, until I found in my hands a video of them pledging allegiance to the Islamic

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State. Some of the top brass of the military called them mere bandits and denied the presence of ISIS in the Philippines.

Consequently, they called me a famewhore, giving the Maute Group more credit than they deserved just so I could look cool on TV. But I knew what I was seeing on the field.

On May 23, 2017, Marawi fell, along with all attempts to mask the true stature of the Maute Group and the presence of the Islamic State in the country. Suddenly, when the military spoke of them, they were called by a different name: Maute-ISIS. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Di Ka Pasisiil was the culmination of years of hard and perilous journalism. At the height of the war, it was the first documentary with unprecedented access to the frontlines.

It was also an honest attempt to wrap our heads around the fierce and incomprehensible battle unfolding around us. It was us peering into the heart of the beast, to try and understand its beating.

We did this via two narrative threads. One was through the eyes of a soldier in the center of the battle. Through him we saw for the first time the absolute horror of the frontlines, and the almost-irrational push to keep fighting in such terrifying conditions. The other was a look back at the people who once knew the Maute brothers, Omar and Abdullah, before they became radicalized. From their childhood friends who watched the brothers burn their own school from the distance, to their own teachers who were trapped in the rubble, and to a child warrior that they themselves trained, we tried to enter their minds and understand what drove them to change, what drove them to do what they did. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Di Ka Pasisiil was the first feature-length TV documentary that the network allowed to air on primetime

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“ Above all, I think a documentary is Time, and Time is Truth—the more time you spend doing something, the closer you get to the truth.

The length of time of a documentary matters much less than the amount of time you spend researching and producing it. Time gives documentarists credibility, earns them respect, and makes them confident in their facts.

A documentary is also cinema. That documentaries today are often shown in the same theaters as Hollywood blockbusters may seem novel. But that’s just going back to the genre’s roots when the very first movies were documentaries showing everyday life. The first filmmakers, the Lumière brothers, traveled the world shooting common scenes with the motion-picture camera they invented. One of their first theatrical screenings famously featured a train simply arriving at a train platform, supposedly creating a panic in the audience and a rush toward the exits.

Finally, a documentary is journalism, nonfiction storytelling that seeks to say something significant about the world. Documentaries today are the antidote to disinformation, fraud that is easy to produce and spread, and often hard to expose and stop. Documentaries are statements by truth tellers that no matter how much falsehood and drivel you dump on the world, facts will eventually prevail.

Documentaries will stand the test of time because you put in the time.

–Howie Severino Pagbabalik sa Tribo (1999) Huling Hala Bira (2005) Mga Nunal sa Dagat (2019)

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television. Prior to this, documentaries were often relegated to the very late time slot, where its perceived lack of profitability would do the least damage. The risk that ABSCBN took on it paid off more than anyone expected. It trended nationally for the next two days, with thousands clamoring for a replay, a response no one in the network had ever seen for a documentary. We were bombarded on social media for days with messages from viewers, thanking us for producing such a piece, asking for more.

It replayed several more times on different platforms and went on to receive prestigious international awards. Having fought for greater respect for the documentary format for years, I finally got my proof that even by mainstream media metrics, it can thrive, without compromising on quality.

ABS-CBN has since been producing documentaries more confidently.

My career in ABS-CBN pushed me to pursue graduate studies abroad. In the U.K., I brought with me my years of experience in producing documentaries for TV, thinking it would simply be a matter of sharpening tools already hanging from my hip. What took place, though, was a radical undoing, unlearning, of everything I thought I knew and was.

My studies introduced me to the many styles and definitions of the documentary and gave me the space to reassess what I actually understood of the form. Michael Rabiger’s definition resonated with me the most: It is “a corner of nature as seen through the lens of a temperament.”

To me this means that in order for the documentary to be true, one cannot separate the film from the one who made it, because it is the creator’s heart that gives the film its life, and it is her life that dictates where the heart is. Her desire to understand a facet of existence turns the film into a journey of discovery. Her inner voice is present throughout,

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whispering the film’s intent.

This definition runs against the fundamentals of the journalistic television documentary in which I thrive.

Whereas the creative documentary embraces the role of the filmmaker’s humanity, the journalistic TV doc demands that we check our biases at the door. Can these two documentary forms merge? Or will people have to pick a side?

I am aware of how different the two are, and I dare say even polar opposites at the heart of it. While an absolute merging of the two styles may be difficult, it is entirely possible to pick techniques from the creative process and little by little infuse the TV doc with these. Along the way, a re-education of the audience may also take place—the millions who grew up thinking the TV doc was the only doc will be exposed to the myriad kinds of storytelling that they can learn from and enjoy.

Returning from my studies, I feel more driven to champion the documentary further in a world boxed in by ratings and simpler forms of entertainment. Its power to tell a story that matters, and is remembered by many, is something I have always believed in and will keep fighting for. Streaming has helped draw a bigger audience into the TV documentary world, and more youth have expressed desire to delve into it in the future.

The reality and limitations of mainstream media, though, are a lot less rosy compared to my dreams. I see a path, but I also see a rough terrain ahead.

I am a mountaineer in my off days and am used to trekking uphill in the worst conditions. Maybe this is how the climb will be. Maybe I’ll break my trusty hip in the process and run out of food. But have you seen sunsets from the mountain’s summit? They are always reason enough to climb again.

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“I knew what I was seeing on the field.” In Marawi. Photo by Noel Celis.

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â&#x20AC;&#x153; Documentary cinema for me is filming everyday situations and people with an intervention that at first may appear minimal but actually has the same weight as when filming in the manner of making a fictional or narrative film. Oftentimes, it is filming with minimal resources and spontaneity. The situation or the subject can direct the filmmaker to the parameters on how and where he or she will move. The images we see in documentary cinema have the qualities of the images we see in our memories and our dreams. It then becomes a purer form of cinema compared to fiction films. â&#x20AC;&#x201C;Christopher Gozum Gurgurlis Ed Banua (2008) Anacbanua (2009) The Ashes and Ghosts of Tayug 1931 (2017)

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Asian submissions to YIDFF in 1989 were mostly cultural films and promotional pieces. Ogawa Shinsuke headed the Asia Symposium to discuss the question, “Why are there no documentaries from Asia?” The Asian filmmakers on the panel— Tsuchimoto Noriaki, Yanagisawa Hisao, Takagi Ryutaro, and others—debated for six hours. At the festival’s Farewell Party, the Asian filmmakers signed a manifesto drafted by Kidlat Tahimik. Their promise to “one day soar with the wind” resonates to this day. (Source: YIDFF)

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Now Soaring With the Wind A CONVERSATION WITH ASAKO FUJIOKA

Since its inception in October 1989, the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival has been instrumental in the promotion of Asian documentaries and the advancement of the documentary as a significant art form. Embracing the works of moving image artists from all over the world, YIDFF has been the platform for both the traditional and modern, recognizing the power of the documentary to record history and opening itself to the new and exciting ways to expand the language.

The festival has welcomed some of world cinema’s luminaries: Frederick Wiseman, Naomi Kawase, Barbara Kopple, Pedro Costa, Wang Bing, Joshua Oppenheimer, Patricio Guzmán, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Rithy Panh, to name a few—and over the years it has continued championing independent cinema and discovering up-andcoming talents through its diverse curation and creative programs.

It is no surprise that the Philippines, with its strong documentary tradition, and with the consistent output of its documentary makers over the years, has had a close-knit relationship with YIDFF, speaking the same language on the importance of community and creation.

In this conversation, Asako Fujioka, who has been working with the festival since 1993 as coordinator, director, and board member, looks back on the Filipinos who have

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made a mark on Yamagata, and how in her knowledge and experience the Philippine documentary tradition is one of the most vibrant in the world.

DD: From your perspective as a programmer who has seen a lot of documentaries from Asia and from all over the world, could you talk about your views on the Philippine documentary, based on those you have seen over the decades and your experience of meeting some Filipino documentarists.

AF: My work with YIDFF opened my eyes to Philippine documentary and provided me with lots of fun memories with extraordinary filmmakers. Pioneers Kidlat Tahimik and Nick Deocampo are charismatic trailblazers whom I got to know early.

In YIDFFâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first edition in 1989, when there were

Tad ErmitaĂąo and Asako Fujioka in Yamagata in 1995.

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Kidlat Tahimik and his son Kabunyan in Yamagata in 1995.

no Asian films selected in the International Competition, Kidlat Tahimik was at the center of a small group of Asian filmmakers who announced in a manifesto: â&#x20AC;&#x153;We declare here, the SPIRIT of the independent Asian documentary filmmakers is alive! And will one day, soar with the wind!â&#x20AC;? It came true. YIDFF watched his seminal I Am Furious Yellow grow over the years as it was invited to three consecutive festival editions (1989, 1991, 1993), eventually evolving into Why Is Yellow the Middle of the Rainbow? (1994).

Interpreting for Kidlat Tahimik in Japan over the past 30 years has been one of my favorite duties in my career, and I hope I can keep welcoming him back.

Nick Deocampo made very important inroads with films like Revolutions Happen Like Refrains in a Song (1987)

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Ditsi Carolino and Nana Buxani presenting Minsan Lang Sila Bata in Yamagata in 1997.

and Ynang Bayan: To Be a Woman Is to Live in a Time of War (1991). Private Wars (1996) was the first Filipino film to be presented in YIDFFâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s International Competition, and I was fortunate to be part of the NHK production for his TV version. Nickâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s devoted work in film education started with Mowelfund, which had strengthened and broadened the baseline for Filipino art film. In contrast to Kidlat, the genius maverick in the mountains who inspires through art, I saw Nick as the driver for systematic and societal change through poetry and reason.

Rox Lee is another special friend of Yamagata since 1989, whose versatile talents and lovable personality attracted many Japanese fans over the years. We are pleased to have had the chance to introduce a big part of his film work at YIDFF 2017, after Harajuku (1992) in 1993 and Green Rocking Chair (2008) in 2009.

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In the 1990s, my impression of Philippine documentary is its fluidity of form, with filmmakers working in animation and experimental methods, going beyond the conventional documentary look. I believe this had to do with the GoetheInstitut workshops and Mowelfund programs. Tad Ermitaño, Hesumaria "Jojo" Sescon, Fruto Corre, Paolo Villaluna, and Avic Ilagan are some of the filmmakers whose work I found delightfully playful and out of the box.

Ditsi Carolino and Nana Buxani are two filmmakers who have left a deep impression on me. Their outstanding work filming children—Minsan Lang Sila Bata (1995), Riles (2003), and Bunso (2005)—made them forerunners in the field of social documentary: aesthetically and technically so adept, getting so close and intimate to real people, allowing viewers to empathize and become children themselves, and all that without preaching social justice. Such strong films.

Invited to YIDFF International Competition in 2003, Basal Banar—Sacred Ritual of Truth (2002) was my first encounter with Auraeus Solito. He and his work introduced me to the vast and diverse tribes and cultures in the Philippines, to the rising indie commercial film scene at the time, including the LGBTQ field, and the positive energies of a talented and fearless artist.

In recent years, YIDFF has continued to feature daring and unconventional approaches to the documentary by Raya Martin, Jet Leyco, Adjani Arumpac, Gym Lumbera, Perry Dizon, and Miko Revereza, among others.

Finally, I’d like to praise Jewel Maranan and Baby Ruth Villarama as lithe yet robust filmmakers whose works are role models for a sustainable documentary landscape.

Their solid heart and craft, their network of international collaborators, their knowledge of the global documentary industry, and their generosity in sharing their experience with

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COLLECTION, RECOLLECTION

other filmmakers—I am in awe of these strong-willed and proactive female filmmakers who believe in creativity and can inspire others.

DD: Where is the Philippines in the map of world documentary cinema?

AF: The Philippines is very prominent in the map because of the topics that its documentaries cover: the controversial policies of the current government, the humanistic stories amid natural disasters, the vibrant LGBTQ movement, the strong influence of Christianity and all of its baggage (good and bad). Also, because of the people: emotionally and physically expressive, eloquent in rhetoric, open and generous, culturally diverse. Furthermore, because of the craft: their artistic originality and innovations in the genre.

I notice that female filmmakers are strong in particular and well-balanced in their artistry and producing skills, a common trend across Southeast Asia.

DD: What is the significance of the documentary in shaping the image of a nation (like the Philippines or Japan, for example)?

AF: Creative documentary and artistic films are like a mirror that reveals the filmmaker’s person. If honest and personal, they are a reflection of a nation through its people’s eyes and hearts.

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Rox Lee made several trips to Japan, including a screening of his film Harajuku in Yamagata in 1993.

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PUBLISHERS KARA MAGSANOC-ALIKPALA is a producer, broadcast journalist, and filmmaker. She has produced documentaries for ARD German TV, CNN International, the History Channel, the Australian Broadcasting Company, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, ABS-CBN, GMA Network, and The Probe Team. Her film, Batas Militar (1997), is a landmark documentary on the atrocities of Martial Law. MONSTER JIMENEZ treads on both fiction and nonfiction.

Her producing credits include Apocalypse Child (2015) and Respeto (2017). Her documentary Kano: An American and His Harem (2010) is the first recipient of the Gawad Urian for Best Documentary and a winner at IDFA (International Documentary Festival Amsterdam).

JEWEL MARANAN is a documentary filmmaker and producer known for her films set in Tondo, Manila: Tundong Magiliw (2011) and Sa Palad ng Dantaong Kulang (2017), which both won the Gawad Urian for Best Documentary. Her producing work includes Asian documentaries dealing with national histories, The Future Cries Beneath Our Soil (2018, Vietnam) and The Silhouettes (2020, Iran). She is the founder of Cinema Is Incomplete and Alternative Cinema Initiatives Conference (ACIC).

BABY RUTH VILLARAMA is a producer and director of short films and feature documentaries, including Jazz in Love (2013), Little Azkals (2014), and The Boy With No Shoes (2019). Her 2016 film, Sunday Beauty Queen, made history as the first documentary to compete and win the best picture prize at the Metro Manila Film Festival. A recipient of the British Council Social Impact Award 2018 for her works that raise awareness of social issues, she is one of the co-founders of Voyage Studios.

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EDITOR RICHARD BOLISAY is a writer and film critic. He teaches film in the UP Film Institute and is the author of Break It to Me Gently: Essays on Filipino Film (2019).

ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR ALEINA ESPINELI is a digital filmmaking graduate of De La Salleâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;College of Saint Benilde. She is currently working as a freelancer and dreams of becoming a film editor in the future.

BOOK DESIGNER TOM ESTRERA III designs for print and motion graphics. He cofounded Cinema as Art Movement, a student film organization based in the UP College of Fine Arts in 1998.

AUTHORS ADJANI ARUMPAC teaches documentary and alternative cinema in the UP Film Institute. Her documentaries include Walai (2006), War Is a Tender Thing (2013), and Nanay Mameng (2013).

PATRICK F. CAMPOS is a film scholar, critic, and programmer.

He is an associate professor in the UP Film Institute and the author of The End of National Cinema: Filipino Film at the Turn of the Century (2016).

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TEDDY CO is a curator and an archivist, considered one of Philippine cinema’s most influential voices. He co-founded Cinema Rehiyon, the biggest gathering of filmmakers from all over the Philippines, and became the Commissioner of the Arts of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and the Chair of its Cinema Committee.

SARI RAISSA LLUCH DALENA is a filmmaker whose works play with various forms such as experimental, documentary, and narrative. She is the former director of the UP Film Institute, where she teaches filmmaking. Her films are often collaborations with her partner Keith Sicat and sister Kiri Dalena, including Ka Oryang (2011), The Guerilla Is a Poet (2013), and History of the Underground (2017).

NICK DEOCAMPO is a prolific filmmaker, historian, producer, and director of the Center for New Cinema. An associate professor in the UP Film Institute, he is the author of several books on Philippine cinema history, such as Cine: Spanish Influences on Early Cinema in the Philippines (2003), Film: American Influences on Philippine Cinema (2011), and Eiga: Cinema in the Philippines During World War II (2016).

ASAKO FUJIOKA has been working with the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival since 1993 as coordinator, director, and board member. She organizes film “dojo” workshops with Asian filmmakers, distributes Asian documentaries in Japan, and acts as international liaison for Japanese documentaries.

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ED LINGAO is a journalist and producer who has worked in various print and broadcast media such as The Manila Times, The Manila Chronicle, Sky Cable News, ABS-CBN, ABC-5, and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. He is one of the hosts of the investigative documentary show The Correspondents, which aired for almost 12 years.

GUTIERREZ MANGANSAKAN II is a writer and filmmaker, and the founding festival director of Salamindanaw Asian Film Festival. His broad range of works include fiction films and documentaries, such as House Under the Crescent Moon (2002), Limbunan (2010), and Forbidden Memory (2016).

KIDLAT TAHIMIK is a visual artist and filmmaker from Baguio City often regarded as the Father of Philippine independent cinema. Known for his docufiction and commentary on postcolonialism, he has been making movies for five decades, including Perfumed Nightmare (1977), Turumba (1981), Why is Yellow the Middle of the Rainbow? (1994), BUBONG! (Roofs of the World! UNITE!) (2006), and Balikbayan #1: Memories of Overdevelopment Redux VI (2017).

CHIARA ZAMBRANO is a journalist and documentarist known for Spratlys, Mga Isla ng Kalayaan (2014) and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Di Ka Pasisiil (2017). She is one of the recipients of The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) for journalism and broadcast communication in 2017.

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FESTIVAL TEAM

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FESTIVAL DIRECTORS Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala Monster Jimenez Jewel Maranan Baby Ruth Villarama FILM CURATORS Adjani Arumpac Teddy Co Sari Dalena DEPUTY FESTIVAL DIRECTOR Raymond Astillas LEAD FESTIVAL COORDINATOR Aleina Espineli PROGRAM COORDINATOR Dada Grifon EVENTS PRODUCER Bianka Bernabe RESEARCH & ACQUISITION Cris Bringas Brontë Lacsamana SCREENING MANAGER Kristine Kintana AUDIENCE MOBILIZATION SUPPORT Eman Eres Don Senoc

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BOOK EDITOR Richard Bolisay BOOK DESIGNER Tom Estrera III POST-PRODUCTION, FESTIVAL VIDEOS & PRINT TRAFFIC Contagious, Inc. Lawrence S. Ang Tricia Bernasor Eluna Cepeda Maria Estela Paiso Pao Sancho MICROSITE DEVELOPMENT daangdokyu.com/watchnow Upside Media, Inc. Peter Alegado Polo Bustamante Rey Etable Raffy Veloso LIVESTREAM Playground, Inc. Maui Mauricio Prech Mauricio PROGRAM SUPPORT Giancarlo Abrahan Dev Angeo Roy Vives Anunciacion Karl Castro Nick Deocampo Martika Ramirez Escobar Moira Lang

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WEBSITE, SOCIAL MEDIA & PUBLICITY RCKA Asia Kelly Austria April Macaraeg Third Marquez Kippie Paurom Jaries Villavicencio Ruby Villavicencio-Paurom POSTER ART & LAYOUT Pablo Biglang-awa Jr. GRAPHICS & LAYOUT ARTISTS Tom Estrera III Drestel Leigh Galang COPYWRITER Lloyd Emmanuel Moreno LEGAL ADVISER Atty. Jerry O. Abad FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION Probe Media Foundation, Inc. Yasmin Mapua Tang Nancy Pizarro

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Book Contributors Alyx Arumpac Kara David Sheron Dayoc Khavn Dela Cruz Lav Diaz Christopher Gozum Jet Leyco Anna Isabelle Matutina Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr. Carla Pulido Ocampo Miko Revereza Wena Sanchez Howie Severino Grace Simbulan Marty Syjuco John Torres The Festival Directors wish to thank Boy Abunda Archie Adamos Sonny Africa Dean Benigno Agapito Roby Alampay Yukihiko Amagi Veron Amboni Alemberg Ang Don Arawan Jen Aquino Atom Araullo Rachel Arenas Rica Arevalo Arapia Cali Ariraya Aditya Assarat Daisy Atienza Elvert Bañares Giana Barata Antares Gomez Bartolome Joy Belmonte Nazh-Far Mariwa Berganio Aimee Bertulfo Anne Biagan Xandra Bisenio Pawi Bitanga Erika Bolaños Mitzi Borromeo Lomel Buena Armi Cacanindin

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Eugene Caccam Jay Calleja Patrick Campos Jeff Canoy Angeli Cantillana Krishna Caparas Bibsy Carballo Jaja Carino Ditsi Carolino Chocs Casimsiman Boo Chanco Karmina Constantino Dansoy Coquilla Bernan Joseph Corpuz Marinel Cruz Kiri Dalena Manet Dayrit Nick Deocampo Ramona Diaz Maria Angeli Diaz Liza Diño Nikko Dizon Miguel Dorotan Ces Drilon Gilberto Duavit Jr. Rosanni Enrile Melo Esguerra Mica Esteban Ava Estrella Edmundo Fernandez Sockie Fernandez Noel Ferrer Andrew Florentino Marissa Flores Beth Frondoso Judy Galleta Jag Garcia Gemma Gonzaga Danny Gozo June Arvin Gudoy Chuck Gutierrez Teresita Gutierrez Samira Gutoc Sohfia Marie de Guzman Amelia Hapsari Maan Hontiveros Timi Idioma Ken-Ichi Imamura Ferdie Isleta

Wilma Isleta Gina Jaculo Cristina Juan Seiko Kato Khavn Abbie SJ Lara Noy Lauzon Cheche Lazaro Ricky Lee Ed Lejano Sinag de Leon Tootoots Leyesa Jenny May Licen Michael Kho Lim Dean Jazmin Badong Llana Grace Lopez Aaron Macapagal Nico Macato Tetsuo Maki Sheree Mangunay Roel Manipon Moonnette Maranan Esther Marquez-Lingao Darlene Menese Orlando Mercado Maria Montelibano Treb Monteras Tina Monzon-Palma Kanami Namiki Rene Napeñas Tep Nazario Julie Ann Nealega Vincent Nebrida Ann Nemenzo Ginny Ocampo Jackie Ongking Stephanie Owens Mae Paner Elcid Pangilinan William Navarro Pedrosa Dexter dela Peña Paul Perez Estelle Piencenaves Monique Pilapil Alex Poblete Daniel Pruce Primrit Puarat Asryman Rafanan Jae Ramos

Maria Ressa Cecilia Resurreccion Clar de los Reyes Carmina Reyes Ging Reyes Joey Reyes Malaya del Rosario Jay Rosas Jun Sabayton David Salvan Roland Samson Hera Sanchez Malou Santos Charo Santos-Concio Rosanni Sarile Hobart Savior Shireen Seno Jayson Septimo Jarell Serencio Howie Severino Sudeep Sharma Keith Sicat Francis Solajes Ben Suzuki Alfie Sy Mike Tan Linggit Tan Jason Tecson Marichu Tellano Art Tibaldo Francis Torral John Torres Ricardo Trofeo Ania Trzebiatowska Ma. Bernadette Uy Nessa Valdellon Tito Valiente Alfred Vargas Harry Vaughn Leni Velasco Toff de Venecia Paolo Villaluna Nandy Villar Romy Vitug Chiara Zambrano Concerned Artists of the Philippines Cultural Center of the Philippines Media Arts Division Dakila Department of Education -

Public Affairs Service Directors’ Guild of the Philippines Dokyupeeps Film Development Council of the Philippines Film Producers Society National Council for Children’s Television Culion Foundation Greenpeace This Side Up, Inc. UP Film Institute Voyage Studios, Inc. Wildsound, Inc.

Concerned Artists of the Philippines De La Salle - College of Saint Benilde De La Salle University Department of Education Far Eastern University Film Aficionados Circle Fr. Mark Munda Gamot Cogon School iAcademy Keys Manila Loyola Film Circle Manila Archdiocesan and Parochial Schools Association The Research team and Manila Tytana Colleges curators wish to thank Mapúa University Cinema Rehiyon MINT College De La Salle University Henry Museo Pambata Sy Library National Council for Filipinas Heritage Library Children’s Television Gawad CCP Para sa National Youth Commission Alternatibong Pelikula at Pelikulove Video Polytechnic University of the IBON Foundation Philippines Jesuit Communications PUP Journalism Guild Foundation San Carlos University Mowelfund Film Institute Sanggunian ng mga Paaralang National Historical Loyola ng Ateneo de Manila Commission of the St. Joseph’s College of Philippines Baggao Cagayan Philippine Film Archives St. Mary’s College Philippine Information Agency Steiner Waldorf School UP College of Mass Thomasian Film Society Communication Library UP Broadcasting Association British Film Institute University of Makati Julian Bato University of Santo Tomas Mae Caralde UP Cineastes' Studio John Carino UP Cinema Faye Cura USC-CineMata Ricky Orellana UST Senior High School Rose Roque The Marketing Team wish The Audience Mobilization to thank team wish to thank Dindin Araneta Ako Bakwit Mindanao Philbert Dy Ateneo de Manila University Erwin Romulo Center for Student Affairs, Eventbrite University of Asia and the Foodpanda Pacific Unilever Cinema Knights, Letran Yellow Cab Pizza Co. Colegio de San Juan de Letran

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â&#x20AC;&#x153; I think documentary circles back to self-reflection. By observing relationships with places and people, we allow ourselves space to process personal questions. Through the lens, we become more aware of where we are standing, how we got there, what we are looking at, and how it is affecting us. The camera shares the movements of the body which contains the memories of history. Our bodies are still processing our colonial memories. We collect images in film or digital drives and replay them over and over. We manipulate these images, and resituate them next to other images. They become inseparable from our thinking.

They become a new language. On an editing timeline we are literally re-organizing thoughts and memories into a new form. Documentary is a container to reflect on difficult questions, but through this process, perhaps transformation and new understanding is possible. It is a testing ground for experiments that break the mold of the past. It is a project of reclaiming agency of our own voices and representations. â&#x20AC;&#x201C;Miko Revereza Disintegration 93â&#x20AC;&#x201C;96 (2017) No Data Plan (2018)

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SCHEDULE OPENING WEEK

19-23 SEPT

MARTIAL LAW, NEVER AGAIN

Streaming on daangdokyu.com/ watchnow

Marcos: A Malignant Spirit (1989) director synopsis

prod. ABS-CBN News, hosted by Angelo Castro, Jr. Containing rare footage and recorded conversations, this documentary about "the plunder of a nation" looks into "the inhuman manner in which Marcos and his henchmen systematically drained the economy [...] in their greedy and unrelenting quest for fortune."

Mendiola Massacre (1987)

director synopsis

Lito Tiongson, prod. AsiaVisions, through IBON Foundation Mendiola Massacre is a newsreel of the massacre in Mendiola Bridge on January 22, 1987. The protest action for genuine agrarian reform by peasant organizations led by Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) resulted in the deaths of thirteen farmers and injuries of hundreds of civilians.

A Rustling of Leaves: Inside the Philippine Revolution (1988)

director synopsis

Nettie Wild A chronicle of the three points of a political triangleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the legal left, the illegal (armed) revolution, and the enemy which threatens them both: the armed reactionary right.

Imelda (2003)

director synopsis

Ramona Diaz For the first time, Imelda Marcos tells her own story on film, from being a young beauty queen in the 1950s to becoming the First Lady of the Philippines in the 1960s, until the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 with the People Power Revolution.

Alunsina (2020)

director synopsis

Kiri Dalena Working closely with human rights organizations, filmmaker Kiri Dalena documents the struggles of children and families in an urban settlement severely affected by the government's war on drugs.

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Recorded introductions: Nettie Wild (A Rustling of Leaves), Kiri Dalena (Alunsina) Pre-Recorded Q&A: A Rustling of Leaves with Nettie Wild and Roland Tolentino Alunsina with Kiri Dalena and Patrick Campos

REALITY CHECK

19 SEPT 8:00 PM moderator speakers

Martial Law, Never Again

Live on daangdokyu.com/ watchnow, Zoom, Facebook, Youtube

Ed Lingao Miguel Reyes, Kiri Dalena, Joel Lamangan, Chel Diokno

INDUSTRY SESSION

26 SEPT 9:30 AM moderators speakers

Sundance: Filmmaking in the Time of COVID

Invitational via Zoom

Monster Jimenez, Ania Trzebiatowska Sudeep Sharma, Stephanie Owens

Q&A BY DEMAND

30 SEPT 8:00 PM moderator speaker

Live Q&A with Nettie Wild (A Rustling of Leaves: Leaves: Inside the Philippine Revolution)) Revolution

Live on daangdokyu.com/ watchnow, Zoom, Facebook

Roland Tolentino Nettie Wild, Jojo Sescon

WEEK 1 [ECOLOGY]

2-8 OCT

Ang Lahat ng Bagay ay Magkaugnay

Streaming on daangdokyu.com/ watchnow

Native Life in the Philippines (1914) director synopsis

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Dean Worcester Made in collaboration with government photographer Charles Martin, Native Life in the Philippines is a comprehensive ethnographic documentation of Philippine tribes at the end of Dean Worcester's term as Secretary of the Interior for the insular government in the Philippines.

Glimpses of the Culion Leper Colony and of Culion Life (1929) director synopsis

Merl La Voy As one of the earliest representations of the Philippines in moving images, this administrative reconnaissance film exhibits the Culion leper colony in Palawan and is being shown for the first time in the country.

Balikbayan #1: Memories of Overdevelopment Redux VI (2017)

director synopsis

Kidlat Tahimik Kidlat Tahimik’s most recent feature bears both sides of his esteemed artistic fixtures: the positioning and exploration of the Filipino in the physical—the circumnavigation of the globe by Enrique, the slave of the colonizer Ferdinand Magellan—and in the spiritual: brewing the memories of homeland into reality, a journey backward being as complex and significant as a journey forward.

Pagbabalik Sa Tribo (1999)

director synopsis

Howie Severino, prod. The Probe Team and PCIJ Howie Severino, who grew up on the American East Coast, returned to the Philippines and found work as media journalist. As he follows the story of filmmaker Auraeus Solito’s rediscovery of his tribal Palawan roots, Severino likewise interrogates his own notions of seeking identity and community as Filipino.

Sabangan (1983)

director synopsis

Jose Cuaresma, Frederico Espiritu, B. Libres, R. Gruta, L. Fisher, through IBON Foundation Recalling how the Pantabangan Dam had disrupted the lives of kinsmen in the southern part of Sierra Madre, the Remontados in Tanay, Rizal, stand their ground in opposition to the proposed KaliwaKanan Dam, a project of the Marcoses funded by the World Bank.

Dam Nation (2019)

director synopsis

Grace Simbulan Dam Nation documents the struggle of the Dumagat of Quezon Province and Tanay, Rizal, against the building of Kaliwa-KananLaiban Dam or the New Centennial Water Source project of the Duterte administration.

Siyanan (2017)

director synopsis

Summer Bastian Siyanan looks into the disappearing traditions among the indigenous peoples of Bontoc, Mountain Province.

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“

Some people say that there is a clear line between documentary and narrative fiction, but I’m not so sure. Traditionally, a documentary shows the filmmaker’s representation of the real world, while a fiction film shows the filmmaker’s representation of an imagined world—even if the fiction is based on reality. But today, innovations in film and filmmaking have made it almost impossible to give the term a strict definition. Many contemporary films combine aspects of documentary and fiction. The line is blurred. I think this is good for filmmakers and audiences because it means that the art form continues to evolve.

—Grace Pimentel Simbulan A is for Agustin (2019) Dam Nation (2019)

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Pinatubo: Pagbangon Mula sa Abo (2011) prod. ABS-CBN News, hosted by Noli de Castro synopsis

Noli de Castro looks back twenty years later on the catastrophic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in June 1991, putting together video footage of the days leading up to the tragedy and recollections of survivors years after it.

Balud (2014)

director synopsis

Francis Solajes Balud is a response to Typhoon Haiyan, which wiped out the directorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hometown in November 2013.

Ang Pagpakalma Sa Unos (2020)

director synopsis

Joanna Arong Intertwining myths and video diaries, Ang Pagpakalma sa Unos ponders on the devastating impact of Typhoon Yolanda on Tacloban.

Tungkung Langit (2013)

director synopsis

Kiri Dalena Apolonio, 12, and Analou, 9, lost their parents and three siblings to Typhoon Sendong, which devastated Iligan City in Northern Mindanao.

They speak to each other of their trauma through play and in the smallest of whispers before falling asleep.

The War We Were Not Taught About (1994)

director synopsis

Jin Takaiwa The narratives of Filipinos and Japanese soldiers who lived through the Japanese Occupation trace the destructive effects of the war that lasted decades after.

Bird Hunt (2019)

producer

GMA Network, The Atom Araullo Specials

synopsis

Atom Araullo explores the many endangered bird species in the country, covering important environmental issues such as poaching, mining, and deforestation.

Bullet-Laced Dreams (2020)

directors

Kristoffer Brugada and Charena Escala

synopsis

Bullet-Laced Dreams follows the Lumad children in Mindanao as they escape from military rule due to the incessant armed conflicts between the government and communist rebels.

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Recorded introductions: Nick Deocampo (Native Life in the Philippines), Cristina MartinezJuan (Glimpses of the Culion Leper Colony and of Culion Life), Kidlat Tahimik (Balikbayan #1: Memories of Overdevelopment Redux VI), Jose Cuaresma (Sabangan), Grace Simbulan (Dam Nation), Summer Bastian (Siyanan), Francis Solajes (Balud), Joanna Arong (Ang Pagpakalma sa Unos), Chricelyn Empong and the Lumad children (Bullet-Laced Dreams) Pre-Recorded Q&A: Bullet-Laced Dreams with Kristoffer Brugada, Charena Escala, and Adjani Arumpac Alunsina with Kiri Dalena and Patrick Campos

REALITY CHECK

3 OCT 8:00 PM moderator speakers

Ang Lahat ng Bagay ay Magkaugnay

Live on daangdokyu.com/ watchnow, Zoom, Facebook, Youtube

Howie Severino Kidlat Tahimik, Giovanni Tapang, Neen Sapalo, Francis Solajes

WEEK 2 [NATION]

9-15 OCT

"Perception is Real, Truth is Not"

Streaming on daangdokyu.com/ watchnow

Aswang (2019) director synopsis

Alyx Arumpac As soon as he won the presidency, Rodrigo Duterte kept his campaign promise: He set in motion a machinery of death to execute suspected drug users, pushers, and small-time criminals. Aswang follows people whose fates entwine with the growing violence during the first two years of extrajudicial killings in Manila.

Yanan (2013)

director synopsis

Mae Caralde Ka Yanan, a member of the revolutionary armed movement, died during an encounter with government troops, and was survived by a son and two daughters.

May Istorya nga Tayo, Patay Naman Tayo (2001)

director synopsis

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Howie Severino, prod. Probe Productions In the middle of gunfires in the city, Howie Severino reports on the hostilities in Lamitan, Basilan, in the siege that happened in 2001.

Sa Mata ng Balita: The Birth of Philippine TV, The News and Many Firsts, Unos at Puntos sa Bagong Milenyo (2003) director synopsis

Ricardo Trofeo, prod. ABS-CBN News From the rise of President Ramon Magsaysay to the Oakwood mutiny during the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, this documentary featuring interviews with some of the country's esteemed broadcast journalists shows that the history of television is also the history of the nation.

Tupada '92: The Philippine in the Year of the Elections (1995)

director synopsis

Fruto Corre Tupada '92 is a coverage of the 1992 Philippine national elections that juxtaposes the hysteria of the campaign season with the precarious state of 31 million Filipino voters.

A Rustling of Leaves: Inside the Philippine Revolution (1988)

director synopsis

Nettie Wild A chronicle of the three points of a political triangleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the legal left, the illegal (armed) revolution, and the enemy which threatens them both: the armed reactionary right.

Mendiola Massacre (1987)

director synopsis

Lito Tiongson, prod. AsiaVisions, through IBON Foundation Mendiola Massacre is a newsreel of the massacre in Mendiola Bridge on January 22, 1987. The protest action for genuine agrarian reform by peasant organizations led by Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) resulted in the deaths of thirteen farmers and injuries of hundreds of civilians.

Marcos: A Malignant Spirit (1989)

director synopsis

prod. ABS-CBN News, hosted by Angelo Castro, Jr. Containing rare footage and recorded conversations, this documentary about "the plunder of a nation" hosted by ABS-CBN's Angelo Castro, Jr. looks into "the inhuman manner in which Marcos and his henchmen systematically drained the economy [...] in their greedy and unrelenting quest for fortune."

Maid in Singapore (2004)

director synopsis

Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr. Overseas Filipino workers, more so those who break their backs in Singapore, have always lived under the large shadow left by the death of Flor Contemplacion and her fate as a domestic helper. Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr. explores whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s beyond this shadow and the solidarity of spirit that defines the Filipino.

229

Queer Transnational Love in the Time of Social Media and Globalization (2017) director synopsis

Adrian Alarilla Using found footage, Alarilla retraces the story of his love with the subject in an effort to work through the trauma of ending a relationship.

The Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heroes of The United Farm Workers Movement (2014)

director synopsis

Marissa Aroy The Delano Manongs tells the story of organizer Larry Itliong and a group of Filipino farm workers who instigated one of the American farm labor movementâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s finest hoursâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;The Delano Grape Strike of 1965 that led to the creation of the United Farm Workers Union (UFW).

Recorded introductions: Mae Caralde (Yanan), Nettie Wild (A Rustling of Leaves), Marlene Francia (Mendiola Massacre), Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr. (Maid in Singapore), Adrian Alarilla (Queer Transnational Love), Marissa Aroy (The Delano Manongs), Alyx Arumpac (Aswang) Pre-Recorded Q&A: A Rustling of Leaves with Nettie Wild and Roland Tolentino

REALITY CHECK

10 OCT 8:00 PM moderator speakers

Perception is Real, Truth is Not

Live on daangdokyu.com/ watchnow, Zoom, Facebook, Youtube

Boy Abunda Ramon Guillermo, Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr., Ramona Diaz, Nicole Curato

MASTERCLASS

14 OCT 2:00 PM instructor

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Documentary Filmmaking 101 Alyx Arumpac

Live on daangdokyu.com/ watchnow, Zoom, Facebook, Youtube

WEEK 3 [TABOO]

16-22 OCT

Off the Record

Streaming on daangdokyu.com/ watchnow

All Grown Up (2018) director synopsis

Wena Sanchez A filmmaker closely follows her teen brother as he starts a new life in college. Her brother is smart but a bit of an oddball, and he finds it hard to navigate the world like a normal teenager.

Dreaming in the Red Light (2019)

director synopsis

Pabelle Manikan In Angeles City, we get inside the lives of two women: a mother who’s a former worker in the Red Light district and her half-German teenage daughter, as they make small everyday choices to improve their conditions.

Dory (2017)

director synopsis

Beverly Ramos Dory is about a 101-year-old trans woman who walks around the streets of Tondo, Manila, where she works as a beautician. As she faces her twilight years alone, she ponders whether her long life is a gift from God or a curse.

Oliver (1983)

director synopsis

Nick Deocampo Oliver follows a female impersonator who supports his family by performing in Manila’s gay bars during the Marcos dictatorship.

Invisible (2019)

producer

ABS-CBN News (Docu Central)

synopsis

In this full-length documentary, ABS-CBN hopes to destigmatize mental health by taking a more optimistic approach with stories of recovery and redemption.

Mga Batang Mandirigma (2004)

director synopsis

Cheche Lazaro for The Probe Team Documentaries The Probe Team traces the roots of two Muslim youths who are currently studying in the U.S.: Khalid Dimaporo and Romina Bernardo.

Documented (2013)

director synopsis

Jose Antonio Vargas Documented chronicles the various journeys of the Pulitzer Prize­– winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas: his journey to America from the Philippines as a child; his journey through America as an undocumented immigrant and, eventually, an immigration reform activist; and his journey inward as he reconnects with his mother, whom he has not seen in person in over 20 years.

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“ It is a personal, creative effort to be truthful in the midst of other truths surrounding you. That is my best answer for now. It always changes, sometimes I doubt if there ever really is such a thing. At the very least, things are a documentation of an event or at least a process in time.

I choose to creatively exert an effort to go toward a place in mind, so I document my way toward it. Although the process bears more questions than answers, I end up substantially changed and discover I’ve set up more traps around the work that lead to more forks on the road.

Many of the documentaries I like give me the rhythm and pulse of a moment, a description or a sense of emotion that moves me, so that I can feel alive and one with you again. I like those that are harder to pin and put into words, as in a premise or a scenario. Those that feel like fragments put together, those that lie to me and charm me to believe, those that then leave me to myself, alone, at the same time.

–John Torres Todo Todo Teros (2006) Years When I Was a Child Outside (2008) People Power Bombshell: The Diary of Vietnam Rose (2016)

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Recorded introductions: Wena Sanchez (All Grown Up), Pabelle Manikan (Dreaming in the Red Light), Nick Deocampo (Oliver), Jose Antonio Vargas (Documented) Pre-recorded Q&A: Dreaming in the Red Light with Pabelle Manikan, Wena Sanchez, and Adjani Arumpac

INDUSTRY SESSION

16 OCT 3:00 PM moderator speakers

TokyoDocs & In-Docs on International CoProduction

Invitational via Zoom

Imamura Ken-ichi Bryan Brazil, Akiko Tabakotani, Mandy Marahimin

REALITY CHECK

17 OCT 8:00 PM moderator speakers

Off the Record: Mental Health and Identity

Live on daangdokyu.com/ watchnow, Zoom, Facebook, Youtube

Chiara Zambrano Naomi Fontanos, Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino, Ma. Regina Hechanova

MASTERCLASS

21 OCT 4:00 PM instructor with an introduction by

Historya ng Dokyupelikula

Live on daangdokyu.com/ watchnow, Zoom, Facebook, Youtube

Nick Deocampo Deputy Speaker Loren Legarda

WEEK 4 [LOCALITIES]

23-29 OCT

Dagat Ang Pagitan

Streaming on daangdokyu.com/ watchnow

A is for Agustin (2019) director synopsis

Grace Simbulan Agustin is a tribesman close to his forties who loves to sing but has never had the opportunity to learn to read or write. When he finds out his boss cheats him out of his wages again, he decides to enroll in grade 1.

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Walang Rape sa Bontok (2014) directors

Mark Lester Valle and Carla Pulido Ocampo, prod. GMA Network Two women, both victims of sexual abuse, yearn and search for a utopia where women can live without being sexually violated.

By chance, they encounter a study by renowned anthropologist June Prill-Brett, which mentions that the Bontok of the Philippine Cordilleras have lived for eras without a term, nor concept, nor incidence, of rape.

Gilubong ang Akon Pusod sa Dagat (2011)

director synopsis

Martha Atienza Gilubong ang Akon Pusod sa Dagat (My Navel is Buried in the Sea) explores the relevance of the sea and its relationship and impact on those who use it as a source of livelihood.

Himurasak (2017)

director synopsis

Francis Solajes Himurasak shares stories from communities in Tacloban affected by Typhoon Yolanda, from the collective memory and experiences of the locals themselves.

Ang Pagbabalik ng Bituin (2012)

director synopsis

Sherbien Dacalanio Ang Pagbabalik ng Bituin documents a domestic helperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ro-Ro (rollon, roll-off) trip from Metro Manila to Cabadbaran, Agusan del Norte.

Budots: The Craze (2019)

directors

Jay Rosas and Mark Limbaga

synopsis

Budots swept the entire nation by storm. But few people knew that the dance craze originated in Davao City before it went viral on social media.

Panicupan (2016)

director synopsis

Bagane Fiola Panicupan, a barangay in Pikit, North Cotabato, is one of the "Spaces for Peace," where Moro, Lumad, and Christian settlers have joined hands in upholding their harmonious relationship amid the conflict between the government forces and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

A House in Pieces (2020)

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directors

Jean Claire Dy and Manuel Domes

synopsis

A war between government and ISIS-affiliated jihadists in Marawi, Philippines, forced hundreds of thousands to flee from their homes.

After the war, residents struggle to rebuild their homes and lives in a destroyed city.

Recorded introductions: Grace Simbulan (A is for Agustin), Mark Lester Valle and Carla Pulido Ocampo (Walang Rape sa Bontok), Francis Solajes (Himurasak), Sherbien Dacalinio (Ang Pagbabalik ng Bituin), Jay Rosas (Budots: The Craze), Jean Claire Dy and Manuel Domes (A House in Pieces) Pre-recorded Q&A: A House in Pieces with Jean Claire Dy, Manuel Domes, and Adjani Arumpac

MASTERCLASS

23 OCT 8:00 PM moderator speakers

State of Journalism in the Philippines

Live on daangdokyu.com/ watchnow, Zoom, Facebook, Youtube

Roby Alampay Ging Reyes, Maria Ressa, John Nery, Shiela Coronel

REALITY CHECK

24 OCT 8:00 PM moderator speakers

Dagat Ang Pagitan

Live on daangdokyu.com/ watchnow, Zoom, Facebook, Youtube

Mike Tan Tito Valiente, Bagane Fiola, Jay Rosas, Keith Deligero, Teddy Co

WEEK 5 [FUTURE]

30 OCT5 NOV

Ganito Tayo Ngayon, Paano Sila Bukas?

Streaming on daangdokyu.com/ watchnow

Alunsina (2020) director synopsis

Kiri Dalena Working closely with human rights organizations, Dalena documents the struggles of children and families in an urban settlement severely affected by the government's war against drugs.

For My Alien Friend (2019)

director synopsis

Jet Leyco For My Alien Friend is a philosophical musing on the nature of being, using footage from the mundane to create an honest depiction of humanity.

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Beastmode: A Social Experiment (2018) director synopsis

Manuel Mesina III A social media experiment involving the altercation of two Filipino celebrities goes viral and exposes the festering wound of Filipino institutions and society.

We Still Have to Close Our Eyes (2019)

director synopsis

John Torres Repurposing documentary footage taken from the sets of Filipino film productions, the filmmaker gathers these peripheries and turns them into an uncanny narrative about human avatars controlled by apps, with images of police, prisoners, and fascism.

Retrochronological Transfer of Information (1994)

director synopsis

Tad ErmitaĂąo Inspired by the works of physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and philosopher Enryo Inoue, this 16mm film documents the experiments of a modern-day scientist who attempts to communicate with Jose Rizal.

Recorded introductions: Kiri Dalena (Alunsina), Jet Leyco (For My Alien Friend), Manuel Mesina (Beastmode: A Social Experiment), John Torres (We Still Have to Close Our Eyes), Tad ErmitaĂąo (Retrochronological Transfer of Information) Pre-recorded Q&A: We Still Have to Close Our Eyes with John Torres and Patrick Campos Alunsina with Kiri Dalena and Patrick Campos

MASTERCLASS

30 OCT 4:00 PM instructors

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GMA Network Masterclass

Live on daangdokyu.com/ watchnow, Zoom, Facebook, Youtube

Raffy Tima, Atom Araullo, Kara David

“

Documentaries use real life as raw material for taking a closer look into the world around us and within us as truthfully, intelligently, and ethically as possible. They can be something as “big” as the Second World War or as “small” as how insects sleep. But they should be shot and edited (and ideally viewed) with an observant and perceptive set of eyes. “Here, this is what this person or thing or place is like,” documentaries try to say, “and what you’re seeing is as truthful as we can possibly get. What does this all mean to you, to us, as a species?”

Most works of fiction are “based on reality,” but many documentaries claim “this is reality.” The limit of creativity is truth and ethics—big words that when taken too seriously could paralyze any filmmaker trying to make them.

There is a famous joke that goes: “Nice people shouldn’t make documentaries.” And that’s because doing them tends to be innately exploitative. Most of the time we make movies about people who are suffering. It takes guts to record suffering. Isn’t it what assholes do? This thought keeps me awake at night, and I might not make another documentary that shows suffering again, or I will try to change my approach. It’s not so good for the soul being so close to your characters and recording their suffering. Nice people shouldn’t make documentaries, yes. But I’d like to think that only nice people should.

Conscience is a big part of making documentaries.

–Wena Sanchez Nick and Chai (2014) All Grown Up (2018)

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WEEK 5 [FUTURE]

31 OCT2 NOV

#HuwagMatakot Halloween Rerun

Streaming on daangdokyu.com/ watchnow

Aswang (2019) director synopsis

Alyx Arumpac As soon as he won the presidency, Rodrigo Duterte kept his campaign promise: He set in motion a machinery of death to execute suspected drug users, pushers, and small-time criminals. Aswang follows people whose fates entwine with the growing violence during the first two years of extrajudicial killings in Manila.

REALITY CHECK

31 OCT 8:00 PM moderator speakers

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Ganito Tayo Ngayon, Paano Sila Bukas?

Live on daangdokyu.com/ watchnow, Zoom, Facebook, Youtube

Mae Paner Jet Leyco, Manuel Mesina III, John Torres, Nica Dumlao, Quark Henares

“

Sa mga unang yugto ng 2019 ay nagturo ako sa Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión (EICTV) ng Cuba. Progresibo, bisyunaryo, malaya, matikas at napakatapang ng programa at kurikulum ng paaralang nasa kalagitnaan ng isang ilang na parang sa ilang na lipunang Cubano.

Gayunpama’y ikinagitla ko ang labis na hidwaan ng dokumentaryong cinema at cinemang gawa ng kathang-isip sa kampus. Mainit ang mga diskurso, maanghang ang mga batuhan—understatement nga ang sabihing halos magpatayan ang dalawang kampo. Agresibong higit ang mga nasa dokumentaryo. Waring iginigiit nilang mas totoong cinema ang dokumentaryo.

Nang tinanong ako, sinabi kong base sa aking karanasan, dahil kapwa ko ginagawa ang dokumentaryo at paglikhang batay sa kathang-isip, wala akong nakikitang pagkakaiba. Ang paggawa ng cinemang kathang-isip o fiction film ay may katangian ding dokumentaryo, at gayundin naman ang paglikha ng dokumentaryo, lagi nang may attribute itong kathang-isip.

Malaking halimbawa ang isa sa mga naunang klasikong dokumentaryo, ang Nanook of the North, na obra ni Robert Flaherty. Alam na ng lahat ngayon kung paano ginawa ang pelikulang ito. At naging malaking debate kung “totoo” nga itong dokumentaryo, lalo na sa isyu ng realidad, dahil “staged” ang pagkakagawa nito, yaong ultimong gawa (dahil nagkaroon ng aksidente sa mga unang footage ni Flaherty, minabuti niyang bumalik sa pook ng mga Inuk at minanipula na niya ang metodolohiya nito).

Lubhang malayo na ang naabot ng cinema upang ilagay pa sa isang kahon, genre, o antas ito. Tingin ko’y masyado nang pyudal kung naroon pa rin ang pananaw natin. Ang dokumentaryo ay cinema, gayundin ang obrang galing sa kathang-isip.

Minsang naglalakad ako sa may baybayin ng Sorsogon, may nagtanong sa akin: Ano ang dokumentaryo?

Ang aking tugon: Cinema po.

—Lav Diaz Pagsisiyasat sa Gabing Ayaw Lumimot (2012) Mga Anak ng Unos: Unang Aklat (2014)

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Presented by

Filipino Documentary Society is a nonprofit organization that aims to advance the production, distribution, and appreciation of documentaries in the Philippines through initiatives that support practitioners in the field, and to foster meaningful partnerships that benefit the documentary practice in the country. The organization was founded by filmmakers Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala, Monster Jimenez, Jewel Maranan, and Baby Ruth Villarama.

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Daang Dokyu is made possible in partnership with:

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TM

Quezon City Capitol

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BUTCH JIMENEZ

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