From September 19 to November 5, 2020, “DaangDokyu: A Festival of Philippine Documentaries” is celebrating one hundred years since the country started capturing in film the stories of its islands and of Filipinos. The festival proper is divided into six main sections, in which select Philippine films are grouped and screened according to the following weekly themes: Martial Law, Ecology, Nation, Taboo, Localities, and Futures.
Parallel to these weekly screenings, EngageMedia is co-presenting two free documentary masterclasses and a roundtable discussion on the state of Philippine media.
- Documentary Filmmaking 101 with Dir. Alyx Arumpac (Oct. 14, 2020, 2:00 PM UTC+8)
- Masterclass: Historya ng Dokyupelikula with Prof. Nick Deocampo (Oct. 21, 2020, 4:00 PM UTC+8)
- Masterclass: State of Journalism in the Philippines (Oct. 23, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC+8)
EngageMedia’s participation in DaangDokyu highlights our Video for Change program in the Asia-Pacific. EngageMedia believes that distribution and engagement activities within film festivals are opportunities to raise awareness on important issues and to contribute to social change.
The masterclasses are free and open to the documentary community, including students, educators, film enthusiasts, and the general public.
Get dedicated email updates on these DaangDokyu masterclasses by signing up at EngageMedia.org/Webinar.
For more information on the film festival, visit the official Daang Dokyu website.
October 14, 2 PM:
Documentary Filmmaking 101 with Dir. Alyx Arumpac
Alyx Ayn Arumpac is a Filipino documentary filmmaker and director of the multi-awarded documentary Aswang on the Philippine government’s war on drugs. She studied film at the DocNomads Joint Master (Lisbon, Budapest, and Brussels) and the University of the Philippines (UP). She produces current affairs for television in Manila.
In this masterclass, Arumpac will talk about the challenges of making your first documentary film and seeing it develop from a personal idea to a piece of work seen by the wider public. This session will serve as practical guidance for the essential parts of the creative process.
October 21, 4 PM:
Historya ng Dokyupelikula with Prof. Nick Deocampo
Prof. Nick Deocampo, one of the country’s most prolific and revered historians, will give a masterclass on the beginnings and the movement of documentary filmmaking in the Philippines, through two World Wars, and from revolution to revolution.
Deocampo is also a filmmaker who presently teaches at the UP Film Institute in UP Diliman. He took up his Master of Arts degree in Cinema Studies at New York University as a Fulbright-Hays scholar and received his Certificate in Film as a French Government scholar in Paris, France. He has made more than 30 documentaries over a span of forty years. His prizewinning works include Oliver, Revolutions happen like refrains in a song, and Sex Warriors and the Samurai. As a film historian, he has authored books that won the National Book award like Cine: Spanish Influences on Philippine Cinema and Eiga: Cinema in the Philippines during World War II.
An advocate for alternative cinema, Deocampo has conducted workshops and taught in classes that produced a new generation of filmmakers working in short films, experimental cinema and documentaries. He organized alternative film festivals that helped revolutionize alternative cinema. Among them were the Independent Film and Video Festival, International Pink Film Festival and last year’s UPFI Experimental Film Festival. His other advocacy issue is film literacy. He has conducted workshops and seminars to promote the use of film for education locally and abroad.
October 23, 8 PM:
State of Journalism in the Philippines
The State of Journalism in the Philippines roundtable will feature ABS-CBN News Chief Ging Reyes, Rappler CEO and Executive Editor Maria Ressa, Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist John Nery, and Columbia School of Journalism Dean of Academic Affairs Sheila Coronel. The discussion will be moderated by journalist and news anchor Roby Alampay.
What else to expect at ‘DaangDokyu’?
DaangDokyu is also hosting the Philippine premiere of the 1929 film Glimpses of the Culion Leper Colony and of Culion Life by Merl La Voy and the controversial 1988 film A Rustling of Leaves: Inside the Philippine Revolution by Canadian filmmaker Nettie Wild.
Other films set to premiere at DaangDokyu are Bullet-laced Dreams (2020) by Kristoffer Brugada and Charena Escala from October 2 to 8; Dreaming in the Red Light (2019) by Pabelle Manikan from October 16 to 22; A House in Pieces (2020) by Jean Claire Dy and Manuel Domes from October 23 to 29, and We Still Have to Close Our Eyes (2019) by John Torres from October 30 to November 5.
DaangDokyu is organised by the Filipino Documentary Society (FilDocs), a nonprofit organisation led by documentary filmmakers Kara Magsanoc-Alicpala, Monster Jimenez, Jewel Maranan, and Baby Ruth Villarama, in partnership with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, The Office of Representative Loren Legarda, Probe Media Foundation, and the University of the Philippines Film Institute.
King Catoy is the Video Lead of EngageMedia. He is an independent documentary filmmaker and alternative media practitioner in the Philippines.
