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| (Image Source: Film Development Council of the Philippines) |
The celebration of Philippine documentary films is crafted under the newly-formed Filipino Documentary Society (FilDocs) founded by acclaimed documentary filmmakers Jewel Maranan, Baby Ruth Villarama, Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala and Coreen Jimenez. As part of Philippine cinema's centennial year celebration, Daang Dokyu is set to showcase classic and contemporary titles from Filipino directors and those of different countries and regions around the world - from the earliest known materials as early as the 1900s to some of the latest and most anticipated ones to be released this year.
Kicking off the festival is the Philippine premiere of Alyx Ayn Arumpac's "Aswang" which tells the story of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs campaign. It revolves around the lives of people who are linked together by the growing violence in the country following the onset of the said campaign - a photojournalist and missionary brother comforting bereaved families and making a stand against lawlessness, a night shift manager of a funeral home, and a street kid with parents and friends in the cemetery. Also making their debut in the festival are the 1988 film A Rustling Of Leaves: Inside The Philippine Revolution by Canadian documentary filmmaker Nettie Wild which was never shown in the country for 32 years, A House In Pieces by Jean Claire Dy and Micheal Domes, Dreaming In The Moonlight by Janelle Manikan and produced by Wena Sanchez, Joana Vasquez Arong's short film Ang Pagpapakalma Sa Unos (To Calm A Pig Inside) and National Geographic's The Nightcrawlers.
Throughout the six-day showcase, the festival will feature and present various documentaries tackling the country's ecology and environment; today's environment of fake news; taboos on religion, politics and the human body; glimpses of different regions; and the future of documentaries and the documentary practice with the purpose of bringing the most relevant debates on these issues through Reality Check sessions that offer the 'docu way' to take stock of how we have been as a nation and where we are going. These will be curated by National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) commissioner and archivist Teddy Co, UP Film Institute director Sari Dalena and award-winning documentarist Adjani "Jaja" Arumpac.
Slated to be the largest gathering of the country's community of documentarists in film and television as well as leading change makers in education, culture and the arts, Daang Dokyu will also include a series of roundtable discussions, lectures and masterclasses of renouned documentarists on the most relevant and pressing concerns on the community and industry. It will also showcase a montage of some of the oldest existing short documentaries from the British Film Institute and the US Library of Congress that are set to be shown for the first time in the Philippines ramping up the last day of the festival.
To be launched in the festival is "Dok Book", a collection and recollection of histories and stories centered on the rich landscape of Philippine documentary in film and television. It features details and historical accounts from the arrival of cinema in the 1890s to the shutdown of press during Martial Law as well as the advent of digital technology in the new millennium and contains contributions from scholars and practitioners in the field. Daang Dokyu is open to films emerging from different regions that resonate with Filipinos, provoke convention or question existing taboos and is hopeful that these will be rediscovered and stored within the Dokyubase, a long-term database project aimed at tracing lost and forgotten histories of documentary film and video in the country.
Daang Dokyu is made possible with the support and partnership of the Office of Congresswoman Loren Legarda-Leviste, National Commission for Culture and the Arts, UP Film Institute and Probe Media Foundation. The event is also sponsored by Purin, Japan Foundation, Quezon City Government, British Film Institute Archive, Viva Central Lab, Grupo Sorbetero, Light & Space, Butch Jimenez, QCinema Foundation, University of London - School of African and Asian Studies (SOAS), British Council and Vista Cinemas with ABS-CBN and GMA Network as among its media partners.
