[Reflexive Cinema] Two Nick Deocampo Documentaries on Philippine Cinema

For this month's edition of Reflexive Cinema, writer and film historian Nick Deocampo presented two of his documentaries about Philippine cinema, Cine>Sine (pictured) and Film. The two films deal with how the Spanish and Americans influenced our cinema as a whole.

Compared with the rest of our Southeast Asian neighbors, our cinema has a distinct je ne sais quoi that sets us apart from them. We are shaped by our historical and national traumas, assimilating much from our colonizers in terms of style and symbolism. The Spaniards gave us religion; the Americans, a love and dependence on Hollywood that we have not totally shaken off. After gaining independence, we have begun shaping our own national identity, and one part of that is through our culture, which includes film.

The documentaries employ computer generated images that try to recreate what our cities (and by extension, our cinemas) looked like back then. The CGI is a bit dated, but it is way cheaper than, for example, shooting on location at heritage sites or creating sets. Considering that these documentaries are small scale, often one man low budget productions, it's not really a problem.

The real meat of the material is when Deocampo cites examples for his theses, often using films by the masters of Philippine cinema such as Lino Brocka, Eddie Romero and Ishmael Bernal. While probably reams of paper have been written about these three greats in dissertations and other academic works, almost no one has ever analysed their works in critical form in a documentary style. If you count the number of local documentaries that have been made about local films in this manner, I doubt you'd count more than 20, perhaps even less. What Deocampo is doing here is important work.

Deocampo's style is light and informative. I was sometimes reminded of Carl Sagan when watching his documentaries. Sagan, whose works helped popularize science for laymen all over the world, showed high concept scientific ideas in an easy to understand manner. While watching Deocampo's two documentaries, I felt the same way, and I can see the importance of film and cultural education for moviegoers young and old. I can only imagine young people being impressed by the films of the Philippines' new wave of independent cinema while remaining ignorant of the fact that we have been making fantastic films for decades now, and that we do have a rich cinematic culture and history.

Lately, when you look at the internet, you can find tons of videos that help promote film, teach about film, and add to the critical discourse about film. There isn't really anything like that for Philippine cinema (my joke video about Querido notwithstanding.) It is my hope that in the future this will change and that one day, Filipinos will really start talking about their own movies. Maybe I am too optimistic, but one can hope.

Reflexive Cinema happens at the CCP Dream Theater every second Saturday of the month until next year (except August 2017 and January 2018). Deocampo's documentaries are also available in book form at your local bookstore through Anvil Publishing.