Nick Deocampo
Nicolas Deocampo--a prominent Filipino filmmaker, academic, historian and activist--goes down memory lane in this intimate vignette and paints through his piercing poetry and gripping visual images—the wins of the LGBTQIA movement as he retells his own struggle in finding love and belonging.
A comprehensive history of early cinema in the Philippines. Told in narration over 3D animation.
The bizarre history of Filipino B-films, as told through filmmaker Andrew Leavold's personal quest to find the truth behind its midget James Bond superstar Weng Weng.
The filmmaker goes in search of his father, a former guerilla soldier who had walked out of the family a decade ago, and in the process discovers new things about himself, his family and the national legacy of war.
A candid story about a Filipino transvestite who works in Japan’s entertainment center in order to support his family. In the daytime, Joan attends to his daily training to prepare him for work as entertainer in Japan. At night, he works as one of the female impersonators in Manila’s gay bars. All these to feed a family of eighteen. Although it will be Joan’s fourth trip to Japan, he still finds it hard to make as much money to make their lives better. Meeting other gay entertainers in the bar where he works, they talk about the difficulties Filipino entertainers experience while working in Japan. The situation is no different though from the life lived by someone like Joan in the Philippines who was once caught in a drug bust operation and sent to jail. Threats and difficulties seem to hound these sex warriors wherever they go.
Based on a painting by Rembrandt, “The Sacrifice of Isaac,” the film is a meditation on the complex relations between fathers and sons. In two parallel stories, a son’s desire to be free is shown as he struggles from his father’s oppressive domination. This is shown on the one hand by a boy who watches over his father in his sickbed wishing to free himself from his father’s domineering presence; and on the other, a biblical Isaac who frees himself from Abraham’s intent to kill his own son.
A documentary film, which focuses on the subject of women’s movement in the Philippines. Myth and legend overlap with history and politics as the women’s struggle is laid to bear in the individual stories and achievements of those featured in the film. The fragmented mosaic of voices and scenes allow for a plurality of views and opinions to account for the multifaceted and complex nature of Filipinas. From poetry to dance, politics to poetry – women chart their own lives in the auspicious event of change happening with the ascent of a woman to the country’s pinnacle of power.
A frenetic collage of scenes with a commentary provided by the pioneer of the independent film, Nick Deocampo, serves as a film manifesto for New Cinema – the movement lead by young filmmakers who lived under the dictatorship for 20 years and who rebelled against the propagandist cinema. The committed film speaks about the social change, the new film and the new world.
Underground video was an important tool during the Marcos era and contributed to the Aquino revolution. In the rejuvenated atmosphere within traditional Philippine media institutions, President Aquino has become the protagonist in a soap opera and the brunt of ribald satiric humor. A skit on a weekly comedy show Six O'Clock News, where a genial Bush twists Aquino's arm for continued U.S. military bases. Next, an emotional melodrama uses double exposure and surreal juxtapositions to address the current military repression. The debates about U.S. bases in the Philippines are played out in TV genres marked by a unique display of national character.
Narrated by Deocampo in English, the film documents the anti-Marcos revolution, the life of Oliver (a transvestite who was the subject of the first film in the trilogy), child prostitution, and the filmmaker's own personal history, including his homosexuality, his filmmaking, and his travels abroad.
An erstwhile boatman wants to do a little more than paddle his own canoe in the town famed for its waterfalls. He leaves the village of his roots for the city and lands a job as a live-sex actor called toro in street lingo derived from the Spanish term for bull. Quick successes in his newfound profession delude him into regarding that the measure of a man is in his trousers. He has a partner on stage and off. Despite her cynicism and tough veneer, she sees in him a way out of the slums and the red light district.
The first part of 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. The film is one of the best illustrations of the fluidity of sexuality, as well as of the power of human agency in times of hardship. (From Pinoy Rebyu)
