The director of the acclaimed film “Aswang” will be teaching a MasterClass in documentary filmmaking for free this Wednesday, October 14. The class will be available in Daang Dokyu Facebook and YouTube channels. Daang Dokyu is the ongoing festival of Philippine documentaries.
Arumpac will talk 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 guide to the essential parts of the creative process. “Anyone can make docs,” she says. “I am thinking of the premise of empowering people; that degrees are not a prerequisite to make a documentary.”
Arumpac is a documentary filmmaker who studied film at the Docnomads Joint Master (Lisbon, Budapest, and Brussels) and the University of the Philippines. She produces current affairs content for television in Manila. Her film Aswang is about the victims of the current administration’s drug war and is one of Philippines’ most successful online releases this year. It achieved half a million views when it was released online last July, in partnership with Daang Dokyu. Aswang also won the International Film Critics' FIPRESCI award in Amsterdam in 2019 and the White Goose Award - Grand Prize at the DMZ International Documentary Film Festival.
The film is currently streaming for free at DaangDokyu.com/watchnow until October 15. It will come back to Philippine screens in Daang Dokyu’s special Halloween event, #HuwagMatakot.
Meanwhile, Historya ng Dokyupelikula is slated on October 21, 4:00 PM. Prof. Nick Deocampo will discuss the beginnings and movement of documentary filmmaking in the Philippines, through two World Wars, and from revolution to revolution.
Deocampo is both a filmmaker and film historian. He is associate professor at the U.P. Film Institute in the University of the Philippines - Diliman. He took up his Master of Arts degree in Cinema Studies in 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.
One of his prizewinning works, Oliver (1983), will be streamed by Daang Dokyu from October 16 to 22. The film is about a female impersonator who supports his family by performing in gay bars.
Deocampo will be introduced by one of the festival's partners, Deputy Speaker Loren Legarda.
Aside from Arumpac and Deocampo, a masterclass composed of veteran journalists Roby Alampay, Ging Reyes, Maria Ressa, John Nery, and Shiela Coronel will take place on October 23, 8:00 PM. They will tackle the current state of Philippine journalism.
GMA Network documentarists Raffy Tima, Atom Araullo, and Kara David will also have a separate masterclass on October 30, 4:00 PM. They will impart their knowledge in documentary production for television.