Free public lecture: Pelikula Lektura with Nick Deocampo

The UP Film Institute (UPFI), supported by the Film Development Council of the Philippines, continues with its next installment of Pelikula Lektura: UPFI Philippine Cinema Centennial Lecture Series this April 2019 with multi-awarded filmmaker, film historian, film literacy advocate, and Faculty Coordinator for Academic Programs and Research of U.P. Film Institute, Prof. Nick Deocampo.

CINEMA UNBOUND:
DIALECTICAL GROWTH OF INDIE CINEMA IN THE
BOOM-AND-BUST ECONOMY OF THE PHILIPPINE MOVIE INDUSTRY
Nick Deocampo

Date: April 27 (Sat), 1 PM
Venue: UPFI Film Studio, Media Center Bldg. (beside College of Mass Communication) Ylanan Ave. UP Diliman Campus, Q.C.

Admission is FREE and open to the public.

For interested participants, you may register at www.tinyurl.com/PelikulaLekturaND

ABSTRACT
The mainstream history of Philippine cinema since after World War II reveals a dialectical growth that has been shaped by the boom-and-bust economy of the local movie industry. It is this cyclic progression that periodically resets the industry’s growth button, making way for new generations of filmmakers to dislodge old guards. From this economic regurgitation of the capitalist industry, fallout from power and the rise of new players result to social alignments that define the local film culture.

Traced in this paper is the pattern of historical growth that is found to be “dialectical.” Since the Fifties when this film evolution made its auspicious mark to the Sixties when a radical break of the so-called “indies” saw the overthrow of studio heads in running the local film business, the movie industry has since then seen generations of filmmakers dominate the movie industry. “Mainstream” producers emerged to exercise dominance and hold on to power. But they did not last long. Upon their decline, emerging generations of “independent” producers grabbed control of the industry as they transformed themselves from “indie” to the “new mainstream.” Their dominance lasted until a new “indie” once more appeared and the same cycle repeated itself. Power struggle dictated the ritual of displacement in leadership driven by the boom-and-bust cycle of the movie industry’s economic life. Four cycles have been identified since the postwar period to the present digital generation, predictably occurring almost in twenty-year cycles. Each cycle is defined by its own political economy swaddled in bungled capitalist desires and incompetent and corrupt political institutions. Falling victim are the moviegoers—the market—who are blinded by this business of deceit.

The historical perspective offered in this lecture produces a new way of understanding and defining Philippine cinema. Instead of merely providing the usual aesthetic landmarks, a materialist perspective in looking at film’s historical growth is in the offing. This comes in the form of a historical study of the recurrent generational power struggle which shapes local film culture. One sees in this new historical framing the mainstream-indie dialectic that has become a ritualized pattern propelling the growth of the local movie industry, a growth that is also its
history.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to indie filmmakers and their mainstream counterparts, student filmmakers, and students and faculty in film, mass communication, media studies, journalism, broadcasting, fine arts, art studies, economics, communication research, film festival goers, critics, film scholars, cineastes, and those who still believe in Philippine cinema.

BIO
Multi-awarded author and filmmaker, Nick Deocampo is an accomplished scholar with a body of work that includes books on the history of Philippine and Asian cinemas; documentaries covering the colonial cycle of Philippine cinema, issues of gender, and Asian environment; and a trilogy on the fall of the Marcos dictatorship and its aftermath. In his works, he has become a film chronicler and recorder of contemporary Philippine social realities. His formative training in documentary filmmaking at the Atelier du formacion au cinema direct in Paris, France prepared him for the challenging task of documenting the country’s social and political ferment in the
eighties. Taking up his Master of Arts degree in Cinema Studies in New York University as a Fulbright scholar, he returned to the country to engage in building an intellectual infrastructure
that has helped enrich the local cinematic landscape, staunchly advocating forms of alternative cinema like the experimental and documentary genres, organizing film festivals of LGBTQ theme, initiating workshops and conferences, undertaking groundbreaking researches, and advancing the cause of film literacy.

Taking pride as a film teacher, he has mentored a generation of alternative filmmakers whose graduates have made their own mark in changing the face of Philippine cinema. He has spawned a generation of filmmakers that has won recognition both locally and abroad for films that have contributed to the national cinema’s historical and aesthetic development. Spending the past forty years mentoring students in classes and workshops at the University of the Philippines, Mowelfund Film Institute, and in countless lectures he has given in various parts of the country and abroad, he considers his greatest task is to establish a useful and relevant pedagogy that will make cinema an ally to education.

Internationally, he has received honors for his academic and artistic contributions: as Scholar-in-Residence in New York University; Chancellor’s Most Distinguished Lecturer at the University of California, Irvine; International Fellow at the University of Iowa; and recipient of various grants and fellowships from the Asian Public Intellectuals (API) Fellowships of the Nippon Foundation; Japan Foundation; The Sumitomo Foundation; and British Council. He served in film juries in festivals in Berlin, Tokyo, Brussels, Hawaii, New York, Czech Republic, Oberhausen, Bilbao, Singapore, Jogjakarta, Yamagata, Finland, and others.

Presently, Deocampo is Academic and Research Head of the U. P. Film Institute in the College of Mass Communication at the University of the Philippines Diliman, where he also teaches as
associate professor. Presently, he is chair of the UNESCO Philippines Memory of the World Committee and President of NETPAC (or the Network for the Promotion of Asia Pacific Cinema).

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The Pelikula Lektura: UPFI Philippine Cinema Centennial Lecture Series aims to highlight key historical events and phenomena in Philippine cinema in the last 100 years and reflect upon what history can teach us for the next 100 years of our journey. The lectures will be presented by the leading scholars and respected critics & artists in the roster of the UPFI faculty and lecturers.