Inside the Industry: Documentary filmmaking with Baby Ruth Villarama

MANILA, Philippines – Around 3 or 4 years ago, while she was studying in the UK, documentary filmmaker Baby Ruth Villarama had an idea. Fresh from directing the 2016 Metro Manila Film Festival Best Picture Sunday Beauty Queen (and, in turn, having experienced first-hand the problems of local film distribution), Baby Ruth wanted to “crack the code” when it came to distributing and marketing independent films – especially her forte, documentaries.

Baby Ruth knew she couldn’t do it alone. So, along with other acclaimed Filipino documentarians – Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala (Batas Militar), Coreen “Monster” Jimenez (Kano), and Jewel Maranan (Sa Palad ng Dantaong Kulang) – they came up with Daang Dokyu, a documentary film festival not only celebrating the 100 years of documentaries in Philippine cinema but also paving the road for the future Filipino documentaries.

In this podcast, Baby Ruth talks about how she went from growing up in Bulacan to transcribing for TV to making documentaries, the struggles of telling stories from “kanto (corner) to palasyo (palace),” and why “time makes a documentary.”

Catch part 2 of our conversation in our other Rappler podcast, Who is the Filipino?, where we trace the Filipino story through documentaries.

Daang Dokyu will screen at the UP Film Center from March 16 – 21. You can check out the full schedule here. – Rappler.com