Who is the Filipino? The Filipino story through documentaries

MANILA, Philippines – When documentary filmmaker Baby Ruth Villarama (Sunday Beauty Queen) explained the theme of their upcoming documentary film festival Daang Dokyu, she said they were deliberate in their choice of words.

“It’s ‘Tracing the Filipino Story’ because we don’t want to ‘define it’ because we’re not experts in defining the Filipino identity. We don’t want to say ‘discover the Filipino story’ because we’re really not discovering; we’ve been discovered and re-discovered a lot of times. Our generation right now, we have a lot of questions, so it’s more of ‘let’s trace things together, let’s see what we can find out together’,” Villarama said. 

In this podcast, we trace Filipino culture’s long-rooted history in documentary filmmaking, how documentaries are a nation’s “photo album” (and why it’s frustrating how we, as a country, don’t archive), and whether our love for documenting things on social media translates to documentary consumption.

Catch part 1 of our conversation with Baby Ruth in our other Rappler podcast, Inside the Industry.

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