Philippine Cinema Heritage Summit: a post-event report

2013PHILIPPINECINEMA HERITAGE SUMMIT a report

Published by National Film Archives of the PhilippinesManila, 2013

Executive Offi ce26th fl r. Export Bank PlazaSen Gil Puyat Ave. cor. Chino Roces,Makati City, Philippines 1200 Phone +63(02) 846 2496 Fax +63(02) 846 2883

Archive Operations70C 18th AvenueMurphy, CubaoQuezon City, Philippines 1109 Phone +63 (02) 376 0370 Fax +63 (02) 376 0315

[email protected]

The National Film Archives of the Philippines (NFAP) held the Philippine Cinema Heritage Summit to bring together stakeholders from various fi elds to discuss pertinent issues and concerns surrounding our cinematic heritage and plan out a collaborative path towards ensuring the sustainability of its preservation. The goal was to engage with one another, share information and points of view, and effectively plan out an inclusive roadmap towards the preservation of our cinematic heritage.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

6 PROGRAM SCHEDULE

7 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

9 OPENING REMARKS

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN CONCEPT

13 NFAP REPORT 2011 & 2012

14 A BRIEF HISTORY OF ARCHIVAL ADVOCACY FOR PHILIPPINE CINEMA

21ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION 1, ASSESSING THE FIELD: REPORTS FROM PHILIPPINE A/V ARCHIVES AND STAKEHOLDERS

23ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION 2, COLLABORATING TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY

24NOTES ON SUSTAINABILITY

26ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONSin the wake of the 2013 Philippine Cinema Heritage Summit

33 CLOSING REMARKS

34 SUMMIT EVALUATION

35 PARTICIPANTS

37 PHOTOS

10

The Archives cannot be built in a day, nor is it built solely by a few. That the task of safeguarding our cinematic patrimony does not lie on chosen hands, but rather preserving our cinematic heritage is a responsibility by and a gift to every Filipino.

6 | National Film Archives of the Philippines

Philippine Cinema Heritage SummitBanquet Hall II, Philippine International Convention CenterPasay City, PhilippinesJanuary 25, 2013

10:00 – 10:30 Registration / Coffee

10:30 – 10:40 Opening Remarks Briccio Santos Chairman, FDCP

10:40 – 11:00 Presentation of an Architectural Design Concept for NFAP’s Permanent Facility Andy Locsin Architect, Leandro V. Locsin and Partners

11:00 – 11:15 Coffee Break

11:15 – 11:45 NFAP Status Report Benedict Salazar Olgado Head, NFAP

11:45 – 12:00 Q&A

12:00 – 1:00 Lunch

1:15 – 1:45 A Brief History of Archival Advocacy for Philippine Cinema by Bliss Cua Lim Visiting Research Fellow, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University Associate Professor of Film and Media, University of California Irvine

1:45 – 2:00 Q&A

2:00 – 3:30 Roundtable Discussions I: Assessing the Field: Reports from Philippine A/V Archives and Stakeholders

3:30 – 3:45 Coffee Break

3:45 – 5:15 Roundtable Discussions II: Collaborating towards Sustainability 5:15 – 5:30 Coffee Break

5:30 – 5:45 Closing Remarks Clodualdo del Mundo, SOFIA Benedict Salazar Olgado, NFAP

6:00 Adjournment

PROGRAM SCHEDULE E

Post Summit Report | 7

Introduction

1. The First Philippine Cinema Heritage Summit was held in the Banquet Hall 2 of the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City, Philippines. It was hosted by the National Film Archives of the Philippines (NFAP) under the auspices of the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP).

2. The Summit envisioned bringing together stakeholders from various fi elds to discuss pertinent issues and concerns surrounding the country’s cinematic heritage and to plan out a collaborative path towards ensuring the sustainability of its preservation.

3. It was attended by 77 participants representing key cultural organizations, government agencies, production studios, distribution companies, corporate vendors, and academic institutions. There were also individual archivists, fi lmmakers, collectors, historians, and students who were present. See List of Participants on page 35

4. The summit was composed of several presentations, open forums and round table discussions generally about the currentstate of audio-visual collections in the country as well as various related plans regarding its preservation. See Program on page 6

Opening Remarks

1. FDCP Chairman, Mr. Briccio Santos, opened the Summit with his remarks articulating the focus of the event which was to identify collaborative strategies towards securing the rich collection of audio-visual materials in the country. He highlighted the need to further support NFAP and encouraged everyone to start taking bold moves for the realization of a sustainable home for Philippine Cinema. He also extended his gratitude to various stakeholders and partners for their continued support. See Opening Remarks on page 9

Presentation of Architectural Design Concept for NFAP’s Permanent Facility

1. Mr. Andy Locsin then presented an architectural design concept for NFAP’s permanent facility. The presentation aimed to explore the challenges, discuss the features, and present possible perspectives in approaching the construction and design of the building. See Notes on Architectural Design Concept on page 10

2. Mr. Andy Locsin and Arch. Khadka were there voluntarily in their personal capacities as resource persons at the request of Chairman Briccio Santos -- not as the appointed / contracted architects or designers of the NFAP Project, but simply to lend NFAP a supportive hand in ascertaining what an NFAP facility could require and surfacing key issues that the NFAP might wrestle with in the process of conceptualizing such a facility.

NFAP Status Report

1. NFAP’s Head, Mr. Benedict Olgado, gave a report on the Archives’ progress and key accomplishments since its establishment in 2011. His presentation provided an overview of the operations and reiterated the NFAP Annual Report 2011-2012. It covered matters pertaining to organizational management, infrastructure, collection, staff, development, and access and advocacy. See NFAP Annual Report 2011-2012.

2. In addition he laid out some of the NFAP’s goals for 2013 which includes vault expansion, outreach services, and acquisition and processing targets among others. See Notes on NFAP Status Report on page 13

A Brief History of Archival Advocacy for Philippine Cinema

1. Visiting Research Fellow in Kyoto University, Dr. Bliss Cua Lim, gave a presentation on the history and development of the archival advocacy for Philippine Cinema. Her presentation touched on the various aspects and threats to sustainability as seen in different interconnected endeavors throughout the years involving a myriad of players. See A Brief History of Archival Advocacy for Philippine Cinema on page 14.

2. Lim’s presentation was followed by a question and answer session which clarifi ed some points and extended the discussion.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY


Roundtable I - Assessing the Field: Reports from Philippine A/V Archives and Stakeholders

1. The fi rst round table discussion aimed to do a quick survey of the current conditions, engagements, and future plans of various archiving institutions and related stakeholders. From cultural organizations to government agencies, private studios to academic institutions, vendors to fi lmmakers – various stakeholders spoke providing a general idea of the current state and future direction of the fi eld and that of our cinematic heritage at large.

2. Key questions were: How is your collection? What are the current threats you are facing and opportunities that you are utilizing? Where is your archive going? Have you engaged NFAP? If so, in what way and has it been productive? If no, why not? How can NFAP help you? How can you collaborate with NFAP?

3. The following individuals and institutions were given the fl oor: (1) Ricky Orellana of the Mowelfund Film Institute, (2) Vicky Belarmino of the Cultural Cneter of the Philippines (CCP), (3) Leo Katigbak of ABS-CBN Film Archive, (4) Lito Cruz of IBC13, (5) Bel Capul of the Philippine Information Agency, (6) MishaAnissimov of University of San Carlos, (7) Rick Hawthorne of the Central Digital Lab, (8) fi lmmaker and historian Nick De Ocampo, and (9) fi lmmaker Raymond Red. See transcript of Roundtable1 on page 21

Roundtable II - Collaborating towards Sustainability

1. The second round table was an open discussion on the issues surrounding sustainability and how the community can work together in securing it. Opportunities and threats were articulated based on past experiences, current concerns, and projected issues. A key speaker during this session was former Director General of the defunct Film Archives of the Philippines, Ernie de Pedro.

2. Issues regarding legislation, funding, political changes, organizational structure, and long-term strategic planning were raised. See transcript of Roundtable 2 on page 23

CLOSING REMARKS

1. President of Society of Filipino Archivist for Film (SOFIA), Dr. Clodualdo del Mundo Jr. gave the closing remarks of the event. In his speech, he stated that archiving is not an activity of futility but is something that needs to be done as it preserves the lifeline of Filipino history. He closed the summit by telling everyone that in the pursuit of sustaining the country’s cinematic heritage, NFAP deserved all the support the whole community can give. See closing remarks on page 33.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY O


It is with both great pride and humble gratitude that I welcome you to the Philippine Cinema Heritage Summit.

On one hand, we at FDCP are very proud of what the National Film Archives of the Philippines has accomplished during the last two years despite limited means and numerous roadblocks. But we are also well aware that this is just the beginning, that the road towards sustainability is long and arduous. The Archives cannot be built in a day, nor is it built solely by a few. That the task of safeguarding our cinematic patrimony does not lie on chosen hands, but rather preserving our cinematic heritage is a responsibility by and a gift to every Filipino.

We are all gathered here today because we share the same passion, the same mission. We are all too painfully aware of the rhetoric – one of the oldest fi lm cultures in Asia with a fi lmography envied by many in sheer number and quality, but with very few preserved fi lms to actually show. Just fi ve pre-war fi lms, works of Gerry De Leon rarely available on celluloid, and mountains of reels left uncared for – the images, stories, and realities are too painful to even recount.

But because of the dedication and commitment of archivists, fi lmmakers, collectors, and institutions – many of which are here with us today,our cinematic heritage has survived in one form or another.

But it’s time to go beyond rhetoric and actually start moving. To take on bold moves and risks to push our advocacies forward, relentlessly. Development has no room for passive stances, only committed actions. And we hope, that you’ll be with us as we pursue this dream of a sustainable home for our cinema, become a reality.

For the past two years, we, at the Archives have done our part. From our climate-controlled vaults to our policy and protocol documents, the restoration of Genghis Khan to the acquisition of Henry Francia’s works, the enactment of AO 26 to the celebration of Home Movie Day – NFAP has covered much ground and we look forward to doing more.

This morning, we will share with you the accomplishments of the Archives so far and our vision of its future. In the afternoon, I invite you to actively engage us and each other as we fi gure out how we can pursue this dream together. We are here to listen. This is an opportunity for dialogue that we hope to continue with you well after the day ends.

We are deeply grateful as well for individuals and institutions outside of our community who nonetheless share our advocacies. This includes our friends at the French Embassy who help made this summit happen. Doctor Bliss Lim who took a break from her fellowship in Kyoto to join us here today and share her thoughts on the development of archival advocacy for Philippine Cinema. And Architect Andy Locsinwho has selfl essly devoted much of his time to conceptualize and give us a vision of how the permanent facility of the National Film Archives would look like. These are small but signifi cant steps. May this summit affi rm our commitment to our shared goals.Our dedication to our cinematic patrimony is the common thread that binds us together. Much is yet to be done, but we are confi dent that with your support the possibilities may well be limitless.

Again, thank you for being here with us. Let us harness the indisputable energy in this room and the momentum we currently have to move forward. May we have a truly productive day!

Briccio G. SantosChairman, Film Development Council of the PhilippinesBriccio G. Santos

OPENING REMARKS


ARCHITECTURAL DESIGNCONCEPT

Mr. Leandro Locsin Jr., Administrator and Design Consultant of Leandro V. Locsin Partners, Architects (LVLP) and Architect Sudarshan Khadka, Senior Architect of LVLP, were at the summit voluntarily in their personal capacities as resource persons at the request of FDCP -- not as the appointed / contracted architects or designers of the NFAP Project, but simply to lend a supportive hand in ascertaining what an NFAP facility could require and surfacing key issues that the NFAP might wrestle with in the process of conceptualizing such a facility.

LVLP claims no entitlements nor harbors any expectations to be the appointed architects of the project. The presentation and the images herein are purely conceptual and are intended only to illustrate notions and opinions about what the FDCP should be considering in the program for their intended facility.


Conceptual Programmatic Section

Massing Perspective (bare)

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN CONCEPT


Massing Perspective (with bris-soleil)

Massing Perspective (with bris-soleil)

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN CONCEPT N


Director Benedict ‘bono’ Salazar Olgado gave a report during the summit regarding the progress of the Archives during its fi rst two years and its short-term goals for 2013.

See the separate NFAP Report 2011 & 2012 for details.

NFAP REPORT 2011 & 2012


ADVOCACY FOR PHILIPPINE CINEMA1

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ARCHIVAL

Bliss Cua Lim

About the Author: Bliss Cua Lim is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies and Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine and a Visiting Research Fellow in the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University. She is the author of Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic and Temporal Critique (Duke University Press, 2009 and Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2011). Her research and teaching center on temporality, Philippine cinema, postcolonial feminist fi lm theory, transnational horror and the fantastic, and taste cultures. She is currently working on a new book on the crises of archival preservation in Philippine cinema.

She serves on the Advisory Boards of two scholarly journals, Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication, Media and Society published by the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication; and Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, published by Duke University Press. Her work has appeared in the journals Discourse, positions, Camera Obscura, Velvet Light Trap, Asian Cinema, Spectator, Flow, and Art Journal; and in the book anthologies Film and Literature: A Reader; Geopolitics of the Visible: Essays on Philippine Film Cultures; Hong Kong Film, Hollywood and the New Global Cinema; and Neoliberalism and Global Cinema.

Let me begin by thanking Benedict “Bono” Olgado, Head of the National Film Archives of the Philippines, and Briccio Santos, Chair of the Film Development Council of the Philippines, for inviting me to speak today.

I am humbled to be delivering a capsule history of archival advocacy for Philippine Cinema in a room full of people who have played pivotal roles in that story, who have been doing this urgent, crucial, and all too often thankless work for decades: whether as archivists, curators, retrievers or restorers of lost or deteriorating fi lms; as fi lmmakers, scholars, or arts administrators; or as cinephiles who could not bear to lose our cinematic past. The story of our nation’s passionate archival advocacy, some of it within but much of it outside the purview of government institutions, is one that I could not have pieced together without the generosity of a few people in particular who I want to thank here: Vicky Belarmino of the Cultural Center of the Philippines and Mary del Pilar of ABS-CBN, patron saints of my research, lent me, nearly a decade ago now, dog-eared paper fi les of their early years with SOFIA and SEAPAVAA. It was Vicky Belarmino who gave me my fi rst copy of Clodualdo “Doy” del Mundo Jr.’s important monograph, Dreaming of a National Audio-Visual Archive (2004),1 a clarion call to the urgency of our archive crisis that forever changed the way I teach and think about Philippine cinema. Late last year, I was able to interview key fi gures in the archive movement who generously shared their experiences with me: Vicky Belarmino, Bono Olgado, Teddy Co, Martin Magsanoc, Cesar Hernando, Briccio Santos, and Ray Edmondson.

In what follows, I sketch a capsule history of the archival advocacy that strove to respond to the impending loss of the Philippines’ imperiled national cinema. The capsule history I present here will be non-linear and interpretive. My goal is not chronology so much as an attempt to grapple with where we are now and how we got here. Walter Benjamin cautions that in writing history, we have to honestly recognize those moments when the past’s horizon of expectations have not been fulfi lled by the present. To take stock of the past’s “unfulfi lled future” is part of the task of remembering.2 What were the dreams and expectations of fi lm archivists of the past, and have our present-day archival efforts fulfi lled these?

In talking about the history of Philippine audiovisual archiving, I’m well aware that the history I’ve reconstituted is like the Philippine media archive itself: partial, contested, vulnerable to error. But what I hope this capsule history does is help us better understand the long-term context of how we come to the conversations we’ll be having today. Today’s conference aims to foster a dialogue between members of the archive community and the newly-established National Film Archives of the Philippines, an NFAP that inherits the groundwork and the accomplishments of prior advocacies as well as the uphill battles, the wounds and losses of those earlier generations.

Archives don’t just preserve history: archives have a history too, and in the Philippines, various attempts to preserve our audiovisual past have been marked by vicissitude: changing presidential administrations and our fi ckle political culture. Over the years, this has unwittingly fostered what Briccio Santos rightly calls a state “culture of negligence” towards Philippine culture.3 Decades of state negligence, as we all know, imperiled the precious little that is left of Philippine fi lm history. That is the daunting task the NFAP faces: the task of turning away from a Philippine media culture marked by negligence and ephemerality towards a culture of sustainable preservation.

1This is the revised text of a talk of the same title I delivered at the Philippine Heritage Summit on January 25, 2013.


The urgency of the Philippines’ archival situation is well-recognized: it is estimated that only 37 percent of domestically-produced fi lms survive, whether in whole or in part: 3,000 titles from approximately 8,000 works since the introduction of the cinematograph in 1897. According to a report by archivist Arnulfo “Mack” Junio from 2005, of over 350 fi lms produced before the outbreak of World War II in the Philippines, “less than 10 titles [are] preserved in their original format”. As of 2005, only one nitrate fi lm print remained, Ibong Adarna (1941).4 In addition to Ibong Adarna, only a handful of feature-length Filipino fi lms from the pre-war era survive: Tunay na Ina, Pakiusap, Giliw Ko—all from 1938—and Zamboanga (1936),

a “lost” fi lm that fi lmmaker and historian Nick Deocampo discovered at the U.S. Library of Congress some years ago.5 In 2009, archival sleuthing by cinephile-collectors Teddy Co and Martin Magsanoc established that footage from two Filipino silent fi lms from 1931, Moro Pirates and Princess Tarhata, had been re-edited as a single fi lm and released in the U.S. market under the title Brides of Sulu in 1934. Co and Magsanoc’s efforts have unearthed some of the earliest surviving footage by local fi lmmakers recovered to date.6

The fragility of the Philippine audiovisual archive is all the more ironic when we consider that the Philippines, in partnership with Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA), pioneered Southeast Asian media archiving initiatives in the early 1990s.7 Considering that the Philippines was an early pioneer of the regional archive movement, it is ironic that we became a late implementer of the archive dream. Measured against the 116-year span of our country’s audiovisual history, state-funded national fi lm archives have existed in the Philippines for a mere 6 years.

Research on Philippine cinema is thus circumscribed by the acute temporal pressures of archival crisis. A dearth of funding, a lack of political will, and the deterioration of media storage formats conspire against a dwindling number of fi lms. The fi rst national fi lm archive ever funded by the state, the Film Archives of the Philippines (FAP), was established by the Marcos government in 1982 and shuttered shortly after the regime’s ouster in 1986.8 Not until 2002 did the Philippine government legislate the creation of another Philippine fi lm archive under the incipient Film Development Council (FDCP) of the Philippines; but this one-line archival mandate9 was left unrealized for almost a decade, until the founding of a new National Film Archive of the Philippines (NFAP) in 2011.10 Credit is due to current Chair Briccio Santos for being the fi rst leader of the FDCP to act on their archival mandate, and to the NFAP’s recently-appointed Head, Bono Olgado, for prioritizing the long-term sustainability of the recently established national fi lm archive.

In the twenty-fi ve year interval between the founding of the fi rst state fi lm archive and the second, fi lm restoration and preservation languished. The historic and long-awaited establishment of a new national fi lm archive, and the promising pledge of support from the French government,11 however, have not entirely delivered Philippine fi lm history from its predicament. The new NFAP collection is currently housed in a transitory archival storage facility in Cubao. The NFAP has prioritized building up its collection, aided by a presidential decree, Administrative Order 26.12 The NFAP Annual Report describes in detail the temperature-controlled facility in Cubao and the nature of their fast-growing collection of over 11,300 elements, the majority of which are on celluloid and analog videotape, so I won’t rehearse them here.13 But I do want to point out that the rapid growth of the NFAP collection—they are already at 70% capacity —means that new acquisitions are far outpacing the NFAP staff’s capacity to accession them in a timely manner. The number of qualifi ed archivists must grow as quickly as the NFAP collection grows.

The fi rst major fi lm project undertaken by the NFAP, the restoration and repatriation of Manuel Conde’s 1950 fi lm Genghis Khan, was completed last year. Other ambitious restoration projects are underway, notably Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag, the 1975 fi lm by Lino Brocka that heralded the dawn of what Joel David calls “the Second Golden Age” of Philippine Cinema.14 A new dynamism is palpable in Philippine fi lm archiving. To understand the continuing urgency of a full realization of the Philippines’ archival mandate, however, we need to go back to what happened in the long years before the establishment of the NFAP.

The dismantling of the fi rst FAP in 1986 and the eventual opening of a new NFAP in 2011 left an institutional vacuum, a yawning 25-year gap that has been fi lled with terrible stories. Doy del Mundo recounts that in 1994,

Figure 1. Fred Cortes in Ibong Adarna [Adarna Bird, dir. Vicente Salumbides and Manuel Conde, 1941], Philippine cinema’s only surviving nitrate fi lm print.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ARCHIVAL ADVOCACY FOR PHILIPPINE CINEMA


LVN, a major studio in the forties and fi fties, decided to discard fi lms by other production companies that had long remained unclaimed in its storage vaults. Only a handful of production outfi ts retrieved their fi lms upon being notifi ed of the purge; the rest of the fi lms – over a thousand rusting cans of celluloid comprising 72 titles – were dumped in the studio’s open basketball court, exposed to months of sun and rain.15 The desperation that seized Filipino fi lm and media archivists in the 1990s, in the absence of a state-funded national archive, led to an era of cooperation and collaboration in a decentralized archival advocacy among the largest remaining audiovisual archives in the country. These stakeholders were composed of “government and academic institutions”, chief among them, the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), the Philippine Information Agency (PIA), the University of the Philippines Film Institute (UPFI), and the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA), which funded several collaborative restoration projects. Among the “private and industry-based institutions”, the signifi cant players are the Mowelfund Film Institute, the fi lm studios, LVN Pictures and Sampaguita Pictures, and the broadcasting corporation, ABS-CBN, which has the premiere temperature-controlled archival storage facility in the Philippines, though critics rightly note that the profi t motives of a commercial TV network inevitably constrain the nature of their archival efforts.16

The third group of stakeholders include nongovernmental organizations and private individuals; in this category, the most important organization by far is SOFIA, the Society of Filipino Archivists for Film, which has functioned as the lead nongovernmental “coordinating body” in media preservation and restoration projects to date.17 Incorporated in June 1993, SOFIA’s 8 founding members were drawn from the prime movers of the archive community at that time: Agustin “Hammy” Sotto (CCP), Belina “Bel” Capul and Mary del Pilar (PIA), Annella Mendoza (UP Film Center), Josephine “Jo” Atienza; Ricky Orellana and Violeta Velasco (Mowelfund); and Renato (Sonny) San Miguel.18 Perusing the documents of SOFIA in the 1990s, the fi rst decade to see an organized though decentralized advocacy emerge in the Philippine fi lm community, my impression is that of a passionate, fl edgling archive movement whose clear priorities and palpable foresight were hampered by insuffi cient political will and inadequate funding.19 I will fi rst sketch the efforts of SOFIA before revisiting also the important contributions of other private individuals to Philippine fi lm archiving.

Galvanized by the disastrous emptying of LVN’s storage vaults, SOFIA in 1994 authored a “Draft of a Master Plan to save the Philippines’ Film Heritage”; I will highlight three of those initiatives here and trace the eventual implementation of those plans in turn. First, the creation of a systematic inventory or “master list” of surviving Filipino fi lms; second, the reproduction and restoration of 19 designated masterpieces of Philippine cinema;20 and third, the dream of establishing a national audiovisual archive.21 As to the fi rst task, an unpublished master inventory was drafted in 2005, a ground-breaking effort by SOFIA and the NCCA. Undertaken between 2002 and 2005, the inventory was conducted by three seasoned archivists, fi lm historian Doy del Mundo, Jr. and the chief fi lm archivists of the CCP and LVN Pictures, Vicky Belarmino and Mack Junio, respectively.22 The authors engaged in a painstaking reel-by-reel and tape by tape inspection of the various media formats of existing archival holdings in the Philippines: “35mm, 16mm, Super-8; Betacam, Betamax, VHS, S-VHS, U-matic, disc.” The master inventory lists 3,738 titles in various conditions ranging from excellent to good to “vinegar syndrome 2-3”, plus a number of unlabeled reels in an advanced state of decay.23 Of the second task of restoration and reproduction of canonical Philippine fi lms: of those 19 fi lms prioritized for restoration by PIA and SOFIA in 1997, selected for their “high heritage value”, 13 have been restored to date, 12 of which were positive to positive prints, while the last title, Manila by Night: City After Dark, was restored as a gift by the South Korean government in 2009 as a digital data fi le.24 In addition, SOFIA had successfully spearheaded the restoration of 18 fi lms by 2004.25

The third part of the plan sketched by SOFIA, the establishment not only of a national audiovisual archive but also of a permanent archival storage facility, has not yet been realized. A 1996 report conducted by two preservationists based in Australia, Mark Nizette and Guy Petherbridge, singled out the National Arts Center in Mount Makiling as the most suitable site for a national audiovisual archive, not least because of its “lower average temperature” and “lowered pollution levels”.26 As we learned from this morning’s presentation of plans for the NFAP’s permanent archival facility, it is possible that its newly envisioned archive compound will be located in Tagaytay.

So far, I’ve been talking about SOFIA as a key non-governmental stakeholder in Philippine archival advocacy. Now I’d like to turn to the efforts of private individuals who were also non-governmental stakeholders, many of whose accomplishments precede the establishment of SOFIA in 1993.

According to a 1983 article by Ernie de Pedro, who was then serving as Director of the fi rst FAP, recognition of the “archival and instructional value of cinema” dates to 1909, during the American colonial period, when Secretary of the Interior Dean Worcester advocated the use of fi lm to record disappearing Filipino folk traditions and the Manila Times newspaper “proposed the establishment of a fi lm archive to preserve moving images for posterity.”27 These calls would be renewed in the postwar, post-independence period. In 1952, fi lmmaker Vicente Salumbides voiced a need to establish fi lm libraries in the country in his book, Motion Pictures in the Philippines. SOFIA’s account of landmarks in Philippine fi lm archiving and restoration also notes that the fi rst AV preservation practices were pioneered by lab technicians like Aquilino Jarlego at LVN, who “devised a simple yet systematic [method of] hand-cleaning fi lms, shelving, and documenting his work.”28

Another pioneer of Philippine fi lm archiving is Ben Pinga, an early champion of Filipino documentary fi lmmaking and a charismatic advocate of fi lm pedagogy who successfully founded the country’s fi rst fi lm schools.29 Having joined the



Army Signal Corps in 1948, Pinga was given an Armed Forces scholarship that facilitated his fi lm training in New York in the early 1950s: a three-year course on Film Technique at the City College of New York, as well as training in radio, Television, and Film at various other New York schools. A tireless institution-builder, Pinga contributed to the founding of several key institutions in the Philippine fi lm scene: the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS), the University of the Philippines Institute of Mass Communication, and the Film Institute of the Philippines, which was affi liated with the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila.30 In 1977, he organized the Film Heritage Foundation of the Philippines and the country’s fi rst conferences on fi lm cataloguing and preservation.31 Active until even the late 1990s, Pinga’s legacy in various spheres of Philippine fi lm culture live on in his students: among them, celebrated director Ishmael Bernal, who cited Pinga’s infl uence as the reason he became involved with fi lmmaking. Pinga’s guiding hand was behind Bernal’s decision to study at the Film Institute of India.32 Two more of Pinga’s former students are still making crucial contributions to archiving today: fi lm historian and SOFIA President Doy del Mundo, and fi lm collector and poster designer Cesar Hernando.33 Hernando organized one of the country’s fi rst exhibitions of fi lm memorabilia in 2003,34 and his picture research can be found in some of the most important books we have on Philippine Cinema, from the Urian Anthology to Nicanor Tiongson’s monograph on innovative independent fi lmmaker Manuel Conde.35

Another exemplar of an early archival consciousness in Philippine Cinema is a cinephilic fi lmmaker who was one of the fi rst to recognize and address the problem of media obsolescence. In the 1980s, deteriorating Studio Era classics were transferred to Betamax by Mike de Leon, grandson of the LVN studio founder, Doña Narcisa “Sisang” de Leon and a major director of the Philippine New Cinema.36 In some cases, these fl ickering Betamax tapes are now the last extant copies of lost LVN fi lms, themselves objects of restoration on digital video. As is well known, Mike de Leon fi gures in the story of the rediscovery of Giliw Ko, a former lost fi lm that was then found under conditions of pronounced serendipity. Mike de Leon was working in the LVN laboratory when Remigio Young, the fi lm’s cinematographer, called to say, “I have a gift for you.” Young presented de Leon with the last surviving 16 mm print of Giliw Ko.37 In 1998, that very 16 mm print— “badly warped” and previously “dismissed as beyond repair” by archivists—was collaboratively restored by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) and the PIA for the centennial celebration of Philippine Independence.38 The remarkable story of the fi nding of Giliw Ko is simultaneously the chilling story of the precariousness of its provenance: had the cinematographer not kept a 16 mm print, had this somehow not found its way back to LVN via Mike de Leon and eventually come to the attention of SOFIA and the NFSA, the fi rst sound fi lm of one of the Big Three studios of Philippine cinema’s classical fi lm period would have been lost to us forever.

As these stories attest, the actions of private individuals who exemplifi ed what we would now name, in hindsight, a kind of archival consciousness, was absolutely vital in the years prior to the founding of SOFIA. In 1982, renowned fi lmmaker Lino Brocka put together a team of researchers to locate the fi lms of National Artist Gerardo de Leon for a retrospective at the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines (ECP). The team Brocka assembled included fi lm historian and SOFIA co-founder Hammy Sotto; movie poster designer and Gerry de Leon fi lm buff Vic de lo Tavo; and cinephile-collector Teddy Co. Sotto and de lo Tavo had begun a similar project years before, locating fi lms for an earlier Gerry de Leon fi lm festival at the now-defunct Museo ng Buhay Pilipino in 1977. The continuing work of locating the last surviving de Leon fi lms in the early 1980s resulted in Co’s discovery of a 35 mm print of Noli me Tangere in the hands of a 16mm fi lm booker for the television broadcast market in the pre-Umatic period. This is the very print of Noli that Teddy Co proposed the Goethe Institute restore to mark the centennial of the publication of Rizal’s novel in Berlin in 1887. The 35 mm restoration of Noli me Tangere by the Deutsches Bundesarchive —spearheaded by a passionate fi lm buff acting without the aid of the Philippine government and funded by a foreign cultural institution —became the fi rst major fi lm restoration of Philippine fi lm history in 1989.39

Recalling these stories of what a handful of individuals managed to do in both the pre-SOFIA and pre-NFAP era, the point to be taken away here is that these hard-won successes are not only acts of private individuals. Pinga’s early advocacy, Mike de Leon’s rescue of LVN fi lms, the rediscovery and restoration of major works of Gerry de

Figure 2. Mila del Sol and Fernando Poe star in the romantic musical comedy, Giliw Ko [My Beloved, dir. Carlos Vander Tolosa, 1939].



Leon—these watershed moments are caught up in webs of causality, serendipity, and collaboration. These are cross-generational stories of collaboration and infl uence, a thread that connects Ben Pinga in the 1950s to the fi lms of Bernal in the 1980s and to the founders of SOFIA in the 1990s. Linkages between Lino Brocka, Hammy Sotto, and Vic de lo Tavo produced the conditions of possibility that allowed Teddy Co to initiate the restoration of Gerry de Leon’s Noli. In turn, the successful restoration of Noli in 1989 served as an early inspiration for Martin Magsanoc, who went on to supervise and coordinate the repatriation and restoration of Manuel Conde’s Genghis Khan in 2012. In academia, scholars like Doy del Mundo, Nick Deocampo, Nic Tiongson, and Hammy Sotto have shown us that it is possible to conduct rigorous scholarship even in the face of a fragile or partial archive, the kind of scholarship that leads to fi lms being retrieved, revalued, or saved, scholarship that foments real social action in the world.

In this last section of my talk, I’d like to articulate some of the big questions posed by this moment when a newly established NFAP is reaching out to its constituents for support and collaboration.

As we know, there have to date only been two national fi lm archives in the Philippines: the short-lived Film Archives of the Philippines (FAP) during the Marcos era; and the new NFAP established in 2011. What are the consequences we’re living with from those 25 gap years, that long interval during which the country was without a national fi lm archive?

I asked Bono Olgado this very question. His reply emphasized the tragic loss of not only countless fi lms but also information about them. This loss of continuity is “manifested in weak paper trails, unknown rights issues, unknown locations of fi lms”, as well as the erosion of public support and momentum for fi lm preservation.40 Loss, discontinuity, and cultural ephemerality are the painful leitmotifs of the history of Philippine fi lm archiving, which Teddy Co has called a “Sisyphean history”, a “history of fi ts and starts”,41 the frustrating history of an urgent task that cannot ever seem to be completed.

But underneath or alongside this history of discontinuities also runs less obvious but nonetheless signifi cant continuities. There is an institutional continuity of mandate and function between the old ECP and the new FDCP.42 There are also continuities and overlaps between SOFIA and the new NFAP. NFAP head Bono Olgado is a SOFIA member, while Eros Arbilon and Emilio “Mhel” Acurin, the NFAP’s senior archivists, trained with Ricky Orellana of Mowelfund and Mike de Leon at LVN, respectively.43 Mike de Leon himself is a key fi gure who mediates between the old Studio Era cinema and the New Cinema of the 70s and 80s, but also prefi gures the nascent archival movement of our own time.

Another important consequence of the 25 gap years between the FAP and the NFAP is that archival advocacy for fi lm became both decentralized and privatized. The state’s abdication of its responsibility to fi lm meant that a handful of private collectors stepped in during the breach. We owe a debt of gratitude to such private collectors, but a tension is inherent between the impulse to privatization vis-a-vis the NFAP’s stated objective of an archive that provides “permanent access” under the stewardship of the state. The impulse of the private collector is to hold onto items whose rarity is a source of prestige, to share only within a limited circle of friends and fellow collectors. But our fi lmic heritage is no one person’s private property, and the chief stewardship of that heritage is now being centralized by the state. How this deep tension between decentralized privatization and state centralization plays out remains to be seen.

We are on the brink of change: the NFAP has fi nally been established, and the state is playing a newly active role after 25 years of indifference. What are the consequences of this sudden shift from an indifferent state to a government that has now taken the helm of the Philippine archiving movement?

As Briccio Santos remarked in an interview last year, the long years of state indifference means that people’s willingness to work with the government can sometimes be “laced with suspicion.”44 Getting people to trust government-led fi lm initiatives is diffi cult, especially because the last administration keenly interested in Philippine cinema was the Marcos regime, which famously used cultural projects for their own ends. But, as Santos pointed out, it is important to distinguish between the political ends to which fi lm can be put by cynical powers, and the legitimate, and very real, “cultural needs of the people” to which archives respond. What I am starting to realize is that the need for trust and good working relationships among an archive’s constituency is as real as the need for a permanent archival facility to house our fi lms. The state archive’s constituency, as Ray Edmondson defi nes it, are the stakeholders, friends and supporters who will “defend the archive when it’s threatened” but also serve as a “constructive critic”, a necessary counterbalance that keeps an archive “honest and in touch with its supporters.”45

Trust is also a temporal issue, an issue of time, as Edmondson notes in his statement on sustainability:

“Organisational continuity or ‘perpetual succession’ (if the organisation is merged with another) are implicit in the idea of preservation. Archives which start up with lots of promise and then fail to survive organisationally or to perform competently destroy public confi dence in the whole idea of preservation, and can do immense damage. Archives are inherently permanent entities... government instrumentalities come and go, but archives have to go on forever.46”

There is an inherent mismatch, as Edmondson notes, between archival permanency and the shorter cycles of government



appointments. As Doy del Mundo’s recent article in the Philippine Daily Inquirer points out,47 fi lm archive initiatives in the Philippines have historically been extremely susceptible to changes in administration; projects prioritized by the FDCP under one leadership may not continued by the next presidential appointee. Yet the extremely long-term temporality of real archiving—which extends beyond a single person’s lifetime—contrasts strongly with the short-term cycles of appointments for key government posts related to fi lm. Real plans for sustainability have to take note of these temporal contradictions.

How do we ensure the NFAP’s sustainability? To its credit, the NFAP is tackling this question head on. The answer is likely to be multi-pronged, a combination of a legislative agenda that secures a Republic Act that amplifi es the FDCP’s archival mandate and guarantees continuity and funding for the archive; fi scal and staffi ng strategies that gain plantilla positions to ensure that the archive has qualifi ed people to run its operations; partnerships with the private and non-profi t sectors or bilateral agreements with international partners to provide funding and other forms of support, and to induce the state to maintain a certain “national composure” where the archives are concerned.48

Last night, when I fi nished writing this talk, I thought, 10 years from now, will we remember this day, and will a national Philippine fi lm archive still exist? The need for sustainability is so dire that it demands we think about it creatively and effectively. It is at the heart of the crucial conversations, encounters, and projects that I hope we begin today.


1. Clodualdo del Mundo Jr., Dreaming of a National Audio-Visual Archive. Society of Film Archivists (SOFIA) monograph for Ukay-Ukay: Where’s the Archive, a Festival of Restored Filipino Film Classics in Celebration of SOFIA’s 11th Anniversary, July 2004.

2. Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken , 1968), 254; see also Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press,1987), 13-16.

3. Briccio Santos, personal interview with Bliss Cua Lim, November 5, 2012, Film Development Council of the Philippines Offi ce, Makati.4. Society of Film Archivists (SOFIA), Terminal Report: Philippine Audiovisual Archives Collections: An Inventory. October 2005. Earlier

Undated Draft entitled “Philippine Audiovisual Archives Collections: An Inventory”, hereafter referred to as AV Heritage Inventory draft, 7-8.5. Nick Deocampo, “Zamboanga: Lost Philippine-Made Film Discovered in U.S. Archive”, Movement (February 2004): 2-7.6. Bayani San Diego, Jr., “Archivists reclaim 2 silent PH fi lms ‘pirated’ by US,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, August 26, 2011. http://entertainment.

inquirer.net/11043/archivists-reclaim-2-silent-ph-fi lms-‘pirated’-by-us-fi lm-fest-opens-friday.7. “Philippines hosts fi rst conference of AV archive institutions,” The Southeast Asia-Pacifi c AV Archives Bulletin, Offi cial Quarterly Newsletter

of the Southeast Asia-Pacifi c Audio-Visual Archive Association (SEAPAVAA) 1.1 (January-March 1996): 1, 14.8. According to most sources, the Film Archives of the Philippines (FAP) closed in 1986; however, in a roundtable session following this talk at the

National Film Archive of the Philippines’ Philippine Heritage Summit on January 25, 2013, Ernie de Pedro, former Director of the FAP, claimed that foreign funding from four international organizations allowed him to keep the FAP open until 1989.

9. Republic Act 9167, “An Act Creating The Film Development Council of the Philippines, Defi ning its Powers and Functions, Appropriating Funds Therefor, and for other purposes”, Congress of the Philippines, Twelfth Congress, First Regular Session, June 7, 2002. The one-line archival mandate reads: “ To ensure the establishment of a fi lm archive in order to conserve and protect fi lm negatives and/or prints as part of the nation’s historical, cultural, and artistic heritage”. http://www.lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra2002/ra_9167_2002.html.

10. Bayani San Diego, Jr. “FDCP fi lm archives now fully operational,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, July 9, 2011. http://entertainment.inquirer.net/5147/fdcp-fi lm-archives-now-fully-operational.

11. “France to Assist Local Efforts to Upgrade Film Archives.” Sunstar Manila 2011 - November 28: http://www.sunstar.com.ph/manila/local-news/2011/2011/2028/france-assist-local-efforts-upgrade-fi lm-archives-system-192969.

12. President of the Philippines, Administrative Order No. 26. “Prescribing the Rules on the Deposit of Copies of Films and Other Audio-Visuals to the National Film Archive of the Philippines.” Malacañang Palace, Manila , April 17, 2012.

13. National Film Archive of the Philippines, Annual Report, 2011-2012, 8-11.14. Joel David, “A Second Golden Age (An Informal History)”, The National Pastime: Contemporary Philippine Cinema (Metro Manila: Anvil

Publishing, 1990) 1-17.15. Del Mundo, Dreaming, 16.16. Report on ASEAN Seminar on Film and Video Archive Management, held May 8 to June 3, 1995, 5-6; and Benedict S. Olgado,

“Undergraduate Thesis Proposal: Towards a National Film Archive, an Analysis of and a White Paper on Policies and Practices in Film Preservation in the Philippines.” 2008, 3-4.

17. Belina Capul, “Annex H: Toward a National Film Archive for the Philippines, Presented at the Workshop/ Consultative Meeting on the Development Plan for AV Archiving in the Region: The ASEAN Catalogue of Film and Television Productions.” Quezon City, Philippines, December 1-5, 1997. 3-4.

18. Annella M. Mendoza, “Seven Years of the Society of Film Archivists.” Society of Film Archivists (SOFIA) Newsletter 1.1 (August 1999): 1,7.19. For an example of SOFIA’s foresight and focus in articulating the priorities of archival advocacy for Philippine cinema going forward, see

(PIA), Philippine Information Agency, and Society of Film Archivists (SOFIA). Consultation Meeting Establishing the National Film/Video Archive Facility, Annotated Agenda, 1997.

20. Letter and Project Proposal from Honesto M. Isleta, Press Undersecretary, Philippine Information Agency Offi cer-in-Charge, to Jaime Laya, Chairman of the Board, National Commission for Culture and the Arts. September 8, 1997. Isleta writes: “…the Philippine Information Agency in cooperation with some members of the Society of Film Archivists (SOFIA) is submitting the proposed programs and projects and the corresponding budget estimates in connection with the development of the National Film/Video Archive in the country for the CY 1998-2000.”

21. Annella M. Mendoza, Draft Elements for a Master Plan to Save the Philippines’ Film Heritage (Society of Film Archivists, Sofi a) June 29, 1994. 1-4.

22. SOFIA, Terminal Report, 5 .23. AV Heritage Inventory draft, 3.24. The 1997 PIA-SOFIA proposal presented by PIA Press Undersecretary Honesto M. Isleta to NCCA Chair Jaime Laya selected 19 fi lms for

restoration according to the following criteria: “endangered Filipino fi lm classics whose survival is in immediate risk unless promptly restored; fi lms that are sociologically, culturally, historically and artistically signifi cant; landmark fi lms or sample fi lms of a specifi c genre.” In addition to 19 fi lms for restoration, Isleta proposed a 20th request, the cleaning of canonical fi lms produced by Bancom. Isleta Letter to Laya, 1997. According to Belarmino, the 13 fi lms listed in Isleta’s proposal that were subsequently successfully restored (though not necessarily through PIA-NCCA) include: Passionate Strangers; Moises Padilla Story; Seksing-seksi; Portrait of an Artist as a Filipino; Pagdating sa Dulo; Manila by Night; Ligaw na Bulaklak; Anak Dalita; Kundiman ng Lahi; Badjao; Giliw Ko; Ibong Adarna; and Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa. The following 6 fi lms in Isleta’s proposal have not been restored because requisite elements have not been found: Tenth Batallion sa Korea; Agilang Itim; Bomba Star; Room 69; Jaguar; and Salawahan. Belarmino, online video interview with Bliss Cua Lim, May 26, 2012.


A BRIEF HISTORY OF ARCHIVAL ADVOCACY FOR PHILIPPINE CINEMA RAFA

25. The fi nal page of Dreaming of a National Audio-Visual Archive lists the following 18 titles as SOFIA-led fi lm restorations completed by July 2004: Ano ang Kulay ng Mukha ng Diyos?; Banta ng Kahapon; Biyaya ng Lupa; Dalagang Ilocana; Giliw Ko; Jack and Jill; Maalaala mo kaya?; Malvarosa; MN; The Moises Padilla Story; Noli me Tangere; Pagdating sa Dulo; Passionate Strangers; Sanda Wong; Seksing-seksi: Mapanghalina; Stardoom; Tunay na Ina; and White Slavery. See Dreaming, 29.

26. Mark Nizette and Guy Petherbridge. Assessment of Potential Sites for a Philippines National Audio Visual Archives Facility, July 1996, 1-3.27. Ernie de Pedro, “Overview of Philippine Cinema”, Filipino Film Review 1.4 (October-December 1983), 26-27.28. Society of Film Archivists (SOFIA), Audiovisual Archiving in the Philippines: Landmark Developments. Presented at the Strategic Planning

Workshop Towards the Establishment of the National Audiovisual Archive, Development Academy of the Philippines, Tagaytay City, January 2000, 5-7.

29. My thanks to Teddy Co for telling me about Pinga and directing me to Mowelfund, which has Pinga’s collected papers.30. Gleaned from the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan Award for Film Arts conferred on Ben Pinga by the Offi ce of the Mayor, Republic of the

Philippines in 1992. Ben Pinga Papers, Mowelfund Institute.31. “Biodata of Mr. Ben Pinga” dated March 30, 1992. Ben Pinga Papers, Mowelfund Institute.32. Sulyap Kultura 1996, 68-69. (Incomplete fragments of article, untitled and unauthored, from Ben Pinga Papers, Mowelfund Institute.)33. Teddy Co, personal interview with Bliss Cua Lim, September 30, 2012, at his residence in Santa Mesa Heights.34. “Cinema Paraiso: An Exhibition of Cinema Artifacts and Memorabilia” was a project of the Committee on Cinema, National Commission for

Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and held on February 19 to April 30, 2003 in Intramuros, Manila.35. The Urian Anthology: 1980-1989, ed. Nicanor Tiongson (Manila: Antonio P. Tuviera, 2001); and Nicanor Tiongson, The Cinema of Manuel

Conde (Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2008).36. Del Mundo writes, “There was no budget for telecine transfer, so [Mike de Leon] merely projected the fi lms and recorded them off the screen

with a Betamax camera and recorder. The improvised recording was not able to get rid of the fl ickering effect.” Del Mundo, “Dreaming of a National Audio-Visual Archive,” Dreaming, 8-9.

37. As related by Martin Magsanoc, personal interview with Bliss Cua Lim, October 5, 2012, SMX Convention Center, Pasay City.38. Mark Juddery, “Saving Giliw Ko,” The news [National Film and Sound Archive Australia] Summer 1998-99, 5. < http://www.latrobe.edu.au/

screeningthepast/shorts/reports/MJss6c.htm>.39. Teddy Co, personal interview with Lim.40. Benedict “Bono” Olgado, personal interview with Bliss Cua Lim, September 19, 2012, at NFAP Archive Operations offi ce, Cubao, Quezon City.41. Teddy Co, personal interview with Lim.42. Like the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines in the 1980s, the Film Development Council of our own decade is an umbrella organization

that oversees various foci that are similar to those of the now defunct ECP: a ratings or censorship arm, a focus on national and international fi lm festivals, a program for incentivizing the production of quality or art fi lm productions through tax breaks, and an archival function, which may sometimes get obscured or overshadowed by the other functions and mandates of this broad umbrella organization. See Nicanor G. Tiongson, “The Filipino Film Industry.” East-West Film Journal 6.2 (1992): 32-33; and similar points made by Belarmino and Co in interviews with the author.

43. Olgado, personal interview with author.44. Santos, personal interview with author.45. Ray Edmondson, “Notes on Sustainability of Audiovisual Archives”, included in this publication, 2013 Philippine Cinema Heritage Summit: A

Report.46. Edmondson, “Notes on sustainability.”47. Clodualdo del Mundo Jr., “The dream need not be a nightmare”, Philippine Daily Inquirer January 23, 2013. http://entertainment.inquirer.

net/77897/the-dream-need-not-be-a-nightmare.48. Santos, personal interview with author.


ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION 1ASSESSING THE FIELD: REPORTS FROM PHILIPPINE A/V ARCHIVES AND STAKEHOLDERS

The aim of this roundtable was to do a quick survey of the current conditions, engagements, and future plans of various archiving institutions and related stakeholders. From cultural organizations to government agencies, private studios to academic institutions, vendors to fi lmmakers – the roundtable sought to provide a general idea of the current state and future direction of the fi eld and Philippine cinematic heritage at large.

Summary of statements and discussions

Ricky Orellana, MOWELFUND Film Institute MOWELFUND has actively collected and taken care of its produced and co-produced works since the 80s. Most of these fi lms are early short works by now key fi lmmakers done during MOWELFUND’s workshops.

Also through the Pelikula at Lipunan program, MOWELFUND through the leadership of Nick De Ocampo was able to reprint and restore a number of classic Filipino fi lms including “Sanda Wong” and “The Moises Padilla Story.” The repatriated print of the fi lm “Zamboanga” is also in MOWELFUND together with the Cebuano fi lms “Badlis sa Kinabuhi” and “Manok ni San Pedro” among others. MOWELFUND has a good inventory of its collection

MOWELFUND however does not have the budget to actually operate an archive.

Its long-term plan is to turn over master preservation copies of MOWELFUND to NFAP

Vicky Belarmino, Cultural Center of the Philippines CCP is the custodian of majority of the collection of the defunct Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, prints of most of the fi lms shown during the early years of Manila International Film Festival, and a number of key classics that CCP acquired through the leadership of the late Hammy Sotto. Filmmakers and producers throughout the years also made a few donations and deposits to the collection.

During the past decade, the CCP collection has grown mainly because of the Cinemalaya fi lms that by default goes to its fi lm archives for safekeeping. CCP has an ongoing digitization program of its wide video collection

CCP for the most part has remained supportive in trying to maintain a stable environment for its audiovisual collection. Nonetheless, they are open and look forward to a working relationship with NFAP, which includes turning over the collection to the Archives.

Leo Katigbak, ABS-CBNABS-CBN Film Archives was put up in 1994 mainly for commercial considerations because the company started acquiring fi lm collections and libraries from studios and producers while also producing its own movies via Star Cinema.

Throughout the years the ABS-CBN Film Archives has operated a state-of-the-art facility where fi lm elements are well taken care of, constantly managed, and duly utilized.

One of the major things the archive is doing right now is the restoration of fi lms in its collection. “Himala” and “Oro Plata Mata” are the fi rst two projects ABS-CBN have accomplished through the help of Central Digital Labs.

Lito Cruz, IBC 13 The IBC 13 collection is mostly composed of the network’s produced television shows since the later 80s. This includes titles such as “Chicks to Chicks,” and “T.O.D.A.S.”

As of September 2012, IBC 13 has turned over its collection to NFAP for safekeeping given the institution’s lack of capabilities and resources to do so.

Mr. Cruz reported that IBC 13 found a number of soundtracks of musicals and old television commercials in their facilities as well that they plan to turn over to NFAP.


Bel Capul, Philippine Information Agency As an information agency, PIA produces and holds multimedia materials on various topics to serve the needs of various government agencies as such they have ads, shorts, documentaries produced by the agency on government programs for its public dissemination activities. They also have raw footage documenting the activities of the President and the government at large. In particular that of the Marcos presidency. It also has a Cinema Collection, which includes titles that it co-produced, processed, restored, and/or has been deposited for safekeeping.

The responsibility of maintaining the archives and library rest with the PIA AV archives and library section of the Management Information System Division after the motion picture division was abolished in 2004.

Currently, the focus is preparing the collection for digitization for greater access. Film inspection and initial condition assessment is almost complete and some cost estimates are now being prepared to source funds for the project. The content management system has been developed and tested.

Capul reports that as PIA prepares for the digitization of its collection, the issue of maintaining a physical storage space for the analog collection becomes less of a burden. Thus it is timely for PIA because after they digitize their materials it would be possible to turn over the analog ones to NFAP for storage.

PIA, Capuls states, would be happy to turn over their collection in phases starting with its feature fi lm holdings, which are not really needed in their work. Nonetheless, the practicalities of getting permission from the owners especially with regards to original negatives have to be worked out, Capul asserts.

Misha Anissimov, University of San Carlos (USC)Mr. Anissimov established the Tioseco-Bohinc Film Archive at USC, starting with his own personal collection of foreign works and growing it with the acquisition of digital copies of short fi lms produced in Cebu.

The main goal is to build a strong fi lm culture in the University, the city, and the region at large, and the Archives is a key element in reaching this goal.

Rick Hawthorne, Central Digital Lab Central Digital Lab based in Manila is a postproduction company that services the advertising and fi lm industry, as well as the archives. Central continues to service the ABS-CBN archives with its various requirements including their most recent restoration projects. Such services are also available to other producers, studios, and archives.

Hawthorne expressed his enthusiasm for the preservation of the rich cinematic heritage of the Philippines and stressed that with new tools and the developing technology generations of Filipinos to come can be able to enjoy these fi lms.

Nick de Ocampo, Filmmaker & Film Historian/Scholar De Ocampo has a personal collection of fi lm materials and extra-fi lmic materials, which he has collected throughout the years as a fi lmmaker, scholar, and historian. His collection beyond his personal output can be classifi ed into three: (1) colonial fi lms, (2) Filipino fi lms made in foreign countries, and (3) textual documents (which he declared he will turn over to Ateneo de Manila University).

De Ocampo mentioned that he intends to turn over his collection to NFAP.

Raymond Red, FilmmakerRaymond Red is a fi lmmaker for more than 30 years now who has works in various fi lm, video, and digital formats.

Red shared his experiences and diffi culties managing his own collection as an individual and called for the need to educate fi lmmakers and producers while also raising awareness on archiving and preservation.

Lourdes David, Ateneo de Manila University David shared ADMU’s Rizal Library’s rich collection of extra-fi lmic materials, which includes newspapers, and photographs which are key resources in fi lm research and scholarship as well.

*The last part of this roundtable had Mr. Olgado answering questions from the fl oor regarding digital archiving and preservation

ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION 1

*transcript of this roundtable discussion to follow as an annex

RCS


ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION 2COLLABORATING TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY

This session served as an open forum discussing and exploring collaboration and sustainability. In particular, participants raised points, concerns, questions, and suggestions surrounding the following key topics: (1) identifying opportunities, gaps, and threats on ensuring sustainability, (2) securing and strengthening legal and political grounds and mandates, and (3) formulating an economically sound preservation environment. By learning from the past, analyzing the present, and projecting the future, summit participants were tasked to assess the crucial fi rst years of NFAP and explore its possibilities in the years to come.

Overview of Discussions

Ernie de Pedro on the rise and fall of the Film Archives of the Philippines Former Director-General of the defunct Film Archives of the Philippines Ernie de Pedro gave his fi rst hand account of the rise and fall of the pioneering attempt of the Philippine Government to establish and run a national fi lm archives during the Marcos era.

De Pedro touched on various issues including political instability, technical and staff development, economics and funding, and stakeholders’ support and international relations.

De Pedro gave some sound advice and fair warnings to NFAP given his experiences with FAP.

Collection provenance and securityThere was a short discussion regarding the fate and ultimately the provenance of the fi lm collection of FAP after its fall. A number of participants shared their varying accounts on the matter. The summit as a whole ended up proposing a much rigorous research and oral history on the identifi ed “gap years” of the Philippine archiving movement.

NFAP’s sustainability and risk assessment Bono Olgado shared NFAP’s sustainability and risk assessment and accordingly, the Archive’s immediate plans in various fronts in response. In particular, NFAP together with its mother agency the FDCP is dealing with (1) strengthening legal grounds, (2) securing funding and sound economics, (3) establishing networks and touching base with stakeholders, and (4) preparing for transitions, political and whatnot. Olgado stressed that advocacy, collaboration, and institutionalization are at the core of its sustainability strategies.

Economics, organizational structures and the archive movement as a whole Summit participants raised the issue of political instability, changing government priorities, and unstable funding and economics as the main threats to the sustainability of NFAP and the archive movement as a whole.

In line with this, several points and suggestions were further brought forward such as the market valuation and economics of archives, the provision of legal security nets, the consideration of having a decentralized archiving movement, the establishment of a strong development arm, the various organizational models possible, and the need for greater advocacy and public support.

*transcript of this roundtable discussion to follow as an annex


NOTES ON SUSTAINABILITYRay Edmondson

An adequate resource base is essential No archive I know of has a budget large enough to answer to all its needs, so growing the resource base over time will be a constant preoccupation. Government sources of funding can be supplemented by sponsorships, donations, bequests, revenue from services and screenings and so on. This is a large subject in itself and there are pitfalls. It can be useful to look at successful sponsorship projects run by other archives, for example. “Cutting your coat according to your cloth”This is a well-known maxim – it means keep your activities to within the capability of your budget, and I’ve heard it propounded often. As a management principle it’s true as far as it goes, but it doesn’t quiet go far enough. It can also be a recipe for stagnation. We learned at the NFSA that you have to “bite off a bit more than you can chew” – so to speak – or you don’t grow. Advocacy and friends’ groupsIt is essential to build a “constituency” of people and organisations who will take an intelligent interest in the ar-chive’s work, will support it, will network for it, will encourage acquisitions and will defend it when it’s threatened (as it will be sooner or later). The archive’s management has to learn how to communicate well with its constituency – and that means more than just sending out newsletters or publicity. It means face to face meetings and consulta-tion and the personal involvement of the archive’s director and board. This is harder than it sounds. All organisations, as they grow, risk becoming complacent, inward looking and hubristic. This happened to the NFSA more than once with near-fatal consequences. External bodies like SOFIA should not only support the archive’s work but be a constructive critic and help to keep it honest and in touch with its support-ers. Such groups should be visibly independent of the archive but have an active working relationship with it.

PublicityThe archive needs to attract publicity: people can’t respond to or support an archive they have never heard of. There are many ways of doing this. The NFSA’s most successful awareness-raising project in its early days was a nationwide search for lost fi lm – “The Last Film Search” – which captured public imagination. But it was also ac-tive in seeking appearances on TV chat shows, getting stories about new “fi nds” into the press, and so on. The best publicity is free publicity.

Access The collection – or at least some parts of it – needs to be accessible to the public, either by personal visit, public screenings, web access or otherwise. An archive which is not accessible will soon fi nd it hard to justify its existence to the government or maintain relationships with supporters. The purpose of preservation is permanent access – preservation which does not have this goal is pointless.

About the Author: Ray Edmondson is Director of Archive Associates, a consultancy company. He began his career in archiving in the Film Section of the National Library of Australia in 1968, ultimately becoming the Section’s Director. Described as the ‘moving spirit’ behind the creation of the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) in 1984, he served as its Deputy Director until early 2001, then becoming its fi rst honorary Curator Emeritus. In 1987 he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for his professional work, and in 2003 received the Silver Light Award of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) for career achievement. Ray is the founding President of the Southeast Asia Pacifi c Audiovisual Archive Association (SEAPAVAA) and has provided assistance to the archiving movement in the Philippines throughout the years.

Ray writes, speaks and teaches internationally within the audiovisual archiving fi eld. Since 1996 he has been involved in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program, authoring its current General Guidelines, and presently serves on its national, regional and international committees. His monograph Audiovisual Archiving: Philosophy and Principles was published by UNESCO in 2004 and recently received his doctorate degree at Charles Sturt University.


Credits It is an aspect of publicity, but whenever the archive supplies footage or a service it should require than appropri-ate acknowledgement be given – for example, in the rolling credits at the end of a TV program. Archives are easily taken for granted as a taxpayer-funded service and this tendency has to be overcome. Staffi ng and training Staff should be chosen with care. Archiving is a vocation, not just a job. External training is expensive – it should be used where possible – but internal training is cheaper and can be done in various ways. Skills training is obviously essential; less obvious, but equally essential, is a theoretical grounding in the principles, philosophy and ethos of audiovisual archiving. There is now a good literature available for reference. Governance and enabling instrument An archive needs good and transparent governance. There needs to be an overriding board or committee that is responsible for policy, strategic direction and accountable administration and this has to be based around pub-lished terms of reference or other “enabling instrument”. If people are to trust the archive they must know it is a well run and accountable operation. How is the board or committee appointed? Who are its members? What are its powers? What stakeholders does it represent? Autonomy Complete organisational autonomy is best, but where the archive is part of a parent organisation – as in this case – it needs to at least have professional autonomy in its decision making, and for this fact to be publicly clear. This is an important aspect of public trust and goes to the heart of the ability to raise sponsorship and other support. ContinuityIt is human nature to place confi dence and belief in people rather than organisations. A fi lm collector donating ma-terial to the archive will do so because he trusts the staff member he has dealt with, rather than some impersonal organisation. This is a dilemma that has to be managed! An archive needs both the continuity of long standing, committed experts as well as constant infusions of new blood! When you accept a fi lm for preservation, the donor’s assumption is that you are going to look after it forever. Organisational continuity or “perpetual succession” (if the organisation is merged with another) are implicit in the idea of preservation. Archives which start up with lots of promise and then fail to survive organisationally or to perform competently destroy public confi dence in the whole idea of preservation, and can do immense damage. Archives are inherently permanent entities – other organisa-tions, especially government instrumentalities, come and go, but archives have to go on forever. How with the Philip-pine National Film Archive ensure this? Ethicality There are relevant codes of ethics – AMIA and FIAF are examples – and every archive should have its own, pub-lished code. Staff have to understand it and sign up to it! Professional ethics are a fundamental for public trust, and they do have to be policed. This goes back to the wise choice of staff who see archiving as a vocation and not as a job which offers them some inappropriate personal advantage.

NOTES ON SUSTAINABILITY


ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Bliss Cua Limin the wake of the 2013 Philippine Cinema Heritage Summit

Why Archive Our Films?Why archive Filipino fi lms? That question echoes broader ones: why foster a sense of history? Why remember the past? The historical past not only provides a sense of rootedness, it also challenges us to fulfi ll its unrealized ex-pectations. The past creates the conditions of possibility for the present and continues to exert a determining force on the future. A sense of history helps us understand how the present-day Philippines was forged, what struggles we inherit, what accomplishments we take pride in, but also what dreams we failed to realize, what forces we must continually resist. We learn to recognize the larger historical processes in which our lives are entangled (the actual past), processes that we ourselves also shape (the virtual future). Being alive to the legacy of our own national cul-ture crafts a sense, not only of identity, but also of the diversity, difference, and confl ict that exist within our shared sense of being Filipino.

Our screen memories should be preserved because they vivify our sense of history. Even fi ction fi lms, as they age, become unintentional historical documents. In Giliw Ko (dir. Carlos Vander Tolosa, 1939), one hears the sound of a fl orid, poetic Tagalog spoken alongside the English slang of the Philippine elite under American colonial rule. What was Manila like in the aftermath of World War 2? People drive through the rubble of the postwar city in Victory Joe (dir. Manuel Silos, 1946) or eke out a living amid the ruins of Intramuros in Anak Dalita (dir. Lamberto Avellana, 1956). What is the back-story of today’s iconic places? Contemporary viewers might be disconcerted to discover that the long, dark stretch of undeveloped road where a brutal crime occurs in Kung Ako’y Mahal Mo (dir. Gregorio Fernandez, 1960) is Highway 54, present-day E. de los Santos Avenue (EDSA). The rugged cliffs of Guadalupe, not yet obscured by today’s billboards along EDSA, possess a kind of epic grandeur in Genghis Khan (dir. Manuel Conde, 1950). An archive of Filipino fi lm and media can be a productive reservoir not only for local fi lmmakers striving to forge a unique cinematic style but also for Filipino spectators learning to see places, times, and even ourselves, in the new light of a rediscovered past.

The mandate of an archive is twofold: to safeguard (preservation) and to make available (access), to enrich the store of publicly accessible knowledge about the contested meanings of our past.

Analysis and RecommendationsNearly 25 years after the closure of the last state-run audiovisual archive, the establishment of a new National Film Archives of the Philippines (NFAP) in 2011 means that we are at a turning point in the effort to preserve what survives of Filipino fi lm and media history.

The following analysis considers the existing situation of the country’s longstanding archive crisis, the internal strengths and weaknesses of the NFAP and other players in Philippine audiovisual archiving, and the external threats and opportunities relating to the archive movement’s goals. The recommendations for strategic planning I propose here grapple with these factors while attempting to build on the real gains of the Philippine Cinema Heritage Summit recently convened by the NFAP in January 2013.

In what follows, recommendations are embedded in the analysis according to the following organizational prin-ciple. For a summary of recommendations arranged according to immediate/short-term priorities to long-term recommendations, please see the fi nal section.

A. Existing Situation of Philippine Audiovisual ArchivingB. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and ThreatsC. Summary of Recommendations

A. EXISTING SITUATION OF PHILIPPINE AUDIOVISUAL ARCHIVING Archive crisis. The crisis is so dire that we have only inexact approximations of how many fi lms have been lost vis-a-vis how many survive. One widely-accepted estimate is that 3,000 titles survive out of approximately 8,000 audiovisual works produced domestically since the introduction of the cinematograph in 1897.i In that case, the survival rate of Filipino fi lms is approximately 37%. However, this number is probably inaccurate: the estimate makes no distinction between survival in whole versus survival in part. It also excludes titles that originated in digital media rather than celluloid or analog tape, as well as works that were never theatrically exhibited (e.g., short fi lms, nonfi ction fi lms, or works produced outside the commercial fi lm industry). According to an unpublished report pre-pared by SOFIA (Society of Filipino Archivists for Film) in 2005, of over 350 fi lms produced before the outbreak of World War II in the Philippines, “less than 10 titles [are] preserved in their original format”, and only one nitrate


fi lm, Ibong Adarna (1941), survives. The only systematic inventory of surviving Filipino fi lms, undertaken by SOFIA and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts - Committee on Archives from 2002-2005, lists 3,738 titles in varying conditions (from good to deteriorating) in a wide range of media formats, from celluloid to analog tape to digital video.ii

State indifference to fi lm preservation: absence of legislation, funding, and permanent archival facility. The single most decisive factor in the archive crisis has been the Philippine government’s longstanding indifference to fi lm preservation. State negligence has historically taken two forms: fi rst, weak legislation. The NFAP is administra-tively subsumed under the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP), a government body whose archive mandate consists of only one sentence.iii

A crucial short-term policy recommendation is for the NFAP to pursue fi rm legislative support in the form of a Republic Act or Executive Order.

The second symptom of state indifference to audiovisual preservation is a perennial lack of funding. Insuffi cient funding means that no permanent archival storage facility has been built to house the NFAP’s growing collection, despite the fact that the archive community has clamored for a permanent archival facility since the early 1990s. The new National Film Archive is currently housed in a transitory storage facility in Cubao.

An urgent short-term task is for the NFAP to build a permanent archival storage facility to house its collection. It must secure appropriate land and funding (from a combination of governmental and non-governmental sources, if necessary) so that construction can begin before a possible change in FDCP leadership in 2016.

Given the NFAP’s announcement at the summit that it may potentially pursue a private-public partnership to fi nance the archive, I will raise a few cautionary points here.

Alongside its intention to explore partnerships with private corporations, the NFAP should also consider partnerships with non-profi t organizations (NPO) or non-profi t participation from private individual donors.

Second, a “private-public partnership” (PPP) is usually defi ned as a partnership with a private business enterprise that expects to recoup its investment and generate profi ts. In any private-public partnership, however, management of the archive should remain fi rmly within the NFAP’s hands. It would be very problematic for the NFAP to enter into a partnership with a private business that regards the national fi lm archive primarily as an investment vehicle. A deep tension exists between the profi t motives of private companies and an archival mandate that sees access to fi lm heritage as an inherent public good that serves the public interest.

Third, if a private business donates land and infrastructure for the establishment of a permanent archive facility and expects only tax breaks and the benefi ts of corporate social responsibility (CSR), then it would be inaccurate and unwise to term this a PPP, since that would imply that the private enterprise is expecting a certain rate of return.

Archival permanency vs. short-term government appointments. Historically, government-led fi lm initiatives have been precarious efforts: prone to uncertainty and collapse, and extremely vulnerable to the country’s volatile politi-cal culture. This sense of precariousness is the very opposite of the sense of certainty, security, and permanence that archives stand for. The foremost example of how audiovisual archiving is susceptible to changes in political fortune was the closure of the fi rst state-funded Film Archives of the Philippines shortly after the ouster of the Marcos re-gime in the 1980s. Other examples can be drawn from the FDCP’s recent history; projects prioritized by the FDCP under one leadership are often discontinued by the next presidential appointee.

Ray Edmondson, Curator Emeritus and former Deputy Director of Australia’s National Film and Sound Archives, ob-serves: “Archives are inherently permanent entities – other organisations, especially government instrumentalities, come and go, but archives have to go on forever. How will the Philippine National Film Archive ensure this?.”iv The same point is made by SOFIA President Clodualdo “Doy” del Mundo, Jr., when he states that the “foremost chal-lenge” for the NFAP is to realize its plans for a permanent archive before the end of FDCP Chair Briccio Santos’ appointment in 2016, since “Santos’ tenure is coterminous with President Noynoy Aquino’s administration...A new president brings with him a fresh entourage. So, it is best to see to it that a national fi lm archive is fi rmly in place by then—the edifi ce constructed, an archive staff hired, and a long-term operations plan set in motion.”v

In order to assure the NFAP’s stability and permanence, an urgent short-term policy recommendation is for the NFAP to protect itself from abrupt changes caused by government appointments and the possible change of FDCP leadership in 2016. Its strategies should involve both the legislative and fi nancial fronts and pursue a range of possible funding sources.

Complementing this, a long-term policy recommendation is for the NFAP to explore ways to gain relative autonomy from the state, possibly by pursuing organizational models other than its current administrative chain ( Offi ce of the President— FDCP—NFAP).



At the Philippine Cinema Heritage Summit, participants raised the issue of alternative organizational models for the NFAP, such as the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ status as a GOCC (government-owned and/or controlled corporation); this and other models are possible alternatives for consideration.

Decentralized privatization vs. state centralization. A crucial repercussion of the nearly 25 gap years between the closure of the Marcos era FAP and the establishment of the new NFAP is the simultaneous decentralization and privatization of archival advocacy for Philippine cinema. The state’s failure to fulfi ll its responsibility to preserve Philippine cinema meant that a handful of private collectors, nongovernmental organizations, government and academic institutions, and players in the fi lm industry stepped into the breach to undertake the archival efforts the state would not. These various stakeholdersvi in the Philippines’ decentralized archival movement performed the crucial work of locating, preserving and restoring several Filipino fi lm classics in the long years of state indifference towards audiovisual archiving.

Despite the many admirable successes and accomplishments of the decentralized Philippine archive advocacy in the years prior to the establishment of the NFAP, its efforts were understandably constrained. The main limitations of the decentralized archival advocacy for Philippine cinema from the mid-1990s onwards are as follows: First, with the exception of the fi lm archive maintained by the ABS-CBN corporation, the majority of these under-funded archives could not afford to adopt the temperature and humidity controls required to stabilize and conserve their collection, with the result that many of their holdings have deteriorated, given the country’s tropical conditions. Sec-ond, these small “pockets of archives”vii , became increasingly privatized and closely-guarded. That is, stakeholders — individuals, collectors, organizations, companies, and sometimes even government administrators — behaved increasingly like private owners toward their collections, rather than stewards of our shared fi lm heritage. In the absence of public access to their holdings and the lack of a permanent facility, access to rare fi lms in the canon of Philippine cinema became confi ned to a circle of archival insiders and collectors.

Three reasons to support the state’s attempt to centralize audiovisual archiving — despite the threat that the new NFAP’s efforts may not be sustainable — are as follows:

A. The NFAP’s stated aim is to provide “permanent access.”viii If it can achieve that goal, then this will rectify the present privatized nature of fi lm archiving in the Philippines, in which several important collections are not accessible to the public.

B. The NFAP may be able to muster the requisite funding and legislative support to build a permanent archival facility, a project that the decentralized archive movement has not been able to realize.

C. The NFAP and the FDCP are potentially able to pursue fi lm archiving on a national scale, as opposed to the primarily Manila-centric projects of the decentralized archive movement. The focus on regional cinemas allows us to recognize that Philippine cinema is not synonymous with Tagalog-language fi lms produced in Manila. Rather, the Manila fi lm industry exists alongside other regional fi lm industries and vernacular fi lm movements (Visayan fi lmmak-ing, for example), although Manila-based media production has historically been dominant.

FDCP Chair Santos plans for archiving efforts to be a component of regional cinematheques outside Manila under the Sineng Pambansa program.ix If Santos’ plan were to be realized, cinematheques outside Manila would not only exhibit fi lms, they would also have an archiving arm that locates and collects regional fi lm, radio, and televi-sion programming from provincial movie theaters, broadcast stations, and collectors. A handful of private collectors have done similar things in the past, but this is the fi rst time that the government has expressed a clear interest in archiving regional media production. A recent fi nd is the fi rst Ilonggo fi lm, Ginauhaw ako, Ginagutom ako (dir., Quin Baterna and Leonardo Q. Belen, 1975), which was reportedly recovered when the daughter of one of the fi lmmak-ers attended a Cinematheque in Iloilo and gave the surviving print to the NFAP. The fi lm is being restored gratis by the French National Center for Cinematography and the Moving Image (CNC).x

If the NFAP fails to realize these possibilities — to build a permanent archival facility, to provide permanent public access, and to pursue archival projects that encompass not only Manila-based productions but also regional audiovisual productions — then the NFAP will have failed to actualize the truly historic opportuni-ties that are within its purview.

The need for collaboration. Given the decentralized, privatized nature of the archive movement from the 1990s onward, the NFAP’s attempt to centralize stewardship of the country’s fi lm heritage, aided by a presidential de-cree, was initially met with resistance by other stakeholders, who viewed it as a coercive rather than collaborative move. In 2012, Philippine President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III signed Administrative Order 26 requiring gov-ernment entities and private parties to deposit copies of their audiovisual collections to the NFAP.xi Although the decree was not accompanied by a clear acquisition policy specifying the format of those copies, an acquisition policy was subsequently drafted by the NFAP in October 2012.xii AO 26 was designed to fast-track the growth of the NFAP’s collection but its polarizing effect may have slowed the NFAP’s efforts to build support and trust in the Filipino archive community.



The real achievement of the Philippine Cinema Heritage Summit held in January 2013 was to open the door to sub-stantive dialogue between the NFAP and longtime stakeholders alienated by AO 26. These stakeholders—govern-ment and academic bodies; private and industry-based institutions; non-governmental organizations; and private individuals— constitute the all-important “constituency” of the NFAP, which Ray Edmondson defi nes as the broader community that will “defend the archive when it’s threatened” but also serve as a “constructive critic”, a necessary counterbalance that keeps an archive “honest and in touch with its supporters.”xiii

One policy recommendation — applicable both in the immediate future and over the long run —is that the NFAP continue on the collaborative path exemplifi ed by the summit, allowing its broader constituency to be meaningfully involved in its projects going forward.

As del Mundo, Jr. noted in his closing remarks at the summit, “the NFAP must involve the stakeholders in shaping the national archive.” Being open to the participatory involvement of the NFAP’s broader constituency might take more time at fi rst, but the collaborative support of experienced stakeholders is key to the NFAP’s success in the long run.

The fi rst step towards collaboration was taken at the summit, particularly during the Q and A section of the second roundtable, “Collaborating Towards Sustainability”, where questions, concerns, and even grievances were aired in a spirit of frank exchange. Benedict “Bono” Olgado, the NFAP’s recently-appointed head, should be commended for fi elding the queries and comments raised throughout the summit in a spirit of openness and candor. When asked what specifi c forms of collaboration he would like to see from the summit participants, Bono Olgado’s response underscored the three fronts on which the NFAP would appreciate collaborative assistance: advocacy, publicity, and “paper trails” or information that will help the NFAP properly process its collection, since the decades-long gap between the fi rst Marcos-era FAP and the new NFAP has resulted in the loss of vital information about the whereabouts, rights issues, and the provenance of surviving Filipino fi lms.

Prior to the NFAP, the two existing precedents for organized archiving efforts in the Philippines were the fi rst FAP in the 1980s and the decentralized archive movement that emerged in the 1990s. The fi rst state-run archive ended tragically, its physical collection either lost or dispersed, and the information it amassed unrecoverable due to water leaks that damaged its database system, as former FAP head Ernie de Pedro recalled in the second round-table at the recent heritage summit. The decentralized archive movement that followed was not able to muster the political will and funding needed to build a permanent archival facility, and consequently was structurally unable to offer public access to its various collections.

Given the limitations of the NFAP’s historical precedents, a different strategy is clearly needed. The NFAP should follow neither the path of precarious state centralization nor the privatized route of decentralization. An emerging alternative that combines the strengths of both centralization under the NFAP and decentralized holdings under other stakeholders was broached by participants in the second roundtable. Some participants, for example, suggested that they would turn over their collections to the NFAP as long as the NFAP left digitized copies with them and underwrote the costs of producing these digital copies.

A crucial policy recommendation is for the NFAP to adopt a long-term strategy of decentralized redundancy alongside state centralization. If requested, the NFAP should give donors, free of charge, digital copies of titles that are turned over to the NFAP. This allows the NFAP to centralize the country’s store of audiovisual master elements, while also creating decentralized redundancies and geographic separation, since stakeholders and donors retain copies in their collections. Ideally, a consortium network would link the NFAP to these other satellite collections to allow collaboration.

A strategy of NFAP centralization alongside decentralized redundancy means that in a worst case scenario, a threat to the NFAP collection would not spell the demise of all surviving copies of rare works. In the short run, this strategy might also overcome the lingering ambivalence of stakeholders hesitant to turn their collections over to the NFAP.

B. STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES, AND THREATSWeakness: sustainability not guaranteed. The key problems sketched above — the NFAP’s lack of a permanent archival facility, weak legislative mandate, insuffi cient funding, and vulnerability to short-term government ap-pointments — can be summarized as the absence of a clear timetable for achieving sustainability. Credit is due to the NFAP for candidly acknowledging the challenge of sustainability and working to address it. However, it is still unclear how and when the permanence of the national audiovisual archive will be absolutely assured.

A short-term recommendation is for the NFAP to vigorously pursue the multi-pronged approach it has already adopted, consisting of efforts on the following fronts:legislation;funding;



staffi ng strategies that gain plantilla positions to ensure that the archive has qualifi ed people to run its operations; partnerships with non-profi t entities or the private sector, and/or bilateral agreements with international partners to provide support and keep the state from reneging on its responsibility to the archive.

With regards to funding, some interesting suggestions raised at the second summit roundtable were to consider the creation of a development arm to raise funding for the NFAP, and the hiring of a full-time grant writer for the NFAP to apply for external/international funding.

In view of the real threats to its sustainability, I strongly recommend that the NFAP formulate a realistic con-tingency plan in the event that legislative support and the construction of a permanent archival facility are not achieved by 2016.

Leadership Strengths. The key resource strength of the NFAP at present lies in its personnel, particularly at the leadership level. Breaking with decades of state negligence towards our audiovisual culture, Briccio Santos is the fi rst FDCP Chair to act on their archival mandate since the FDCP was created in 2002. Credit is due to Santos for his dynamic and committed pursuit of a broad range of initiatives: establishing the NFAP; spearheading the resto-ration and repatriation of various Philippine fi lms; enlisting international support, notably from the French govern-ment; integrating archiving activities within other FDCP projects that reach beyond Manila to include other regional cinemas; and vigorously pursuing the land and fi nancing required to build a new permanent archival facility for the NFAP, possibly in Tagaytay. In these various efforts, Santos has proven himself an adept player in political and diplomatic networks and the fi rst FDCP leader to exhibit real foresight and commitment to fi lm archiving. This may be a particularly opportune moment for Santos to lobby actively for government funding for the NFAP, since anti-corruption reforms under President Aquino’s administration have resulted in “considerable savings” and increased government revenue.xiv Santos has also successfully recruited Benedict “Bono” Olgado, the NFAP’s recently-ap-pointed Head, to run the NFAP.

From a resource perspective, Olgado represents the NFAP’s chief strength. Olgado represents a unique blend: academic training at prestigious U.S. institutions (he holds a Master’s Degree in Moving Image Archiving and Pres-ervation from New York University and was the recipient of the 2011 Kodak Fellowship in Film Preservation) is com-bined with professional, on-the-ground experience in both national and regional archive associations (locally, with SOFIA; and regionally, with the Association for Southeast Asian Cinemas (ASEAC) and the Southeast Asia-Pacifi c Audio-Visual Archive Association (SEAPAVAA)). Despite his youth (he is likely the youngest national fi lm archive head in the world), Olgado is a trusted fi gure in local archive circles. Roundtable participants at the summit repeatedly mentioned their degree of personal trust in Olgado as an incentive for turning over their collections to the NFAP. Trustworthy, transparent governance is a key success factor for securing the sustainability of audiovisual archives, a point to which Ray Edmondson repeatedly returned in his “Notes on Sustainability.”xv

Olgado is also well-known and respected in the regional archive network, with strong links, for example, to the Singapore-based Asian Film Archive and the Thai Film Archive. In his fi rst 6 months at the NFAP, Olgado has al-ready done a great deal: shepherding a fast-growing collection; stabilizing the NFAP collection through rigorously monitored temperature controls and fi lm inspections at the interim facility in Cubao; streamlining operations and workfl ow; training personnel through workshops and refresher courses; organizing numerous events in coordination with the NFAP; and authorizing various important documents, from the NFAP acquisition policy to its fi rst annual report.

To be successful, strategic planning must recognize that existing strengths — in this case, personnel strengths in the leadership of the FDCP and the NFAP — may be eroded over time.xvi The threat posed by a change in leader-ship to the FDCP has already been mentioned above. Given that the tenure of the FDCP chair is by nature limited, maintaining continuity on the level of the NFAP leadership despite changes in the FDCP administration is absolutely crucial.

To protect the NFAP’s existing leadership strength and ensure continuity despite changes in FDCP leadership, one long-term recommendation is to vigorously work to retain Olgado as NFAP head— past 2016 to at least 2020— through promotions and incentives.

Weakness: NFAP understaffed. Alongside Olgado, the NFAP has also successfully recruited a small group of skilled, experienced archivists with strong ties to the archive movement: the NFAP’s senior archivists, Eros Arbilon and Emilio “Mhel” Acurin, trained with Ricky Orellana of Mowelfund and Mike de Leon at LVN, respectively, while junior archivist Jose “Dudoy” Dineros was an archivist at Sampaguita.xvii However, the rapid growth of the NFAP collection— the transitory facility in Cubao is already at 70% capacity —means that new acquisitions are far out-pacing the NFAP staff’s capacity to accession them in a timely manner. The NFAP’s very low processing target (at the summit, Olgado mentioned that they hope to accession between 10% to 15% of the NFAP’s total collection by the end of 2013) is due to the shortage of qualifi ed staff. The number of qualifi ed archivists must grow as quickly as the NFAP collection grows in order for the NFAP to eventually provide public access to its collection.



An immediate recommendation is to hire much-needed personnel for the NFAP, especially video archivists and catalogers in order to process new acquisitions in a timely manner and gain better intellectual control over the archive’s holdings.

When possible, the NFAP should hire a grant writer to seek external funding for NFAP projects.

Over the long run, the NFAP must gain more plantilla positions in order to retain skilled staff.

Weakness: lack of accurate information about country’s existing archival holdings. Since it is now almost 8 years since the completion of the master inventory conducted by SOFIA and the NCCA in 2005, an accurate esti-mate of extant surviving titles in the Philippines is not available.

One long-term recommendation is for the NFAP to conduct a national inventory of surviving audiovisual works produced in the Philippines since the introduction of cinema.

This inventory should be pursued with the active collaboration of all archival stakeholders in the Philippines and should try to ascertain the location and condition of all remaining titles, including both NFAP and non-NFAP audiovisual collections in the country as well as audiovisual productions beyond Manila.

This is a medium-term recommendation since other short-term recommendations requiring more immediate action, detailed later in this article, should take precedence over this project. At present, the NFAP’s transitory facility, its limited staff, and the immediate need to process new acquisitions mean that it will take time before the NFAP is in a position to conduct this inventory.

Weakness: NFAP unable to collect memorabilia and print documentation related to fi lm. The NFAP has candidly stated that it does not have paper conservators to handle textual documents, movie advertisements, and posters. Arguably, however, such extracinematic materials, which also include non-paper-based materials such as costumes, props, and the like, would enrich the archive’s holdings.

Adding extracinematic or paratextual materials (memorabilia, props, costumes), and fi lm-related print documents (scholarly books and articles, fi lm reviews, periodicals, correspondence, posters, and promotional materials) to its collection would be an ambitious long-term goal for the NFAP, should its storage and staffi ng capacities permit. Failing this, a long-term recommendation is for the NFAP to actively collaborate with a library, museum, or archive that could collect and preserve such materials.

C. SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONSThe key success factors for the NFAP at this juncture could be summarized as follows:

A. Sustainability/permanenceB. Leadership stabilityC. Collaboration with stakeholdersD. Suffi cient number of qualifi ed staff

The strategic recommendations broached in the above analysis are an attempt to close the gap between these key success factors and the NFAP’s actual resources and capabilities. The recommendations discussed above are summarized as follows:

Short-Term recommendations (accomplish by 2016)1. Build a permanent archival storage facility to house the NFAP collection. Secure appropriate land and funding, from a combination of government, non-governmental, non-profi t, and private sources, if necessary, so that con-struction can begin before 2016.

2. Explore possible partnerships not only with private entities but also with non-profi t organizations and cultivate non-profi t participation from private individual donors. In the event of a private-public partnership, keep admin-istrative control of the permanent archival facility fi rmly within the hands of the NFAP, since the profi t motives of private business are in deep tension with an archival mandate that sees access to fi lm heritage as an inherent public good that serves the public interest. If a private business donates land and infrastructure for the establishment of a permanent archive and expects only tax breaks and the benefi ts of corporate social responsibility, then it would be inaccurate and unwise to term this a PPP, since that would imply that the private enterprise is expecting a certain rate of return.

3. Pursue fi rm legislative support for the NFAP in the form of a Republic Act or Executive Order.

4. Pursue legislative and fi nancial strategies to cushion and stabilize the NFAP in the event of a change in FDCP leadership after 2016.



5. Continue the NFAP’s multi-pronged approach to sustainability (funding, legislation, staffi ng, and partnerships).

6. To alleviate understaffi ng, hire video archivists and catalogers as soon as possible in order to process new acquisitions in a timely manner, gain better intellectual control over the archive’s holdings, and move closer to the NFAP’s stated goal of offering permanent public access to its collection. When possible, hire a grant writer to seek external funding for NFAP projects.

7. Formulate a realistic contingency plan in the event that legislative support and construction of a permanent archival facility are not achieved by 2016.

Long-term Recommendations 8. Continue on the collaborative path exemplifi ed by the summit, allowing the NFAP’s broader constituency of stakeholders to be meaningfully involved in its projects going forward.

9. Pursue a long-term strategy of decentralized redundancy alongside state centralization. If requested, give do-nors, free of charge, digital copies of titles that are turned over to the NFAP. Ideally, a consortium network would link the NFAP to these other satellite collections to allow collaboration.

10. Retain Benedict “Bono” Olgado as NFAP head—past 2016 to at least 2020—to protect the NFAP’s key re-source strength and ensure continuity despite changes in FDCP leadership.

11. Explore ways to gain relative autonomy from the state, possibly by pursuing organizational models other than its current administrative chain (Offi ce of the President-FDCP-NFAP).

12. Gain more plantilla positions in order to recruit and retain skilled staff.

13. Conduct a national inventory of surviving audiovisual works produced in the Philippines since the introduction of cinema. The inventory should be pursued with the active collaboration of all archival stakeholders in the Philippines and should try to ascertain the location and condition of all remaining titles, including both NFAP and non-NFAP audiovisual collections in the country as well as regional audiovisual productions beyond Manila.

14. If the NFAP’s resources permit, consider adding extracinematic or paratextual materials (memorabilia, props, costumes), and fi lm-related print documents (scholarly books and articles, fi lm reviews, periodicals, correspondence, posters, and promotional materials) to the NFAP collection; OR actively pursue a collaboration with a library, museum, or archive that could collect and preserve such materials.

i. Ramon C. Nocon, “Finally, a national fi lm archive,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, October 27, 2011. http://entertainment.inquirer.net/18699/fi nally-a- national-fi lm-archive. ii. Society of Film Archivists (SOFIA), Terminal Report: Philippine Audiovisual Archives Collections: An Inventory. October 2005, 8.iii. The FDCP’s archival mandate reads: “to ensure the establishment of a fi lm archive in order to conserve and protect fi lm negatives and/or prints as part of

the nation’s historical, cultural, and artistic heritage.” Republic Act No. 9167. An Act Creating the Film Development Council of the Philippines, Defi ning Its Powers and Functions, Appropriating Funds Therefor, and for Other Purposes. Ed. First Regular Session, Twelfth Congress, Congress of the Philippines. http://www.lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra2002/ra_9167_2002.html 2002 - June 7.

iv. Ray Edmondson, “Notes on Sustainability of Audiovisual Archives,” included in this publication, 2013 Philippine Cinema Heritage Summit: A Report.v. Clodualdo del Mundo Jr., “The dream need not be a nightmare”, Philippine Inquirer January 23, 2013. http://entertainment.inquirer.net/77897/the-

dream-need-not-be-a-nightmare.vi. These stakeholders include “government and academic institutions”, chief among them, the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), the Philippine Information

Agency (PIA), the University of the Philippines Film Institute (UPFI), and the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA), which funded several collaborative restoration projects. Among the “private and industry-based institutions”, the signifi cant players are the Mowelfund Film Institute, the fi lm studios, LVN Pictures and Sampaguita Pictures, and the broadcasting corporation, ABS-CBN. The third group of stakeholders include nongovernmental organizations and private individuals; in this category, the most important organization is SOFIA (the Society of Filipino Archivists for Film) which has coordinated and spearheaded several fi lm restoration projects. See Report on Asean Seminar on Film and Video Archive Management. ASEAN Seminar on Film and Video Archive Management. May 8 to June 3, 1995, 5-6, Print; and Benedict S. Olgado, “Undergraduate Thesis Proposal: Towards a National Film Archive, an Analysis of and a White Paper on Policies and Practices in Film Preservation in the Philippines.” 2008, 3-4.

vii. Clodualdo del Mundo Jr., “Ukay-Ukay: Where’s the Archive? Continuing the Search for a National Film Archive,” Dreaming of a National Audio-Visual Archive. Society of Film Archivists (SOFIA) monograph for Ukay-Ukay: Where’s the Archive, a Festival of Restored Filipino Film Classics in Celebration of SOFIA’s 11th Anniversary, July 2004, 28.

viii. “NFAP believes that ultimately, the goal of preservation is permanent access.” National Film Archive of the Philippines, Annual Report, 2011-2012, 14.ix. Briccio Santos, personal interview with Bliss Cua Lim, November 5, 2012, Film Development Council of the Philippines Offi ce, Makati.x. Bayani San Diego, Jr., “Restored classic fi lm comes home,” Philippine Daily Inquirer September 6, 2012. http://entertainment.inquirer.net/60228/

restored-classic-fi lm-comes-home. xi. President of the Philippines, Administrative Order No. 26. “Prescribing the Rules on the Deposit of Copies of Films and Other Audio-Visuals to the National

Film Archive of the Philippines.” Malacañang Palace, Manila , April 17, 2012.xii. National Film Archive of the Philippines, “Acquisition Policy & Protocol” Version 1.2, October 10, 2012.xiii. Edmondson, “Notes on Sustainability.”xiv. “DPWH, BIR Aquino’s favorite success stories,” Philippine Daily Inquirer February 7, 2013. http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/353923/dpwh-bir-aquinos-

favorite-success-stories.xv. Edmondson, “Notes on Sustainability.”xvi. Heinz Weihrich, “The TOWS Matrix — A Tool for Situational Analysis”, Long Range Planning 15.2 (1982): 61.xvii. Benedict “Bono” Olgado, personal interview with Bliss Cua Lim, September 19, 2012, at NFAP Archive Operations offi ce, Cubao, Quezon City.

ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS C


Memory as an archive is truly remarkable. By sheer strength of memory, the great epics of the world have survived through the ages – the Gilgamesh of Mesopotamia, the Iliad and the Odyssey of Greece, and our own story of Lam-ang. Memory, of course, has its limitations. Film offers a major challenge to human memory. I have a vivid memory of Gerardo de Leon’s Ang Daigdig ng mga Api, a fi lm written by Pierre Salas, starring Robert Arevalo, Barbara Perez, and Oscar Keesee. I can re-tell the story; I can remember specifi c shots; but I cannot capture the fi lm for you. The total effect of the images and sounds and how these elements combine through the power of editing to tell the story with impact and emotion – that would be diffi cult to tell. It would be futile to describe the fi lm, for it is meant to be seen.

To make us see - that is the basic purpose of the fi lm archive. But archiving has its own inherent problems. We know how diffi cult it is to archive fi lm. How long can fi lm last before the vinegar syndrome sets in? How long can it be stored through the latest digital technology? How long do we want a piece of fi lm to last? Indeed, archiving can be an exercise in futility; nonetheless, it is something that needs to be done. The archive is our lifeline to history; and, in the case of fi lm, it is our lifeline to the past of our own national cinema.

The question that always comes to mind is “Why do archiving?” Why do we have to invest time and money on a fi lm archive? The answer is simple – because the fi lms are there, or what remains of them. These are fi lms that can tell us stories about ourselves as a people, fi lms that can show us the best and the worst of ourselves, fi lms that can show us images and sounds and ideas about our past.

The archive can open our eyes to the fact that we have a signifi cant heritage in fi lm. Like the storytellers of the past who held on to the great epics of their people in their memory, the archive will provide us the portal to our stories on fi lm. When the archive becomes a living part of our culture, I am certain that it can contribute towards creating a proud people. And when that happens, we can never overestimate what a proud people can do.

The Film Development Council of the Philippines has taken a signifi cant step towards the creation of a National Film Archive. It deserves all the support that we can give.

Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr.PresidentSociety of FIlipino Archivists for Film (SOFIA)

CLOSING REMARKS


SUMMIT EVALUATIONEVALUATION REPORT

LOGISTICS AVERAGE RATING

Venue (PICC: Summit Hall, Dining Hall, Facilities)4.20

Food / Catering (Via Mare: Lunch, Coffee/Snacks)4.20

Summit Kit (NFAP Report, Brochures, Materials)4.13

Comments: What do you think of the summit in general?

• It was productive. There were a lot of issues discussed.

• I think the summit exceeded expectations in terms of alignment of goals and objectives of all parties.

• I’m glad that frank comments were exchanged in the second roundtable!

• A good fi rst step that hopefully will continue beyond the summit.

• The summit on the whole was good. It provided a venue of discourse that was able to bring to light the differ-

ent point of views re archiving and restoration. I was expecting to hear more defi nite plans about the NFAP’s

sustainability direction so that the attendees of the summit could zero in more towards what they could contrib-

ute. Also, I feel that there should be a thicker line seperating archiving and restoration as 2 different tasks to

be taken on.

• It was a very informative summit. This should be done annually. Maybe the academe can also participate in

the next runs.

• It was a good spring board. I hope that this initiative will not just end as a meeting but that it will be coupled

with real work. Personally, I am just so happy that this dream of establishing a fi lm archive in the country is

fi nally coming together!

• An important step towards preserving Philippine cinema history. Should be made an annual event.

• I think its needed especially considering the fragmented nature of all our endeavors. it should be a good venue

for discussing issues and concerns fortrightly

• This is a great initiative of the government to inform and engage not only the public but also the private institu-

tions and archivists to share expertise and work together for the preservation of our history and culture which

are recorded in fi lms/video.

• It is a good beginning. There are still many gaps in the vision and the implementation but these could be put

in place as the plan is reviewed and materializes. There are other possibilities that could be explored. More

power.

SESSIONS AVERAGE RATING

Opening Speech by Chairman Santos4.00

Architectural Design Concept by Architect Locsin3.80

NFAP Report by Bono Olgado 4.00

A Brief History of Archival Advocacy for Philippine Cinema by Dr. Lim4.40

Roundtable 1: Assessing the Field -- Reports from Philippine A/V Archives and Stakeholders 4.00

Roundtable 2: Collaborating towards Sustainability 4.14

Closing Remarks by Dr. Del Mundo 3.93

*Rating scale:1 – Poor ; 2 – Fair ; 3 – Good ; 4 – Very Good ; 5 – Excellent

**Average rating from 32 respondents


1 Abrigo Christine University Library, De La Salle University

2 Acurin Mhel National Film Archives of the Philippines

3 Aguila Aris Digital Infrastructure Developer

4 Aligaen Melba Radio TV Malacañang

5 Almendralejo Albert Independent Film Cooperative

6 Ambat Marc OPTIMA Digital

7 Anissimov Misha University of San Carlos

8 Arbilon Eros National Film Archives of the Philippines

9 Arcilla Cesar National Film Archives of the Philippines

10 Belarmino Vicky Cultural Center of the Philippines

11 Bolonia Mary Grace Louise National Museum

12 Cabagnot Ed Cultural Center of the Philippines

13 Capul Bel Philippine Information Agency

14 Cardenas Kim Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation

15 Co Teddy Film Historian / Collector

16 Cortes Dennis People’s Television Network

17 Cruz Camil Victoria VIVA Films

18 Cruz Lito Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation

19 Dagñalan Mike Independent Film Cooperative

20 Dagñalan Maan Independent Film Cooperative

21 Dancel Marilou National Historical Commission of the Philippines

22 David Lourdes Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University

23 Dayrit Manet Central Digital Lab

24 De Ocampo Nick Center for New Cinema

25 De Pedro Ernie Film Archivist

26 Del Mundo Pol Movie and Television Review and Classifi cation Board

27 Del Mundo Clodualdo Society of Filipino Archivists for Film

28 Del Pilar Mary ABS-CBN

29 Dimasaca Jennifer National Library

30 Dineros Jose National Film Archives of the Philippines

31 Duzano Sabrina Alliance

32 Escobar Jocelyn Private Individual

33 Esteban Ryan Film Development Council of the Philippines

34 Fajardo Bona Producer/Filmmaker

35 Fajardo Lyn Pinoy Real TV

36 Grant Paul University of San Carlos

37 Guno Roland Jesus Film Development Council of the Philippines

38 Guzman Mario Independent Film Cooperative

39 Hawthorne Rick Central Digital Lab

40 Hernando Cesar Society of Filipino Archivists for Film

41 Jacinto Yolanda National Library

42 Joaquin Edwin Society of Filipino Archivists for Film

43 Katigbak Leo ABS-CBN

44 Khadka Sudarshan Leandro V. Locsin Partners

45 Lacay Mark Audio Archivist

46 Lim Bliss Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University

47 Locsin Andy Leandro V. Locsin Partners

48 Lozano Jerry Global Pinoy Cinema

49 Macalintal Martin French Embassy, Manila

50 Magsanoc Marti National Film Archives of the Philippines

PARTICIPANTS


51 Mariano Sebastianne Youth/Student

52 Merer Christian French Embassy, Manila

53 Nocon Monchito Society of Filipino Archivists for Film

54 Ocampo Josephine Youth/Student

55 Odono Nena Sampaguita Pictures

56 Olgado Bono National Film Archives of the Philippines

57 Orellana Ricky Mowelfund Film Institute

58 Orlina Soc Media, Philippine Daily Inquirer

59 Punay Jerhum National Film Archives of the Philippines

60 Red Raymond Filmmaker

61 Reyes Hero VIVA Films

62 Reyes Remedios GMA

63 Rogelio Boyet Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation

64 Rozal Ma. Assumpta GMA

65 Sailon Chitolee FTS International

66 San Diego Bayani Media, Philippine Daily Inquirer

67 Santos Angelo SQ Films Laboratories

68 Santos Briccio Film Development Council of the Philippines

69 Schweitzer Joerg DUNCAN

70 Silvestre Dennis SQ Films Laboratories

71 Sonora Jeffrey Fernando Poe Jr Archives

72 Terania Ruth Radio TV Malacanang

73 Tolentino Rolando University of the Philippines - Diliman

74 Uy John Christopher PPMO Phil Courier

75 Velasco Rocel Johanne Youth/Student

76 Velasco Tito UNICO

77 Zaragoza Edgar People’s Television Network

PARTICIPANTS P


PHOTOS

Former Director General of Film Archives of the Philippines (FAP), Ernie de Pedro

(L-R) Vicky Belarmino of CCP, Pol del Mundo of MTRCB, and Edwin Joaquin of SOFIA

Prof. Paul Grant and Misha Anissimov of University of San Carlos Cebu

FDCP chairman, Briccio G. Santos

SOFIA president, Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr.

Dr. Bliss Cua Lim

Rick Hawthorne of Central Digital Lab and Ricky Orellana of Mowelfund Film Institute


Nick Deocampo

(L-R) Former FAP director general Ernie de Pedro, CCP media division head Ed Cabagnot, and NFAP head/director Bono Olgado

(L-R) LVLP administrator Andy Locsin, French Embassy cultural attache Martin Macalintal, and FDCP chairman Briccio G. Santos

Raymond Red

Cesar Hernando

French Embassy cultural attache Martin Macalintal and Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Bayani San Diego

Bel Capul of PIA

Teddy Co

Documents

Philippine Cinema Heritage Summit: a post-event report