UPDATE 03/10: DaangDokyu has been postponed due to the COVID-19 health threat. For those who wish to get a refund, please send an email to [email protected].

Calling all documentary filmmakers and enthusiasts—your version of Christmas is just around the corner. Launching next month, the country’s first documentary film festival, Daang Dokyu, is set to begin on a high note.

Founded by filmmakers Jewel Maranan, Baby Ruth Villarama, Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala and Monster Jimenez, Daang Dokyu is a six-day festival with selections curated by directors, alongside a series of Q&As. In addition to that, Daang Dokyu will also hold an exhibition showcasing the long history of Philippine documentaries, a book launching, then ending in the country’s largest gathering of documentary filmmakers—the Phillippine Documentary Forum.

After sifting through 1,500 documentary submissions, the festival will be divided into five sections. The first day’s theme is Ecology, including environmental films dating back from the ’20s and one on the 1965 Taal eruption. Following that is the theme Nation—with matters regarding the country’s politics—as well as the peculiar in Taboo, regional documentaries for Localities and the fest’s outro, Future, which will focus on new tech that’ll shape films to come.

Among what may be shown include recently retrieved films stored at the British Film Institute in London. “Access to these films is very difficult. To just be able to view them, one needs to be in London and pay a per minute viewing fee. To get screening rights, you also need to pay a digitization fee and then screening fees on top of these,” says Villarama.

Some of these titles include 1926’s “Manila Street Scene” and 1929’s “Glimpses Of The Culion Leper Colony And Of Culion Life.” In order to bring these back home, they started a GoFundMe with a goal of £1,670 (approximately P110,000). The GoFundMe hit its mark—so we can expect these exclusive documentaries on our Daang Dokyu to-watch list.

Daang Dokyu will run from Mar. 16 to 21 at Cine Adarna at the University of the Philippines Diliman. Watch the film festival’s trailer below.

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Still from Philippine Studies’ YouTube Channel