Carillon is published by the
University of the Philippines
Office of Alumni Relations
Nick’s Dream for Cinema & Education
By Bino Gamba & Mariamme D. Jadloc
It was Nick’s dream to make cinema relevant to the educational community.
On 27 April 2023, at 20th anniversary celebration of the Institute of Environmental Science and Meteorology (IESM) of the UP Diliman (UPD) College of Science (CS), this dream slowly but surely turned into reality.
The institute screened Bakawan, a science-oriented educational video that Nick produced. The screening was held at the CS Institute of Biology auditorium.
Bakawan is a 45-minute documentary that explores the importance of mangroves in the coastal ecosystem, the reasons behind the decline of mangrove forests in the Philippines, the ongoing threats to mangroves, and the current efforts to rehabilitate them. It was directed by Lemnuel V. Aragones, PhD, of the IESM.
It is the first of the 10 films in Nick’s research project Cinema for Education: Rationalizing the Philippine Audiovisual Industry to Promote Inclusive Education through Film Literacy (Cinema for Education). Cinema for Education is a research project that explores how cinema can be utilized as a powerful tool for teaching, as well as a means of reorganizing the country’s audiovisual industry to benefit the educational community.
Nick said the 21st century is the age of audiovisual culture.
He expressed his desire to create a third film front, one that combines different disciplines and goes beyond traditional artistry. He envisions a cinema that not only caters to artists, “but what I think of is that the audiovisual industry can really take root in the academic community.”
“We are not putting books aside. I am a book writer myself. I love words and I write books. But the important thing is that we need to reconcile ourselves with the new media in the same way that Johannes Gutenberg, in 1493, introduced the printing press, and look what kind of a revolution it created in terms of knowledge production, it has all become word-based,” Nick said.
He added that by watching Bakawan and many other films, “we are now reconciling ourselves to the new media that will allow us to really have a sign-based pedagogy, so that we will be looking at motion pictures, we will be looking at images, as a source of our knowledge.”
Nick Deocampo is an award-winning filmmaker, film historian, director, writer, and educator.
On April 21, six days before Bakawan’s screening, Nick received the 2023 Premio Casa Asia for Culture and Society category from Casa Asia.
Casa Asia is a public diplomacy institution launched by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Union and Cooperation, the government of Catalonia, and the Madrid City Councils and Barcelona. It aims to advance Spain’s diplomatic relations with countries in the Asia Pacific Region, including the Philippines.
According to the UPD College of Mass Communication (CMC) Facebook page, Nick was awarded “for his decisive contribution to the knowledge of Filipino cinema and the recovery of Filipino classical cinema in his country, as well as for his commitment to cinema as a tool of change and social progress, for his advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights, giving voice to this collective at film festivals, workshops, and other activities.”
Nick is also an associate professor of film at the CMC Film Institute. He earned his AB degree, cum laude, from the UP College of Arts and Sciences in Diliman in 1981.