Opening the Quezon City International Pink Film Festival is a new film by the country’s pioneering gay documentary filmmaker Nick Deocampo. His new work, “#pinQCity” that tells of LGBT characters living in the country’s premier city is a fitting tribute to the city’s 75th founding anniversary as it reveals its current social reality.
Interweaving lives compose the story of Deocampo’s “#pinQCity.” It shows a real-life lesbian fighting for LGBT rights, a transman seeking gender recognition, a gay filmmaker using film to address gay identity, and a bisexual fighting against human trafficking. All characters speak about the contemporary state of LGBT lives caught in the throes of change in the new century.
Among the country’s pioneers in gay filmmaking, Deocampo’s queer documentaries have broken new ground for a realist representation of homosexuality on local screen. Starting his career at the height of the Marcos dictatorship, his films have defied military repression to give damning images of the regime. Now celebrating thirty years of documentary filmmaking, Deocampo’s documentaries have become virtually a living memory of local gay history.
Blazing a new trail in major festivals in London, Berlin, Tokyo and New York, his films have received awards and paved the way for local independent cinema to be accepted in international festivals in the Eighties long before the emergence of digital cinema today.
Marking thirty years of groundbreaking work, Deocampo’s films have been hailed in festivals abroad as “uncompromising” and “a searing inquiry into the human condition.” Referring to his film about the People’s Power revolution where he declared his homosexuality onscreen, the documentary was described as “raw, bloody, face-against- the-fence experience.” A London critic, Tony Rayns, described it as his “magnum opus.”
With a legacy of outstanding films committed to the gay cause, Deocampo remains to be the enduring face of a marginalized sector in society seeking wider tolerance through his films.
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