Books and Documentaries: Facts of Life (with excerpts)

Horacio “Howie” Severino has been a journalist for nearly 40 years, and has produced over 200 TV documentaries, at least a dozen of which have won domestic and international awards. He is in his 23rd year as a TV documentarist for I-Witness, one of the longest-running television shows in the Philippines. He is also a pioneering podcast host for GMA Integrated News. He anchored the morning news at GMA News TV for eight years. From 2009 to 2014, he was editor-in-chief of GMA News Online. In other stages of his career, he was a newspaper reporter and magazine editor. He is a co-founder of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. He retired in 2021 as a Vice President of GMA Network, responsible for the training of its journalists. His documentaries have covered many heritage-related themes, which has led him to become an advocate and teacher of Baybayin, the ancient Filipino script. He has produced five documentaries on Jose Rizal, which have been used widely in classrooms across the Philippines. Howie was born in Manila but spent a large part of his youth in the United States as a diplomat’s son, and graduated from Tufts University in the US with a degree in History, magna cum laude. He received his MA degree in Environmental Policy from Sussex University in the UK. His documentary on being an early Covid survivor, “Ako si Patient 2828,” won Best Documentary in the Philippines’ Gawad Tanglaw awards and became one of the most watched Philippine documentaries of all time. In 2023, he was given the prestigious Balagtas literary award for his writings by the Unyon ng mga Manunulat ng Pilipinas (UMPIL).

Nick Deocampo is a filmmaker, film historian, and author. He recently retired as a film professor at the U.P. Film Institute in the University of the Philippines – Diliman. He took up his Master of Arts degree in Cinema Studies at New York University and received his Certificate in Film in Paris, France. His documentaries have been screened and have won awards nationally and internationally. His books have garnered four of the country’s National Book Awards. As a recognized film personality, he has served as jury member in various international film festivals. As a scholar, he has been a recipient of various academic grants and fellowships. Among his publications is Alternative Cinema: The Unchronicled History of Alternative Cinema in the Philippines.

He is presently the chair of the UNESCO Philippines Memory of the World Committee. In 2023, he received the Premio Casa Asia, Spain’s highest cultural award. He is also the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Film Development Council of the Philippines for his achievements in cinema and the Gawad Tsanselor para sa Natatanging Guro from the University of the Philippines for his academic and teaching excellence.