Deocampo is a multi-awarded filmmaker, film historian, and film literacy advocate. He is currently an associate professor at the U.P. Film Institute College of Mass Communication at U.P. Diliman. He graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in Theater Arts at the University of the Philippines (UP) in 1981. Under a Fulbright Scholarship Grant, Deocampo earned an MA in Cinema Studies at the New York University in 1989. His prize-winning film and video documentaries span more than thirty years, covering varied themes from life under the military dictatorship to film history and environment.
Deocampo (a.k.a. Rosa ng Maynila) broke new grounds in the early Eighties when he openly-embraced queer-themed films by advocating in his works this once-taboo topic. His documentary, Oliver (1983), is a landmark film that changed not only the face of Philippine documentary awakening from the propaganda spell cast by martial law. It also opened the public eyes to the issue of homosexuality as a relevant social theme crying out for emancipation and equality. The film is a far cry from the caricature that is made of homosexuals in popular cinema. His subsequent works Revolutions Happen like Refrains in a Song (1987), The Sex Warriors and the Samurai (1996) and Pink City (2015) have all become part of the country’s alternative queer film culture.
Images: Film still from Oliver (1983); 8mm transferred to digital, color, sound; 45 min.
