The National Commission for Culture and the Arts says there’s an “urgent need” to raise awareness among the youth on the Philippines’ intangible cultural heritage amid the threat of urbanization and globalization.
The Morionan is a combination of art and devotion of Marinduqueños; a solemn socio-cultural activity rather than a tourist attraction. Failure to observe it last year due to the pandemic, dealt a great loss to the tourism sector and the devotees.
THERE is an urgent need to make high-quality documentation that can contribute to safeguarding, transmitting, and raising awareness of existing intangible cultural heritage in the Asia-Pacific region.
Based on this premise, the South Korea-based International Information and Networking Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Asia-Pacific Region (ICHCAP) together with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) has made public over a dozen documentaries on some of the intangible cultural heritage (ICH) properties of the Philippines.
The documentaries are part of an ICH documentation project in the Asia-Pacific region.
Ten 27-minute documentaries were done in partnership with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) taken last 2018-2019.
Many of our ICH such as language, weaving traditions, fishing rituals, and more are just some of the things we are missing out on during this pandemic.
These are things that we can better understand through an immersive experience.
Many would argue that experience is a better teacher than the modules our students are using now.
How are we to educate them on the importance of our cultural traditions in the hope of raising awareness and action is one of the reasons why it is important to watch these feature videos on YouTube.
The docus include the Lenten Morion mask-making tradition in Marinduque, The Traslacion of the Black Nazarene, traditional boatbuilding in Tawi-Tawi, Ifugao mud dyeing, and the ritual system of the Subanen.
Theater veteran and Mindanao scholar Nestor Horfilla served as consultant and co-director, while journalist and cultural researcher Roel Hoang Manipon served as the co-director, main writer, and researcher for the project.
The official NCCA statement for the documentaries reads, “There is an urgent need to make high-quality documentation that can contribute to safeguarding, transmitting, and raising awareness of existing ICH in the Asia-Pacific region, since the number of cultural traditions of communities in danger of vanishing is gradually increasing because of many factors including urbanization and globalization.”
Especially at this time of pandemic, many traditions are not being observed.
For example, the annual Morionan was canceled last year around the start of the pandemic in the country.
The Morionan is a combination of art and devotion of Marinduqueños; a solemn socio-cultural activity rather than a tourist attraction. It dealt a great loss to the tourism sector and the devotees.
Through these documentaries, Unesco, ICHCAP, NCCA, and the creators hope to reach out to more audiences and those seeking national cultural content.
“Awareness of the ICH is the starting point, then critical appreciation and transformative action follow,” Horfilla said.
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