Metro Manila, Philippines – Filipino film pioneer Jose Nepomuceno’s “Diwata ng Karagatan,” a long-lost film made in 1936, has been discovered in Belgium in a historical effort to locate the oldest surviving Filipino pre-World War II movie.
In a narrative posted on Facebook on Friday, Oct. 31, Nick Deocampo, Filipino filmmaker and film historian, said he used personal funds to visit Brussels, Belgium from Berlin, Germany to look for the film, even if he was unaware if a copy exists in the Western European country.
He said he linked up with the director’s daughter, Louise Baterna, to coordinate with the CINEMATEK, the Royal Belgian Film Archive, where the “national film treasure” was found.
Baterna, a former journalist, is Brussels-based and is the founder and president of the Philippine Art and Culture Exchange, an organization that promotes Filipino arts and culture abroad.
“On October 28, we found ourselves watching the only-known existing copy of the vintage movie being played on a Steenbeck editing machine,” Deocampo said.
He said “Diwata ng Karagatan” was directed by Carlos Vander Tolosa, a figurehead in Philippine cinema, and was produced by Nepomuceno’s film studio Parlatone Hispano-Filipino. It starred pre-war screen icons Mari Velez and Rogelio de la Rosa.
Deocampo said the film only exists in 35-mm format and no copy has been digitized since a nitrate original was deposited at the Belgian archive by the now-defunct Belgian laboratory CineLabor in 2016.
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