The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) of the Philippines has funded the social enterprise “EdukSine”, which recently debuted as a streaming platform for independent educational and socially meaningful Filipino films, and will delight independent film fans in the country.
“Film is a powerful educational tool in telling our stories. Once a story is told, it stays with you. Let’s keep telling our stories,” says Hector Gloria, Executive Director of EdukSine Philippines.
Through online, face-to-face and hybrid screening events, EdukSine showcases films with global impact that reinforce Filipino cultural roots and narratives. The initiative aims to provide audiences with contextual and transformative film content, meaningful engagements and long-term support for independent Filipino producers, directors, actors and marketers. EdukSine will be a new and unusual platform to promote independent films made by small film producers and filmmakers.
The platform also aims to bridge the gap between socially responsible and independently produced films and reach the most remote regions of the country. It will hold pre-arranged screenings in schools, government offices, businesses and organizations, including those in mountainous and coastal villages, in addition to its streaming platform.
Russell Pili, head of the DOST-Technology PCIEERD Transfers Division, also provided an overview of the Women Helping Women: Innovating Social Enterprise (WHWise) program. WHWise is a DOST program that has helped EdukSine and all other grantees improve their causes to have a meaningful impact on their target communities. In this sense, EdukSine improves the lives of many filmmakers and producers who have limited support and distribution and no way to make their films accessible to a wider audience.
Filipinos have been using streaming platforms heavily since the pandemic, and local services have hit record numbers of streams and subscribers. In the past few months alone, the entertainment industry has changed incredibly rapidly, which is why streaming services have quickly become one of the most popular digital services in the country.
Meanwhile, as part of its long-term goal of supporting the emerging space technology industry in the Philippines, researchers from the DOST-Advanced Science and Technology Institute (DOST-ASTI) successfully communicated with Diwata-2 via the Iloilo Ground Receiving Station (GRS), the latest in space infrastructure.
DOST-ASTI Director Franz A. de Leon led a team of researchers at GRS Iloilo to perform the testing, validation, and initial operations of the ground station installation. The team also met with local government units to discuss potential collaborations.
The operationalization of Iloilo GRS is a welcome development, and it is a great addition to the existing space technology infrastructure. The government wanted to build a ground station on each of the main islands of the country. With the installation of the Iloilo GRS, the country now has stations in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. This will allow greater operational flexibility and redundancy of critical infrastructure.
The Iloilo GRS is housed at the Climate Field School in Dumangas, Iloilo, and has a 3.5 meter Earth observation satellite tracking antenna. The antenna was initially erected in 2019 and operationalization testing began in 2019 by researchers from the Philippine Earth Data Resource and Observation (PEDRO) Center. However, due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, antenna testing has been delayed.
In 2019, Diwata-2 captured a grayscale image of Earth. The Philippine Scientific Earth Observation Microsatellite (PHL-Microsat) program released the first images from the satellite, which included images of Kalinga and Aurora provinces.
