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 Filipino films that are educational and socially significant, and will excite fans of independent cinema in the country.
“Film is a powerful tool for education by 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 block screening events, EdukSine features films with global impact that strengthen Filipino cultural roots and narratives. The initiative seeks to provide audiences with contextual and transformative film content, meaningful engagements, and long-term support for independent Filipino film producers, directors, actors, and film marketers. EdukSine will be a new and unusual platform for promoting indie films made by small film producers and filmmakers.
The platform also aims to bridge the gap between socially conscious, independently produced films and to reach out to the most remote parts of the country. It will hold pre-arranged screenings in schools, government offices, businesses, and organisations, including those in mountainous and coastal villages, in addition to its streaming platform.
Russell Pili, Chief of the DOST-Technology PCIEERD’s Transfer Division, also provided an overview of the Women Helping Women: Innovating Social Enterprise (WHWise) Programme. WHWise is a DOST programme that assisted EdukSine and all other grantees in improving their causes to have a significant impact on their target communities. In that sense, EdukSine improves the lives of many filmmakers and producers who have limited support and distribution and no way to make their films available to a wider audience.
Filipinos have been using streaming platforms a lot since the pandemic, and local services have reached record-high numbers of streams and subscribers. Just in the last few months, the entertainment industry has changed incredibly quickly, hence streaming services have quickly become one of the most popular digital services in the country.
Meanwhile, as part of its long-term goal of nurturing the Philippines’ emerging space technology industry, 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 addition to the space infrastructure.
DOST-ASTI Director Franz A. de Leon led a team of researchers to the Iloilo GRS to conduct testing, validation, and initial operations of the ground station facility. The team also met with the local government units to discuss potential collaborations.
The Iloilo GRS’s operationalisation is a welcome development, and it is an excellent addition to the existing space technology infrastructure. The government wanted to build a ground station on each of the country’s major islands. With the installation of the Iloilo GRS, the nation now has stations in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. This will allow for greater operational flexibility and critical infrastructure redundancy.
The Iloilo GRS is housed at the Climate Field School in Dumangas, Iloilo, and features a 3.5-meter Earth Observation satellite tracking antenna. The antenna was initially erected in 2019, and testing for operationalisation began in 2019 by researchers from the Philippine Earth Data Resource and Observation (PEDRO) Centre. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s restrictions, the antenna’s testing was delayed.
In 2019, Diwata-2 captured a greyscale image of the Earth. The Philippine Scientific Earth Observation Microsatellite (PHL-Microsat) programme released the satellite’s first images, which included images of the provinces of Kalinga and Aurora.
