Filmmaker, Writer, Producer, War Correspondent, Journalist, Communications Specialist, Social Entrepreneur
Writer, poet, and broadcast journalist Jim Libiran made his debut as a filmmaker in Cinemalaya 2007 through his gritty ultra-realistic film, Tribu, casting real-life gang members from Tondo as actors. Tribu bagged several awards from Cinemalaya that year, including Best Film. This verismo-approach to filmmaking is reprised in Libiran’s second full length project, Happyland (2010) — the Philippines’ first football film — by using real soccer players from Tondo as actors and local residents as part of the crew.
This unconventional and divergent approach to filmmaking characterizes Libiran’s multi-faceted career – He is a multi-awarded writer, poet, essayist, print and broadcast journalist, sociologist, television producer, university lecturer, activist and, recently, film actor.
Films
TRIBU
Full version: https://bit.ly/3GL9JCS
HAPPYLAND
Trailer: https://bit.ly/3svsR2k
NINJA PARTY
Trailer: https://bit.ly/38yf8C5
Awards / Citations
2008 Pari de l’Avenir, 7th Festival Cinema Paris, TRIBU
2008 Best Director, Gawad Tanglaw (Teachers’ Choice Award)
2008 Best Film, Gawad Tanglaw (Teachers’ Choice Award), TRIBU
2008 Best Musical Score, Urian Awards, TRIBU
2007 Best Film, Cinemalaya 2007, TRIBU
2007 Best Sound, Cinemalaya 2007, TRIBU
2007 Best Ensemble Acting, Cinemalaya 2007, TRIBU
2007 Best Actor (Ensemble), Cinemanila, TRIBU
2007 Best Actress (Ensemble), Cinemanila, TRIBU
2006 2nd Prize, Screenplay – Filipino, Palanca Awards for Literature
Film Festivals (Competition)
2008 July 10th Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival. New Delhi, India. (South Asia Premiere)
2008 April 10th Festival de Cinema Asiatic de Barcelona. Spain
2008 March 22nd Fribourg International Film Festival. Switzerland
2008 Feb 58th Berlin Film Festival – International Forum for New Cinema. Germany. (Western Europe Premiere)
2007 Oct 12th Pusan International Film Festival – New Currents Section. Busan, South Korea. (East Asia Premiere)
2007 August 9th Cinemanila International Film Festival. Manila, Philippines
2007 June Cinemalaya 2007. Manila, Philippines
Film Festivals (Non- Competition)
2009 Jan Black Movie Film Festival 2009, Geneva, Switzerland
2008 May Tekfestival (Festival of Independent Film). Rome, Italy
2008 March Titanic International Filmfestival Budapest. Hungary. (Eastern Europe Premiere)
2008 March 19th Natfilm Festival 2008. Copenhagen, Denmark
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Biography
Multi-awarded filmmaker, poet, essayist, writer, broadcast journalist, film and TV producer, documentary-maker, and social entrepreneur, Jim Libiran is also a communication, marketing, and brand consultant on both traditional and new media.
He is also a Senior Communications Specialist with an extensive professional experience in traditional and new media platforms. Combined with more than a decade of ground experience conceptualizing, strategizing, synergizing, and mobilizing grassroots communities for various advocacies, campaigns, and crisis communications.
His core competencies include unorthodox ideation, flexible strategies, and multi-modal activations of adult pedagogical modules aimed at enhancing the skills and knowledge of coparticipants in the educational process. He is currently training in NLP, basic appreciation of data science, and has humble knowledge of some programming languages. Libiran is also equipped with the right brain skills in the areas of written and visual narrative expressions like films, performances, and traditional literature.
From January 2021 to January 2022, Libiran was engaged by the USAID Fish Right Program (FRP) as its Senior Communications Advisor. Under this role, Libiran designed and created the module, and directed the video materials for USAID FRP’s Social Media Communicators’ Seminar—a multimodal learning system to aid future social media creators and communicators in creating their campaigns and messaging.
In 2020, Libiran partnered with industry experts in founding The Safety Project PH. It is an organization of certified professional Safety Officers that help production teams and companies in complying with the Safe Filming protocols established by the Film Development Council of the Philippines, the Department of Labor and Employment, and the Department of Health, during and post-pandemic.
After the tragic Kentex factory fire in May 2015, Libiran and his fellow labor organizers and journalists came together, seeing the need to formalize a new media platform for grassroots labor journalism in the Philippines, and further start a social media network for labor groups to air their campaigns and document labor mobilizations.
Libiran and his colleagues started the Center for People’s Media (CPM), to address prevalent labor issues and concerns in the Philippines. CPM is supervised by People’s Media Advocacy, Asia, a Philippine-based NGO that has, since its founding, received support from the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, the UCSC Blum Center, BigIdeas@Berkeley, Public Services International, Building and Woodworking International, the ASEAN Services Employees Trade Union Council, and the Union for Canada. In 2018, CPM also partnered with the UCSC Everett Program to develop social media training modules.
Since its founding, CPM continues to navigate the global political and social climate of misinformation and disinformation, by collaborating with students, professionals, NGOs, and other private organizations in developing their capacities of producing citizen media. At present, a satellite organization that mirrors the same values and goals is being established in Arizona, USA.
Libiran is a native of Tondo (district of Manila). He has tucked in his belt, a total of ten years of work experience in television news— from segment producer, he rose from the ranks to become a reporter and eventually manager of ABS-CBN’s news and public affairs division. He transferred to ABC 5 to become the Head of Production for News and Public Affairs.
As a broadcast journalist, he has done documentaries and reportage on the eve of the wars in Iraq; the Taliban defeat and the Northern Alliance takeover in Afghanistan; the rebellions in Mindanao; the EDSA DOS (People Power 2) uprising; as well as socio-cultural investigations on things uniquely Filipino. Before television, he spent ten years working in various print media companies, from tabloids to broadsheet dailies to magazines. While working as a newspaper journalist, he was also a labor union activist and a grassroots organizer/educator.
Libiran, the filmmaker, is widely known for his unorthodox style and offbeat stories. With the launch in 2010 of Happyland – the Philippines’ first football film –Libiran firmed up his signature style of blending realist cinema and social entrepreneurship. By casting a real football team in Happyland, Libiran again reprises his method of using real-life characters as actors.
In Tribu (2007), he recruited 52 real-life gang leaders to act in this critically-acclaimed film. This unconventional and divergent approach to filmmaking characterizes Libiran’s multi-faceted career – He is a multi-awarded writer, poet, essayist, print and broadcast journalist, sociologist, television producer, university lecturer and activist. Libiran finished his Bachelor’s degree in Sociology at the University of Santo Tomas. He is currently finishing his Master’s degree in Media Studies – Film at the University of the Philippines’ Film Institute.
The ultra-realist film is based on his screenplay that won the prestigious Palanca Award for Literature in 2006. In Tribu, Libiran explores the hip-hop sub-culture in the Philippines and the hidden world of teenage gangsters in urban areas. As such, it is hailed by Cinemalaya 2007 jurors for its “grand and graphic depiction of contemporary Tondo, Manila, its raw passion and searing violence, its terrible social conditions and conflicting social mores, and its people’s coruscating embrace of both the sacred and the profane, the filial and the tribal, the tender and the vicious.”
The film has garnered a total of eight international and local awards including the Pari de l’Avenir (Bet for the Future) from the Festival Paris Cinema 2008; Best Film, Best Sound, and Best Actor (for its ensemble cast of real-life gang members) from Cinemalaya 2007, and both Best Actor Ensemble and Best Actress Ensemble awards at the 9th Cinemanila International Film Festival. In the same year, the Philippine academic community gave Libiran the Gawad Tanglaw award for Best Director and the Best Film.
In 2012, Libiran was tapped by the top insurance company, Hongkong-based Sunlife (Asia), to produce a ten-minute film about the Igorot ―solar painter Jordan Mangosan. The project became part of Sunlife’s Asia-wide campaign, featuring three Asian directors.
His third film, “Ninja Party” — controversial for tackling adolescent sexuality — won the People’s Choice Award at the first Sinag Maynila Film Festival, held at SM Aura, Taguig City, March 2015.
Libiran is also in various stages of pre-production and script development on several film projects both for commercial and television release. He is also working on several commissioned documentary projects.
Outside his work as a Senior Communications Advisor, he spends most of his time developing short films, music videos, joins literary contests (poetry and essay), lectures at local universities, conducts filmmaking workshops, social media and communications seminars, and supervises various socio-civic projects.
At present, he is also working on his fourth film as he continues to create and innovate means and avenues that push the boundaries of television, film, and new media, especially post-pandemic.
DEVELOPMENT WORK & ADVOCACY
USAID-URI Fish Right Program’s Social Media Communicator’s Seminar
(40 module videos for an online course)
https://bit.ly/38tKBFD
KALAYAAN: Pamanang Karagatan
(West Philippine Sea Documentary)
https://bit.ly/3JrMjnQ
KALAYAAN: Karapatan sa Karagatan
(West Philippine Sea Documentary)
https://bit.ly/3GGupM1
KALAYAAN: Paninindigan para sa Karagatan
(West Philippine Sea Documentary)
https://bit.ly/3gEdHm6
EDSA 25: Sulyap sa Kasaysayan
(Documentary, Trailer only)
https://bit.ly/3gIxCAi
ARAW
Sunlife Financial Asia (Commissioned Documentary)
https://bit.ly/3gYXQih
BEVERLY HILLS 6750
Positive Transformation Campaign Ads (Advocacy campaign ad)
https://bit.ly/3GLf6lp
https://bit.ly/3Lt58IR
https://bit.ly/3p6KwwL
https://bit.ly/3LtDUC2
FAMILIES
30s (Television and New Media Campaign for Press Freedom and against the Ampatuan Massacre in Mindanao)
https://bit.ly/3GNmCwb
HEADLINER TVC: Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV
(Political campaign advertisement)
https://bit.ly/3oKXS1k
