by Christine R Mapa
Building on the success of its inaugural session, the AmBag Anniversary lecture series returned on May 23, 2025, with its second installment: ‘Dugsong: Mga Tinipong Kwento ng Klima mula sa Oscar M Lopez (OML) Center’, presented by Ms. Kato Sarmiento.
Since its founding in 2012, the OML Center has focused on building up climate research in and on the Philippines. As the research grew and people began taking climate science more seriously, they arrived at a new challenge — bridging knowledge to action. Thus, the center has expanded to also developing programs and projects that aim to address this, such as the decision support tool eCCET Helper and workbook Klimaalam.
But for this lecture, Ms. Sarmiento specifically highlighted ‘Mga Kwento ng Klima’, a 60-minute documentary, shining light on how the art of filmmaking and storytelling could help promote climate knowledge and resiliency among the general public.
THROUGH THE FILIPINO LENS
Launched in 2019 in partnership with ABS-CBN DocuCentral, the goal of ‘Mga Kwento ng Klima’ was to tell stories of climate change based on the Filipino experience.
“We needed visuals and stories that are familiar to Filipinos, that can help them make sense of the international data and news reports… and why there is more to resilience than glorified post-disaster stories,” she explained.
An integral part of this documentary’s creation was the ABS-CBN production and writing crew being required to participate in multi-session workshops with scientists, technical experts, and other interested stakeholders. Ms. Sarmiento believed that this approach allowed the crew to understand how they can combine data and stories in a compelling manner, resulting in a robust, informative documentary.
BUILDING RESILIENCE WITH STORYTELLING
The Mga Kwento ng Klima documentary marked the beginning of the OML Center’s ‘Balangay’ project, which aimed to combine the strengths of science, arts, and communications to promote resilience. The speaker emphasized their belief that “weaving climate stories into the Filipino consciousness contributes towards the building of a climate resilient nation.”
A part of this project was the Klima Film Festival, which was launched during the height of the pandemic in 2020 in partnership with the Climate Change Commission (CCC). This effort continued independently in 2022, this time under the banner ‘Mga Kwento ng Klima (MKK) Short Films’. In total, the OML Center has amassed 42 short film entries from the competitions, all of which are science-based fictional narratives. As the speaker clarified, this allowed filmmakers to share and portray their understanding and experience of climate impacts from their perspective and with creativity.
She then went on to highlight some realizations she had over the years of working on this project. According to her, these stories have elicited more interest among its audience to learn more about climate change and action compared to presenting data and graphs. “The films are able to give people some sense of agency, perhaps because they see characters and stories on screen already play a version of their challenges out,” she remarked.
When asked about whether choosing film was a conscious choice over other means of communicating climate science, she further reiterated the point that showing the implications of the science in terms of something the general public can relate to in real life will encourage more people to learn more about climate change.
Still, to ensure that films remained rooted in reality, she explained that the competition required the participants to undergo the Climate Film Labs (CFL). This is a series of workshops with climate science and film experts, allowing contestants to strengthen both the science and technical aspects of their films.
LOOKING AHEAD
One of the positive developments about MKK was the noticeable shift in the themes of the entries submitted. Ms. Sarmiento shared that in the first edition of the competition, most of the short films were centered on general environmental issues. But over the years, the stories became more complex. She noted that last year’s competition received more entries featuring stories related to Philippine mythology and way of life.
Another positive development to come out from the film festival was the realization that films are a good medium for communicating science to people with disabilities. With this, the OML Center has worked to improve their film outputs and screenings to be more inclusive and accessible, including to Deaf and blind audiences.
ON REACHING A WIDER AUDIENCE
Currently, the short films from the 2022 and 2023 MKK are available for streaming on JuanFlix, in partnership with the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP). The entries from the 2024 edition are expected to be available on the website around November 2025.
The OML Center also recently launched ‘Mga Kwento ng Klima Short Films Roadshow’, which will involve screenings and learning sessions with students and other members of the community. The event commenced last May 22, 2025 in Bacolod City, and is expected to be held in different parts of the country.
