National Artist Kidlat Tahimik told more than 250 campus journalists in Baguio City that Filipino culture carries its own brake system, a preno that keeps a people from speeding toward someone else's destination. He spoke at the closing ceremonies of the 30th Word Cup, the country's longest-running national campus journalism conference, held days before the first death anniversary of his late wife, Dr. Katrin de Guia, who died on October 12, 2025, at age 75.
The 82-year-old filmmaker, born Eric Oteyza de Guia, has spent decades arguing that our indigenous worldviews are not relics but engines. According to CDN Digital, he used the Baguio gathering to explain kapwa, the Filipino value of shared identity, to a crowd of student writers from elementary to college levels.
What kapwa means, and whose idea it was
Kapwa teaches that the self is inherently intertwined with others and the natural world. It is not a slogan. It is a way of seeing, one that Katrin de Guia, a German-born ethnographer and author, spent years documenting alongside her studies in Sikolohiyang Pilipino under Dr. Virgilio Enriquez at the University of the Philippines.
Her 2005 book, Kapwa: The Self in the Other. Worldviews and Lifestyles of Filipino Cultural Bearers, mixed academic theory with journal entries and personal reflections. It traced the concept through the lives and works of Baguio artists Santi Bose, Roberto Villanueva, Rene Aquitania, and Kidlat himself, along with New York-based documentarian Angel Shaw, Boracay artist Perry Argel, and film director Kanakan Balintagos.
Katrin defined kapwa as the Filipino core value of shared identity and interconnectedness, a living philosophy that could heal both individuals and nations. Kidlat carried that message to the young writers in Baguio, standing before them days before the anniversary of her passing.
Kapwa is an embracing culture, one where we include others in our sense of self, help one another and move toward a shared destination.
A graduation from the 'University of Hollywood'
True to form, Kidlat did not deliver a lecture. Dressed in a graduation toga over a traditional Cordillera-inspired jacket and loincloth, or bahag, he performed as a graduate of the fictional University of Hollywood.
He narrated the journey of a Cordilleran filmmaker who returns to the rice terraces and rejects the formulas of sex and violence in favor of local truths. He set the Ifugao wind goddess Inabyan against Marilyn Monroe, the Hollywood wind goddess, to contrast local storytelling with imported fantasy.
His target was not entertainment itself but the colonial educational system, which he argued reduces learning to the basic 3 Rs of Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic, a corporate pipeline that shapes young minds for someone else's economy. He calls his answer indogenius, the indigenous creative genius that colonial schooling tried to bury.
Wikipedia notes that Kidlat is widely celebrated as the Father of Philippine Independent Cinema and was named National Artist for Film and Broadcast Arts in 2018. His landmark films, Perfumed Nightmare (1977) and Turumba (1983), critiqued Western imperialism and elevated indigenous worldviews over corporate globalization.
The preno: why culture needs brakes
Kidlat's central metaphor is mechanical. Culture, he says, is an engine, a collective force that moves a people in one direction. But every engine needs brakes.
I call it a cultural preno. Culture is an engine of a people, a collective engine to move in one direction. But our culture also has a preno system to balance your forward thrust. It's like a sports car engine. Even if your engine is really good, but if you don't have a good preno system, you will never get to your goal.
The brake he means is kapwa itself. When Western consumerism pushes a people to accelerate, kapwa asks whether the destination is even ours. It is a quietly radical idea: that development measured only in speed and consumption is a car without brakes, and that our own traditions hold the stopping power we need.
Why it matters for young Filipino journalists
The Word Cup Philippines, running since 1994, is a practitioner-led conference, workshop and contest program that draws student publications from across Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. It offers hands-on training in news, editorial, feature and sports writing, editorial cartooning, mobile journalism, broadcasting, photojournalism and media ethics, with participants covering live press briefings and real-time simulations instead of listening to pre-packaged lectures.
For these students, meeting a National Artist who turns a speech into installation art was itself a lesson. Kidlat showed them that form and message can be one, that a journalist or artist who copies the formulas of the powerful tells someone else's story.
His message lands at a moment when the country's media and culture sectors are asking hard questions about foreign ownership, digital platforms and the stories we tell about ourselves. As adobo Magazine reported, Kidlat has carried the same argument to international audiences, including the Frankfurt Book Fair, championing Filipino stories as creative survival rather than mere content.
Katrin de Guia did not live to see this particular graduation at the University of Hollywood. But the young writers who left Baguio carrying the word kapwa are proof that her work, and the preno she helped name, are still moving.
Frequently asked questions
What does kapwa mean?
Kapwa is the Filipino core value of shared identity and interconnectedness. It holds that the self is inherently intertwined with others and the natural world, not separate from them.
Why does Kidlat Tahimik call culture a preno?
He compares culture to a sports car engine. A people needs collective forward thrust, but without a good brake system, a preno, it will never reach its own goal. Kapwa serves as that brake against Western consumerism and colonial values.
What is the Word Cup Philippines?
It is the country's longest-running, practitioner-led national campus journalism conference, workshop and contest program, held annually since 1994 for students from elementary to college levels, along with school paper advisers and teachers.