biography
Jan Philippe “JP” V. Carpio grew up in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental.
He is a writer, filmmaker and performer currently based in Metro Manila, Philippines. He has undertaken a number of writing and filmmaking workshops: Ricky Lee’s Film and Television Writing Workshop Batch 11 in 1999, the Cultural Center of the Philippines Media Arts Division workshops under Ed Cabagnot: “Paano Ba Talaga Manood ng Pelikula” film appreciation workshop and in 2000, the workshop module of “The First Filipino Full Length Independent Feature Festival” where he completed and screened his first full length film Girl of My Dreams.
In 2005, he completed a workshop facilitated by American master filmmaker Jon Jost as part of the workshop module of the .MOV International Digital Film Festival. He was also selected as a participant for the 2016 Black Factory Cinema Filmmaking Workshop under the late Iranian master filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami. As recently as 2018, he took a filmmaking workshop under Filipino master filmmaker Raymond Red.
His second full length feature Balay Dakû, the first full length film in the Ilonggo language, was awarded a 2002 National Commission for Culture and the Arts Cinema Grant. He completed and screened his third full length feature Hílo (thread) in 2007 at the first Kontra-Agos Film Festival. His fourth full length feature INT.-EXT. (Ella, Marita, Atbp.) was included in the Film Market section of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival.
Apart from a number of pending short films and full length films, his fifth full length film Palanggâ (the beloved) is currently in post production.
His films have been screened at Philippine film festivals like the eKsperim[E]nto Film & Video Festival, GAWAD CCP, Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival and .MOV International Digital Film Festival as well as international film festivals like the Chicago Filipino American Film Festival, the EC0-ETNO-FOLK Film Festival in Slătioara, Romania, Festival Internacional de Cinema Independente in Rio Claro, Brazil, Filipino International Cine Festival in San Francisco, USA, and the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in Greece.
He was officially selected twice for the Silvershorts competition of the 2008 and 2011 .MOV International Digital Film Festival. He was a co-programmer with Benhur Winter of the Anahata Foundation for the year long Metropolis Film Screenings series in 2010. He was one of four Filipino filmmakers invited to present their work and participate in the inaugural Asian Cultural Symposium 2011 held at the LASALLE College of Arts in Singapore.
His writing has been published in national publications like Philippine Graphic and The Philippine Star. His short story “Bundle” was the runner up for Best Published First Short Story at the 2001 NVM Gonzalez Awards. His film writing has been published as a former staff writer for Desistfilm, a transnational online film quarterly.
An advocate of what he calls “artistic cross training”, he has investigated and tried to understand the relationship between the so-called plastic arts and the performing arts. He has taken workshops such as Act Now in 2004, the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ 2006 Beginning Acting Workshop under Tess Jamias and Ian Lomongo, a free contemporary dance workshop under Dancing Wounded’s Jay Cruz in 2007 and a free martial arts and contemporary dance workshop under Jun Nishio in 2008. He has collaborated with actor and dancer Vanni Liwanag on improvised movement pieces which they have performed in venues such as the I Love You Store, Lav Diaz’s award winning film Melancholia and the painting exhibit opening of Dante Perez’s Versus at Alliance Francaise Manila. He has also collaborated on a series of performances with the Actors’ Pleygrawnd: a collective of artists and actors founded by Soliman Cruz that explored the potentials of performance. In 2010, designer Chrysmas Gawaran directed him in an experimental performance piece “Sa Gitna: a meet-and-greet party” based on his one act play “Sa Gitna”. In 2017, he joined a performance art workshop facilitated by Marta Moreno Muñoz.
He currently teaches at the Digital Filmmaking program of the College of St. Benilde School of Design and Arts and the Film program of MINT College. He also holds a regular filmmaking workshop called “Linao Films Working With Actors Workshop”.
He is husband and life partner to writer Yvette Pantilla Carpio.