To Ditsi Carolino, critically acclaimed director of the documentaries ‘’Minsan Lang Sila Bata, ‘’ ‘’Riles’’, and ‘’Bunso’’, it’s about looking for a face to represent the social ills she wishes to expose and correct.

In every film she has made—from the Mowelfund workshop product "Masakit Sa Mata’’ to the latest human rights treatise "Bunso’’—Carolino (who refuses to reveal her age), along with long time film making partner and cinematographer Nana Buxani, has continually prodded the audience and the authorities’ sense of human decency and has urged them to take action against the myriad social injustices in the country today.

‘Bunso’ follows this same vein. An exploration of the lives of three minors named Diosel, Itsoy and Anthony held in a prison together with adult criminals in Cebu, reviewers have called this film a "moving, intense, graphic, finely crafted, an indictment of the justice system, of education and social welfare, and of the church stand on family planning."

And along the way, Carolino garnered an international following as well. In fact, this past couple of weeks, her films ‘’Riles’’ and ‘’Bunso’’ will be making the rounds of film competitions all around the world.

‘’Bunso ‘’was screened in Milan last week at the Festival For African, Latin American and Asian Cinema, while ‘’Riles’’ was screened in Paris, also in that same week. ‘’Riles’’ then moves to Berlin first week of April, while ‘’Bunso’’ goes to Toronto to screen at Canadian International Documentary Festival, the biggest documentary festival in North America at the end of April, and then moves on to Prague on the first week of May.

What is astounding is that Carolino didn’t really set out to become a documentary filmmaker in the first place. Before she graduated from the University of the Philippines in 1982 with a degree in Sociology, she was taking up Medicine.

"I wanted to be a doctor, in the sense of wanting to help people, and being a doctor seemed a fairly obvious way of helping people," she explains. "I discovered I wanted to be a doctor but that I didn’t like the process of becoming one. I enjoyed my social science courses more than my zoology and chemistry subjects."

The fact that anti-Marcos sentiments were strong at the time was a big factor in Carolino’s decision to shift to Sociology instead.

"I think it was also the nature of the times," she says. "The anti-Marcos struggle was pretty strong during those times, and you’d have to be really numb or heartless not to be part of this whole protest action. It also made my social science and political dynamics classes much more interesting."

It was only eight years later after graduation—during which time she had become a production assistant for the news magazine show ‘’The Probe Team’’—that Carolino felt the need to branch out into filmmaking.

"That was where I really started making documentaries, with Probe, that’s where I learned the ropes, so to speak," she says. "Before that I was working with an NGO in Davao, and while I was there I attended a photography workshop that made me realize I had a good eye."

"I learned photography, made slide shows," she further explains. "It was only a matter of time before I wanted my still images to move as well. And when I worked at Probe I realized I wanted to do more indepth documentaries that I attended a workshop on documentary production at Mowelfund."

Aside from this 1990 workshop, Carolino also took a post-M.A. studies in the United Kingdom called Advance Program at the National Film and Television School.

Her first film ‘’Masakit Sa Mata’’ tackled the plight of street children. This first foray into documentary filmmaking was most definitely an education for her.

"The first thing was that, coming from TV, where I think the common practice is to write the script and then put the images in order according to the logic of the script. While doing ‘’Masakit Sa Mata,’’ I learned that you could shoot and edit pictures before writing a script."

From then, she has gone on to helm other features such as ‘’No Time For Play,’’ ‘’Mula Pabrika Hanggang Fukuoka,’’ ‘’Salome,’’ ‘’Minsan Lang Sila Bata,’’ ‘’Riles’’ and ‘’Bunso’’.

"They’re basically human rights films," she says about her films. "I like doing films about ordinary people. All of the films are character-driven explorations into human rights issues with the story of the subject always at its center."

If there’s one outstanding trait that marks a documentary as one by Ditsi Carolino, it is the gritty realism and the way the subjects end up etched in the viewers’ hearts.

Carolino credits her sociology training as a very big factor in helping flesh out the real atmosphere of her documentaries.

"My being an artist and an activist doesn’t have to be a dichotomy. One feeds on the other," she says. "I wouldn’t have become a filmmaker if it were not for my interest in development work and social issues and advocacy. At the same time, my films wouldn’t be this powerful if there was no intention of using these films as an instrument of change."

Carolino also feels that unlike some documentary filmmakers, her willingness to fully involve herself in the lives of her subjects gives her a very sharp creative edge.

"We immerse a lot," she says. "It took us three months to find the subject for ‘Riles,’ and then we shot the subjects for five months and then we ended up editing. Because we had spent so much time with them, we saw how that time of their lives that we filmed had its own dramatic structure. It’s almost like you’re watching a film and no one tells you what to think and feel."

"I know for a fact that ‘Riles’ is used a lot in the Office of the Ombudsman for values formation," she reveals. "They’ve used it to show that the reason they need to work hard against corruption in government is because every peso that is lost in corruption could have been a peso that could have gone to social and basic services for people."

‘’Bunso’’ looks set to follow that gripping and heart-wrenching path that the documentaries before it have already trekked.

"Bunso has become an instrument for advocates to push for a comprehensive juvenile justice bill," Carolino reveals. "Some government people have seen it, like Congresswomen Etta Rosales and Cynthia Villar, and apparently they’re working on their other colleagues in Congress to see it as well."

Carolino is particularly adamant that this bill should be passed into law as quickly as possible.

"Every year the bill gets delayed, it means dozens of kids die because this system does not address their needs," she says. "There’s no rehabilitation that happens to them in jail. In fact, they call prison a university of higher crime because this is where these children learn to commit bigger crimes. And the reforms shouldn’t stop at that. It’s got to be a form of restorative justice that really addresses the children’s needs."

But being a documentary filmmaker isn’t just all about exposing the world’s ills and traveling around the world to showcase your work. Life has ups and downs, and being a documentary filmmaker is no exception.

"I think the biggest advantage of being a documentary filmmaker is that I don’t have to invent anything," she says with a laugh. "I pretty much go there with Nana, and we capture what we can."

Another thing about her filmmaking that Carolino sees as a tremendous advantage is the change she can effect on people.

Carolino has also had her share of not so glowing reactions from her audience, and she takes all of this in stride.

"When we made Minsan, some LGUs in Cebu reacted, they were very sensitive," she relates. "They were very defensive because their task force on streetchildren was very active, and for six months they kept on talking about whether there really were children in the chop shops and whether I was singling out Cebu. They had these doubts, as if we could set up anything."

Apparently, the accusation of setting up a scene is a popular one among Carolino’s detractors.

"I know that a review has been published accusing us that we set up scenes, that we wanted the movie to be dramatic so we set things up," she says. "That’s just not our style. Maybe for some documentary filmmakers, since they spend so little time with their subjects, they need to set up. But with us, we’re patient, we immerse ourselves in our subjects environment and spend time with them."

Carolino’s films have not been branded as biased products as of yet — unlike Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 — but Carolino does not fear the tag if it ever descends upon her works.

"I always believe in a documentary that’s biased," she says. "I think you can’t make a documentary that’s not subjective. It has to reflect the filmmaker’s point of view; otherwise it’s a news report. You make films because you have something to say, you have a point of view you want to get across. That’s what distinguishes a powerful documentary from the ones about the birds and the bees."

Last year saw a boom in the commercial viability of documentaries. Features such as ‘’Fahrenheit 911,’’ ‘’Imelda,’’ and ‘’Super Size Me’’ have proved that documentaries need not be an exercise in boredom but a moving piece of cinema as well.

Carolino is all for this welcome change, and believes that documentaries fill a need that most commercial films have failed to cater to.

"It’s affirming to note people being able to connect your films to their own initiatives to change the government," she says. "I think that with documentaries, people are finally getting a hunger to find out what’s actually happening, rather than being bombarded with information that doesn’t really get to the bottom of things."