Push PH cinema to greater heights
Credit to Author: Mauro Gia Samonte| Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2020 16:13:02 +0000
FEW people realize it but when Sen. Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go proposed one more Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) outside of the one that has been held over the past more than four decades every yuletide season, he was actually giving the local film industry a most vital shot in the arm.
I don’t know if the senator had ever dropped in at the Tropical Hut on Scout Borromeo in Quezon City. This place was the hub of movie people — actors and actresses, craftsmen, artists, production crews, stuntmen and extras — who gathered there for coffee while waiting for shoot schedules or post-production activities at the Magnatech facilities a block away.
That was at a time in the 1980s and the 1990s when the Philippine film industry was at its most productive. This could be gauged from the fact that though film scripts during the period were fetching fees of only as high as P25,000 at the maximum, one of the most prolific screenwriters at the time, Humilde “Meek” Roxas, was able to donate an elegant chapel for Catholic devotees in his neighborhood in Cupang, Antipolo. I don’t know of any other local film craftsman who boasted of such an accomplishment.
At any rate, if Senator Go happens to visit the area today, he would realize that the Magnatech is completely gone, both from sight and perhaps from public memory, attesting to the complete demise of an industry it used to serve.
Yet, how pathetic that the same folks who patronized Topical Hut in the so-called second golden age of Philippine cinema continue to crowd the place, if only just to talk (for there just isn’t any cash to pay for coffee), exchanging notes on what the next film assignment potential is forthcoming. It used to be that stunt actor Brando Navarro would bring coffee in a thermos bottle from time to time to serve to colleagues who couldn’t afford to buy the Tropical brand, but over time the amiable favorite double of Fernando Poe Jr. or FPJ would figure in a murder case that would place him behind bars up to now.
It was in the place I remember having last seen Celso Ad Castillo, scrounging for assignments that would no longer come. And it is the same good ole eatery that legman Ariel bases his operation alternately with McDo across Quezon Avenue, which has been kind enough to allow him to lug in his meager belongings each time he conducts his business there — which mostly consists of notifying me and others about the passing away of one more film director. The latest I remember he notified me about was the death of Mike Relon Makiling, the scriptwriter of the movie that launched to stardom the Philippines’ first Miss Universe, Gloria Diaz, in the Celso Ad Castillo film “Ang Pinakamagandang Hayop sa Balat ng Lupa.”
Ah, Filipino films. How one can’t talk about them now without talking about joblessness, hunger, homelessness and death!
True, moviegoers are continuously treated to films that appear to indicate a flourishing of the Philippine film industry. But what we don’t realize is that those movies are products mainly of just the two main television networks — ABS-CBN and GMA 7. I leave it to the readers to determine just what kind of movies the two networks churn out and which SM theaters consistently give accommodation to. Once leading film producers like Seiko Films, Regal Films and Viva Films have gone forever it seems, with the latter two engaged with the giant networks in joint ventures every once in a while.
Can this setup amount to a Philippine film industry?
Unwittingly it seems, Senator Go struck the question when he proposed the holding of another MMFF. A summer edition of the MMFF won’t solve the problem of resuscitating the gasping Philippine cinema, but the idea is an eye-opener. It zeroes in on the real problem.
At the advent of the millennium, the vigorous establishments of SM malls across the archipelago have succeeded in siphoning off the masses of moviegoers away from the traditional single-unit movie houses, which were the distinct hallmarks of urban centers, to the multi-theater cinema scheme of the malls chain of Henry Sy: one giant cinema center subdivided into a variety of theaters labeled “A, B, C, D, E, etc.”
It was this one single development that had sent the more than 180 independent movie houses crashing in one fell swoop. Cite such theaters as Ideal, State, Universal, Avenue and Odeon on Rizal Avenue in Manila, or Ocean, Diamond and New Frontier in Cubao, Quezon City. They have all gone to oblivion.
And we are here talking about movie theaters only in Metro Manila. How about those in other urban areas of the country? It is estimated that 80 percent of movie houses across the land are those in the SM cinema scheme.
As far as the output of the film industry is concerned, the consolidation of moviegoers into SM theaters didn’t appear to register any ill effect. On the contrary, it even made movie dates more convenient and pleasurable, what with the air-conditioned climate and commercial ambiance inside the malls contributing to the leisure of moviegoers. And so it was that as late as 1999, Philippine cinema continued to churn out more or less its average output of 150 yearly. In 2000, the figure dropped drastically to 83, going down further to 80 in 2003. What took place in the film industry at the advent of the millennium?
Henry Sy banned R-18 movies.
This type of movies are those that cater to mature audiences, aged 18 years and above — the kind that had built movie idols like FPJ, Joseph Estrada, Lito Lapid, Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr., Rey Malonzo, Cesar Montano, Cristina Gonzales and who else who have gone up the rungs of politics eventually. These movie icons are the kind that attracts movie audiences, thereby continuously oiling the film industry.
In other words, R-18 movies are the lifeblood of Filipino films. Ban R-18 movies, what do you get? You bleed the Filipino film industry dry.
That’s what Henry Sy did to the industry when he banned R-18 movies from SM theaters.
Only during the MMFF do SM theaters exhibit a relaxation on the ban. The festival is an event mandated by law, and not even a Sy can defy it. But outside of the ambit of the law mandating the festival — meaning the rest of the 11 months and three weeks of the year — SM theaters continue to do their own thing in the spirit of laissez faire.
It’s all in the exercise of free enterprise, it is said. SM theaters are the Sys’ own and who can stop them from doing as they please?
Evidently, when Senator Go proposed a summer film festival, it was far from his mind to approach the matter the way I have been advocating it should be done: use strong political will to quash the SM ban on R-18 movies. The senator merely felt bad, it is said, to see the other entries in the MMFF just past not winning any cash remuneration; he wished that everybody had gotten a prize. So he thought maybe more festivals will do the trick.
But the imminent absolute demise of Philippine cinema is inevitably anchored on crushing the monopoly enjoyed by the networks. Only by doing so will the otherwise legitimate stakeholders in the film industry be encouraged once again to partake in the exciting, socially creative enterprise of filmmaking.
History tells us that film was conceived and developed consciously to be an instrumentality of social change. Lenin commissioned theater scholar Sergei Eisenstein to study the silent American movie “Birth of a Nation” by D.W. Griffith, for the purpose of using the cinematic medium as a weapon for organizing the masses in the struggle to oust Czar Nicholas 2nd. The Eisenstein study produced the montage theory, which until now is the one single guiding principle for making movies.
In the hands of socially responsible elements, films are a powerful medium for achieving truly meaningful social change. This is the far-reaching implication I perceive in the concern of Senator Go to expand coverage of the MMFF — which in essence is upholding Philippine cinema over foreign ones, specifically Hollywood products that are the constant milieu for movie fans in SM movie houses.
It is particularly significant that attention to this malady finally comes from a lawmaker who has the power to make things in this respect happen. He has announced his brainchild anyway; push it then to its adulthood. Initiate legislation that will end SM’s virtual monopoly of film exhibition, require the mall giant to lift its ban on adult films, thus leveling up the playing field not just for the two major networks but also for all the stakeholders in the great adventure of pushing Philippine cinema to greater heights.