Philippine Cinema is Dead?!
Mighty)
This article was originally published at the website of the Filipino International Film Festival Los Angeles.
I grew up in the quiet town of Roxas, Isabela in the Cagayan Valley region (Philippines that is). There wasn’t much going on in our town—no shopping malls, no fun rides except during fiesta when a ferris wheel and a caterpillar would be setup, no parks for my friends and I to chase each other and certainly no video games and Internet to steal away our time. Our life was simple and uncomplicated. It was the early 1990s.
Our town was hundreds of kilometers away from Manila cut off by two mountain ranges and reachable only by a nine-hour bus ride. But no, we were not isolated and the town wasn’t boring. We had two movie houses in town showing movies, granted they were shown in Manila a month or so ago but it didn’t really matter.
Our family would go to the movies once or twice a month. Mom held my sis and dad took care of me. Some of our cousins went with us, too. Those were the days of “double-with” flicks, two movies for the price of one! Value for our money indeed!
Our movie experience wasn’t complete without the pop corn and soda that mom would buy before going in. After the movies, we’d eat balut on the way home. Since there were no taxis there and tricycles weren’t as popular as they are now, we’d walk home.
Those were the days.
I grew up. So did the world. Betamax came a-knocking but VHS forcibly entered the movie scene. In a few years time, VCD no longer sounded too foreign and just when almost every household had a VCD player, the world shifted and brought us the revered DVDs.
Meanwhile, the movie houses in Roxas died a natural death. Survival of the fittest at work! In the wake of these movie houses, you’d find thousands of DVDs in the market, on banketa along the streets and kids downloading movies from the Internet.
Since then, movie houses in the provinces and in the metro started the habit of dying and giving way to more profitable ventures, with the exception, of course, of behemoth malls with movie houses such as SM Cinemas, Robinsons and Ayala.
If the tentacles of the movie houses were dying, then the movie industry, itself, is terminally ill!
Studios and film makers in the Philippines produced about 200 films yearly in the early 2000s. But with the dominance of Hollywood films and the rampant piracy in the society, how can Philippine cinema hope to survive?
Philippine Cinema is not dead. At least not yet. But there is a revolution going on—both in the independent front and also in well-meaning mainstream film makers. But it’s an uphill climb from here.
I live in Quezon City now where the movie houses at the malls are easily accessible. I still love movies. It’s just that the repertoire of Philippine Cinema is radically reduced. Thanks to budding indie film makers, film buffs have more choice. And that my friends, is what I want to support through this blog ww.penstalker.com!
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I totally agree. I miss those days when our nearby neighbor keeps on announcing the next movie flick in their movie house. From what I remember, they used VHS player for showing two back-to-back Filipino movies (mostly FPJ and Bong revilla films) at a cost of 2 pesos per head, MWF. It was the cheapest rate I’ve experienced in a move house and it was a quality entertainment at its best especially when we have to argue on our different reviews and most of the time, discuss the highlights of the movies. It was fun demonstrating the movie highlights especially the scenes of FPJ sequence of power punches.hehe
Yet, of course, it was in 1990′s. Now, the cinema is dying because the big media companies are too cautious in gambling their own money to more mature movies. They always tap “what’s in, too westernized ” concept on the minds of the mass. Instances such as the never-ending series of cheesy love-stories starred with too overrated love teams (or pseudo-love teams) are always the first-pick of the producers. Actually, love stories are just OK for me as long as there is relevance, gist or a more polished plot and creative cinematography. Yet, what we have is always the stereotypical type such that the publicity of the actors/actresses always overshadows relevance of the movie’s plot and there’s always this “happy-sad-happy” shallow transitions of emotional scenes not to mention the actors/actress dialogue filled with too much sensationalism. If I were the writer of this stories, I would hesitate putting my name in the end credits.
We can see light on these indie films yet the problem always lies on their distribution to the public I think. They can’t reach the entire masses because of lack of major market endorsers. Yet with the help of various awarding bodies, they can still be uplifted. As a moviegoer, it is pretty rare for our movie house here in Tacloban to present these indie films because of money matters of course.
Actually,not that I support piracy, I watch foreign movies in my PC through torrent. But when it comes to watching nice local films (which is rare at the moment), I always go to cinemas.
Hey Joshua! Those were the days. heheh. Piracy really hurts the local film industry. I hope something could be done to revive Philippine Cinema. Anyways, we ordinary people could support good Pinoy films. But if all producers and directors do is to rehash Hollywood plotlines, then we’re better off watching the original hollywood movies.
I think it’s quite not easy nowadays.