There were two big stories in Philippine cinema in 2005, one sad and one happy. The first was the continuing downturn in commercial film production. From a high of more than 200 films in the early 1990s, annual production has steadily declined, hitting a low of about 25 films in 2005. The second story was the boom in independent filmmaking. With the availability of cheap digital video technology, aspiring directors no longer have to wait for the movie studios to give them their big break-they can go ahead and make their own movies.
The year began on an encouraging note: GMA Films, an affiliate of the GMA television network, released the romantic comedy Let The Love Begin, the year's first bona fide blockbuster. Directed by Mac Alejandre, the movie starred Richard Gutierrez and Angel Locsin, who were then best known for their hit television fantasy series, Mulawin. Let The Love Begin uses a formula that has not changed since the Filipino movies of the 1950s: poor boy falls in love with rich girl, circumstances force them apart, but through his own hard work and resourcefulness, he gets the girl in the end. Alejandre tries to give the old stereotypes a modern makeover, and to his credit the film has a light, charming quality, but Let The Love Begin owes its success to its attractive young stars. GMA had another hit later in the year with Lovestruck, starring the winners of its TV talent search, Starstruck.
Star Cinema, an affiliate of the other major television network, ABS-CBN, started the year with Dreamboy, also a romantic comedy, with one of its biggest stars, Piolo Pascual, in three different roles. Dreamboy performed below expectations; observers noted that Pascual, who had done well in more mature roles, was perhaps too old for romantic comedies.
Director Jeffrey Jeturian (Pila-Balde, FEFF 2001, Bridal Shower, FEFF 2004) unveiled Bikini Open, a hilarious mock-documentary about a beauty pageant for young women and men. The main protagonist is a TV host (Cherry Pie Picache) who is trying to save her show from cancellation by doing an "investigative report" into the lives of the attractive, not to mention skimpily-clad, contestants. In her desperation to raise her ratings, she invades her subjects' privacy and manipulates events, all in the name of "good journalism". The media exposé turns out to be an exposé on the media itself, and how it sacrifices truth and objectivity for entertainment and high ratings. Chris Martinez's witty screenplay also makes fun of the national obsession with celebrity without resorting to slapstick or crude gags; some of the film's funniest moments are oddly moving. Produced by Seiko Films, Bikini Open stars Diana Zubiri, Francine Prieto, Alfred Vargas, and Rafael Rosel.
In 2003 Tony Gloria's Unitel Pictures and writer-director Mark Meily scored a critical and commercial hit with Crying Ladies, a "dramedy" (drama-comedy) about three women who hire themselves out as "criers" at wakes and funerals. Their follow-up, La Visa Loca, follows a Filipino Everyman (Robin Padilla) in his quest for that most desirable prize: a United States visa. Meanwhile, he is employed as a chauffeur by the American host of a TV show called Planet Strange, which features bizarre real-life events and personalities, of which the Philippines has many. La Visa Loca aims for social satire but fails because it balks at giving offense. The film's many elements - including a chorus which periodically appears to offer musical comment on the proceedings - never really come together, and the jokes are tired and flat. Towards the end the satire falls headlong into sentimentality.
Unitel's next offering was Pinoy Blonde, director Peque Gallaga's first movie in seven years. Written by Gallaga and Lore Reyes, Pinoy Blonde follows two bumbling cousins (played by Jeffrey Quizon and Boy2 Quizon) as they attempt to carry out an assignment for their uncle, who has connections in the criminal underworld. The two cousins are film buffs, no, movie junkies who constantly quote lines from popular films and bicker endlessly over who is the greatest Filipino director, Lino Brocka or Ishmael Bernal. During moments of crisis, they wonder how their favorite filmmakers would have rendered their stories on film. They also have trouble distinguishing between real life and the movies.
Before long they're trapped in a condemned building between two warring gangs, with only their movie-fueled imagination to fall back on. Gallaga has made several films that are recognized as Filipino classics - Oro Plata Mata, Scorpio Nights, Unfaithful Wife. Pinoy Blonde is his valentine to the movies and his dispatch to the new generation of Filipino moviegoers. The biggest stars in Philippine cinema appear in clever cameos, and the most popular rock bands contribute to the original soundtrack.
Star Cinema recovered from the dismal performance of the romantic drama Wherever You Are (Nasaan Ka Man) with two hits in a row: the melodrama Dubai and the comedy D'Anothers. Dubai, directed by Rory Quintos, stars Aga Muhlach and John Lloyd Cruz as two brothers working in Dubai; Claudine Barretto is the woman who comes between them. There have been several attempts to make movies about the experiences of Filipino workers overseas - there are eight million of them and counting - but for the most part these films are traditional melodramas that just happen to take place in other countries.
Joyce Bernal (Mr Suave - FEFF 2005) continued her run of successes with D'Anothers, starring Vhong Navarro. This spoof of horror films ranging from The Others to recent Filipino blockbuster Feng Shui appeals to the Filipinos' fondness for in-jokes and puns.
The annual Metro Manila Film Festival is the main reason the local film industry has not died out completely. For two weeks in December, Metro Manila theatres show only Filipino films. These films are chosen in mid-year by a committee composed of city mayors and industry representatives. Industry observers have long been critical of the selection process: the choices are based on the submitted screenplay, and the list of actors who may be cast in the film. In short, the shooting script may change completely in the course of making the film, and none of the actors in the proposed list may be hired, but the finished film is still guaranteed a spot in the festival. The selection committee is openly partial to movies with strong commercial prospects, meaning small movies without big-name stars have little hope of getting in.
This year fantasy movies dominated the Metro filmfest. Enteng Kabisote 2, the sequel to last year's festival top-grosser about an ordinary man (Vic Sotto) who marries a fairy princess (Kristine Hermosa) and travels to her magical kingdom, topped the charts again with a P140 million gross. Erik Matti's Exodus: Tales from the Enchanted Kingdom, starring action star turned anti-video piracy chief turned senator Bong Revilla, also made a strong showing, thanks to its impressive special effects, all Filipino-made. Mulawin, a co-production of GMA Films and Regal Films based on the very popular TV fantasy series, did not do as well as expected. Perhaps the viewers were finally growing tired of fantasy-dramas after watching them on TV every single day, or maybe they wanted something bigger and more spectacular than what they'd already seen on TV.
Regal Films' Mano Po had its fourth incarnation, this time a comedy about a polygamous Chinese businessman called I Am The Legal Wife (Ako Legal Wife), directed by Joel Lamangan and starring Zsa Zsa Padilla, Cherry Pie Picache, Rufa Mae Quinto and Jay Manalo. Lamangan also directed the Regal drama Blue Moon starring Dennis Trillo, Jennilyn Mercado, and Mark Herras. Gil Portes directed Mourning Girls, a comedy with Juliana Palermo and Assunta de Rossi.
The popular horror movie omnibus Shake, Rattle and Roll returned for the eighth time, with episodes directed by Uro de la Cruz, Rico Maria Ilarde, and Richard Somes. Jose Javier Reyes wrote and directed Kutob, a suspense-thriller about a serial killer, played by former teenybopper Marvin Agustin.
At film festivals overseas, Filipino cinema was well represented by Brillante Mendoza's Masseur (Masahista), Lav Diaz's Evolution (Ebolusyon), and The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros (Ang Pagdadalaga Ni Maximo Oliveros), directed by Auraeus Solito. Masseur won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival, and has just been acquired by a North American distributor, Picture This. Evolution, Diaz's 11-hour opus which follows the fortunes of a rural Filipino family from the martial law regime to the post-Marcos era, has been screened at more than a dozen film festivals including Toronto and Rotterdam. Diaz has been honored outside the Philippines with retrospectives of his films, and Evolution is on many critics' yearend Top Ten lists. Ironically, few people in the Philippines have seen the film - by the director's estimate, a total of 120 - and it is not likely to be screened in Manila theatres. The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, the story of a gay 12-year-old boy whose loyalty to his family of hoodlums is threatened when he is befriended by an honest policeman, was named Best Film at the Montreal World Film Fest, the imagineNATIVE filmfest in Toronto, and the Asian Festival of First Films in Singapore. Earlier this year, it screened at Sundance, was named Best Asian Film in Rotterdam, and won three prizes in Berlin, including Best Gay Film. Masseur, Evolution, and Maximo were all independently-produced.
In contrast to the protracted death throes of the mainstream film industry, the independent filmmaking scene is thriving in Manila. Among the notable indie films released in 2005 were Cris Pablo's Bilog, Ato Bautista's My Awakening from Consciousness (Sa Aking Pagkagising Mula sa Kamulatan), Ellen Ongkeko's Stray Cats (Mga Pusang Gala) and Rico Maria Ilarde's Beneath the Cogon.
A prominent Filipino businessman financed the Cinemalaya Foundation, which awarded grants of 500,000 pesos each to nine first-time filmmakers. The results of this experiment were so impressive that other organizations have followed suit, opening up funding opportunities for aspiring filmmakers. The first batch of Cinemalaya films range from social satire to love stories to meditations on death. There's the aforementioned Maximo Oliveros, the first film from Ufo Pictures - a group of screenwriters working within the traditional studio system, who wanted to have creative control over their material. Ned Trespeces made Bigtime, a satire that understands the language of film and plays with it. Barrioke by Ron Bryant is a comedy about how the arrival of a karaoke machine changes the lives of the people in a barrio. Aloi Adlawan's Roomboy is the love story of a motel roomboy and a pretty prostitute. Las Ponggols is Sig Sanchez's tribute to the "little people" of the movie industry - the clappers, gaffers, caterers, and other workers behind the scenes.
Clodualdo del Mundo, who has written many important Filipino films such as Black (Itim), Kisapmata, and Third World Hero (Bayaning Third World) made his feature film directorial debut with Pepot Artista, the story of a starstruck boy. Rica Arevalo's ICU Bed Number 7 stars veteran Filipino actor and director Eddie Garcia as an old man confronted by his own mortality. Isnats by Mike Pancho takes the viewer through the underbelly of society through the eyes of a pickpocket in Divisoria. Eman de la Cruz's One Night (Sarong Banggi) delves into the relationship that forms between a callous prostitute and an adolescent boy looking for his first sexual experience. It will be interesting to see what this year's batch of Cinemalaya grantees can come up with.
So Philippine Cinema is either dying or thriving, depending on who you're speaking to. Mainstream film producers constantly complain about how much money they're losing, and they threaten to quit the business altogether, but somehow they continue to make movies. Attendance at commercial movie houses is down - viewers will only come out for big event movies like Harry Potter, and theatre owners blame cheap, widely-available pirate DVDs for their dwindling audience.
Maybe pirate DVDs are to blame, not only because a disc costs less than a movie ticket, but because the wide selection of bootleg movies - from current releases to Hollywood classics, world cinema, and art films - has actually elevated the viewers' tastes, causing them to lose interest in the usual formulaic fare. Indie filmmakers have a somewhat better chance to realize their artistic visions, but they still have to convince the audience to watch their movies. If the producers who fund and distribute movies could just get together with the filmmakers who use the rawness and immediacy of digital video to create narratives worth watching. But maybe that's expecting too much.
by Jessica Zafra