The Parasite moment at the 92nd Academy Awards was an affirmation of the value of cinema and showed how an institution like the Oscars can uplift an overlooked tradition of filmmaking. People felt euphoric, elated by the fact that a South Korean film won over films by giants like Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. But a few weeks later, when cities around the world started shutting down due to a global pandemic, the whole filmmaking industry seemed as if it was teetering on the brink of disappearing – rendered inessential and, at least in the Philippines, seemingly left to its own devices.
At least 14 movies were released before the start of the world’s longest lockdown, which began on March 15, 2020. Five days later, a collective of filmmakers launched the Lockdown Cinema Club, a privately initiated effort to help the vulnerable members (wage earners such as grip men, boom operators, etc.) of the local filmmaking industry. Lockdown Cinema Club allowed users to watch as many short films as they want (volunteered by filmmakers, even extending to films from Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand) and give what they could in return. The club was able to amass a total of ₱4,701,036 for donations, which was given to 1,549 workers.
Streaming affirmed films as a rallying point during the lockdown. They served both as an escape and a way to convey political messages about the increasing turmoil in the Philippines. Amid the pandemic, the government pushed for the controversial Anti-Terror Law which was criticized as “relaxing safeguards on human rights and [being] open to abuse.” This law came amid months of mounting outcry over the Philippine government’s bungled response to the pandemic. This encouraged many actors – who can become accessories to political endorsements during the campaign period, and even become politicians themselves – to speak out. An actress apologised for endorsing the current president. Another actress asked the government to help protesters, not threaten them. Some asked where the supposed ₱275 billion Covid-19 response went.
In the wake of the shutdown of ABS-CBN, the country’s largest broadcaster and entertainment company (which was perceived critical of the Duterte administration), and the questionable production “new normal” shoot guidelines set by the Film Development Council of the Philippines, actors came together and started a Filipino actors guild – Aktor – by themselves.
“Actors are often seen as dolls or sources of amusement. This is perhaps brought by wrong notions of what an actor is in our society,” said Aktor representative Dingdong Dantes in a statement.
More actors spoke about political issues while congress deliberated the ABS-CBN franchise, which expired on May 4, 2020. Its main channel, ABS-CBN 2 went off the air that day. President Duterte’s spokesperson has repeatedly insisted that the palace is neutral on the proceedings, though the president has repeatedly slammed ABS-CBN for biased reporting, and even said that he will “personally see to it” that ABS-CBN will be out of business by 2020. The broadcaster has been accused of tax fraud and allowing foreign owners to control the company. On July 10, 2020, the congress voted 70-11 to deny the media giant a new franchise to operate.
The move has effectively disenfranchised as many as 11,000 entertainment industry workers. ABS-CBN has several channels and film production outfits under its wing, including the “mainstream” Star Cinema, which has produced nine of the highest grossing Filipino films of all time; the “indie” outfit Black Sheep; the male-market oriented CineBro; and the film festival CinemaOne Originals. ABS-CBN also has undertaken film restorations and archiving under its “Sagip Pelikula” (“Save Films”) programme and has acted as a de facto film archive in the absence of a proper Filipino Film Archive. The film restoration unit was one of the early casualties of the shutdown.
“Sagip Pelikula” has remastered and restored almost 200 films since it began in 2011. The archive has 3,000 titles in its vault. Now, the team has lost two thirds of its personnel. Projects have come to a halt and its future remains uncertain.
“We always say we are in the service of the Filipino, but not all of that is kawanggawa, (charity),” said Leo Katigbak, the head of the film restoration department in an article published in the anniversary of the time ABS-CBN went off the air. “We are serving the heart, the soul, history, and culture. We are providing a lasting legacy for future generations to appreciate, ponder and ruminate over. The value of what we will appreciate from the perspective of the future, not the immediate present. It is bridging past and future. It is a challenge even under the best of conditions.”
“Sagip Pelikula” still managed to premiere a few of its remaining projects through ABS-CBN’s virtual event hub KTX. In 2020, notable restorations included the gay “comfort” film Markova (2000), about a man forced into sex work during the Japanese occupation; and a new 4K scan of Ibong Adarna (1941), a cinematic adaptation of the Filipino epic poem. The films are available on KTX for around ₱100 (US$2). The platform, originally an online ticket portal, was able to adapt into the new normal and became host to paid concerts, fan engagements, and movie premieres. When films were slowly coming back into production, KTX reached out to producers and artists to provide them the means to make their efforts more sustainable. Four of Star Cinema’s 2020 movies managed to premiere on KTX: the horror film U-Turn, the queer films My Lockdown Romance and Boyette, and the family oriented Four Sisters Before the Wedding.
The metrics of success though for KTX are different. In the absence of box office sales, the platform relies on fan engagement. “We don’t usually look at the numbers when we load our events,” says Gian Carlo Vizcarra, the head of business development at KTX. “We put more of a premium on the possibility of offering content to more markets. We are thrilled when we capture a big mass market (The House of Us and Hello Stranger, the Movie), but we also get excited when we reach a seeming unattainable niche market (for instance, filmed theatre productions, independent movies, regional films). For KTX, a project is considered a hit when we have successfully helped artists and producers to monetise their content.”
Putting cinema online changes metrics, as we can see by the way Netflix measures a title’s success. This year’s Metro Manila Film Festival, the biggest mainstream film festival of the Philippines, usually held during the holiday season, went online through the start-up Upstream. The VOD platform is founded by Reality Entertainment co-owners Erik Matti and Dondon Monteverde (responsible for films such as On the Job and Honour Thy Father). Upstream’s initial online film fest offering was the hip and ever-reliable QCinema, which only premiered three Filipino films this year: Eduardo Dayao’s chilling Midnight in a Perfect World, the Philippine premiere of Raya Martin’s Berlin Film Festival entry Death of Nintendo, and the Asian premiere of the Venice Film Festival winner Genus, Pan by Lav Diaz.
On December 2020, the government-managed Metro Manila Film Festival premiered through Upstream with 10 films, mostly of the mainstream and genre fare, in keeping with the tradition of the festival. No box office numbers were disclosed as per the decision of the festival committee. Piracy problems plagued the films, particularly the festival’s top winner Fan Girl by Antoinette Jadaone. The film, about a fan with psychopathic tendencies who gets to “hang out” with her matinee idol crush, went on to win the festival’s biggest awards, including Best Film, Best Actress (Charlie Dizon), Best Actor (Paulo Avelino) and Best Director. Fan Girl producers waged a war with social media users who pirated the movie, and even pressed criminal charges against them.
What was remarkable about the 2020 Metro Manila Film Festival was that it included a queer film led by an unapologetically femme queer actor, Adrian Lindayag in the Boys’ Love genre film The Boy Foretold by the Stars. Initially slated to premiere at an earlier film festival, The Boy Foretold by the Stars came at a time when Boys Love became the de facto entertainment fare in the Philippines. Many local productions of Boys Love (or BL) started popping up, thanks to the massive success of the Thai Boys Love hit 2gether: The Series. A BL show mainly hinges on the chemistry of the two leads, and as a country that absolutely adores love stories and love teams, the Philippines became one of the largest producers of BL shows in Southeast Asia, even surpassing Thailand. With The Boy Foretold by the Stars coming at the end of the year, Lindayag’s delicate performance, and the fact that he was a queer actor acting in a queer film helmed by a queer director, felt like the high point of the Philippine BL craze.
After 2gether: The Series, which was accessed by international fans through YouTube, a string of “lockdown” themed BL productions premiered. The first, and the one of the big three, was Gameboys starring Kokoy de Santos and Elijah Canlas, a film which tackled finding queer love during the threat of Covid-19. Another remarkable showing was Hello Stranger, directed by emerging filmmaker Petersen Vargas and starring Tony Labrusca and newcomer JC Alcantara. The third of the “big three” was Like in the Movies (Gaya sa Pelikula) written by playwright and poet Juan Miguel Severo and starring newcomers Ian Pangilinan and Paolo Pangilinan.
These shows gained millions of hits and international followings for each “love team.” After the YouTube success, the shows were acquired by Netflix, which also became a repository for overlooked Filipino films from the past few years, that is, films that only enjoyed several days on theatrical release and were overshadowed by bigger mainstream titles.
Many saw the rise in BL stories as the queer community’s reclamation of their own narrative, as queer actors and roles were mostly second fodder in films, positioned to be comedic relief and portrayed stereotypically. “That the BL genre has enough following in the country while the SOGIE equality bill’s fate is still hanging makes this the most opportune time to hear stories that normalize queer love,” said Severo in an interview.
A year after the first Filipino BL shows, and with the Korean drama wave still going strong, BL shows are still being produced in numbers. Gameboys is slated to run for a second season. Hello Stranger became a hit film (the aforementioned Hello Stranger, the Movie produced by ABS-CBN’s Black Sheep and premiered via KTX). The Boy Foretold by the Stars is getting a sequel in the form of a web series. Many of the best BL shows kept their politics in check, mindful of how the LGBTQ+ community is still treated by the majority of Filipinos, despite many wins in terms of representation. The fact that the anti-discrimination bill is still being debated heavily by lawmakers means that there’s a long way to go.
Shedding light on political issues is also the thrust of what was supposed to be the biggest documentary film festival in the Philippines, DaangDokyu. Initially scheduled to run in March 2020, DaangDokyu eventually became a sprawling seven-week online film festival featuring a smattering of nonfiction films with several themes, from environmental issues to historical memory.
The festival features a team of some of the most incisive female Filipino documentarians: Jewel Maranan (In the Claws of a Century Wanting), Baby Ruth Villarama (Sunday Beauty Queen), Sari Dalena (Memories of a Forgotten War), Adjani Arumpac (Nanay Mameng), Monster Jimenez (Kano), and Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala (Martial Law, producer, Call Her Ganda). The film festival premiered during the anniversary of the declaration of martial law by the dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
What was initially a Facebook group became an idea for a non-competitive film festival to showcase the strength of documentary filmmaking in the Philippines. “We decided to mount it to trace Philippine documentary history, to give a platform to the community to interact, and to develop the Filipino audience and invite them to see how diverse documentaries can be,” said Maranan.
DaangDokyu premiered what is perhaps the most acclaimed Filipino film of 2020, Aswang by Alyx Ayn Arumpac, a documentary on President Duterte’s bloody war on drugs. The newly formed Society of Filipino Film Reviewers awarded it the Best Film of 2020.
It is worth noting that with movies forced to go online, a large part of the population have little or no means of accessing them. According to a CNN Philippines Life report, the Philippines has recorded the highest percentage (64 percent) of internet users (aged 16 to 64) who spend more time on social media during the first three months of the lockdown. Yet there is still a huge gap between those who have meaningful internet access (only 55 percent of Filipinos) and those who don’t. Access to films and film festivals also required over a hundred pesos, such as the MMFF or the FDCP’s own Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino — at a time when people would rather spend on essentials. There wasn’t much choice to go around either, with only a little over 50 new films in 2020.
As of this writing, Philippine cinemas in Metro Manila are still closed. A few cinemas are open in the other parts of the Philippines where the pandemic is easing up, yet the safest way to watch is still online. Vaccines are slow to arrive in the country and it looks like 2021 will just be more of the same for Filipinos.
Don Jaucian