Lekha J Shankar takes a close look at the Philippines thriving movie industry and recommends how Thailand could learn from the initiatives being taken.

The Philippines film industry is booming. This year they had a record five films featured in the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, with the climax coming when a Filipino film ‘Kinatay’ by Brilliante Mendoza, won the Best Director award! The brilliant director had another film ‘Lola’ in competition, at the prestigious Venice festival, which is pretty much unprecedented in Asia.

In Venice a 22-year-old Filipino director Pepe Diokno, won the Best Debut Film award, for his first film ‘Clash’. It’s no coincidence that the Bangkok International Film Festival (BIFF) had a Retrospective of the new Filipino cinema last year, and featured some dynamic indie films from that country, this year.

Talented directors such as Adolfo Alix Jr , Sherad Anthony Sanchez and producer Arleen Cuevas were here, while  Cannes-winner Brilliante Mendoza was on the main  Jury. Last year, Filipino films like ‘Serbis’ and ‘Jay’ won the top awards, while this year, it was another pair of  Filipino films that won awards – ‘Independencia’ and ‘Imburnal‘.

What’s amazing is that most of these directors are less than 30 years old. It’s no wonder that Filipino films have been described as the new ‘tiger’ on the world cinematic front. The Paris Film Festival had a Retro of Filipino films last year, while the Pusan Film Festival and a top Middle Eastern film festival held Retros this year.

A Retrospective of Filipino films has become a yearly feature in New York and also figures regularly in the Museum of Modern Art’s ‘Contemporary Asian’ film series.

In fact last month, young Filipino director Adolfo Jr’s film ‘Adela’, shown in this series, was described by New York Times, as ‘A gem of contemporary neo-realism.’

So, why is a country noted for it stunning islands, suddenly becoming noticed for  its startling cinema?

This writer got some answers when she attended the Cinemalaya Independent film festival, at the grand Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), in Manila , recently.

According to Nestor Jardin, the Artistic Director of the festival and President of the

CCP, the Cinemalaya Festival is just one of the many cultural events held in the Centre, which holds as many as 700 shows a year, including art, theatre, writers’ festivals.

This is a unique example of public and private enterprise working closely in unison, to develop national talent. The CCP is Government owned, and was formed more than 4 decades back, while the Cinemalaya Foundation is a private enterprise, which was formed five years back.

The festival has been called ‘The big, small festival’ because it discovers the ‘big’ talents through their ‘small’ indie films. In fact, the festival is unique, because all the films are made in the highly affordable digital format .

“Digital technology has liberated the film-maker today!” stated Jardin.

Speaking of   their talent-process, he said that the Cinemalaya Foundation held ‘script’ tests, every year, where the participants were asked to write a two-page synopses of their film-stories, giving details of their concept and treatment. He said that they got as many as 200 entries from around the country.

Once the best scripts were selected, the Foundation helped the writers get started on their film-projects, with a basic fund of about 50,0000 pesos,  and also introduced them to potential producers. Jardin said that, thanks to the digital format, the indie film-makers could make their films within a budget of one to three million baht. A commercial film would cost anywhere between five million and 70 million pesos.

That’s why the country produces an extraordinary number of indie films today, which are also creating waves internationally.

According to Jardin, the Cinemalaya Film Festival exhibited  the ten best features and ten best shorts, from among the films made from the script-contest, in their Competition

Sector. The other films were also shown at the festival, so that the audiences would get inspired, and more talent could be tapped, for the next festival.

With ticket-rates as low as 100 pesos – or $ 2 – they had sizeable audiences, from a modest audience of 8,000, at their first film festival, it had become 30,000 this year! The Cinemalaya Festival films later toured around the film-schools and universities of the Philippines.

Jardin said that the Festival awarded cash-grants to the award-winning directors, which would help  the latter to improve the technical quality of their films, and  possibly partake in the international film festival circuit . That’s why the new Filipino cinema is creating waves at the top festivals of the world.

To quote the latest ‘Screen International’ – “ The local film industry in the Philippines is showing an upward trajectory that has defied expectations.”

This year’s Cinemalaya Film Festival  had  film-programmers  from  festivals around the world hunting for  movies -  Cannes , Pusan , Hawaii, India , Sri Lanka , Malaysia , Singapore. Like Bangkok has two film festivals- the Bangkok International Film Festival and the World Film Festival (6-15 Nov) – Manila has two film festivals , with uncannily similar names- the ‘Cinemalaya’ and  the ‘Cinemanila’ festivals.

The latter festival is also a great promotion for new Filipino films, and like Nestor Jardin, festival-director Tikoy Aguiluz manages to do a lot, with limited funds. The festival even has a grant-scheme for directors from developing SE Asian countries.

Indeed, for the amazing discovery and promotion of local talent, there’s much that   Bangkok’s two film festivals can learn from Manila’s two festivals.

It does not have to be WOW Philippines, but WOW Thailand, as well.

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www.cinemalaya.org

www.cinemanila.org