Tag Archives: Metro Manila Film Festival

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The Metro Manila Film Festival: As Martial Law corpse

In pandemic year 2020, when the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) had to go online, and it was impossible to do the pomp and pageantry of what has been sold as an annual Philippine film “tradition”, Sen. Imee Marcos claimed it wholly and completely as a Ferdinand Marcos creation from Martial Law year 1975, when the best picture film was “Diligin Mo ng Hamog ang Uhaw na Lupa”.

We liked to dismiss the Marcoses’ claims to culture pre-2022, but none of what Senator Imee says there is a lie.

And despite little of it probably getting into your algorithm, neither is it a lie that in 2024, First Lady Liza Marcos was front and center (literally) of MMFF, not just in the photos for the launch of its purported 50th year in July 2024, but also with her husband, PresidenAt Bongbong at the Konsyerto sa Palasyo para sa pelikulang Pilipino on December 16, and throughout the year, since February, ostensibly stepping into the Imeldific role of joining hands with film industry stakeholders on the promise of supporting the film industry. That the outcome of this is yet another cultural organization called CineGang, Inc. that’s supposed to promote local films to a global audience, which apparently means needing a fancy new office in Makati City, private investors, golf tournament fundraisers, and a Malacañang-hosted first meeting with the First Lady herself in November 2024, is a conversation for another time.

For now, the more important conversation is how it is that after 49 years, the MMFF is still lacking in transparency and credibility, and remains riddled by controversy. That it was created by Marcos Sr. during Martial Law speaks to why.

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MMFF, transparency, big words

The Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) is all of six months away, and here we are already talking with such passion about what the film industry needs and what the audiences deserve, quality versus commercial, small film producers versus big production companies, new versus old, change change change.

There is very little that we know so far, probably owing to what recently resigned MMFF Execom Member Roland Tolentino has said is a “confidentiality clause” on their work with MMFF.

What we do know is this. Four films have already ensured their spots in the MMFF 2017 roster, three of which hark back to the tried and tested blockbuster films of old. Three members of the MMFF Execom have resigned because the current committee is moving in the direction of “putting too much emphasis on commerce over art” (Statement, July 5). Those who benefited from last year’s “changes” are raising a ruckus. Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) Chair Liza Diño is being questioned for deciding to stay as part of the Execom.   

We are being told that this is a waste of last year’s gains. Yet no one wants to talk about what those gains were exactly.  (more…)

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Selling relevance, using current events

The family drama is … ahem … a Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) tradition, one that’s produced some interesting enough versions from the Tanging Ina series to Mano Po. And so it was no surprise that the purported / sold / imagined “change” via MMFF 2016 would deem it necessary to have a “family drama.”

It was “Kabisera.” And while it did fulfill all the requirements for a family drama, i.e., there was a family, and there was a crisis, and the family pulled together — sitting through the convoluted loop-holed narrative made one think it was particularly chosen not because of artistic merit but because of elements that might have rendered it relevant … or at least “more relevant” than the family movies of MMFFs past.

Apparently all it takes these days is to throw in some corrupt politics, play around with images of impunity, and then engage in a discussion about these as superficially as possible. Have I mentioned the caricature of a human rights Chief that was obviously a jab at De Lima? Yup, one that didn’t work at all.

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Beyond the horror

I’m a sucker for the Pinoy horror film formula: a scary setting, well-done sound design, the gulat factor. I’m the person in the cinema who will scream first, and the loudest, the person who is so ready to be scared.

But of course the fear factor is only one of many aspects of the horror film, and one realizes given the effort that is put into a movie like Seklusyon (directed by Erik Matti, written by Anton C. Santamaria), that there is more to doing good horror than just getting an audience scared shitless. And certainly the cinematography, the context, the narrative itself of Seklusyon is enough to warrant some of the awards it has won: it speaks of the evil within us, the fears that haunt us, given the lives we live. It speaks of how in a Catholic country like the Philippines, the good is trumped by what is easy, and it is the false saviors that might be biggest enemy. (more…)

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Film, art in a time of change

AFTER a good seven years of doing the arts and culture beat, writing reviews, doing cultural assessments, I have surprised even myself that my interest seems to have dwindled.

It’s not that nothing’s going on, as it all just seems secondary to the state of the nation, the urgencies of which cannot be overstated at this point in time. When you don’t have a government that delivers credible information, and no opposition that provides an alternative ideological viewpoint, and all you have is social/media caught up in troll discourse, trends, and hashtags, there is little energy left for arts and culture.

Until you realize that it is exactly the chaotic, confusing, out-of-control state of the nation that highlights as well the state of the arts–its crises of patronage politics and parochialism included. (more…)