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THE PHILIPPINES
CINEMA INDUSTRY |
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You can't miss them in the Philippines: iconoclastic hand-painted
billboards advertising so-called bomba movies, made in a couple of days
on the kind of budget that wouldn't buy a Caesar's salad in Hollywood.
Bombas are cheap, histrionic and full of wonderfully crass dialogue ("You're
nothing but a second-rate, trying hard to copycat").They endure because
they espouse the kind of escapist hopes that preoccupy the country's
masses: a bashful barrio hunk takes on witless thugs who victimize a
beautiful girl. The endings are frothy. The hunk whips the thugs, the
girl falls for the hunk, and then becomes a famous actress in Manila,
city of dreams.
The proliferation of Tagalog bodice-busters (many of them shown on the
popular cable channel Pinoy Blockbusters) is worrying academics and
intellectuals, but their hold over the public shows no sign of
slackening. While "Pinoywood" is nowhere near as productive or
prodigious as Bombay's Bollywood, it is still a potent popular force.
Around two hundred bombas are made every year and stars with unlikely
names like Ronnie Ricketts, Tipso Cruz III and Boy Chico are known in
every barrio.
But not everybody is a fan. Former president Fidel Ramos got so tired of
the interminable diet of guns, goons and breathless maidens that he once
summoned Manila's top producers to Malacanang Palace to give them a
dressing-down. He told them to start making serious films that showed
the Philippines in a positive light. His plea fell on deaf ears, however,
and the deluge of bombas continued unabated, as it still does today.
The main reason the industry thrives is money. Prestige films are a
rarity because of the financial problems associated with producing high-class
cinematic art in a third world country where quality education is
available only to a few. The margin of profit is shrinking and few
producers are willing to take a chance on films that have little chance
of a paying audience outside arthouse cinemas in Manila.
One true story illustrates the problem. In 1984, Regal Films produced
Sister Stella L, a reflective biopic about a Catholic nun working with
trade unions. It swept the local awards, but losses were so huge Regal
producer Lily Monteverde was too traumatized to make another socially
relevant film. The bomba bandwagon rolled on.
The first filmmakers came to the Philippines from America at the
beginning of the twentieth century, using the islands as a bulk-standard
Asian backdrop for any film that required palm trees and heat.
The end of WWII, followed by Filipino independence from the US, saw a
cinematic blossoming dominated by four studios modelled after the
Hollywood majors.
Most of the films followed reliable genre formats, but the postwar
period also brought more artistically ambitious works by the likes of
Gerardo de Leon, who later tried to break into Hollywood using an
unlikely vehicle, The Mad Doctor of Blood Island, about an unscrupulous
scientist who turns his lab assistant into a green-blooded plant
monster.
In the 1960s , as the country descended into political turmoil, things
went belly up. The industry collapsed and all the major studios stopped
production, with dozens of smaller independents appearing on the scene.
It was here that the bomba was born. Under-capitalized and lacking the
clout of the now-defunct majors, the independents turned to sensational
projects for quick profit. Guns were drawn and cleavages exposed,
although most bombas are in fact rather tame, with the artless cliché of
surf crashing on a sandy shore still used regularly as a symbol for
sexual gratification.
Serious cinema in the Philippines has flapped but never taken off,
handicapped by pitiful budgets and the lack of a moneyed audience. But
in the 70s , things began to change, with a new generation of filmmakers
galvanizing themselves in opposition to the Marcos dictatorship.
This age of censorship was also, ironically, the golden age of
Philippine cinema , with the late Ishmael Bernal and others like him
showing their work at European and American festivals. One of Bernal's
most striking films is the noirish City After Dark, originally known as
Manila by Night until Imelda Marcos took exception to the unflattering
depictions of life in "her city".
One of the strangest martial law stories concerned director Mike de
Leon, scion of one of the oligarch families who bitterly opposed Marcos.
He directed Batch 81, a thinly disguised allegory about the Marcos
dictatorship graphically dramatizing fraternity violence at
universities. A brave piece of casting saw the fraternity's sadistic
Grand Vizier and chief torturer played by Chito Ponce Enrile, brother of
Marcos's defence minister Juan Ponce Enrile. The film ran to packed
houses and Marcos made no attempt to ban it.
Philippine cinema today is still in a quandary, torn between the easy
profits of bankable bombas and the creeping need to give the country's
emerging middle class something more than heaving chests and
testosterone. So, worthy productions come and go, but the bombas roll
on. The Philippines wouldn't be the Philippines without them, and
without the peculiar brand of risqué dialogue they perpetrate. Academics
may sneer and pontificate, but who could fail to snigger at a line as
memorable as: "You're young, fresh and beautiful. What could you
possibly want from a poor farmer like me? Eggplant?"
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