“Made in the Philippines”? Filipino filmmakers need support.0

Written by Dennis Lam, Edited by Andric Tham

When was the last time you recall see­ing a Filipino film? Amidst curi­ous shrugs and rolling eyes, cer­tainly, the answer is, “Not that I can remem­ber, no.”

Perhaps, we’re not all strangers to Filipino tal­ent. It wasn’t so long ago that Arnel Pineda’s song­writ­ing genius – of pop­u­lar rock band Journey – graced the air­waves for the first time since “Don’t Stop Believing” was first released in the ‘80s, all thanks to hit tween show Glee.

Curiously, the impact of the Filipino film indus­try is hardly pal­pa­ble out­side of its shores.

Last Friday, Ambassador Grace Relucio Princesa made a state­ment regard­ing the Philippines’ deci­sion to make cul­tural diplo­macy one of her for­eign policy’s bases. Citing movie busi­ness con­cerns, awarded Filipino movie busi­ness per­son­al­i­ties Soxy Topacio and Manny Palo prof­fered their opinion.

During the open­ing night of the First Philippine Film Festival in the UAE – Our Films, Our Culture, Topacio men­tioned to The Gulf Today that although some Filipino inde­pen­dent films have made it big in a plethora of film fes­ti­vals world­wide, movie pro­duc­ers are still reluc­tant to ven­ture abroad. It’s hardly a sur­prise though. Producers are reluc­tant after see­ing a num­ber of their com­pa­tri­ots fail while ven­tur­ing abroad.

All of this is markedly due to the lack of sup­port by Philippines’ over­seas gov­ern­ment offi­cials, opine Topacio and Palo. To make this worse, Philippines’ diplo­matic work in the adver­tis­ing and pub­lic­ity fields do not include the movie business.

He admires the pride and courage exuded by the South Korean and Thai movie indus­tries’ staff that mar­kets their local films aggres­sively dur­ing inter­na­tional film fes­ti­vals. He wishes that Philippines’ over­seas gov­ern­ment offi­cials will sup­port their homeland’s movie busi­ness so that it can take firm roots into the highly com­pet­i­tive global film sec­tor. After all, movies are impor­tant in effect­ing change. Topacio explains: “I hope our gov­ern­ment realises that the US was able to invade China because of Hollywood,” and diplomacy.

Palo hopes that Philippines’ over­seas gov­ern­ment offi­cials will come to under­stand that it is a priv­i­lege and some­thing they should be proud of when their home­land film direc­tors are part of inter­na­tional film fes­ti­vals, and pro­pel the Filipino movie busi­ness world­wide even more. He believes that movies and tele­vi­sion are essen­tial in spread­ing the Philippines’ cul­ture internationally.

Source: The Gulf Today