Essay in New Perspective to Film Culture: "Concerning Film Festivals: The Case of the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF)"

Concerning Film Festivals: The Case of the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF)

(August 3, 2018)

Film Festivals in the recent years have become an avenue for showcasing the best films around the world, the artistic and the avant-garde, the new generation of filmmakers, and as a location for potential production and co-production evaluations and dealings. However much true this is in the case of the international events, sometimes film festivals within the local setting aims to solidify the national cinema culture, helping to create the national identity or address issues of local importance. Unfortunately, this is a point of departure for the case of the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) for the recent years has seen a plunge in the quality of the films and where awards are given to films with the highest grossing income without much regard for the filmic art and craft, and seemingly banking on any popular actor and actress. Thus, problematizing the MMFF is not a new trend within the film industry and circles of the Philippines, and in this paper I will be giving a brief introduction to the current situation of the MMFF and the discourses and critics surrounding it, and its effects.

Film Festivals in relation to MMFF

Firstly, to put film festivals in context, Cindy Wong explains how film festivals play a central role in defining cinema through examination of the characters involved (actors, networks, filmmakers, business agents, festival organizers, programmers and critics), and how they, in turn, create the foundation or criterion through which a festival operates and can be understood (2014, 7). In addition, while the article of Wong puts emphasis on the workings of film festivals at an international stage, the coinage of a “film festival” still lends to its definition when assessing the national film festival, in this case, the MMFF. It is because of this prestigious understanding of the term film festival that there is a problem within MMFF, especially when scholars and critics want to attribute the international film festival definition unto a national-level film festival that has changed over the years. This change I will explain further below. For now, looking at Wong’s argument, festivals select and honor films, thus adding value to them, but at the same time festival programmers must create the film culture taste, capturing the “best" films and “discovering” more (2014,7). The latter part of this argument is what is missing in the current MMFF, with titles preferring to add numerical suffixes as if to relay a legacy would be an assured success, and as Joel David, founding director of the University of the Philippines Film Institute, argues in his article that the MMFF introduced commercial performance as a measure for artistic recognition, film festival loses much of the prestige and socially intellectual rhetorics associated to its film culture while incorporating the required entertainment and mass-appeal value (2015). 

Secondly, it should be understood that one more important factor in the success of a film festival, as Wong wrote, is the role of the audience that sustains the festival, such as supplying money and spread of publicity while participating in a local culture of cinema and wider validation of the festival/film canon (2014, 10). This is perhaps more relevant to the role of a film festival at a local context, in which I will explain below how audiences of MMFF often decry the line up of independent films that require critical thinking and that productions should instead cater to the demand of the public, in which case they refer to the often senseless but entertaining type of films– which most mainstream film companies would so willingly produce for they attract more box-office returns than any other genre film.

MMFF: complications, symptoms and ailments

There have been many cases of controversies surrounding the Metro Manila Film Festival, in the recent years, the anomaly revolves around the quality of the films produced and the imagery that the films try to portray. The UP Film Institute lamented the decline of the quality of films showcased during the festival in its 2015 official statement of the 41st MMFF, stating:  “that the original vision of MMFF was to be a film festival held during the Christmas Season in recognition of the role of the film industry in providing artistic depictions of both this country’s story and history. [However] a critical interrogation of the corpus of films showcased in the festival shows a bias towards “film as entertainment” [thus] rather than promoting film as a social tool that can educate the audience and help them understand their own society, culture, and history, the festival operates according to the dictates of the culture industry and capital.” It has become apparent that the MMFF has moved away from its foundational vision and have fallen to the capitalist trappings of media entertainment. In an 2018 interview with CNN Philippines, Ed Cabagnot, a film professor from the UP Film Institute and former member of the MMFF Executive Committee pointed out:  “two important objectives of the MMFF upon its conception: the first being a means to give local cinema a chance to be showcased, and second, to encourage the creation of excellent Filipino films. These days, however, (excluding the 2016 selection) the MMFF is known for its big-budgeted commercial fare that tries to attract the biggest box-office draw possible” (Manlangit, 2018).

In the 2016 MMFF edition, there was a sudden shift in the movie selection, and to quote Valiente’s point, “it is nearly [a] heart-choking shift from the flagrantly commercial and inane entries to what is trumpeted as a festival of 'indie' films" (Valiente, 2016). This so-called shock in the shift of entries harks back to what the public may have already come to believed to be the norm of MMFF (and in extension of Philippine Cinema) as a season to showcase highly entertaining films that should reflect the joyous season of Christmas. Valiente further stresses out that this shift of norm which have created the current perception of the MMFF can be attributed to commercial benefits of the season, where he points out that the reason for the country’s Christmas Season as the longest one in the world is due in part to the commercial success and profit it brings, to which the film industry wants to join into. In fact, its participation to monopolize the commercial profit of the season can be traced in its sudden shift from its original conception in 1966 as the Manila Film Festival conceived by then-mayor of Manila Antonio Villegas which ran a 12-day event from June 12 (Independence Day) to June 24 (Manila Day) as a time to showcase only Filipino films. This allowed for an opportunity to local directors to exercise and showcase their craft and social commentaries that would otherwise have fallen on deaf ears in comparison to the high-budgeted films of bigger film productions like Sampaguita Pictures and Lea Pictures, as well as imported Hollywood Films that often ruled the box office charts during the December season. This was halted in 1973 due to the country’s Martial Law rule, but was resumed in 1975 and renamed as Metro Manila Film Festival.

However, the rift created by the 2016 MMFF edition film selection is further amplified when the distinction between indie and mainstream films became a point of national issue between actors, critiques and even the fans and moviegoers that the symptom of the failing national cinema became more apparent. While calls for indie films to remain in independent film circles and awarding bodies was the common call by the usual participants of the annual event, and who were left unlisted in contention for that year, their point of protest goes in contradiction to the MMFF original vision of "to create a space and time for films that have more social commentaries than slapstick, black humor and sick jokes at the expense of the marginalized" – latter often being associated with the recurring tropes and themes in these so-called family films that should be entertaining the public during the annual event.

Wanggo Gallaga, scriptwriter and professor at the College of St. Benilde, points out the question that perhaps best exemplifies the problem of MMFF: “What is this festival really about? Is it about making money, producing films that people want to see, or producing a festival of films that would champion and showcase the best of Filipino movies?” (Manlangit, 2018) Indeed, over the course of the years, and the changes of the film festival (particular its festival date,) the significance of the film festival has evolved from its original purpose. One good analysis I can offer in relation to this, if the film festival were to run along its original conception dates, starting with the country’s independence day and up to Manila Day (then considered as the representative city of the country’s modernity and potential economic growth), it would have been a film festival of staunch nationalistic cause and pride. The shift of the festival dates to the commercial Christmas season only further validates the argument of increasing monetary income and the need to indulge into the public’s entertainment. For what kind of films would you like to introduce to Christmas season movie-goers? An easy family entertaining film or the critical and social commentary films?

In response to this, recent productions have tried to compromise and close-in on the gap by creating the category of “maindie”, which is a blurring of the lines between independent and mainstream films just to appease to both the public and the critic, yet its success has yet to be properly assessed. Valiente further argues that what is currently experienced is a dichotomy within the Philippine cinema– one, where mainstream is at risk of dying out due to its poor craftsmanship but stays afloat by star-power, and the other, where the indie movement must try to understand the [local] market even as it tries to create a global awareness about the new creativity of Filipino filmmakers abroad (Valiente, 2016). But as suggested with the term ‘compromise' there will have to be a point where one gives in, and to what point of the film production this refers to, the resulting product will truly be affected.

Steps toward the future of MMFF

The first big renewal of interest on intellectual film showcases during the MMFF since the 2010’s would be the 2013 MMFF selection. David begins his piece by noting the decline of quality of Filipino films but in 2013, MMFF has finally begun its attempt of a throw-back to its glory years via its “New Wave” module, a side event of lesser-budgeted “independent” projects (2015). However, being labeled as merely a side project could only further create a discrepancy between mainstream and independent films, with latter being marked as specialized to the point that it is not for everyone’s consumption, and the former being marketed as the family-type, or all-rounder film, thus more profitable.

All hope is not lost, however, as filmmakers, film educators, critics and enthusiasts continue to fight for a resurgence of intellectual films, most often than not occurring within the top universities of the country, in which they celebrate what could be considered the most extreme form of independent cinema called “regional cinema”. Ideal to create the awareness within the school grounds, tapping into the social consciousness and changing the film consumption behaviors of students, and ultimately to educate them of the power of the films, there is still a limitation to how far this movement could go, and with most of the top universities situated only within the north of the country, the larger part of the nation remains at the periphery of the discourse and can only consume the popular film industry culture and taste prescribed by the north, creating a form of regional discrepancy for choice.

With regard to MMFF’s future, I believe that having more discussions broadly and openly talked about, especially through media and news outlets that can reach a wider audience, would help disseminate the information of the issues facing the film festivals. Especially with the current social conditions in the country (the drug raids, the poverty, the discrepancy of imagery of the real and the fictional) the social consciousness of movie-goers should no longer be limited to the family-oriented entertainment and blockbusters, and that topics of immediate concern should slowly be accepted. Thus, the MMFF can return to its founding vision of film as a social tool that can educate the audience and help them understand their own society, culture, and history.

Conclusion

Finally, Wong also includes that individual festivals help shape the lives and future of film workers, the solvency of small film companies and large corporations, the prestige of cities, nations and regions, and the construction of the academic and public knowledge about film and video (2014, 14). This is true, even in the evolution of the MMFF, and David agrees that the current situation of the MMFF is in fact a result of the prestige of the past events and the immediate political and economical needs that referred to directors as heroes of society. Through the cinematic breakthrough of past directors such as Lino Brocka, Eddie Romero and Celso Castillo (to name a few) which put Philippine Cinema to the fore through MMFF and allowed the winning films to be showcased in international events as representative of the national cinema, there lingers a perpetuating prestige allotted to selected and winning films of the MMFF even if the criteria for selection has long changed and the representative films have become more of a debacle than one worthy of representing a country’s culture. But even this argument should be problematized for it raises the question of the country’s own culture being reflected through the selection per se. What if the current culture is in fact properly represented and that most of the critics still hang on to the prestige of films of the past because the current society no longer requires the critical stance and prefers the leisure that entertainment provides. It is, in itself, a symptom of a greater social circumstance that cannot easily be remedied by any film festival. However, I do agree that when a society no longer feels a need to be critical, that there must be a critical lens or means for it to acknowledge reality, and that this is what films must aspire to be, rather than simply racking in profit. Thus, the battle of film scholars and critics will continue until MMFF regains its past prestige as well as finally take up the role of which the term “film festival” is internationally recognized and idealized.

Words: 2,444

Works Cited:

1. David, Joel. “Pinoy Filmfest Circa 2013.” The Manila Review, 2015, www.themanilareview.com/issues/view/pinoy-filmfests-circa-2013.

2. Manlangit, Shinji. “How Do You Solve a Problem like the MMFF?” CNN Philippines, 8 Jan. 2018, www.cnnphilippines.com/life/entertainment/film/2018/01/05/mmff-survey.html.

3. “UP Film Institute's Statement on the 2015 Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) Controversy.” UP Film Institute, University of the Philippines, 28 Jan. 2016, www.web-old.up.edu.ph/up-film-institutes-statement-on-the-2015-metro-manila-film-festival-mmff-controversy/.

4. Valiente, Tito Genova. “MMFF 2016: A Problem of Bad Language and Forgotten Histories.” The Business Mirror, 30 Nov. 2016, www.businessmirror.com.ph/mmff-2016-a-problem-of-bad-language-and-forgotten-histories/.

5. Wong, Cindy H. 2014. “Introduction”. Film festivals: culture, people, and power on the global screen. 1-28.

6. Oxford Dictionaries, s.v. “compromise”, accessed August 1, 2018, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/compromise