The Philippines Cinema Industry
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 cliche 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 risque 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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