Filipino movies from the Philippines

Next month is the Metro Manila Film Festival and I personally dread what the Filipino producers will be dishing out to the public. There has been a mix of good, boring, interesting, and not worth one’s-time Filipino movies from the Philippines over the past few years. Some of dvd movies from the Philippines I watched for sheer curiosity, some because it was required as a student and some because my brothers or mom wanted to watch them. We have been complaining that the Philippine movies being shown these days are too commercial, or they lack plots and everything. It’s as if the movie outfits have been banking on the mass appeal of the Filipino stars there. How many teeny-bopper Philippine movies have been shown in the past two years? And it has been getting on my nerves how teen-age commuters gush over certain young stars and how they’d love to watch their movies over and over. I have been lamenting the death of the Philippine film industry and maybe Vic del Rosario has a point with what he’s suggesting.

We need to have Filipino movies from the Philippines with not only big stars but also stories to tell, or something to leave behind in our minds. There are smaller cinema outfits, independent film makers who would like to show us other things about our society with the stories they capture on film, or in digital format as in this cinema case. And I am looking forward to watching more Filipino movies from the Philippines in the coming days.