GUILLEN AND COJUANGCO. Prime movers.
Congratulations to the Cinemalaya indie film festival for marking its full decade of existence this year. In a ningas cogon land characterized by well-meaning movements that don’t have the energy to go the distance and typically sputter out after only a couple of years, Cinemalaya’s longevity is a tribute to the validity and vitality of its reason for being, and to the stick-to-it-iveness of its founders, led by Tonyboy Cojuangco and Laurice Guillen.
Even more impressively, Cinemalaya gets better and better each year, its influence and clout making a mark not just here but also internationally. And the indie film festival’s success has inspired other groups to provide incentives and support for new filmmakers and similarly boost independent filmmaking.
Best of all, the festival has had an influence even on the country’s mainstream movie industry, with the indie spirit evident in some of its output, as well as the rise of the new hybrid, “maindie,” which tries to produce good movies on a budget, thus enabling studios’
capital to go a longer way and bankroll more productions.
In addition, even big stars like Nora Aunor, Vilma Santos, Piolo Pascual and Judy Ann Santos have occasionally “gone indie,” due to the more challenging roles that the movement’s movies have to offer.
Movement
Aside from being the land of ningas cogon, this is also the country of “crab mentality,” so Cinemalaya’s success has prompted some congenitally envious people to try to pull it down with their arch and scathing critiques. Happily, their low blows have failed to stop the movement from reinvigorating itself from year to year, and the frustrated crustaceans have ended up feeling—even crabbier!
We’re happy to have played a small part in the creation of Cinemalaya. It seems like only last year when Laurice, who was the head of the Film Development Council at the time, asked us to think up the parameters for such an indie fest, to be funded by Tonyboy’s companies.
Dream movies
We came up with the matrix of a 10-film full-length festival funded by seed grants of P500,000 per film, plus an adjunct short film festival to encourage another 10 new filmmakers to make their dream movies, albeit only 20 minutes long, finally come true.
That was the core template, to support 20 new filmmakers each year, in the hope that the good and determined ones among them would, in succeeding years, find ways to make even more movies, thus adding a lot to the total of Filipino films produced annually, which had slumped to only 50 or so.
All aspects
During that first year, the movement lacked support, so we were tapped to get involved in all aspects of the festival, from vetting the entry storylines and scripts, interviewing the prospective filmmakers, and judging both long and short forms of the competition.
Well, we’re happy to have helped, because Cinemalaya has transformed the local filmmaking landscape, from the “starvation” industry it was a decade ago, to the burgeoning, kinetic and prodigiously productive scene it is today. —Hey, “democracy” in cinema works, as envisioned, and Filipino filmmakers now enjoy the freedom to make their own movies their way!
Of course, problems remain that inhibit local movies’ true progress, but the path to their solution is clear, thanks to Cinemalaya. Long live!