Cinemalaya Foundation forges on with new film school, bigger production grants

By: 10 years ago

MANILA, Philippines—After a successful decade and attaining premiere status as the Philippines’ leading independent film festival and competition, Cinemalaya is now expanding its mission to the training of practitioners in key aspects of film production and serving as an inspiration to independent filmmaking in Asia. This was announced recently by the Cinemalaya Foundation.

Cinemalaya Foundation also announced the increase—by almost as much as 50%—of production grants and cash awards to be given to finalists and competition winners.

While it has sought to nurture Filipino filmmakers through the yearly competitions, Cinemalaya now wants to inspire Asian filmmakers by showcasing the Philippines as the cinematic center of creativity and free artistic expression and to professionalize film practitioners in various aspects of film production.

This year, Cinemalaya will launch the Cinemalaya Film Institute (CFI) which will offer a three-semester program of intensive training in writing, directing and producing; cinematography, editing, sound and production design, music score and acting. The CFI is scheduled to open in June.

Award winning director and graduate of the NYU Film School Carlos Siguion-Reyna leads the faculty composed of international teachers and practitioners.

Cinemalaya 2015 will be held on August 7-14 at the CCP and other festival venues to be announced. For this year, the competition will be held only in the short feature category. The winner of the short feature category will receive Php150,000 cash prize.

A highlight of this year’s Cinemalaya festival will be the Philippine premieres of recently produced independent films and selected acclaimed Asian films. The Asian section will be curated by the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (Netpac), which will be celebrating its 25th year during the Cinemalaya Festival. A retrospective of Cinemalaya films and outstanding works produced in the past decade will also be shown.

In 2016, the full length feature category will resume. There will be no subcategories for the full length feature category as in past Cinemalaya festivals. Ten finalists will be chosen for the full length feature category. Finalists will receive production grants of Php750,000 each, up from the previous Php500,000 of previous years. The Best Film will receive a cash award of Php250,000. Cinemalaya 2016 will be held on August 5-14 at the CCP and other Festival venues.

Cinemalaya is currently accepting entries to the 2015 Short Feature Competition and to the 2016 full length feature category. Deadline is March 6, 2015.

For more information, visit www.culturalcenter.gov.ph and www.cinemalaya.org or call CCP Media Arts at tel. no. 832-1125 local 1704 and 1705.