FANS gather around the float of “Honor Thy Father” during the Metro Manila Film Festival Parade of Stars along Roxas Boulevard in Manila. Photos by Richard A. Reyes
Vital questions raised during the congressional hearings on the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) last Jan. 11 and 13 went beyond the disqualification of Erik Matti’s “Honor Thy Father” in the best picture category.
Two important issues that were also tackled concerned the auditing of festival earnings (culled from amusement taxes) and the hasty pullout of MMFF entries from cinemas as early as the second day.
During the Jan. 13 hearing, Leo Martinez, director general of the Film Academy of the Philippines (FAP), called for “a full accounting of MMFF funds” in the last 10 years.
The MMFF Executive Committee (execom), however, pointed out that it should be exempt from accounting by the Commission on Audit (COA) because it is a “private entity.”
Martinez submitted a FAP position paper to Congress, which questioned the MMFF practice of giving its beneficiaries their share from festival earnings in several tranches spread out during the year.
He said that the earnings should be given to beneficiaries “in full, a month after the last day of the festival, and not in four to seven tranches in a span of one year, as is being practiced.”
He explained that theater owners are expected to “remit taxes to the executive committee not later than 20 days after the last day of the festival—or they will be penalized.”
Worse, Martinez told the Inquirer that his organization had not received its share, “amounting to P110 million, as of 2013.”
Noemi Ilagan, executive director of the fest’s secretariat, however told the Inquirer that the FAP had already received its share for 2014. “All the beneficiaries received their shares at the same time,” she said.
Ilagan said that beneficiaries’ shares are usually divided into “six tranches given throughout the year.”
Aside from FAP (which gets 20 percent of the fest’s earnings), the other MMFF beneficiaries are the Movie Workers’ Welfare Foundation (or Mowelfund, 50 percent), Motion Picture Anti-Film Piracy Council (20 percent), Optical Media Board (five percent) and Film Development Council of the Philippines (5 percent).
Mowelfund head Boots Anson-Roa told the Inquirer: “We were supposed to receive P9 million for the 2014 festival. So far, we have received P7.25 million. We hope to receive the balance by next month (February).”
Roa, who is also a member of the MMFF execom, said that the first tranche from the “MMFF 2015 proceeds will hopefully be distributed during the launch of the 2016 festival in March.”
FAP’s Leo Martinez.
Martinez also lamented the fact that “although the festival’s gross income has grown bigger every year… the beneficiaries’ shares keep getting smaller.”
He told the Inquirer that the MMFF has two income sources: from amusement taxes remitted by Metro Manila theaters, and the rest from nontax revenues.
Dominic Du, MMFF execom member, told the Inquirer that nontax revenues “come from different sources (from sponsorships, donations, penalties, souvenir program ads, etc.).”
In 2014, it was reported that the MMFF earned P1 billion during its two-week run, but only P18 million was divided among the beneficiaries.
“In the last five years, the gross receipts have doubled, but only one to two percent [of the earnings] went to the beneficiaries,” the FAP position
paper said. “From 1986 to 2002, 10 to 19 percent went to beneficiaries. ”
Dondon Monteverde, producer of “Honor Thy Father,” said that the COA should come in, because “people’s money—in the form of amusement taxes—is involved.”
“Festival earnings should be deposited in a trust and should not be used for the event’s expenses, a practice deemed illegal by the COA,” said Martinez.
Meanwhile, Monteverde recalled that during the same hearing, it was revealed that a film fest entry,
“Nilalang,” was pulled out of a certain cinema (SM Megamall), contrary to that agreed upon by filmmakers and theater owners.
“It was agreed upon that MMFF entries would not be pulled out of theaters on the first three days. Cinema owners, however, insisted on P50,000 as required earning per film per theater,” Monteverde recounted. “‘Nilalang’ earned P62,000 on its first day in one theater, yet it was still pulled out, in spite of the service agreement.”
The MMFF executive committee, in a position paper presented to Congress, asserted that: “While it is true that certain films, e.g. ‘Nilalang,’ were pulled out from movie theaters on the first days of showing, the pullout was done with the express consent of the producer, representative or distributor of the affected film.”