Search for ‘lost’ Filipino films intensifies

Sofia, the Filipino film archivists’ group, should be congratulated for successfully making the search for “lost” movies currently trendy and important. Its monthly screenings of old Filipino films retrieved from the dustbin of forgetfulness, apathy and neglect have whetted film buffs’ zest for other “rescue” efforts to preserve our rapidly dwindling film patrimony.

Most recently, Sofia got veteran producer Mother Lily Monteverde belatedly interested in preserving her own studio’s huge output for the past years and decades. If other producers are similarly reminded and motivated, succeeding generations of Filipino viewers will no longer be robbed of their cinematic past and future.

Before Sofia, pioneers in local film preservation and archiving included the Sampaguita Pictures studio, which has managed to preserve copies (in various films and/or video formats) of around one-fourth of its vast filmography—a huge and visionary achievement, despite the Sampaguita archives’ limited resources.

Also a pioneer was the late Fernando Poe Jr., who devised his own inexpensive system for preserving the negatives of his studio’s actioners and dramas. Ronnie reaped the financial rewards of his foresight, because it enabled him to show his old films on TV every five years or so.

We trust that other producers will learn from his experience to value their own old movies as the “circulating capital” they in fact really are, and that the financial rewards will help motivate them to value and preserve their own productions.

In truth, while classics and other quality movies should have first crack at rescue, rehabilitation and preservation, all movies should be rescued and archived.

Films aren’t just examples of cinematic art, they document the period in which they were made, so they amount to a visual history of their times, telling not just fictive tales about how screen characters loved, but also how we really actually lived.

Instructively enough, our own insights into the importance of film preservation were honed not locally, where apathy and neglect have been the operative attitudes for many decades, but in other countries, where archiving is regarded and practiced with a keener sense of its importance.

In London, for instance, we would spend many hours in film “museums,” learning a lot about the cinema’s possibilities by watching really old and seminal productions.

In TV-film school in the States, our film history courses similarly amazed us with the very best the film world has to offer, from its earliest year onward.

And, in the Fukuoka Film Archives in Japan, we immersed ourselves in the nitty-gritty of the extensive facility’s operations, and were amazed to find that scores of Filipino masterworks had been kept in pristine condition in its cool, state-of-the-art vaults.

The thought struck us: If foreigners can value and honor our films so much, why can’t we?