Victory Of ‘Pinikas’ At Sinag Maynila Decentralizing Filmmaking In PH?

HAS THE WINNING of the Visayan film “Pinikas” at the 8th Sinag Maynila Film Festival awards night recently created a gap between Manila-centric and regional filmmaking?

Has it stunted the development of a national cinema scheme?
Or has it cultivated alienation among filmmaking societies in the Philippines? 
Yes and no.

Let us count the ways.

“Pinikas,” translated and subtitled by its filmmakers as “Halved,” is a Visayan-language project about a woman who cares for a fisherman, grapples with poverty and still dreams of a “foreigner father” to save her from bondage won the Best Film plum at the recent Sinag Maynila independent film event.

Cinema has its own language, to begin with, one that is not explicitly expressed just seen and felt from various elements of the audio-visual experience like lighting, aural design, camera angles, mise-en-scene etc., which is entirely different from a language or dialect spoken by its characters or written onscreen.

In this case, could the indigenous speech create barriers among non-Visayan speakers or listeners?
There are subtitles alright but viewers generally get distracted by reading the character generations at the bottom of the screens.

But since the purpose of a film narrative is to convey meanings to form ideas and impressions, subtitles are inevitable.
They are also ways to integrate in the multilingual local and international film markets.

REGIONAL FILMMAKING

The cinematic language of ‘”Pinikas” brings closer to fellow Filipinos the cultures and other realities of regions for common understanding, a pursuit vis-a-vis aim of the country’s search for national language to achieve progress and national identity.

Film aids as well in the process of assimilation to foster unity that is why the idea of regional filmmaking has reemerged in recent memory.

Which brings to mind: It isn’t true that regional filmmaking has just found it’s space only recently in the main currents of national moviemaking.

Regional filmmaking has existed even before the Pacific War.

In Cebu City alone, there were already movies being produced in the 30s and 40s.

Cebuano filmmaking was alive even in the 50s, 60s, 70s, especially the latter decades when Gloria Savilla was tagged as the Queen of Visayan Movies that paved her way to conquer Manila filmmaking as an actress and later, as producer.

Even Iloilo and Davao had local filmmaking businesses after World War II.

Baguio has Eric de Guia, later known as Kidlat Tahimik, now National Artist for Film, who pioneered filmmaking in the city in the 70s.

In Lucena City in Quezon Province, Ven Zoleta and F.V. Alfon did, also in the 70s, the first version of the life of the province’s local hero, Apolinario de la Cruz, also known as Hermano Pule, titled “Hermano Pule.”

In these cases, except for a one or two Sevilla starrers, their productions, sadly, were not screened in cinemas in Manila.

PROVINCIAL FILMMAKING

Here lies the beef.

Filmmaking, in its general sense, isn’t only casting popular stars, promoting them, investing money in productions, using attractive materials etc. it includes booking, distribution and other socio-political underpinnings for economic survival.

Until now, imperial Manila has been the concentration of showing, booking and distribution of Filipino films.

Provincial filmmaking has been segregated, mostly confined to its homebase.

The advent of independent filmmaking, though, has created a playing field more democratized in showing regional outputs in commercial cinemas in Manila.

Thanks to film festivals, albeit still wanting.

Indeed, Manila-centric studios have been lording them over the likes of “Pinikas” but the latter and its cohorts have persisted.

Regional filmmaking has started decentralizing showbiz.

Let “Pinikas”’s producer Sunny Toys Entertainment, director and writer Cris Fuego, actors Angela Villarin and Jade Makawili, musical scorer Maria Luisa Calveros and editor Jay Hernando—all winners chosen by Head of Jury Jeffrey Jeturian at the 8th Sinag—exert more effort for struggle to hegemonize.