This head I read in one of the pages of The Philippine STAR middle of this week: “Parañaque to create film awards body.”
According to the story with Rhodina Villanueva’s tagline, Parañaque City Mayor Florencio Bernabe will push for the creation of the Parañaque Film Critics Award “to be given to digital films, performances and excellence in broadcast and electronic media.”
The city government will also support a digital filmmaking workshop being organized by the Plusiminus Film Camp from April 5 to May 10.
Since I am not a Parañaque taxpayer, I am not sure if I have the right to give an opinion regarding this project since I have not contributed anything to the city coffers.
But I will give my unsolicited advice to the good mayor anyway. To Mayor Bernabe, maybe it’s best not to push through with the creation of the award-giving body that is now supposedly already in the drawing board. Why? The answer is simple: We already have an excess of awards bodies within the industry and even in academe.
We have the FAMAS, the Gawad Urian, the Film Academy Awards and two press awards: From the Philippine Movie Press Club and the splinter group, the Entertainment Press Society. I’m sure I missed out one or two in the list because there are already so many.
In the groves of academe, I am starting to worry that students today seem preoccupied with only two activities: Staging protest rallies (and I don’t hold that against them — fight for what you believe is right) and organizing showbiz awards.
I don’t understand why they took it upon themselves to honor supposedly outstanding achievements on film and television — when it’s not their job to be doing so. Kids, your primary responsibility at this point is to study and get good grades. For your extra-curricular affairs, join theater groups, sports activities or the school choir — that is the best way to hone whatever talent or skill you have and you should do that in late high school and college.
If you are truly aching to hand out awards — honor the Ten Most Outstanding Teachers in your school. Your mentors are never compensated enough. Maybe an award from the student body may just inspire them to perform better — and that will be for your own good.
Perhaps you want movie stars visiting your campus. Then, hold musical concerts with you as performers and get entertainment personalities to sing a song or two, but make sure you are the star and not a spectator — otherwise, you don’t get to develop your personality.
Another option is to hold symposia and invite respected artists to talk about their craft so you just don’t hear some gushy-gushy acceptance speech from the winners, some of whom are even undeserving of the honor. How can you kids be able to monitor what comes out on TV when you should be in school studying?
But going back to the planned Parañaque Film Critics Award, I have to say that this is a bad idea. Aside from the FAMAS, Urian, etc., we have Cine Manila, Cinemalaya and Cinema One already taking care of independent filmmakers.
We already have enough film products — some are truly excellent pieces, but the others are merely masturbatory works of directors pretending to be auteur.
But with regard to the second project of Parañaque — the one about holding workshops where the city will support a digital film workshop, I say — go for it. Any kind of training is good and I hope the city of Parañaque would focus more on this rather than on the awards presentation, which really is just all frivolity.
I have another suggestion, however, to the officials of Parañaque: Why don’t you just train the workshop participants on how to make documentaries? What this country needs badly is archiving and proper documentation of our past. Maybe you can sponsor a project that would trace the history of Parañaque — from a simple fishing village to the progressive city it had become.
Perhaps you can commission a filmmaker to do a documentation on the eminent people of Parañaque — from the Spanish times or pre-Hispanic even, if there were any. Going over the list of names in the present generation, maybe you can ask the participants to start documenting the lives of celebrities whose beginnings were shaped in Parañaque: Gloria Diaz, Korina Sanchez, Dr. Vicki Belo and the Revilla sisters.
Personally, I would like to see a documentary on how the Baclaran Church was built and how the devotion to the Mother of Perpetual Help became very popular.
Of course, if the city decides to stick to documentaries and come up with a contest, there will be no Best Actor and Best Actress trophies to hand out — and so there will be no movie stars to grace the awards night.
However, the Parañaque people should realize that even if they proceed with their original plan of holding a film festival, they will most likely end up with indie actors whose faces we’d be seeing on the screen for the first and maybe the last time. In the Urian acting race this year, for instance, we have names like Joey Paras (for Last Supper No. 3), Che Ramos (for Mangatyanan), Dennis Ascalon and Milton Dionson (both for The Arrival) gracing the red carpet during the awards night on April 29. All four gave outstanding performances and they may just win even if they don’t do soap operas on TV — which isn’t a problem with Manunuri members since we don’t go for popularity (we have proven that many times).
Lucky for Parañaque movie fans if their participating filmmakers are able to snag the likes of Judy Ann Santos, Richard Gutierrez or Marian Rivera to star in their films. I hope they do. But what if they don’t?
I wish Mayor Bernabe would abort this film festival project because it is unnecessary — a waste of time, money and effort (but proceed with the workshops, please). We have more than enough digital movie projects that no one watches anyway. Maybe the Parañaque City council can fund a study on how we can develop an audience for indie movies — without the filmmakers resorting to sex as bait to get viewers into the movie theaters because, surely, we will hear from the moralists.
Mayor Bernabe, if you still have time to revise the workshop outline, please turn it into a documentary filmmaking project and make participants record anything about Parañaque. Trust me, this will be more useful. Conduct audio-visual presentations among the Parañaque people who may want to know their roots. After those docus have made the rounds of the city, store these copies in the public library for research purposes and for the future generations to see the beautiful city that is now the present Parañaque.