Why aren't Filipino movies making money or winning awards abroad? "They simply aren't good enough," say Isah Red, perhaps the most outspoken and contrarian of Manila's showbiz columnists.
Appearing in one of those late TV talk-shows, the very outspoken Isah wasn't just referring to poor and obsolete technology, but to what he described as utter "lack of creativity" in the local movie industry.
Why, indeed, would anybody else but masochistic Filipinos patronize films that routinely insult their intelligence and put their national identity and moral values under the harshest light possible?
This is not to say that there have not been attempts to rescue the industry from terminal idiocy and irrelevance. From time to time, we've heard of this or that brilliant filmmaker rushing off to Berlin, Toronto or even Cairo in a blaze of self-promotion, and thereby raising extravagant hopes of bagging some major award or another.
More often than not, such ego trips fizzle into pained silence or "we tried our best" philosophizing. In some instances, there have been news of supposedly "prestigious" awards in this or that category, but you have to read the fine print about the particular contests or non-contests the films have been entered into (the "non-competitive" or the saling-pusa division).
Although the local movie industry is just a few years younger than Hollywood or France, it has never taken off as a truly artistic medium. Always, it was (and remains) the chosen refuge of dilettantes or mercenary artists catering mainly to the so-called bakya or unshod crowd.
Of course, there were a number of filmmakers who showed great promise in the past (Manuel Conde, Gregorio Fernandez, Gerry de Leon, Bert Avellana, Lino Brocka, Mike de Leon) but none ever came to full flowering or gained any lasting recognition beyond these benighted shores.
At the most, there had been some favorable mention for one or two Filipinos at Cannes (Conde and Brocka), but none of the kind that puts them in the major leagues or identifies them with a solid body of work.
Whether the reason was that they were cut short by early death or they never got the necessary financial backing, the fact is that the industry, in general, has become more insular and petty with the passing of the years.
It has been said that the more recent attempts to gate crash international film festivals, irrespective of importance or value, mirror the sense of desperation and impending doom that afflicts the industry.
"Baka maka-tsamba," (Lightning may strike) one critic acidly puts it.
Another critic says the obsession with foreign awards is a form of artistic inferiority complex that just wants to play up to western prejudices and changing entertainment trends. The need for external validation can only get more acute at the rate the industry heaps praise and accolade on itself. Year after year, eight or so award bodies guarantee that anybody who's bent on getting an award should be able to get one or even two for him or herself.
Just about every Filipino film sent abroad in the last 20 years has focused on turgid, if sensational and pointless themes like slum life or sexual perversion. If the Filipinos aren't eating out of garbage cans or selling their bodies, they are depicted as pitiful victims of political oppression.
Not surprisingly, many Filipinos who lived abroad feel offended by this flood of self-flagellation and negative self-worth which tends to reinforce racist stereotypes about Filipinos and their crisis-plagued country.
So what's to be done?
As economic globalization makes the local movie market more and more vulnerable to slick foreign imports, Filipino filmmakers have to work twice as hard to overcome obstacles more than twice as impossible to fight.
Like it or not, the local market is shrinking fast. Even name stars no longer command top salaries and have had to fill up slack time with pito-pito quickie movies, sudsy TV anthologies and mindless variety shows.
Only a true movie icon like Ronnie Poe can still be considered recession-proof or immune from any artistic expectations. But even The King has to widely limit his appearances to just one merciful film a year.
It goes without saying that small countries like the Philippines can't possibly compete in the high-tech department. But there has always been an opening for small-budget films of heartwarming stories true to national traditions but of universal interest that Hollywood tends to overlook. As with all other consumer products, real quality goes a long way for films.
This was how Japan's Akira Kurosawa, France's Francois Truffaut, Italy's Vittorio de Sica and Federico Fellini, India's Satyagit Ray broke upon the world cinema scene. The present competition includes equally talented filmmakers like Spain's Pedro Almodovar, China's Jiang Zimou and Chen Kaige, Taiwan's Ang Lee and others -- all of whom have been turning out great films in small packages that still elude their Filipino counterparts.