Film center

For a nation mad about Hollywood movies, we should have developed our potential as an Asian center for filmmaking, for both local and foreign ventures, a long time ago.

Many Filipinos have become artists in Hollywood animation enterprises including Pixar, but the Philippines is far from being a center of filmmaking or even a favorite setting for foreign movies.

In this part of the world, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malaysia have also beaten us in producing homegrown actors who made it big in Hollywood.

Shooting of a Hollywood movie is so rare here that a lot of excitement has been generated by the 45-day filming around Metro Manila of “The Bourne Legacy.”

A 120-member task force has been organized by the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) for crowd control and traffic management during the shooting of the movie, which starts today in San Andres, Manila.

The filming of the latest installment in the “Bourne” franchise appears to have generated so much excitement in this country that even Malacañang had to issue a statement saying the movie could boost Philippine tourism.

I don’t know if it was the usual hecklers’ reaction to that statement, but the other day a story lifted from a blog circulated that the filming had been canceled because the MMDA had cleaned up the areas specified by the movie producers for the shooting. The film director, according to the report, thought altering reality violated artistic freedom. The MMDA reportedly reacted that it would return the piles of garbage to their usual places.

By late afternoon, we had verified that the story was a hoax.

Should we laugh or cry about this story? There were a number of people who thought it could be true.

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Although a hoax, the story raised concerns that the movie, instead of promoting Philippine tourism, might actually put the country in a bad light.

I know a former movie superstar who liked to say that any publicity, good or bad, is still publicity that should be appreciated by the subject.

It seemed to work for Kazakhstan when its people were lampooned in the savagely hilarious 2006 movie “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.”

Maybe it’s easy for Pinoys to laugh because we weren’t on the receiving end of the Borat jokes. One day producer-star Sacha Baron Cohen might put the Philippines in the crosshairs and we will no longer find him so funny. The last time a Hollywood actress, Claire Danes, shot a movie here and complained of filth and rats in Intramuros, she was declared persona non grata by the Manila city council and a newspaper editorial huffed that she has a big nose.

We’re not alone in such sentiments. The Hollywood hit “Slumdog Millionaire,” set in the slums of Mumbai, also raised the hackles of certain people in India who thought the winner of an Oscar for best picture was exploitative poverty porn.

If the Bourne Legacy’s Philippine scenes will be shot entirely in Metro Manila, I think we have to be prepared for the country to be presented not in the best of light. Manila isn’t Paris, after all, and by this time the film crew would have already seen the piles of garbage all over the Philippine capital, inhaled the pollution and gotten stuck in horrid traffic jams.

The best that we can hope for is that despite the existence of squalid neighborhoods, Manila will be projected as an exciting, vibrant place to visit, like Bangkok, which has become a popular venue for foreign movies. Why has the Thai capital become more popular than Manila for film shoots?

Perhaps the film crew will also be able to go out of Metro Manila and see the beauty that the country has to offer. It’s what I say when enticing people in other countries to visit the Philippines: make sure to see places outside Metro Manila.

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Inviting movie outfits to shoot in the Philippines is something that the government can explore.

China is developing areas devoted to film production by both local and foreign outfits. New Zealand, with its breathtaking landscape, is fortunate to have filmmaking genius Peter Jackson, who put the country on the international movie map with his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Jackson showed his genius earlier than that, with “The Frighteners.” Today New Zealand travel companies still offer “Lord of the Rings” tour packages, and the country has positioned itself as an ideal place for making movies.

As in tourism, it doesn’t really take a catchy and original slogan or a good movie to promote a destination like New Zealand. Those things can help stir up initial interest, but the interest has to be sustained through endorsements based on personal experiences, through word of mouth or, in this age, through blogs and social media. The lovely enchanted forest in Lord of the Rings is right smack in the New Zealand capital Wellington.

If we want our country to be projected in a good light, we have to make it presentable to the world. Metro Manila has to be clean and relatively safe even when there is no foreign film crew around.

And if we want to encourage more companies to produce films here, we have to create the environment for it, with incentives and facilities that can compete with what some of our neighbors are currently offering.

Filipinos like to say that Philippine culture was molded by nearly 400 years in the convent and 50 years of Hollywood.

Since we love movies so much, we should develop a robust industry for both local and foreign film production. In this area, we should be able to compete with our neighbors.