Lessons From The Metro Manila Fim Festival ( MMFF ) :

by Carlo Cielo

Moral lesson of the story :
The Filipino Film industry should be allowed not only during Christmas break. It should be allowed all days of the year.

A lot of films get ignored because you have an ENTIRE spectrum of a film scene being compressed within a short while. How can you properly appreciate, say, the intricacies of RPG :Metanoia ( and there are many ), or the poignancy of what appears to be Dolphy's swan song, when you don't have the latitude to appreciate each at their own time.

Instead, you are forced in a situation where you're deluged by a sturm un drang of Filipino product, showing their wares for a limited period before they are literally shooed off the streets. Naturally, the loudest ones get picked up first, and nothing else would be said of it. There is only so much you can consider and sift through. You do not have time to linger.

And often, the products aren't prepped for the long term. They had to make it as flashy and as noisy and as instantly consumable, or they're immediately passed by. Under the wretched market principle that defines their activity, they are left with no choice.

This is what you get when you have a neo-liberal economy that is slave to Western transaction, and is prone to dire straits. Obviously, we have to get a bit of self-respect now, and that this must not go on.

Filipinos shouldn't have to live by technocratic pipe dreams; they should be able to live by theirs, and they should be allowed to do that in their own cinema. And not be treated like insurgents/terrorists/traffic obstructions whenever they dare to frickin' do so !

Feel Good Sick :

‎" Celebrity courtiers, masquerading as journalists, experts & specialists, identify our problems & patiently explain the parameters. All those who argue outside the imposed parameters are dismissed as irrelevant cranks, extremists or members of a radical left. Acceptable opinions have a range of A to B. The culture becomes a world of cheerful conformity, as well as an endless & finally fatal optimism. "- Chris Hedges