HABANG nakikinig kay Chairperson Liza Diño-Seguerra ng Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) na naglalatag ng mga programa ng kanyang ahensiya para ngayong taon sa presscon last Thursday, umupo sa tabi namin si Katotong Ricky Gallardo at agad na ipinabasa sa akin ang post ng direktor na si Erik Matti.

Parang pinagtiyap ang pagkakataon na habang iniisa-isa ni Liza ang mga hakbanging iniisip niyang magpapayabong sa movie industry, may post naman si Direk Erik dalawang oras pa lang ang nakalilipas.Para hindi kami makaagaw ng espasyo ng mga kasamahan namin sa pahinang ito, ilalabas muna namin ang post ni Direk, saka na namin tatalakayin ang mga pagsisikap ng FDCP at kung anu-ano ba talaga ang tunay na problema ng industriya at kung may solusyon pa nga ba.

Matatandaan na 90s pa ay may doomsayers nang nagsabi na patay na raw ang pelikulang Pilipino. Taong 2019 na ngayon, pero may pelikulang Pinoy pa rin naman.Naririto ang post ni Erik Matti:

“The state of our film industry, the business of it, is in a dire situation. Someone should do something about it. Government should intervene. This is not a slow death anymore. We are on life support and we need resuscitation. No more pointing fingers. I think we’re beyond that at this point. This is a plea for help.

“The film industry is at its busiest the past three years but no one gets to see the movies we make except for the sporadic mega hits. Hundreds of movies are being made now but no one is really doing good business including the big studios. What happened to our local audience?

“The past three weeks several local movies were screened, including one of ours, and it didn’t make good business despite all the marketing fanfare. This week Regal and Viva premiered films and again it wasn’t received well at the box office despite all the marketing and promising stories. Even MMFF no matter how much they claim with pride that it was a hit, it wasn’t. It didn’t make as much money as the previous years. And instead of looking at the problem head on of the dwindling audience they just chose to deny it.

“Is it the online platforms killing us? Is it support of cinemas? Is it Hollywood? Is it bad marketing? Is it esoteric, irrelevant, tired or uninteresting stories? Is it traffic? Is it downloads? Is it poverty? Has our audience outgrown our films? I really don’t know at this point.

“All I know is, we cannot go on making movies where no one sees them. We cannot blindly just trudge along busily working on our films without thinking about whether all this passion is really worth it. We cannot keep on spending millions for movies that no one gets to see. This is alarming. SOMEONE SOMEWHERE SOMEHOW SHOULD DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS.

“This industry nurtures its artists with our local film fests, we look after our film workers with so many films being produced. We strengthen ties on our international film fest connections. We revel on the little things we accomplish and splash it on big bold letters in the headlines. But are we really doing something for the film industry where it matters most? Are we really getting our films to the audience it was actually made for? Or are we just bringing them to the small audience we embarrassingly deserve?”

-DINDO M. BALARES