Gusto kong mag-MMFF movie marathon. Kahit na hindi gaanong kaaya-ayang panoorin ang ilan sa mga kalahok na pelikula.

Teka, bago iyan eh ibabahagi ko lang sa inyo ang nabasa kong ‘to sa pitak ni Nestor Torre sa Inquirer ngayong araw. “What was the last Filipino film you saw?“

After a while, however, we sense that some of the queries are coming from left field, because the people asking them simply want us to confirm their exceedingly low opinion of local films.

To determine exactly where they’re coming from, we ask them the title of the last Filipino movie they’ve viewed. Eight times out of 10, it turns out to be a film that was screened years, even decades ago!

We make a point of underscoring this, because it shows how dishonest, or at best intellectually disingenuous, some critics of local movies are.

How can you judge the Filipino movie industry’s products in 2004 if the last time you watched a local film, Ian Veneracion was still wearing short pants, and Jimmy Fabregas still had all of his hair? Give us a break!

It’s OK with us if you disdain or even loathe local movies, as long as you’ve viewed one film recent enough for your view to be current enough to be taken seriously.

That’s one of the problems with people who profess to evaluate the state of local movies today: They simply aren’t serious about their chosen task, and blithely dismiss the works of our filmmakers without putting in the viewing hours required for their views to deserve attention.

They do this because it’s currently fashionable to look down on local film products. But, they don’t remind themselves that the local movie industry is the only one we have, so the best way to relate to it is not to pulverize it with utter scorn, but to criticize its bad elements and boost the people in it who are trying to do good work.

[from The Philippine Daily Inquirer, December 25, 2004]

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 25th, 2004 at 10:16 pm and is filed under Movie Babble, Social Babble . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.