Just this morning I was reading the editorial on inq7: Going Digital.
THREE PROPOSALS made last week by Vic Del Rosario, head of Viva Entertainment and presidential adviser on entertainment, may yet revive the country’s dying film industry. His proposals: give a five-year tax holiday for digital films, exempt from taxes all film-related raw materials and equipment and exempt local movies from amusement taxes for the next five years.
Next month is the Metro Manila Film Festival and I personally dread what the producers will be dishing out to the public. There has been a mix of interesting, good, boring and not-worth-one’s-time movies over the past few years. Some of them I watched for sheer curiosity, some because I was required as a student and some because my sister or mom wanted to watch them. We have been complaining that the movies being shown these days are too commercial, or they lack plots. It’s as if the movie outfits have been banking on the masa appeal of the stars there. How many teeny-bopper movies have been shown in the past two years? And it has been getting on my nerves how teen-age commuters (I overhear their conversations) gush over certain teen stars and how they’d love to watch their movies over and over. I have been lamenting the death of the movie industry and maybe Vic del Rosario has a point with what he’s suggesting.
We need to have films with not only big stars but also stories to tell, or something to leave behind in our minds. There are smaller movie outfits, independent film makers who would like to show us other things about our society with the stories they capture on film, or in digital format as in this case. And I am looking forward to watching more of them in the coming days.