Contemporary independent film producing in the Philippines: The case of Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe (The Rapture of Fe)

The Filipino film scene

The revival of the national film industry in the Philippines with the rise of independent filmmaking can be largely credited to the private sector investors. Independent filmmaking in the Philippine context refers to filmmaking production done outside the financing of mainstream studios and television networks, which also have their own established machinery for film distribution. Examples of mainstream studios are Regal Films and Viva Films. The two major players among television networks in the country have their own film production companies. ABS CBN Channel 2 has Star Cinema, while GMA Channel 7 has GMA Films. On the other hand, I use private sector here to refer to certain individuals and private companies who invest in filmmaking with no profit-driven motives. They engage in film production for purely philanthropic reasons, driven by their love for art or for nationalistic reasons, aiming to revive the ailing Filipino film industry. The critic Nicanor Tiongson called the 1990s the ‘worst of times’ in the history of Filipino cinema, with a drastic decline in profits earned coinciding with a downturn in the technological and aesthetic quality of films produced. ¹ Independently produced films during these bleak times were also not able to attract an audience to prevent this downward spiral of the Filipino film industry, with most of the independent talent getting absorbed eventually into the advertising industry. ² They were largely experimental in form and narrative, catering mainly to a very specific demographic: the arthouse audience and film enthusiasts. Examples of these are the independent films produced under the workshops of Mowelfund and the films of Kidlat Tahimik, credited now as the father of Filipino independent filmmaking.

It was only when Cinemalaya entered the scene in 2005 that independent films became a viable force in changing the conditions of filmmaking in the country. The Cinemalaya Foundation, Inc. is a non-stock, not-for-profit, non-government foundation that provides competitive financial grants to independent filmmakers. Cinemalaya also provides venue for the screening of independent films in an annual week-long film festival held usually in July at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. It may be argued that Cinemalaya came at the right moment when the effects of digital filmmaking were already being felt in the country. But it cannot be ignored that with the success of Cinemalaya, other institutions followed suit in entering the film scene with their own slew of independent films. It was also in 2005 that Cinema One Originals, the independent film arm of the television network ABS CBN, launched their first batch of independent films. Cinemabuhay, the film production company of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT), was established in 2006. All three platforms – Cinemalaya, Cinema One Originals and Cinemabuhay – are grant-giving institutions to independent filmmakers. It is only Cinemalaya, however, that allows the filmmakers to have the full copyright over their work after the grant has been awarded. Cinema One Originals and Cinemabuhay retain their copyright over the produced film. In 2012, however, Cinema One Originals conceded a 30 percent share of the copyright to the filmmaker. The energy produced by independent filmmaking from these three platforms has even revived the confidence of commercial operators such as Regal Films and Viva Films to continue producing films that seek popular markets. They now absorb talent and resources from independent film directors and production crews. Even the highly politically motivated Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), lorded over by mainstream producers, was forced to introduce in 2011 its own independent film section. In 2012 there are more films produced independently than by main studio systems. At the turn of the millennium, independently-produced films accounted for about 70 to 80 percent of the total film output in the country. In 2010 alone, out of 187 movie titles released commercially, 58 were digital or indie films. ³

This year, Cinemalaya has also started expanding its film screenings to include the commercial Ayala Cinemas inside the lavish Greenbelt Mall in Manila’s commercial heartland, Makati. It would seem that alternative, independent and arthouse movies are finding a sustainable niche market among Manila’s emergent, young and rich middle classes. In turn, the independents have at least in part contributed to the revival of the commercial film industry with increased production rates and market share rising in the past five years after a 15 year trough. An intriguing question that cannot be answered here is: does this mean that it is business as usual for the film industry, or are we witnessing a longer term and permanent shift away from the cinema to multifarious and complex visual culture industries with multiple forms of production, distribution, and consumption? In other words, does the growth of the independents in the past 15 years presage a new era in filmmaking? Filmmaking is a relatively expensive, complex collective effort that speculative investment returns on. It is therefore a hard industry to work in and an even harder one to predict as to its future fortunes. Here I tell a few stories of recent experiences in independent filmmaking in the Philippines to open up these issues.

Cinemalaya, although housed under the Cultural Center of the Philippines and run by the heroic efforts of an understaffed Media Arts Division, was largely an endeavor borne out of the sympathy of the private sector for the arts. Cinemalaya is funded by the Econolink Investments, Inc. of Antonio O. Cojuangco, second cousin to the current president, Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino III, and nephew to the late Corazon ‘Cory’ Aquino. He is the son of Ramon Cojuanco who, like him, once chaired the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT), the largest telecommunications provider in the country. He said in his speech in the opening of the Cinemalaya Season in July 2011 that his investment in Cinemalaya was not-for-profit but to establish a legacy in changing Philippine society. Econolink Investments., Inc., however, only shells out 5000,000 pesos (c. US$11,000) as a seed grant for each of the films chosen by a Cinemalaya Selection Committee. Independent directors and producers awarded this seed grant would still have to provide the counterpart financing to fully finance a film, which would at the very least need one million pesos (c. US$22,000). Thus, grantees would solicit additional funding largely again from the private sector to augment the Cinemalaya grant. Grantees are usually first-time film directors and producers looking for a platform to make their directorial debuts. Their funders are usually their own families and relatives. With the ailing film industry, the business sector does not really have the courage to invest their money in film, which by its very nature is a highly volatile market even with the interest generated by the independent film scene.

Additional funding also comes from the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP), the government arm tasked to promote film in the country. When the film Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe was produced in 2009, the FDCP was headed by Rolando S. Atienza. They could only afford to give an additional US$2,300, and that was probably to recognize the efforts of Cinemalaya in reviving the ailing Filipino film industry through the efforts of Nestor Jardin, then President of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Aside from these modest initiatives, however, the national government has not been involved in supporting the cause of independent filmmaking and indeed in other respects can be a barrier. For example, it costs US$186 just to be reviewed by the government’s Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB), whose criteria for classification have been very unpredictable. They levied an X rating on our poster, saying it was sexually suggestive, with Adlawan crossing her hands on her lap, a gesture normal enough for a conservative Filipina to protect herself from lascivious eyes. In addition, to apply for a film rating before the Cinema Evaluation Board (CEB) to get exemption from government taxes if granted a Rated A, you will have to pay US$279.

However, the FDCP, now headed by Briccio Santos, has become more proactive in promoting films in the country with the launch of Sineng Pambansa – a project that seeks to create an audience across the whole nation for independent films. The FDCP coordinates with local government units (LGUs) in creating venues that would showcase these films outside of the cartel of commercial distribution outlets. Moreover, MTRCB has opened its doors to representation from the independent film sector. They have different rates now for independent films applying for classification. The National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) also has a National Committee for Film which could also give additional funds to independent film producers.

But in the end, the national success of independent filmmaking – which has the potential to herald in a new Golden Age for the Filipino film industry – can be credited in large part to the efforts and investments of the private sector. With the renewed interest, however, in Filipino film, old powerbrokers are still making their influence and presence felt. Infusing new blood and money into the Filipino film industry does not necessarily mean changing the system which has brought its near demise, a system built on capitalist interests, churning out formula narratives, genre-oriented productions and star-dependent promotions: capitalist interests which cannot afford to deviate from a mass production mentality; capitalist interests concerned more with recouping investments on a per film basis rather than investing in developing an audience for the long term; capitalist interests which have been castrated from being adventurous and courageous in their investments by global competition.

Scripting Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe

Ang Pangagahasa kay Fe was borne out of a need to create something new in and for the Filipino film industry. It started out with a sense of idealism. The challenge was to stop griping about the ailing status of the Filipino film industry from the vantage point of a film viewer; instead, surveying the terrain of the filmmaking industry, we saw a space for us to contribute something ourselves, and in the process re-define the film industry that we were so critical of in the first place. At the very least, we were out to confirm the rumors of what actually ails the Filipino film industry and maybe test the possibility or impossibility of creating a good quality film despite the rumored dire conditions of filmmaking in the country.

The script was a product of research about the marginalization of the Filipina worker in the national and global scene. ⁴ The aim of the script was to historicize the current predicament of the Filipina forced to work as a migrant laborer under oppressive conditions. The oppression of the Filipina is not a contemporary phenomenon with the marked increase of service workers being deployed abroad. Rather, it has historical roots in the county’s patriarchal feudal past. The aim then was to show how economic issues in the country are also gendered. This is the ‘rape’ that the film was trying to grapple with: the rape of the Filipina migrant worker having its history in the agricultural past of the country.

To deal with the topic of rape, however, it was also necessary to contend with the filmic form – because this rape is also reflected in the Filipino film industry capitalizing on skin just to sell, and the victim is still the Filipina. This was the time when there were a lot of Filipino films capitalizing on the likes of Rosanna Roces, Diana Zubiri, Klaudia Koronel, Ynez Veneracion, Prsicilla Almeda, and other actresses who built their careers on baring their bodies on celluloid. Ironically, their films would also usually discuss the rape of the Filipina in settings of local prostitution and seedy dealings in the underbelly of Filipino society. In recreating these conditions of rape, these films also recreate the prurience that a mainly masculine audience feed on inside seedy commercial theaters abounding in the metro. Thus, despite their being films on the rape of the Filipina, these are films ending up capitalizing also on the nudity and sex scenes participated in by their actresses.

To address this problem of form, the script resorted to allegory. The critic Francis Cruz effectively sums this up in his review of the film:

[C]haracters symbolize the different players that struggle within the patriarchal Filipino society, beholden to foreign forces because its agricultural sector (symbolized by Dante, whose farmland is mortgaged to Arturo and is left untilled) can no longer provide and its industry (symbolized by Arturo whose factory, while earning, is not profitable) has never matured to be self-sufficient. Within the context of Yapan’s allegory, Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe blossoms into an academic but pertinent commentary on the state of the nation given its unique history and culture, as presented in the form of a literary tale where hints of the supernatural are weaved into overly familiar experiences of domestic violence and infidelity. ⁵

This summation from an independent critic who saw the script’s original intent in terms of insight and focus still present in the final film product reveals how effective the platform of Cinemalaya can be in encouraging the critical development of new ideas and story concepts that do not conform to mainstream formula.

Cinemalaya constitutes a Selection Committee who will sieve through hundreds of grant applications. The shortlist will be chosen on the basis of their submitted sequence treatments alone. When Cinemalaya started, the Selection Committee only requested a short synopsis to come up with their short list. But since sequence treatments would usually deviate from their synopses, they now ask for sequence treatments instead of just a synopsis. A grantee would then be awarded his/her seed grant on the basis of the merit of his/her work, its originality and creative vision. Although there are some other considerations – for instance, the grantee should also be able to prove that s/he has the technological capability to direct and handle the filmic form – the script’s originality and creative vision based on the sequence treatment still stand out as the main criteria for selecting a winning application. This way the artistic vision is not unduly compromised.

Upon entering the film festival, however, a grantee discovers that Cinemalaya also has concerns other than promoting original artistic vision. It is also concerned with profitability. Although funded by the aforementioned Econolink Investments, Inc., it still needs to sell tickets and attract an audience come the festival week held every July. Indeed, Cinemalaya boasts of new voices. The main section of the festival itself is called ‘New Breed’. But Cinemalaya is still run by mainstream personalities, such as Laurice Guillen, the festival director, and Robbie Tan, the head of the Cinemalaya Monitoring Committee, tasked to monitor the progress of the film production, both of whom have been members of the Selection Committee. This only means that Cinemalaya stories are indeed fresh and daring in exploring new territories but not entirely experimental. If ‘malaya’ in ‘Cinemalaya’ literally means freedom, this freedom has its limits. There is still a need to connect to an audience. Stories should still have a very clear narrative and storyline and should appeal to a bigger audience.

Although Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe is not a genre film, it nevertheless capitalizes on the familiar horror genre by utilizing the kapre character. The kapre is a tree ogre in the local lore known for spiriting away maidens into his kingdom whose entrances are old and ancient trees. It also recalls the fantasy genre. When Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe was accepted in 2008, Pan’s Labyrinth (dir. Guillermo del Toro, 2006) was already a huge hit among both the mass and critical audience. Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe has a similar storyline, with Fe confronting the kapre at the end of the film and being made to choose whether to stay in his kingdom or not. So that although the script was original, the choice of Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe as part of the Cinemalaya Cinco and eventual success could still be attached to mainstream sensibilities.

This need to speak to an audience and to engage in issues of marketability I understand and agree with. Film as a creative medium cannot afford to be entirely personal and expressive of very individualistic sentiments, especially upon realizing that it would take at least a million pesos to produce a film. Even with the advent of cheap and affordable digital media, film as a creative medium is a luxury in a third-world setting. Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe was produced for US$35,000, US$11,600 of which came from Cinemalaya and another US$2,300 from the FDCP. The rest – US$21,100 – was counterpart money which both I and my producer, Alemberg Ang, scrounged from our own savings. Thus, in the clash of conflicting interests for commercial viability and the promotion of original artistic vision, there is always going to be a necessary and creative tension. Cinemalaya seeks to maintain the balance of supporting new and innovative ideas and ideas that speak and appeal to a wide and diverse audience of movie-goers and not just to the auteur self of the director. This is the goal, but it is difficult enough to recognize what is new, as it is to guess what is going to be popular, without also pursuing imaginary balances between them.

Casting Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe

Without being forced to cast mainstream actors, my producer and I volunteered to get mainstream actors if only to lend Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe some marketability. We also needed to recoup our US$21,100 investment coming from our own pockets as university literature professors. Given our very limited budget, we could only cast actors who would be willing to work for a lower fee, or who are sympathetic enough to the cause of the indie film industry. I wrote the character of Fe specifically for Irma Adlawan, a theater actress who’s also trying her career in television and film. Since she started out in theater, we thought we could appeal to her sympathy for the arts to take on the role of Fe. And we were right. She loved the script and agreed to meet with us and do the role.

However, Adlawan’s fame is limited in the world of film and television, where starpower matters more than acting skills. So to balance out our casting we wanted to cast a more popular actor in the role of Arturo. Dingdong Dantes was a big thing then, after getting included in E! Entertainment’s list of the world’s sexiest men. He was a former student of mine at the Ateneo de Manila University. I thought I could also appeal to his sympathy for the arts; and, if not, for a former professor trying to make his way in the murky waters of show business. At first he was interested in the project. Several emails and text messages were sent back and forth. His manager, Perry Lansigan, however, intervened and said that while Dantes was open to doing an independent film, he would have wanted a script that would cast him in a different light. For some reason, they concluded that the Arturo character did not depart from the usual role of Dantes as a lover. They were looking for a role that would put Dantes in a more wholesome light, like in a father-son relationship or brotherly devotion narrative mould. They also had a problem with the script focusing on Fe and not Arturo. In short, they wanted the script changed to center on the character of Arturo.

But since Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe was about the plight of the Filipina migrant worker, and the point of the entire film was to expose the historical roots of Violence Against Women (VAW), I did not acquiesce to the demands of casting. So we dropped Dantes and went to TJ Trinidad, who had just signed a contract then with the television network GMA 7. Trinidad loved the script, even though his manager, Annabelle Rama, was against his doing the role. Rama was worried then over Trinidad’s first project with GMA 7, Zorro, which would conflict with our shooting schedule. Trinidad assured Rama that he would not slacken in his commitments to GMA 7, but he still wanted to do the film with us.

Casting then for Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe was about having the right mix of actors from the mainstream and theater, again to appeal to a greater range of audience. With Irma Adlawan, we would be getting critical acclaim for her performance and respect from the arthouse audience familiar with her work. With TJ Trinidad, we would be talking to the mass audience. At the same time, on Trinidad’s part, it would solidify his reputation as a serious actor, more than just being a matinee idol.

Financing Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe

The US$11,600 grant from Cinemalaya came in several tranches. The initial tranche for US$5,800 would be used to jumpstart the film production. To get the balance from the grant, the production should be able to submit film rushes to give the Monitoring Committee an idea of how the money was spent. This way the Monitoring Committee could suggest some changes in the production. This is where a lot of arguments transpire between the filmmakers and the Cinemalaya Monitoring Committee. Other filmmakers would protest at this as an intrusion on their artistic freedom. On the other hand, the Monitoring Committee would argue that their years of experience in mainstream cinema provides good criteria for recognizing when a film is treading on dangerous, unmarketable ground. Luckily for Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe, no such thing happened, except for a few suggestions that perhaps Trinidad should take off his shirt in one particular scene that we already shot. I defended that scene before the committee, saying that the intent for the scene was to direct it like a mother-child scene, with the much older Irma Adlawan playing mother to TJ Trinidad suckling one of her breasts. If Trinidad would bare his skin, the scene would lose its innocence and would become prurient.

Throughout film production we had to satisfy the demands or at least defend our artistic decisions before the Cinemalaya Monitoring Committee headed by Robbie Tan, former head honcho of the now defunct Seiko Films, which, ironically, were known to produce titillating films. On top of this, we also had to satisfy the demands of different sets of sponsors whom we are trying to court to invest in our film.

Since Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe is about the oppression of the Filipina, we decided to approach non-governmental institutions who could invest in our film to promote their advocacy. This has become a trend in financing independent films. Latching on to an advocacy makes it easier to get donors and a captive audience to watch (and pay for) the final film product. The only problem with selling a film as an advocacy project is the artistic vision of the film could sometimes be sacrificed for propagandistic efforts. Instead of drawing on grey areas in a debate, an advocacy film would be biased for the advocacy of a particular institution. Since we did not want to sacrifice the film’s vision and insight, we found the Women’s Crisis Center – Manila Chapter as the only institution willing to take us on without compromising our own vision in the deal. When we presented before their officers, however, they told us they did not have any money to invest. They did invest before in an independent film, but it did not produce the results they expected. So they were now wary to invest again. Apparently we entered late in the game, just when donors were already experiencing fatigue in investing in films latching themselves onto advocacies just so they could be produced. So that even if we were not exactly like those film producers, they already found it hard to trust us. They told us instead that they could help us promote our film and help us find financiers and an audience. We accepted their offer. On our part, having the support of WCC would legitimize the film’s advocacy against VAW (Violence Against Women). So we agreed to support each other, although not monetarily. As goodwill, we offered WCC rights to use Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe to screen on their own with all the proceeds going to their institution.

We also had to please advertisers from the business sector. We were only able to get additional funding from one sponsor, from Orocan, who gave us US$2,300 for product placement. I had to write a scene into the script where we show Irma Adlawan dressing in front of a plastic cabinet manufactured by Orocan. We also received sponsorship from Regalong Pambahay, a company that manufactures and distributes Filipino furniture. They lent us one of their cocoon chairs for free just so we could shoot Trinidad and Adlawan having sex inside a crib-like piece of furniture, again to push the image of a mother-child incestuous relationship.

Producing Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe sent us on a crash course on how the artistic vision of films could very easily succumb to financial demands from the business and advertising sector, and non-governmental and non-profit institutions – in short, to the interest of potential donors. But in the end, one can still produce a film of good quality despite the dire conditions of filmmaking in the country. Besides, this is the question we set out to answer in producing Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe. However, what saved the artistic integrity for our film is the money that came from our own savings. It is the private sector now that is infusing new blood and energy to save the ailing film industry. We just don’t know for how long and to what extent the private sector will be willing to make sacrifices for a cultural industry that has long been craving governmental support and protectionism, and a business venture easily abandoned by mainstream producers once the going gets tough. In the meantime, the film industry itself faces new technological and economic challenges. Our own little experiment in independent filmmaking revealed to us the scale of these challenges, but also that creation in itself makes a difference to what these challenges are, even as the goalposts shift the more we play the game.