Hugot, Vice and MMFF: Pinoy cinema in the 2010s

IT SEEMS like there is no turning back from the same old racketeering as the Metro Manila Film Festival continues to serve the familiar comedy staples headlined by Vice Ganda, Vic Sotto and Coco Martin, undoubtedly, three of the most bankable Pinoy celebrities. What also remains unchanged is the propensity to misspell titles probably in an attempt to be funny and cute and familiar as with the case of Sotto’s (Mission Unstapabol) and Martin’s (3Pol Trobol) films.

And with the festival’s mission statement of sorts, to be “family friendly”, meaning to cash out as much as possible from the pocket of every family member, there is something for everybody. The MMFF, after all, has become the template festival since it has evolved into a sinister, money-making machinery in the post-EDSA, neoliberal economy. Aside from the variations of comedies, there is sure to be a horror film, and a love story, and sometimes the genre is weaved into period, family or historical dramas. And just to balance things out, and also as a way of making itself lip-service relevant, a socially-relevant film.

The attempt at reform in 2016 did little to change the existing norms and viewing habits, practically because one year and one MMFF can barely do that. That edition’s selection was not a total turnaround, and one does not expect so, but it introduced films like the documentary Sunday Beauty Queen, a neglected genre in mainstream Pinoy cinema, to be given a voice in a popular platform (the film ended up winning the best picture that year).

You can say that year was a mid-decade blip in a period marked by the narrowing of Pinoy TV and cinema culture into one that is celebrity-obsessed while we rushed forward to the technological shifts brought about by digital culture that spawned online streaming services like Netflix, iFlix, and the local iWant, among a host of other streaming platforms. It continues to shape viewing habits of audiences and raised important issues related to discourses in cinema culture, e.g. the cinema vs. content debate, that has pitted master filmmakers like Scorsese against the purveyors of the prevailing culture of consumption in movies and pop culture.

Pinoy cinema in the 2010s heralded the next wave of independent filmmaking with the flourishing of filmmakers from the regions that took off with the rise of digital filmmaking that preceded 2010. The Visayas, more prominently Cebuano cinema, and Mindanao, figured in quite significantly in the landscape of our national cinema. Regional cinema became an identifier, but not many years since its heralding via the Cinema Rehiyon (a project started by the NCCA), it is now in itself undergoing its own problematization, a blurring of lines that may be attributed to the dynamism of the cinematic art form, or as Mindanao filmmaker Teng Mangansakan recently raised, a ploy to further agendas.

Not to dismiss the many great works of this “other” Pinoy cinema, but the decade saw the rise in popularity by Vice Ganda. 2010 heralded his brand of comedy via the remake of the Roderick Paulate classic Petrang Kabayo and catapulted his name into stardom in just a few blockbuster hits that regurgitates the same comedic humor, movies that are now the highest-grossing in Pinoy movie history.

Then came the dominance of Pinoy hugot cinema that spiraled into a hugot culture, which can be attributed to the success of That Thing Called Tadhana. The film, which was part of a film festival that showcases edgy works and out-ofthe-box ideas, is in a way responsible for the proliferation of hugot films that are capitalized by both large studios like Star Cinema, and the then-rising TBA Studios. And yes, a hugot film does not necessarily have to be romance or comedy, it can be in the form of a historical drama like TBA’s Heneral Luna.

And now we are ending the decade with a film that supposedly signals the entry of the Philippines into the age of Netflix. Though not the first Filipino film to be acquired by the streaming giant, it is reportedly the first one to be produced, premiering last December 1. The film, directed by current favorite Mikhail Red, is very characteristic of the content flooding Netflix, a lackluster work of millennial pandering doused in trademark hot neon lighting.

We are also ending the decade in Pinoy cinema with Brillante Mendoza’s brashly titled Mindanao, the “socially-relevant” film in the roster of regurgitated MMFF products, that is sadly another pandering work of gross simplification and regressive cultural appropriation. With the Bangsamoro transition process underway, it is unfortunate that the film comes to fruition, and following last night’s multiple wins, a possible misguided championing, at a time when Mindanao, the island-region and its peoples, are once again at the threshold of reclaiming their histories and identities and narratives.