FILM MEDIA

FILM HISTORY

While there is a long prehistory of filmmaking and many inventors staking claim to the development of motion picture cameras, the first large screen projected film is credited to French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiĕre, who debuted a short film entitled “La Sortie de l’Usine Lumiére àLyon” (“Workers Leaving the Lumiére Factory in Lyon”) at Grand Café of Paris in December 1895.

 Meanwhile, in the United States, Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, has projects of his own. Not to be out done by the French, he invested in Thomas Armat’s and Charles Francis Jenkins’s projection machine invention.

 Films by Lumiére and Edison simply depicted regular everyday events as they unfold. It took a French magician George Méliés, the first filmmaker, to incorporate special effects and use actors in his film. For example, in his 1896 film, “Escamotage d’une dame chez Robert-Houdlin” (“The Vanishing Lady”), Méliés stopped the camera and substituted a skeleton for a woman. He was the first one to bring fantasy, science fiction, horror, and dark comedy to the cinema; and he was the first to begin writing scripts with actors, instead of shooting real-life events.

In the Philippines, the first film to be shown in the country were composed of local scenes shot by Spanish filmmaker Antonio Ramos, using the Lumiére technology in January 1897 at the Salon de Pertierra in Manila. 

But most of the films in the early 1900s were imports from the United States. These films helped show Filipinos the American way of life. There were also local films produced by the Americans. For example, filmmakers like Joe Rosenthal and Raymond Ackerman produced documentaries about the Taal Volcano eruption in 1911 and the fiesta at Obando. The first Filipino feature film was “La vida de Jose Rizal” (The Life of Jose Rizal), produced by American Harry Brown. The production used actors from the zarzuela companies. 

The first Filipino filmmakers were brothers Jose and Jesus Nepomuceno, known as the founders of Philippine cinema. In 1917, the Nepomucenos bought film equipment from Albert Yearsley and Edward Meyer Gross. After two (2) years of experimentation, they produced the first Filipino silent film entitled “Dalagang Bukid” (Country Girl), an adaptation of Hermogenes Ilagan’s zarzuela of the same title. To play the part, he got the original zarzuela actors, with Atang de la Rama in the title role. Unfortunately, this film was not preserved and is lost to us forever.

The oldest film with an existing copy is “Zamboanga”, produced in 1936 by Philippine Films. The film was directed by Marvin Gardner, using the screen name Eduardo De Castro, and produced by Americans Eddie Tait and George Harris. Intended for American audiences, it starred Fernando Poe, Sr. The film was also thought to be lost, but in 2004, local filmmaker Nick de Ocampo found it in the archives of the US Library of Congress. The film’s official synopsis reads: 

In the shores of Sulu lives the sea-faring king tribe that is rules by Daru Tanbuong. His granddaughter, Minda (played by Rosa del Rosario) is bethrothed to be married to danao (played by Fernando Poe, Sr.), who is a handsome young pearl fisher who presents a handful of impressive pearls to the datu. However, a visitor to Danao and Minda’s wedding celebration is Hadji Razul, a chief of another tribe who has feelings for Minda. He then solicited the help of a renegade American captain to abduct Minda. Minda was abducted, and tribal war ensued. In the end, Danao kills Hdji Razul, and the film ends with Minds and Danao sailing into the sunset. 

There are two (2) famous film companies that ushered in the golden age of Philippine cinema after World War II. These were LVN Pictures and Sampaguita Pictures. 

LVN Pictures was formed in 1938 by three (3) families: the De Leons (L), the Villoncos (V), and the Navoas (N). Considered the first Filipina film mogul, Doña Narcisa de Leon served as its president and executive producer. Eventually, due to the uninvolvement of the Villonco and Navoa families, she bought their shares, which made LVN a De Leon family company. Its first film was the 1930 box-office hit musical GiliwKO, starring Ely Ramos, Fernando Poe, Sr., Mona Lisa, and Mila del Sol. 

LVN produced the first Filipino colored film, “Ibong Adarna”, directed by Vicente Salumbides. The color sequence of the film – the singing of the bird – was painstakingly hand colored. The film company is best known for its epic films during local cinema’s golden age: a remake of “Ibong Adarna” (1955); “Lapu-lapu” (1955); “Badjao” (1956), “Anak Dalita” (1957), and “Biyaya ng Lupa” (1959). 

Sampaguita Pictures was also a family-owned company established in the last quarter of 1937. Dr. Jose Perez of the Vera-Perez family ran its operations. Its first feature film was “Bituing Marikit”, starring Elsa Oria and Rogelio dela Rosa, and was a box-office hit. Sampaguita Pictures is known for its war pictures, such as “Guerilyera” (1946); and musicals such as “Bulaklak na Walang Pangalan” and “Huwag Ka ng Magtampo,” with real-life husband and wife Pancho Magalona and Tita Duran. Sampaguita Pictures discovered some of the country’s biggest screen luminaries such as Gloria Romero, Susan Roces, and Nora Aunor. The company shutdown due to financial constraints                                                                                      in the 1980s, with Mike De Leon’s classic                                                                                                 Batch ’81 as its last film.

Despite our completion of 100 years of cinema in the Philippines, the same problems plague us now just as it had when film was still a relatively new art form. The phrase “poorly made” is fitting to describe the quality of films being churned out by the film industry year by year. There have been few exceptions to the rule.Presently, films are primarily made for profit, lacking any qualities to redeem itself. Studies show that Hollywood films, with its high technology and subject matter, are being preferred over local films. It is no wonder – for films now are “too profit-oriented…[with] corrupting morals and…dubious values…sticking with formulaic films”

       

 Genres that have been present for the past few decades are being recycled over and over again with the same stories. The teen love teams of the fan movie are still present with incarnations of love teams of yesteryears. Now instead of “Guy and Pip” are “Judy and Wowie”. The bomba film is still present, now having grown more pornographic and taboo. The film Tatlo (1998) comes to mind with its subject matter of threesomes. In Filipino slapstick or komedya, Dolphy has been replaced by younger stars. But even if the films of today have not been quite up to par, “Filipino movies…wields an influence over the national imagination far more intense that all the others combined.”