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| Veteran director and film maker Erik Matti appealed to government for help / photo from Google and ABS CBN |
Veteran director and film producer Erik Matti laments the “dire
situation” of local film industry amid to what he described as “alarming”
string of movie flops.
On a Facebook post on Thursday, Matti, co-founder of film
outfit Reality Entertainment, appealed to the government to address the issue.
“Someone should do something about it. Government should
intervene. This is not a slow death anymore. We are on life support and we need
resuscitation. No more pointing fingers. I think we’re
beyond that at this
point. This is a plea for help.
“The
film industry is at its busiest the past three years but no one gets to see the
movies we make except for the sporadic mega hits. Hundreds of movies are being
made now but no one is really doing good business including the big studios.
What happened to our local audience?”
The
“BuyBust” director also pointed out that "The past three weeks several
local movies were screened, including one of ours, and it didn’t make good
business despite all the marketing fanfare."
Last
January 30, Reality Entertainment has released the romantic comedy movie ‘Tol
which starred Arjo Atayde, Ketchup Eusebio, Jessy Mendiola, and Joross
Gamboa.
Mattie
cited that another movie Elise and Hanggang Kailan which also did not perform
well in the box-office.
"This
week Regal and Viva premiered films and again it wasn’t received well at the
box office despite all the marketing and promising stories. Even MMFF no matter
how much they claim with pride that it was a hit, it wasn’t. It didn’t make as
much money as the previous years. And instead of looking at the problem head on
of the dwindling audience they just chose to deny it."
The director believes that the availability of Pinoy movies
on online streaming sites could be a factor in the decline of moviegoers.
"Is it the online platforms killing us? Is it support
of cinemas? Is it Hollywood? Is it bad marketing? Is it esoteric, irrelevant,
tired or uninteresting stories? Is it traffic? Is it downloads? Is it poverty?
Has our audience outgrown our films? I really don’t know at this point.
"All I know is, we cannot go on making movies
where no one sees them. We cannot blindly just trudge along busily working on
our films without thinking about whether all this passion is really worth it.
We cannot keep on spending millions for movies that no one gets to see. This is
alarming.
"SOMEONE SOMEWHERE SOMEHOW SHOULD DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS.
"This industry nurtures its artists with our
local filmfests. We look after our filmworkers with so many films being
produced. We strengthen ties on our international filmfest connections. We
revel on the little things we accomplish and splash it on big bold letters in
the headlines. But are we really doing something for the film industry where it
matters most? Are we really getting our films to the audience it was actually
made for? Or are we just bringing them to the small audience we embarrassingly
deserve?"
Source: ABS CBN
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