Film is a relatively young art form, as the technology for creating them has only been around for a little less than 150 years. Despite that, as a medium for communication, it is easily the most popular. And, by virtue of its popularity, our refinement in the art of film has progressed much more rapidly than that of other art forms.

Today, there are hundreds of award-giving bodies all over the world dedicated to highlighting the best films out there. To call a film award winning endows it with the believability that it is more important than other films. And these awards, from the highly prestigious Academy Awards to the less internationally recognizable Gawad Urian Awards, have shaped the way art is associated with films.

Fringe benefits

For those working within the film industry, awards are an endorsement of their ability as filmmakers. When asked how winning awards has affected his career, multi-awarded filmmaker and Filipino Department Associate Professor Alvin Yapan, PhD, laughs. “It opened doors, but aside from that, none. It’s all prestige.”

That isn’t to say that that prestige doesn’t carry any actual weight. The doors winning those awards opened were actually big doors. “Because of these awards, you get exposed to a lot of people trying to look for venues to watch your film,” Yapan explains. “So the media is very much interested to write about you in their columns or in their pages.” The exposure generated by these awards allows films that would otherwise be ignored by most audiences the chance to establish themselves in cultural consciousness.

One of Yapan’s multi-award winning films from 2008, Ang Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa, is still being screened today. Most recently, it played at the Greenhills Teatrino. By winning awards, the film retains the type of significance that entices audiences to watch it and draws organizations looking to screen it.

But filmmaking is a very expensive craft. Hollywood blockbusters have astronomical budgets reaching into the hundreds of millions—trying to amass the funding to produce any film is a feat as challenging as actually making a good film. When Yapan goes looking for funding for his projects from individuals or institutions, these benefactors are more willing to pledge their support because they know that he is a more than capable filmmaker.

Risky business

As good as Yapan’s films may be, there is still a large element of risk in producing them. Considering the seriousness of the subjects he tackles, like homosexuality and domestic violence, and the kind of filmic language he uses, producers find Yapan’s films much riskier to invest in than the mainstream flicks like She’s Dating the Gangster (2014). For films that producers feel would easily make their budgets back and also make a good profit, the funding just rolls in.

Speaking within the context of Philippine cinema, there stands a clear distinction between serious films, the types of films usually associated with awards, and films that serve primarily as entertainment, such as Praybet Benjamin (2011) or the Enteng Kabisote series. The divide between these films is clearest when one takes even a cursory glance at how much money one type can make at the box office versus the other: Entertainment wins at the box office every time. “One that also made money was the [Diary ng Panget (2014)] because of James Reid showing his abs, very guwapo and very cute,” says Fr. Nick Cruz, SJ, a film professor from the Communication Department and a former board member of the Gawad Urian Awards.

But the films that are meant to be purely entertainment almost never win any awards. In fact, anyone with even the most casual knowledge of the elements of film would say that these films, despite how entertaining they are, aren’t particularly good films. They employ simplistic plots, scripts composed primarily of clichés and shock comedy and always have happy endings no matter how unbelievably they are achieved. “Movies that are just entertaining—comedies, or musicals—you watch [and] you don’t need to think about it. You watch it and then forget about it,” muses Cruz.

To the public, awards for film seem to serve as a vague acknowledgement that a particular film has artistic merit. In most cases, audiences tend to be turned off by films dubbed award-winning. “Majority look at awards as a mark of an intellectual tradition that is not easy to access,” Yapan explains.

Shift in perspective

Cruz looks at more serious films as a challenge, something that requires some level of critical thinking to fully appreciate; unfortunately, he finds that Filipino audiences are unwilling to respond to that challenge. “Analyzing what made films make money, we Filipinos are not that intellectual in nature,” Cruz says.

But Cruz’s claim is contestable—there was a time in Philippine film history when an award-winning film was almost guaranteed to be a box-office success. For example, Ishmael Bernal’s Himala (1982) was a multi-award winning film that also grossed an estimated P30,000,000 at the box office.

The change in movie-going culture is evident. And to understand the shift, one need only look at a similar shift in American theatre. American theatre really started to orient itself towards more serious plays around 1944 with Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie. Leading up to the staging of The Glass Menagerie, there was a huge demand for the less serious musicals. But as World War II started to come to an end, audiences were suddenly more willing to rise to an intellectual challenge similar to the one described by Cruz.

The impact the war had on American culture was one that lead to more escapist trends in theatergoers. The types of films that achieve commercial success in the Philippines today tend to follow the same escapist tendencies. “You look at movies for entertainment, because who will want to [watch a serious film at the end of the week]? [Audiences] want to enjoy and relax,” Cruz explains.

Seeing as the Philippines isn’t fighting in a world war, Philippine culture’s orientation towards escapism can only be rooted in the many social issues that plague the country at present. The government is universally decried by the Filipino people. There is rampant poverty and widespread oppression. “[Moviegoers] will not spend money to cry [over] a movie about the squatters and whatever. They see it in reality, so they don’t want to be subjected to it in films,” Cruz posits.

Crossroads

Recently there has been something of a resurgence of more serious films. It seems that because of the huge economic prosperity that mainly the upper classes are enjoying now, the escapist trends in Philippine cinema are beginning to taper off, paving the way for more serious films to take center stage.

Films like That Thing Called Tadhana (2014) take more considered, nuanced looks at their subjects. So despite sort of falling into the romantic comedy genre, they deviate from the typical blockbuster formula enough to be considered risky by producers. These films are mainly supported by the more upper class Filipinos. “No one was watching [English Only, Please (2014)] in the beginning, but because of word of mouth, the AB crowd started crowding the movie houses and it stayed on for more than a month,” Cruz explains.

Philippine cinema seems to be heading for a crossroads. Down one road is the revival of an accessible intellectual tradition in film, one that would eventually allow for a wider confrontation of the realities of Philippine culture and society. And down the other is more escapism, albeit more refined. The box office receipts of award-winning films will probably be able to tell us which it is—for as long as we’re able to trust the award-giving bodies, that is.