Getting our acts together

There is a plan by a private company, Pacific Rim Academy, to establish a school that would teach locals and Asians how to make movies the great Hollywood fashion. A spokesperson of the company, Kerry Deets, says a long line of Hollywood directors, actors, actresses and movie production experts would descend and help mold their counterparts in this part of the world at the Northern Marianas College, where movie-making courses are to be offered by a new school department.

It’s certainly a good first step but I’m not really sure how it would help. At anytime, I can rifle off one by one the American movies that impressed me in the last few years but it would take sometime before I can remember the last Philippine movie that moved me.

There is nothing colonial in this but I cater to films that come down strong on my senses, feelings and thoughts whoever produces them. Asia has produced world-class directors, as Akira Kurosawa, actors, actresses along with a few notable films but they are more of an exception to the surfeit of mediocre films that are the number one promoters of Western films in Asia.

Asia has much promise. It has a lot of potential in terms of talent, market and themes but hasn’t anyone noticed that all of these have been efficiently exploited by the West? Ironically, some of the more outstanding recent Hollywood movies, for example, dealt with Asia –– its wars, its oppressions, its backwardness, its struggles, its culture, its people, its promise, its China and Vietnam. Many of Asia’s talents also look up to the West as the high point of their careers, and the region’s market has long been a Hollywood captive.

What would change all of these? I can speak, maybe, from what I have seen in the Philippines. Its movie industry needs capital, better talents, and equipment. It should rid itself of producers that treat films like mass-produced commodities crafted to make money. In Manila, there is a flurry of sex-oriented films nowadays that would not really look strange to somebody transplanted from the 1960s to our time. These cheap, trash films have been shown in the Philippines as far back as I can remember, which means a few decades ago, when producers learned that there is gold in the camera.

Asia should create quality standards, not necessarily those of Hollywood, but anything that would not insult the general sensibilities of viewers. How many times have Filipinos watched local movies about vampires and monsters and got gas pains from laughing instead of fears in their hearts?

Once they did, many never come back. They turn to American movies that make earthquakes and ship sinking look so real you fear for your own lives long after you’ve left the theaters.

And so, how will the new movie school in Saipan make a difference in all of these? Filipino actors, actresses and maybe the locals can go to the real movie institutions in America rather than learn acting, directing and producing in this Pacific island. Many Filipinos have gone to take up courses on film in America actually in the past years but look at the Philippine movie industry now. Have the movies changed?

The problems of Asia’s movie industry are not complicated. They are simple but hard to solve. It needs money, equipment, technology, a viable market and a way of overcoming the image of mediocrity it has built in the past. They don’t need talents and themes because they have that. There is so much personal and regional sufferings there that make people, including actors and actresses, naturally cry on and off the camera.

It doesn’t help also that Deets, a spokesperson of the company putting up the movie academy in Saipan, would belittle Asian movies to attract enrollees. She said that, “Hong Kong and India are the two countries in Asia that produce the most number of films per year, but they produce lower grade films. The idea is to bring them here where they can learn the Hollywood magic.”

The school, as it is, would thrive if students come all the way from neighboring Asia. It wouldn’t be viable with only local students.

Considering all things and the 50-50 chance of success of the proposed academy, the way for Deets to do maybe is not to antagonize people. That way, Asians would be convinced to fly in because of the little amount of money they would save when they learn the movies here than in America. That way, she’ll invite enrollees and not hate.