Philippine New Wave (known as Filipino New Wave or Contemporary Philippine Cinema) is a filmmaking genre that has been popularly associated with the resurgence of independent, digital and experimental films in the Philippines began in the 21st century, merged into a recent filmmaking period known as the Third Golden Age of Philippine cinema.
Origins of the movement
Following the first golden age, in the 1950s to 1960s, and the second, from the 1970s to the early 1980s, the dawn of this era saw a dramatic decline of the mainstream film industry in the Philippines in mid-1980s to 1990s. Hollywood films dominated theater sales even more, and fewer than twenty local studio films were being produced and shown yearly. Many producers and production houses later stopped producing films after losing millions of pesos.
Thereafter, a new sense of excitement and trend enveloped the industry with the coming of digital and experimental cinema. Seemingly signaling this was the winning of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival 2000 of Raymond Red's short film Anino (Shadows). But truly pioneering this digital revolution was the 1999 digital feature film Still Lives by Jon Red. Many other digital filmmakers soon followed suit. Cheaper production cost using digital media over film has helped the rebirth of independent filmmaking. Hailed as the inspiration to French New Wave in digital form, this decade saw the proliferation of digital films by independent filmmakers with international reach and caliber, and the introduction of locally produced animated features. Production of action films is on a decline, and formulaic romantic comedies and melodrama films constituted the majority of mainstream releases. However, independent filmmakers spurred a renewed interest in Filipino movies through digital movies.
History
It was in 1999 that digital cinema was introduced in the Philippines but by then, the film industry was already dwindling in numbers. According to the records of the UP Film Institute, 122 films were produced in the year 1999 and 83 in 2000. In 2002, the number went even lower with having only 92 films then further went down to 80 in 2003. This decline in film production was attributed to the country's economic movement wherein the Philippine Film industry was considered one of the heavily taxed industries in terms of equipment, materials and film stock and the imposition of a 30 percent amusement tax to be paid to the local government and a 12 percent value added tax to the central government. Consequently, the high production costs brought about by the high taxes caused ticket admission to also go up. Thus leading to people opting for a different and cheaper form of entertainment particularly in television.
Signs of rebirth of the Philippine cinema arose by way of movies with inspirational themes. In 2002, Gil Portes released Mga Munting Tinig (Small Voices), a subdued movie about a teacher who inspired her students to follow their dreams; the movie also implied improving the country's education system. A year later, Mark Meily's comedy Crying Ladies, about three Filipinas working as professional mourners in Manila's Chinatown but looking for other ways to earn a living, became a huge hit. Also that same year, Maryo J. de los Reyes made a buzz at various film festivals with Magnifico, a simple film with universal appeal about a boy trying to help his family survive their hardships.
In 2005, the film industry saw the lowest number of films produced with only 50 films that were commercially released. However, the establishment of film festivals Cinemalaya and Cinema One Originals which are dedicated to digital films, the addition of Digital Lokal, a digital section, at the Cinemanila International Film Festival, and the second offering of the .MOV International Digital Film Festival helped save the Philippine Film industry.
In 2006 and 2007, Filipino filmmakers started making movies using digital media. Duda (Doubt) is an example of how a man driven by an idea for a film, against all odds, can succeed in creating a significant statement. Writer/Director Crisaldo Pablo used a cast of friends and some professional actors, and with the use of a Sony VX-1, a Hi-8 camcorder, made the first full-length digital movie ever shot in the Philippines. Comments by Cris Pablo and casts in the 'making of' featurette on the DVD demonstrated how much dedication to vision played in this movie. Donsol, by director Adolfo Alix, made waves with his debut digital movie about Donsol, a fishing town and in the opposite, a sanctuary to endangered whale sharks. Other filmmakers of note include Jeffrey Jeturian and Auraeus Solito.