People lining-up for a screening at the Manila Film Center in 1983.
MIFF 1983 IN RETROSPECTIn the Competition, It Wasn't who won that Mattered, But whether anybody caredby Isagani R. Cruz published in Phil. Panorama, Feb. 13, 1983
Downtown, it was like the bomba days before martial law, when the theatres were crowded with flesh. The two weeks of MIFF '83, of course were not like the typical week before 1972-the films were not really hardcore and the audiences were not exclusively male. Nevertheless, downtown moviehouses were turning away patrons by the hundreds and raking in millions of pesos.
At the Folk Arts theatre, tens of thousands of moviegoers stayed up late to catch the midnight screenings of such foreign sex flicks as Japan's
IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES. At the CCP Little Theatre, the sign
"SOLD OUT" was put up a number of times. At the two main screenign venues at the PICC, it became more and more difficult as the festival progressed to find an empty seat.
Meanwhile back at the Main Theatre of the Manila Film Center, supposedly the hub of festival activity, there were always more empty seats than viewers. Since the middle orchestra seats were reserved for non-paying foreign guests, the number of actual patrons actually paying their way in was dismally small. Despite the promotional come-ons placed around the Manila Film Center (such as ring of Fast Food booths manned by five-star hotels and restaurants, a mini-shopping arcade, orchestras and choral groups, a permanent diorama exhibit, not to mention the chance to appear on television if the coverage crews took a fancy to you), hardly anybody bothered to watch the competiiton entries. Like the eye of a typhoon, despite the long queues elsewhere, the Main Theatre was ironically, conspicuously, sadly, half-empty.
There were three basic reasons for the low attendance at the screenings of the competition films. The first was the admission prices, criminally high at P40 (daytime shows) and P80 (gala shows). The second was the stiff competition offered by the exhibition films. What fim buff could afford to miss screenings of such greats as Brazil's
PIXOTE, Italy's
LA NOTTE DI SAN LORENZO, United States'
CHAN IS MISSING, the Soviet Union's
THE CRANES ARE FLYING, France's
LA NUIT DE VARENNES and
QUERELLE, Germany's
TWO GERMAN SISTERS, not to mention the great Filipino Films in the Retrospective? What freedom starved local viewer, fed up with the outmoded, prudish standards of the local censors could miss the chance to see uncensored screenings of sex-filled artistic, semi-artistic and unartistic movies.
The films themselves were not that good. In fact, some of them were plain bad. There were, of course, a few good entries, but the general feeling I got after watching most of the entries (not all, because my conscience would not allow me to miss the great exhibition films running at the same time) was that last year's crop was better. We cannot blame the festival organizers for the low level of the competition films. After all, Berlin and Cannes are just a few weeks away. Our own
HIMALA (winner over
MORAL in the Metro Manila Film Festival) could not compete in Manila, because it is bound for the more established therefore more prestigious Berlin Film Fest. We did field
ORO PLATA MATA (at presstime, the awards have not yet been announced, but I can feel in my bones that we will win one of the major awards with
ORO), which just goes to show that we consider our own international film festival important enough to field our best. But other countries were clearly reserving their best films for older festivals. The general quality of films has internationally declined.
GANDHI for instance, though not one of the decade's best films is winning or running for all the big American awards practically unopposed.
Curiously enough the films had several things in common. One is the use of local color. Thailand's
SON OF THE NORTHEAST, spends a lot of footage on such things as the making of jars, the preparation of snake meat for cooking and a wedding ritual. Bulgaria's
WHITE MAGIC weaves a symbolic tale within concrete images of peasant life. Egypt's THE SHAME sets certain scenes on rooftops, in order to show Egyptian architecture. The attempt to exploit local color leads to an emphasis on production design. Since design becomes more impressive in period films, many of the competition entries are set in the past. Australia's
MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER details the lives of horsemen in the wilds of Australia. China's
MY MEMORIES OF OLD BEIJING takes the viewer back 50 years.
ORO PLATA MATA is a period film laying great stress on production design.
In the end, what remains of the competition films is not their overall lack of power, but the few scenes that are as powerful as film can become. My memories of the competition to rephrase the Chinese film's title revolve around some beautifully photographed, masterfully directed elegantly written sequences. There's Anthony Quinn in
VALENTINA, asking the young boy whether he wants to be a saint,a hero or a poet. That moment of triumph in
MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER (appauded at the gala screening) when the young man rides in with all the wild horses is another cinematic gem. Gripping is the scene in
THE SHAME when the family is told that the dead father was a drug dealer. The suspenseful scene of the prisoner with his gun inside his mouth as he contemplates suicide in
A DAY IN A TAXI is excellent. The torrid sex scene beside the stalled train in
THE END OF AUTUMN, these are my memories of those cold, lonely nights at the Main Theatre of the Manila Filjm Center.
