But I tell you, yes, everyone is a filmmaker. I can even reduce it by saying “Every [contemporary] man is a film camera. (Kino Eye)” this was the very idea of a famous Russian director from the Soviet Montage film movement in 1920s, Dziga Vertov, whose philosophy of man is highly linked with cinema. He said: “In the face of the machine we are ashamed of man’s inability to control himself, but what are we to do if we find the unerring ways of electricity more exciting than the disorderly haste of active people…I am an eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, I am showing you a world, the likes of which only I can see”. Vertov wasn’t really into capitalism when he said this. On the contrary, he saw cinema as a tool and our eye itself.

We must also note that like many art (literature, painting, architecture, etc.) cinema is historically contingent and ever evolving medium. In 1929, the coming of sound, many filmmakers and theorist declared that cinema is dead. Sound is somewhat alien to many silent filmmakers that time, they considered it as an intruder to their quiet little haven. However, we see the 1930 and 40s, the transition period, as the zenith of cinema not the death of cinema (if that happens, we won’t be blogging about it at all hehe!). 1930-40s is a period in cinema when the greatest films were made, Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941), La Grande Illusion (Renoir, 1937), The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939), It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946), Children of Paradise (Carne, 1945). This films have made a great impact on the rest of the history of film. The style of each one, The Rules of the Game and Citizen Kane’s deep space cinematography, La Grande Illusion’s mobility of the camera, Children of Paradise’s mise-en-scene decor and historical significance (Carne filmed it during the Nazi Occupation in France, such a violent time to film a masterpiece!), have influenced dozens of filmmakers and have established film studies itself.

in line with the central topic, that of digital filmmaking, we can approach it not as a political agenda of sorts, but as a way of comparing it with the COMING OF SOUND in 1929. It is THE NEXT FILM MEDIUM, and we see its existence on many films both foreign and local and it is evident that it will flourish in the years to come. When Abbas Kiarostami started using the digital camera after filming The Wind will Carry Us (1999), he declared that its much a better camera than the celluloid one, and many critics were ’shocked’ by this declaration. This shift of medium is also observable in many directors like David Lynch in his Inland Empire (2006) and Brillante Mendoza in his Masahista (2005). Kiarostami used the digital camera because, he said, it is the new realism in cinema attributed to its closeness to us, audiences, that, in line with your democratization argument, we can document daily life with it. Lynch used it for psychological effects, a purely stylistic cause. Mendoza used it to add atmospheric/mood effects.

We can say that the use of the digital medium is itself a manifestation of a new realism in cinema (with Kiarostami), and more importantly, a stylistic choice of the filmmaker. I cannot see how this medium can be used by young filmmakers to propel themselves to fame. If I am a ‘young filmmaker’ i would still use the old ones, the celluloid camera, because of its grainy effect which can add ‘pa-pogi’ epek sa mga judges ng film festivals.

In line with your attack to advertising, if this advertising concerns the publicity of either a mainstream film or an independent film, I say that leave it that way. This is how the film industry works ever since cinema was born in 1895. Without advertising, no people would enter on nickelodeons (old movie theaters during the 1910s) to watch screwball comedies and silent melodramas. One has to be informed to gather audiences, and what is cinema without our faithful audiences. What is a film industry without a proper information dissemination scheme, for as we all know, advertising is a form of information dissemination. if we are concern with the quality and accuracy of the information, then it is a question of value, another topic we are not concerned with.

Finally, you mention of ‘world class standards’ to attain in order for our local filmmakers to attain fame and distinction. And I say this, such ’standards’ exist, we call them not ‘world class standards’ but ‘film studies’ per se. If, say, we put Tokyo Story (JAPAN, Ozu, 1953) as a primary example, Western film scholars discovered the film in the 1970s and it is hinted as the one that opened the window to Yasujiro Ozu’s filmmography to be studied in depth. Every film, wherever it originates, has a focal point: the camera and the techniques. And this techniques are learned from film schools, or if lucky, from self experimentation. What unites every film is the camera, and film theorists and historians are experts on every aspect of the camera, how it can transform a series of ordinary moving pictures into a remarkable story, how it can distort reality, how it produces ideas and meanings. Film theorists read every film that way, and not only ‘that’ way but many ways. One can engage an ideological study on a satirical film, to explore its themes and motifs. One can engage a formal study focusing on the technicalities of the film (mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, sound). Such ‘world class standards’ are not standards at all but ‘analytical point of references’. Say, how one film differs from another film, how their camera works look the same but function in different ways.

That’s all… Hehe! I am going to blog this, if you don’t mind.