PERCEPTION OF COMMUNICATION STUDENTS
TOWARDS LOCAL INDIE FILMS
School of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences
INTRODUCTION
Films have been a part of a modern country’s culture in the past century. A series of
moving pictures which has been integrated with sound and a form of narrative depicting the
fictional or factual in a medium that can be easily ingested within less than a few hours. A form
of media that usually depicts the present day problems, views, cultures, aspirations, as a sort of
collective, in relation to the time the film was being made, regardless of it being fictional, of the
locale.
Within the past decade local independent films or indie films in the Philippine cinema
industry has been booming exponentially compared to the past century. As with the advancement
of technology and accessibility of tools and equipment being cheaper as the years passed,
aspiring film directors and even the veterans are venturing into the world of independent films.
With the advent of cheaper high definition cameras, improvement of digital technology in editing
software, and platforms of which a filmmaker can publish films digitally without the red tapes of
the commercial filmmaking.
, The expression or reflection of the culture and events are portrayed a lot in the indie films
in the Philippines, from the taken for granted mundane to the surreal to even sensitive issues that
Filipinos are facing. As Dr. Jack Lule said that the relationship between movies and culture
involves a complicated dynamic, and in regards with Philippine indie films societal issues and
subgroups are given the spotlight. From the "poverty porn" films depicting the hardships of life
in the Philippines like the works of Brillante Mendoza, the “real music scene” as shown in Quark
Henares’s “RAKENROL”, and the list goes on up to the latter parts of the last century.
As the Russian Filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky said in his book Sculpting in Time:
“The purity of cinema, its inherent strength, is revealed not in the symbolic aptness of
images (however bold these may be) but in the capacity of those images to express a specific,
unique, actual fact.”
In the 1970s, Kidlat Tahimik made an independent film entitled Mababangong Bangugot
or “Perfumed Nightmares” which won the International Critic Awards in the Berlin Film
Festival in 1977. In the film, Kidlat was a jeepney driver hoping to become an astronaut to
become rich but as his journey unfolds he sees the horrible side of progress. As the years pass,
themes like this which isn’t or rarely shown in mainstream or commercial films, are focused on
in indie films. Other alternative filmmakers or independent filmmakers also followed the format
of not following the commercial way of doing films.
Primarily, the freedom that comes along with creating indie films without the need to
follow commercial formula given and controlled by major studios, gives them that appeal.
Working on a very limited budget is also one of the factors that affect the production of indie
films. As there are no major studios backing up the filmmakers financially, the “make do with
TOWARDS LOCAL INDIE FILMS
School of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences
INTRODUCTION
Films have been a part of a modern country’s culture in the past century. A series of
moving pictures which has been integrated with sound and a form of narrative depicting the
fictional or factual in a medium that can be easily ingested within less than a few hours. A form
of media that usually depicts the present day problems, views, cultures, aspirations, as a sort of
collective, in relation to the time the film was being made, regardless of it being fictional, of the
locale.
Within the past decade local independent films or indie films in the Philippine cinema
industry has been booming exponentially compared to the past century. As with the advancement
of technology and accessibility of tools and equipment being cheaper as the years passed,
aspiring film directors and even the veterans are venturing into the world of independent films.
With the advent of cheaper high definition cameras, improvement of digital technology in editing
software, and platforms of which a filmmaker can publish films digitally without the red tapes of
the commercial filmmaking.
, The expression or reflection of the culture and events are portrayed a lot in the indie films
in the Philippines, from the taken for granted mundane to the surreal to even sensitive issues that
Filipinos are facing. As Dr. Jack Lule said that the relationship between movies and culture
involves a complicated dynamic, and in regards with Philippine indie films societal issues and
subgroups are given the spotlight. From the "poverty porn" films depicting the hardships of life
in the Philippines like the works of Brillante Mendoza, the “real music scene” as shown in Quark
Henares’s “RAKENROL”, and the list goes on up to the latter parts of the last century.
As the Russian Filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky said in his book Sculpting in Time:
“The purity of cinema, its inherent strength, is revealed not in the symbolic aptness of
images (however bold these may be) but in the capacity of those images to express a specific,
unique, actual fact.”
In the 1970s, Kidlat Tahimik made an independent film entitled Mababangong Bangugot
or “Perfumed Nightmares” which won the International Critic Awards in the Berlin Film
Festival in 1977. In the film, Kidlat was a jeepney driver hoping to become an astronaut to
become rich but as his journey unfolds he sees the horrible side of progress. As the years pass,
themes like this which isn’t or rarely shown in mainstream or commercial films, are focused on
in indie films. Other alternative filmmakers or independent filmmakers also followed the format
of not following the commercial way of doing films.
Primarily, the freedom that comes along with creating indie films without the need to
follow commercial formula given and controlled by major studios, gives them that appeal.
Working on a very limited budget is also one of the factors that affect the production of indie
films. As there are no major studios backing up the filmmakers financially, the “make do with
