The MetroManila Filmfest (MMFF) has always been the crowning glory in terms of box office returns for Filipino movies. By law, during the span of the Christmas week ... all the way to the New Year, only local movies are allowed screenings in the movie houses covering the domain of Metro Manila.
But the nearly two years of the pandemic has changed all that. Yes, we will still have the MMFF mounted this year despite the fact that the poor attendance of moviegoing in cinemas has proven the exercise to be highly unprofitable. In a mall of so many screening outlets, an average of only one hundred people bought tickets and watched movies throughout an entire day. And that is not even enough to cover for the cost of turning on the air conditioning.
Moreover, after twenty months of closure equipment of the moviehouses are now conking out because of a stretch of unuse. Those who are brave enough to march to cinemas to buy tickets end up screaming in both anger and frustration as images hang or machines completely conk out in the middle of watching movies.
The truth is that the pandemic has changed so many aspects in what we perceived as our daily lives pre-COVID19. Because of the cost of tickets plus the additional expenditures of food, transportation, blah, blah, blah each time you go out of the house to catch a movie, people have found a different comfort zone in streaming platforms ... or even YouTube. The pandemic has also pushed us into that: why bother going out of the house to catch a flick when you can easily stay in your bedroom with your most comfortable house pambahay and not worry about the traffic?
Yes, it will require a lot of convincing for people to see a movie back in the cinema houses. It only took such a relatively short span of time for the mindset of people to change. Now going out of the house to do anything is a major production number (complete with protocols and precautions) so that more often than not --- it does not feel like it is worth the trouble or the effort.
But in the same way we choose comfort, we also have surrendered the real experience of watching a movie.
What a difference it made to see Chloe Zhao's Nomadland on the big screen as compared to your computer monitor regardless of size and technological wizardry. Can you possibly fully appreciate any of the Marvel or DC summer epics or Steven Spielberg's reinterpretation of West Side Story in any smaller screen than that of a movie house complete with Dolby sound and all its embellishments?
Can comfort really replace the experience of watching a film in a totally blacked out movie house knowing that there are other people forming a community and sharing ... yes, a communal experience of embracing a narrative of sound and sight?
I think not. But nowadays, the bottom line is It better be worth it.
It is not only the cost of the ticket at stake here ... but the dangers of health that one can be so paranoid about in a world that has not yet purged itself of the killer virus.
Now can the MMFF lure back the Filipino audiences to the movie houses?
This is quite a tall order --- but, as somebody in the organizing committee said, "If we don't go back to the cinemas now ... then when?" There is a need to create a demand for people to return to the real cinematic experience rather than just be blase with the comfort of streaming platforms. Now it is a matter of asking if the movies of the festival are good enough, strong enough to convince the audiences to accept the fact that this Christmas, we will try to bring back as much of the old normal possible ... or as we remember it.
So now we ask, "O, ano? Manonood ka ba?"
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