Name: Paul Samuel S.

Lacap
Hum 3-X
Essay
Philippine Film: A Brief History
It amazes me that we Filipinos managed to keep our native films rich in culture.
Unlike Hollywoods great budget for films, we were very low in budget back then but that did not stop
Filipino directors to create films that entertain us. Also, the history of Philippine Films also shows how
patriotic we were, Filipinos keep their originality and made their narratives, themes and inspiration from
Filipino themselves which makes the Filipino viewer easily relate to the story. We also remain true to
our language, even though most film developers might have known the English language; they still put
their Filipino pride first by making their films in Tagalog dub. By showing it in Tagalog not only shows
patriotism, but the Tagalog language also has another good effect, since most Filipinos were still not
knowledgeable about the English knowledge back then, they would rather watch films they understand.
Therefore, the culture of Filipino films further spread in our country.
Our Filipino movies back then also shows how religious we are, in most of our melodrama
films, directors back then based their characters from popular people from the Bible. And when it comes
to action, the reason that divides the two groups of characters from good or evil is religion. The good
side are the Christians while the Moros were the evil ones, these films made me think that we were
religiously biased back then, no wonder some Muslims do not like us today.
The said above were most currently the trend of movies then everything change after 1950s.
The Filipinos adopted most of the style from foreign films. This added variety to our culture of films,
some themes we adopted was the secret agent films, martial arts, slapstick comedies, and bomba. It
was very surprising that Filipinos back then shows bomba in films. I mean its drama with sex. It just
shows that Filipinos has an open mind about these films.
Now, as we can see, our films were heavily influenced by culture and time. There were
a lot of changes that affected on how we made films today. From Jose Nepomocenos Dalagang Bukid
to the film adaptation of Jose Rizals two famous novels and to our latest films today. However, no
matter its theme or story, theres always one thing in common about our films, it shows the culture of
us Filipinos, and by watching these films means we can learn a lot about our culture from different
times, and this films is also a way that we can make our culture famous around the world.


References:
Lumbrera, Bienvenido Philippine Film a Brief History