Ang Babae sa Septic Tank was one of the award winning films in the 7th Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival. I chose not to watch it before because I thought, 'Hey isn't that the actress from Kimmy Dora? I'm pretty sure this film would be as corny as that'. But I was wrong. I forgot that Kimmy Dora's a mainstream film, and that Ang Babae sa Septic Tank's an Indie. Big difference (here we go again with indie vs mainstream.)
Ang Babae sa Septic Tank was an Inception kind of movie. There is a movie within a movie. It is about the 2 film graduates who aspire to make an award winning film. Their chosen topic was, of course, poverty and trafficking in the Philippines. One of the observations I was able to make while watching the movie was that I think it is satirically targeted to other directors in the industry who use poverty as a tool to make an award winning indie. Surprise, surprise! This film bagged a lot of awards last year. Well, poverty and trafficking in the Philippines was highlighted in this film.
It is very funny and through most of its scenes you can safely tell that they did a great job establishing their subject. But I can't help but wonder why film makers use poverty for "cinematic purposes"? Perhaps this would be one of the reasons why people perceive the Philippines as one of the poorest countries in the world. Which is true but, we all know that our country is not all that. Films like this specifically cover only the shanties and the poverty stricken lives of some of our citizens. But admittedly, this masterpiece did it differently by adding satire in their story. It aimed not just to expose the state of poverty in the Philippines but also to make us realize that filmmakers take advantage of these issues, again, for cinematic purposes--which is not bad. It isn't bad at all. But I think there's just too many films about poverty already...
No comments:
Post a Comment