Political Ponderings
The Political Economy of Film Distribution in the Philippines: A Glimpse of the Metro Manila Film Festival
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mark Lester Chico
This paper provides readers a glimpse of how film entries to the Philippines’ arguably most important and biggest film festival, The Metro Manila Film Festival, are distributed. With key informants as primary respondents, this paper reveals how the business of film distribution is controlled by film oligarchs who plot the destiny of films distributed and exhibited in the country. Film distribution in the Philippines is highly politically controlled and profit driven. Film distributors play a crucial role in making sure that their films are preferred not only by exhibitors but more importantly the audience. Film, being the distributors’ commodity, is produced and distributed with profit as the end in mind. The film distribution (as well as production and exhibition) industry is definitely capitalist-driven. These capitalists, in the face of producer-distributors and exhibitors, have an undeniably strong control of the market from when films would be played to whom they would compete with, and much more. They have structured themselves so well through various organizations, such as the National Cinema Association of the Philippines, in order to keep the power within themselves as industry players. They have mastered, or perhaps shaped, a market that craves movies whose content is mainly for entertainment. How can small or starting producers and distributors penetrate the existing market with their “alternative films?” How will they play the game, the rules of which were crafted by those who have stayed in the industry longer? What are the hopes of changing this film landscape?
Demonetization and Opinions of Indian Newspapers
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Indroneil Bir Biswas
Media is often abused by the dominant classes viz. government, and corporate houses to manufacture an agenda, which is in sync with their interests. A dominant class’s hegemonic longevity depends on its control over the apparatuses through which it indoctrinates its ideology in a society. In many instances, they control the narrative of a news story using their influence, money, and power. Media owners, editors, and journalists often become focal points of their respective competing class through their proximity to the elites. The present investigation is a case study on the demonetization of high-value currency notes in India during 2016 to examine the relationship between the print media, and political parties through a qualitative analysis of the editorials and op-eds published in two leading English language broadsheet dailies of India. The newspapers have been selected are 'The Pioneer', owned and edited by a former Parliamentarian of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, and 'Hindustan Times', which has a “reputation” of being pro-Indian National Congress(INC) – the principal opposition party. While 'The Pioneer' was supportive of the government’s point of view and confronted the opposition, majority of the commentaries published in 'Hindustan Times' were dismissive of demonetization, echoing the INC’s point of view. The investigation revealed that the newspapers’ respective opinions about the issue were in sync with the inferred political alignment of their publishers confirming that there has been a close, historic, and symbiotic relationship between the press, and the dominant classes.
