State patronage

Public money paying for films to be made, through an agency, a fund, a festival or a commission.

It is usually argued about as though the only question were whether there is enough of it. The Philippine record makes a different question unavoidable: patronage and control tend to arrive from the same hand, because the body with the budget is the body with the terms. The Experimental Cinema of the Philippines financed two of the finest films this country has produced while the same state was halting Insiang over how the country looked in it.

The practical consequence for anyone building now is that the shape of the money matters more than the amount. Money that arrives automatically on a rule cannot be withdrawn to punish a film. Money that arrives at somebody’s discretion can, and has been, in Manila and in Busan.

Source: The Philippine case is the ECP, created 29 January 1982 by EO 770 with Imee Marcos as Director General, which funded Himala and Oro, Plata, Mata and was later accused of producing sex-oriented films (Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, Wikipedia); Joel David’s free first-hand “Experimental Cinema of the Philippines: A Hasty Recollection” is the best free account. The discretionary-versus-automatic distinction is developed properly in Lesson 3.7 and the international comparison in Level 4.

First used in: 3.4 · The golden age a dictatorship paid for