FOR A WORKER-FRIENDLY FILM & ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY
By Leo G. Martinez
Director General, Film Academy of the Philippines


(We are starting a four-part series that aims to spell out the Academy’s policy of spearheading and encouraging efforts to uplift the lives of our movie workers and to improve their competencies and competitive skills. In effect, this worker-friendly policy will be one of the major guidelines which will dictate the Academy’s programs and projects.—Editor)

It is the dream of every person involved in film and entertainment to be a member of a community that recognizes his contribution to the field and works with him in achieving his optimum, whatever his skill. The film and entertainment industries can be such communities.

But the film and entertainment industries are also business communities. Left to themselves, they generate businesses that are largely profitable to the owners. While the business owners do provide jobs, they also reap the profits. Benefits hardly trickle to the workers, especially since there are yet no concrete agreements or visible programs that safeguard healthy and fair treatment of the workers. Or if there are, these are oftentimes overlooked by producers while others consciously close their eyes to these iniquities.

For many years now, film and entertainment activities recognize and reward mostly the producers. It is necessary that a film industry body, the Film Academy of the Philippines, which is tasked to look after the creative and technical workers --the directors and assistant directors, the actors, the writers, musicians, production designers, cameramen, soundmen, editors, and other production personnel--exert efforts to steadfastly ensure that these people get their rightful share of the business. Not only that, that it also provides a long-term program of action that will improve workers' competencies and competitive skills and discard impediments to their development.

With government's support, both FAP and the government as its partner can do well by strengthening their focus on creating a worker-friendly industry.

Worker-friendly in the sense that it rewards the workers' innate talents and respects their property rights

[] Reduction of the amusement tax from 30% to 10%, the savings of which should filter down to the workers (to differentiate from tax on foreign films, a 5% rebate can be given to local film productions)

A law to be enacted reducing the current amusement tax of 30% to 10%. This will mean a reduction in cost on the part of the producers. Consequently, this may generate interest for them to create more film projects thereby giving our workers jobs. Similar legislation may be enacted to xempt other taxes iposed on raw materials and/or equipment for filmmaking.

While the law is envisioned to encourage more film projects and therefore create more job opportunities for the film workers, it should also indicate specific interventions by which the film workers can share in the tax savings.

[] Agreements with producers for a royalty scheme for the workers, giving also the OMB and Anti-Piracy Council justifiable reason for their existence.

[] Creation of a law that will specifically institutionalize a royalty scheme for the film workers. It should, include the specific formulae by which to determine the royalties based on the work contributed by the creative and technical workers to the project. With such a law, the producers will be legally bound to include the matter of royalty in all their exhibition plans and to actually pay the royalties. The law will also provide the workers legal basis for claiming the royalties due them.

With royalties to protect, the Optical Media Board and the Anti-Piracy Council will now have more significant work to do. They will now be bound to run after the pirates of local films. As it is, their work is serving only foreign producers who are aggressively protecting their royalties. For the Filipino film workers, it does not matter how many pirated films are confiscated by the two offices--they do not benefit anyway since no royalties are paid to them by the producers.

Creation of intellectual property rights bodies for all creative and technical workers (similar to the FILSCAP version)

There is a need to create a body or bodies that will take charge of protecting the intellectual property rights of the film and entertainment workers. These bodies need not be a government organization. It can be a private corporation.

The Filipino Society of Composers and Publishers (FILSCAP) can be studied as a model and replicated to cover other fields of work. FILSCAP currently boasts of a large membership of our local composers and publishers. As an organization, it has set into place a network by which they are able to monitor the use of songs and publications of their members, or reruns of their members' work by other film and media entertainment organizations here and abroad. This enables FILSCAP to charge the users the appropriate fees for the intellectual property rights benefiting its composers or authors or creators. Perhaps a similar body can be organized for specific creative and technical workers in film and entertainment.

[] Sharing of all monetary incentives gathered from festivals and other competitions with the creative and technical workers of the film/production.

In film festivals and other competitions, it is normally the producer or owner who gets the monetary awards and incentives. For instance, every year the President gives P1M incentives for the producers who join the Metro Manila Film Festival. None are given to creative and technical personnel. A written agreement should be forged with film festival/awards organizers or with film and entertainment producers that will automatically apportion a percentage of the monetary award to be shared by the creative and technical workers involved in the film/production. This agreement, however, will cover only monetary award or incentive for a film or production and not for individual awards.

(Continued next week)