Tuesday, July 15, 2008 Tantingco: Glory days of local theatres, how lucky can today's kids get? By Robby Tantingco
THEY have over 50 channels on cable TV to choose from, unlike us who had only six (Channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9 and 13).
They have the sharpest pictures that digital technology can offer, even sharper than real life, unlike us who had to tape a rainbow-colored plastic sheet on the black-and-white TV screen and pretend we were watching a color TV.
They can watch two or more channels simultaneously on the same screen and make subtitles appear and disappear without rising from their seats, unlike us who had to constantly stand to turn the channel knob and rotate the antenna at the back of the TV set for a clearer reception.
The latest blockbuster movies open in Angeles at the same time they open in Los Angeles, unlike during our time when we had to wait one month, sometimes even two or three, before we got to see them here.
Today you can bring home your favorite movie and watch it in your room over and over. Before, if you loved a movie and wanted to bring it home with you, you just bought a movie poster or a long-playing movie soundtrack, or brought a camera and took a picture of the movie screen.
One time I even brought a cassette player with me to the movie house so I could record entire dialogues of my favorite movie.
My father told me that in the 1950s we were the first house in the neighborhood to own a TV set. People from many blocks away crowded our living room (and sometimes waited for snacks to be served) and watched with mouths open, and before they left they had to check the back of the TV set to look for the little beings that they believed inhabited the box.
In the early 1980s my father became one of the town's first owners of a Betamax machine, which was as thick as a two-burner stove.
The Betamax eventually gave way to the VHS, which used larger but better-quality cassette tapes. My father purchased a hi-fi version of it, as well as dozens of tapes of musicals, concerts and operas. I remember waking up every morning to Mario Lanza's "Be My Love" and being lulled to sleep at night by the songs from "Showboat" and "Carousel." All my friends would come over and watch "West Side Story," "Camelot," "Oliver" and "Amadeus."
Our kids today don't have memories of those days, because by the time they were born, digital technology had replaced most of our audio-video equipment.
A college student today, for instance, would never know how to click a manual camera, or dial a telephone, or rewind or forward a cassette tape recorder.
These were my thoughts yesterday when I went to see the movie "Serbis" at the Family Theatre in downtown Angeles.
I had promised its director, the brilliant Brillante "Dante" Mendoza and its producer, Ferdie Lapuz, who are both friends of mine, that I would see it.
It was our country's entry to the recent Cannes Film Festival but when it was shown in Manila a few weeks ago, it was mostly ignored or panned.
Why they chose to show a prestigious movie in a decrepit movie house and not in the mall theatres is, to me, a decision that's both poignant and inspired. It's homage to the lost glory days of the theatre-going culture of Filipinos and particularly Kapampangans.
Once upon a time, Kapampangan community life revolved around the theatre.
Teatro Sabina in Bacolor and Teatro Trining in Guagua fueled the Golden Age of Kapampangan Literature in the early 1900s. Traveling theatre groups staged zarzuelas and cenaculos all over Pampanga.
When the Americans introduced motion pictures, movie houses sprouted even in towns like Minalin, Macabebe, Mabalacat, Arayat, Apalit and Porac.
In Angeles, a group of residents attempted to put up a movie studio before World War II.
Family Theatre belonged to that generation of movie houses that mushroomed in the early 1960s when Angeles became the region's first chartered city, replacing Eden located along Miranda Street) and Marty (along Rizal Street in the rotunda, where Chowking Restaurant is now).
Showing "Serbis" at a theatre that has fallen into disrepair and disrepute is probably also an attempt to dignify its existence and to offer, in its last dying days, absolution for all the un-rated movies it has shown and all the shadowy activities it has hidden in its darkened hall.
When I saw "The Sound of Music" at the newly opened Family Theatre in the 1960s, it was the most elegant movie house north of Manila. Today it is the only one of its kind left standing. It stinks, it is hot, and it is infested with roaches, rodents and who knows what else, but Family Theatre has entertained entire generations of Kapampangan families and therefore deserves our gratitude and respect, and we must do all we can to preserve if not restore to its former self.
Which is why I now feel ashamed because, to tell you the truth, I did not watch "Serbis" yesterday. I froze in front of Family Theatre and turned back, because I was afraid I'd catch a cold inside the humid theatre, but I think I was really embarrassed to be seen entering a theatre that shows adult movies. This is no way to treat the grand old lady of all movie houses.
Today is the last day of showing, so I have another chance to redeem myself from my cowardice.
