The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority has begun its preparation for the country’s first-ever Metro Manila Summer Film Festival with an inspection of the proposed route for the Parade of Stars last Friday.
The film festival will be held on April 11, 2020, Black Saturday.
The MMDA planned to conduct the Parade of Stars in Quezon City covering a distance of 6.2 kilometers and is expected to take a minimum two hours and 30 minutes from the Welcome Rotonda to the Quezon Memorial Circle.
“We are very excited for the first-ever MMSFF in April. This early, preparations for the Parade of Stars have begun to ensure that the event will be an exciting day for Filipino moviegoers,” said MMDA chief and concurrent Metro Manila Film Festival chairman Danilo Lim.
Just like the regular MMFF during Christmas, the Parade of Stars is one of the highlights of the summer film festival that will showcase floats carrying celebrities of the official entries.
Lim said the festival will officially open on April 11, Black Saturday, where eight full-length films will be shown exclusively in theaters nationwide for an 11-day period.
According to cinema exhibitors, historically, Black Saturday or Sabado de Gloria is the second highest grossing playdate next to Christmas.
Senator Christopher Lawrence Go initiated the move for the country to have a separate Metro Manila Film Festival to be held during summer.
Go is a member of the MMFF executive committee while the MMDA is the overall organizer and the supervising body of the annual film festival.
In 2017, Senator Vicente Sotto III also filed a resolution pushing for a separate festival for independent movies following the outcome of the 2016 film festival when most of the movie entries were ‘indie-films” or made by independent producers.
Sotto, a former actor, had expressed his disappointment and was not satisfied about the outcome of the 2016 MMFF, particularly the box-office results.
In his Senate Resolution 257, Sotto proposed that MMDA should establish a film festival “exclusively for the independent films during the long semestral break", citing the changes made to 2016 Metro Manila Film Festival as one of the reasons behind the recommendation for a new film festival.
Among the changes in the 2016 MMFF observed by Sotto that prompted him to file the Senate Resolution was the removal of "50% commercial viability" from the criteria for selecting the eight films that will be featured in the festival.
As a result, he said, most of the films that were produced by independent companies were chosen, instead of the usual big budget commercial films.
Sotto said in the resolution that while some enjoyed the new films in MMFF 2016, others were still looking for old festival favorites that "give them a good laugh."
"Since Christmas season is for children, and it is likewise the time when MMFF movies are being shown in the cinemas; the absence of the mainstream films in the MMFF entries for 2016 was prejudicial to the regular MMFF moviegoers, particularly the children, who always look forward to these movies to bond, enjoy, be entertained and share a good laugh with their family and friends," the former comedian turned politician said.