From a child actress, Kathryn Bernardo has emerged as one of the biggest stars of her generation top billing hit TV series and blockbuster films. She also has a platinum-selling CD to her name.
But amid numerous accolades and recognition received, Kathryn felt that she hasn’t done everything yet. She wanted do something else, something entirely different.
“It’s true that I have done a lot of things throughout my career, I was able to record a CD, act alongside big stars and appear on TV and movies, which I really enjoy. But I still needed to do something else that would allow me to reach out to more people especially to those who look up to me. That’s why the idea of writing a book came into picture,” Kathryn told The Standard as to how authoring a book was conceived.
In a collaborative effort with Summit Media, Kathryn’s question on what else can she do to please her fans has been answered. In the book entitled Everyday Kath: Kathryn Bernardo’s 365 Ways To Be A teen Queen, the 20-year-old shares everything she’s learned about fashion, beauty and friendship.
Fueled by her endeavor to inspire every girl to be her best self, the Kapamilya star also shared that it took her almost a year to complete the book, which she’s been wanting to release since last year but couldn’t do so because of her hectic schedule. Obviously, she doesn’t have a huge amount of spare time on her hands these days.
“We wanted to release the book last year pa. But because of Pangako Sa ‘Yo, we had to postpone it. And now that I’ve just celebrated my 20th birthday, I think it’s my perfect gift to my fans and my way of inviting them into my colorful, inspiring world,” Kathryn, sounding very proud during the launch of her book, said.
Creating core audience for indie films
At the launch of Sinag Maynila, an indie film festival that is on its second year now, festival director Brillante Mendoza said that through the annual festival, they aim to create a core audience for independently produced films.
The multi-awarded filmmaker furthered that having steady followers, a core audience, they will be able to inspire, motivate and give grants to more filmmakers so they can develop their individual materials to a full length features for public exhibition.
Having that in mind, we asked filmmakers Adolf Alix Jr., Ato Bautista, Mes De Guzman, Jay Altarejos and Gino M. Santos, who are all part of this year’s fest, if they feel they’ve already created enough films to change the mindset, the stigma normally associated with indie films, to encourage more people to watch independently produced movies.
None of the filmmakers was able to answer the question. It’s either the audio system was bad or our question wasn’t clear enough for our esteemed guests not to understand what we were trying to ask. The answers they gave us were generic: “We make films because we wanted to tell real-life stories.” Sure, that’s the goal of every storyteller.
For Wilson Tieng, however, he believes that Filipino made indie films already have an audience.
“When Brillante and I were planning this [festival] in 2015, we didn’t think it would be that fast. In six months we were able to put up the first Sinag Maynila. After my birthday in September last year, we went to Europe and brought our films to 37 film festivals there. We were overwhelmed. Malaki ang audience ng Philippine cinema overseas. To foreign audience kasi, walang distinction ang films.”
Tieng explained that foreign audiences “don’t look at our films and ask whether it’s mainstream or indie. They look at the story the film tells rather than how the film was produced.”
And inspired by this premise, the CEO and Founder of Sinag Maynila decided to add new categories in this year’s festival to encourage young and budding filmmakers to create and tell their own stories. It will run from April 21 to 26.