During the Spanish period, Filipinos who didn’t understand the language of the movie didn’t find it a hindrance to appreciate the imagery and the music that accompanied the screening. This is what makes a film a universal and powerful medium of information and communication dissemination. But since the American period mandated Filipinos to learn the American language and culture, it was no wonder that Filipinos embraced Hollywood film products that easily during those early times. This is why people sometimes joke that we Filipinos were under “400 years of Catholicism and 50 years of Hollywood:’ resulting in the Filipino of today.
Film’s primary purpose in the Philippines rooted in the entertainment factor, but this changed when the Japanese colonial period began. Seeing film as a viable form of mass media communication, the Japanese led the production of propaganda films and tapped Filipino directors and actors to make them. The most popular of such films was Dawn of Freedom (1944) which highlighted the World War II aim of the Japanese to have an “Asia for the Asians:’ It was co-directed by another pioneer of Philippine Cinema, Gerardo de Leon, and starred Fernando Poe Sr. plus other Japanese and Filipino actors. Emerging from the war-torn culture of the Philippines, especially Manila, gripping narratives featuring the war, lower-class underdogs and ordinary people as heroes for the people emerged in the cinema. Such themes and characterizations are still popular among Filipinos today when watching local or foreign films.