"Maximo" -- Cinemalaya 2010 Trailer

Our favorite femme boy movie character, the iconic Maximo Oliveros, lends himself to the promo campaign for the 6th Cinemalaya Film Festival. You may remember Ang Pagdadalaga Ni Maximo Oliveros debuted in the very first Cinemalaya in 2005.

While the spot (directed by Paolo Villaluna) enjoyably apes the memorable sequence in the film directed by Auraeus Solito -- in which Maxi and his friends stage a mini beauty pageant -- and how nice too, to see actor Nathan Lopez all grown up and still work the same innocent charm, it's disheartening to see all this appropriated for an icky message. Maxi is now performing, not out of the need to express himself, but for the approval of a panel of foreign judges.

"The world is watching" is this year's Cinemalaya slogan -- the campaign was devised by ad agency DDB Phils. -- and it may be a testament to how the country's most popular independent film festival has acquired an air of laurel-chasing self-consciousness. Poor Maxi, who used to bow only to love, is made to appear to be a sellout, a prostitute for fame. Blasphemous. Filmmakers, is this what you're really making films for?

GRADE: D

Related Links:
The two other spots in the ad campaign:
"Casket" and "Engkwentro"

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