1910 - Cebu’s oldest
playhouse (Teatro Junquera established in 1895 on Colon
Street) came to be more of a cinemahouse than a playhouse.
1911 - Cine Ideal
was built, a structure particularly built for movie viewing.
1922 - Cine
Auditorium was built, with a capacity for 10,000 people.
1922 to 1923 - the year
Visayan movie making started. A group of Cebuanos collaborated to make,
the first Cebuano full-length silent movie.
1938 - the first talking
motion picture in Cebuano was produced, called Bertoldo-Balodoy.
1940 - the second movie, Gugmang
Talagsaon, was released, co-directed by Fernando Alfon and S.
Alvarez Villarino.
WW II - the third movie,
Florentino Borromeo’s Bulak sa Lunangan was in
production when the WW II broke out, and thus, was never finished.
November 1947 - the movie
Sa Kabukiran was premiered in Cebu’s Liberty
Theater. Manuel P. Velez, a well-known Cebuano composer, helped produce
the movie. He was the musical director while his daughter, Lilian Velez,
was the movie’s star.
1949 - Velez linked up
with local businessman and organized Star Pictures Production
Corporation. The company produced its first film, Buenaventura
Rodriguez’s Luha Sa Kalipay, which opened in Vision
Theater on December 28, 1949. It had a Cebuano cast led by Bert Nombrado
and Esterlina (Ester Colina)
1950s - the heyday of the
Visayan film industry. Films were made by such outfits as Azucena
Pictures, Mutya Productions, Antingan Pictures, VisMin Productions,
Vista Films, and Adelpha Pictures. The industry produced such notable
screenwriter-directors as Piux Kabahar, Fernando Alfon, Natalio Bacalso,
S. Alvarez Villarino, and Leoux Juezan. It was also a time for the
rising of such stars as Mat Ranillo Jr., Gloria Sevilla, Esterlina, Bert
Nombrado, Mario Palacio, Virgie Solis, Caridad Sanchez, Danilo Nuñez,
and comedian Arcadio Roma. There were around 80 Cebuano movies produced
between 1947 and 1960, an average of some six new pictures a year
1950 - Princesa sa
Tawi-Tawi, which starred Rudy Robles, was produced with English
subtitles with an eye for the foreign market.
1955 - Salingsing
sa Kasakit won a Best Picture nomination and a Best Child Actor
award for Undo Juezan in the FAMAs competitions. This movie was also
dubbed in Tagalog for wider distribution.
1960 - the beginning of
the Cebuano movie industry’s decline
1969 - Badlis sa
Kinabuhi, a Cebuano film produced by a Tagalog director, Leroy
Salvador, won the Best Actress award for Gloria Sevilla in both the
FAMAS and the 16th Asian Film
Festival in Jakarta. The film was also chosen as the Best Balck and
White Film in Jakarta and was entered in the Berlin Film Festival of
1969.
