Producerdirector Cirio H Santiago is the son of Dr Ciriaco Santiago who founded Premiere Productions in Manila in 1946 He has two siblings After starting out as a producer he started directing englishlanguage movies in the early 70s Santiago became one of the pioneers of the Blaxploitation genre by being one of the first to cast black actors and especially actresses as strong action heroes Movies like TNT Jackson 1974 became instant cult classics In the 80s Santiago became known for his numerous lowbudget Vietnam war movies such as Firehawk 1993 which gave him a reputation as the master of the Vietnam war genre A long running production partnership with Roger Corman assured proper distribution of his movies in the USA Many of todays hottest filmmakers such as Jonathan Demme Joe Dante or Carl Franklin got their first directing jobs with Santiago In 1995 he was named president of the Philippines Film Development Funds by President Ramos The organization strives to uplift the quality of Filipino filmmaking to new higher standards and to encourage production of foreign movies on location in the Philippines Premiere Productions headed by Cirio H Santiago still remains one of the biggest studios in the Philippines and went public in 1997
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