In 2011, only about a third of the 229 films shown commercially in the Philippines were locally produced, the report noted. The vast majority were the Hollywood movies loved by many people in this former U.S. colony, where English is widely spoken. Last year, the top-grossing film in the Philippines was “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.”

“Why is the local film industry dying?” asked the report.

As in many other developing Asian countries, rampant piracy has been a major factor undercutting development of the homegrown movie business. In the Philippines, a film that can be seen in the theater for a ticket that costs 120 pesos, or about $2.80, can often be bought at the same time from vendors of pirated DVDs for 40 pesos. The Film Academy of the Philippines estimates that the industry lost about 4 billion pesos last year to piracy.

Illustrating the pervasiveness of the problem, Ronald Llamas, the political adviser to President Benigno S. Aquino III, was photographed in January buying about 2,000 pesos’ worth of pirated DVDs at a local market in Manila. He later apologized.

Many also blame the decline of the local film business on a 30 percent tax on gross revenues that was instituted in the 1990s. Adding in a 12 percent value-added tax, Philippine movie producers were paying a tax rate of 42 percent for much of the past two decades.

“That killed the industry,” said Pepe Diokno, a producer and director whose film “Clash” won the Luigi De Laurentiis Award at the Venice Film Festival in 2009.

“The tax killed innovation and killed the chance that producers would take risks with narratives and unknown stars,” he said. “Producers went with formula, with melodrama and slapstick, because they had to be sure it would sell.”

In 2009, the revenue tax was lowered to a more manageable 10 percent. That was not the only major change in recent years. The advent of affordable digital equipment has allowed a boom in the production of independent films in the Philippines.