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DAVID PUTTNAM announced a joint venture to produce six feature films over the next four years. In London, the former chairman of Columbia Pictures said his British-based company, Enigma Productions, would have companies from the United States (Warner Bros.), Japan, and Britain, as partners in the $50 million project. Among prospective writers for his new films, Mr. Puttnam named Robert Bolt (``Lawrence of Arabia'') and Colin Welland (``Chariots of Fire''). BRITISH AWARD-WINNING COMMERCIALS will be shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Thursday through Saturday this week. The commercials, made for television and the cinema, will be screened in an 80-minute program that will be presented later in Los Angeles, Houston, Boston, San Francisco, and Minneapolis. Eighty-five commercials won gold, bronze, silver, diploma, and special-category awards. A MUSICAL ABOUT THE PHILIPPINES at the turn of the century will have its New York premi`ere Wednesday through Saturday at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. ``Manifest Destiny: An Evening of Yankee Panky'' will have a cast of 30. President McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and Admiral Dewey are among the historical figures portrayed in this ``blend of history and entertainment'' concocted by Raul S. Manglapus, the Philippines Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. CARNEGIE HALL BEGINS ITS 98TH SEASON with a gala benefit on Sept. 27. The Philadelphia Orchestra, led by music director Riccardo Muti, will appear at the New York hall in performances of Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1, with Soviet violinist Viktoria Mullova as soloist, and Prokofiev's cantata ``Alexander Nevsky,'' with Bulgarian mezzo-soprano Alexandrina Milcheva and the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia. The gala tickets, priced at $250, entitle holders to a post-concert dinner at the Russian Tea Room, but concert-only tickets are also offered, with a $60 top.