Who remembers the years of the dictator?
The years under the dictatorship went by unchronicled. Formally. The news archives from 1972 until at least the…
Tender and raw is Sorrentino’s ‘The Hand of God’
A voluptuous woman stands in a long line, outstanding in her beauty, with her nipples rigid against the…
Meditating on Miyâ: The social media stray cat
All cats are stray cats unless they belong to, or have been adopted, are cared for, or singled…
Feasting (literally) on cinema
In 2014, the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) reserved a special section celebrating the diversity and development of…
Ma. Victoria Carpio-Bernido: Physicist, teacher humanitarian November 17, 1961-January 6, 2022
IT was on December 30, 2019 when we had Ma. Victoria Carpio-Bernido and Chris Bernido as guest in…
Vlogging about this island paradise called Ticao
All islands are paradise. It is the unknowability of the place that it offers to the outsider that…
Judging the first week of the year
WE have barely thanked the past year for witnessing our survival when the first days of 2022 exposed…
Myopic and visually impaired: ‘Don’t Look Up’
Don’t look up! Humanity is down there and this is where the action is. That is the blunt,…
Worshipping Animals, Signs and Earth Magic
TWENTY-TWENTY was the Year of the Rat. Geomancers predicted how the Rat, specified as the Metal Rat, would…
As this year comes to a close
I woke up this morning with an online post pontificating how we should be thankful for the Marcoses…
The Other Night before Christmas
Long before the Three Magis were born, a discussion ensued among the Archangels and other Angels. They knew…
The Mary of the first Christmas in cinema
EVEN the sacred tales from the Bible have not escaped the power of cinema to retell the story,…
Transnationalizing Christmas
Four small evergreens flank the entrance to the main lobby of the hotel. The trees, which are sized…
‘Asakusa Kid’: Cinema as counterculture and nostalgia
There are two ways of getting to know this man—as Beat Takeshi the comedian, or Kitano Takeshi, the…
Birds or Angels?
I should not have shared my unusual discoveries that day or the day before. But who chances upon…
Guilty (reading) pleasure: Gore Vidal’s ‘Palimpsest’
Gore Vidal was never a writer in my small writing universe. The reason had nothing to do with…
The Blue Christmas Tree
She was always against a blue Christmas tree. Maybe the word is not “against”; she was worried that…
Human still in ‘The Last Birds of Passage’
IN summer, they journey to the cooler climes of the central and southern mountains of Turkey, but in…
Reading the Return
A photograph has gone viral online. It is about a gathering of people in red, in front of…
A woman awakens in ‘Vera Dreams of the Sea’
IN Vera Dreams of the Sea, we meet a woman who dreams of a good life after her…
Re-locating Life and Desires
After long negotiations with trucking services and door-to-door deliveries, my 40-year-old life in Manila arrived in the old…
‘The Brittle Thread’: Weaving dreams and selves
Rani is a dancer. When she performs, her movements come to us, outsiders, as one of those sensuous…
Testing Theories of Change in the Troll Age
There were no trolls yet when the Jesuit sociologist, John J. Carroll, SJ, began writing on social theory…
Kosovo’s ‘Vera Dreams of the Sea’ takes the Tokyo Grand Prix
IT was a glorious night of awards as the 34th Tokyo International Film Festival ended last November 8.…
Who are we online?
How should I respond to a “Friend Request” on Facebook from a being who does not show his…
And so begins the 34th Tokyo International Film Festival
IT is early autumn in Tokyo, and on October 30 the 34th edition of the Tokyo International Film…
Respecting death is loving longer
This is the second year now when the State has stopped its citizens from observing the All Souls’…
Conquering the archives: Lapulapu at the Met
Subversive and reflexive, Lapulapu—staged in the newly restored Metropolitan Theater of Manila—shows us how to decolonize our past.…
Faking it
If you add to the truth, you take something away from it.—A Jewish Proverb Local experiences of earthquake…
Paranoid, personal view: Disaster films and realities
THIS must be what I must call an immersive review. For the past three days, since Thursday, October…
Coloring politics
Colors have histories; they also have politics and cultures. These interesting positions are explained in a book edited…
Critics honor the actors of the decade
AT the end of each decade, the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino honors the achievement of the actors and…
We are all teachers
But Teachers’ Day or any month dedicated for teachers is not for all of us. The day is…
From the Manunuri: The ‘Gawad Dekada’ films
AT the end of each decade (technically, the beginning of another decade), the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino selects…
Pagpupugay kay Bienvenido Lumbera, National Artist (April 11, 1932-September 28, 2021)
How does one honor a National Artist in his passing? Does his death mean partly the death of…
Movies in my (pandemic) mind
THE poster shows three young people standing. They have their masks on. It is 2009 and the film…
Pagpupugay kay Bienvenido Lumbera, National Artist
HOW does one honor a National Artist in his passing? Does his death mean partly the death of…
Outside Manila: September, 49 years ago
Our city had two Black Saturdays in September, 1972. A local paper of Naga City in Camarines Sur, Naga…
Six documentaries, nine short films compete for Gawad Urian 2021
IN the documentary Aswang, the being whose name refers to a complex of witches and viscera suckers leaps…
Is the ritual of redemption dying?
Every year, on the second day of September, the image of the Nuestra Señora de Peñafrancia, is taken…
The apotheosis of Mae Paner: Because we want to change
‘Photojournalism” is the only word that greets us in the first of the four-part monologue, called Tao Po.…
Visualizing visions and values: The films of Sine Halaga
THIS is the second part of my capsule review, as promised, of the other films in Sine Halaga,…
Silences online
IT started out as an irritant online—the lighted solitary candle announcing no names, but signifying something desolate. But…
Teaching cinema and valuing Filipino narratives
AN interesting project under the National Commission for Culture and the Arts has recently been completed under its…
Historicizing faiths
Lost in the surge of viral infections and shrouded by dirty politicking amid hunger and inability to help…
Critics consider animation, two documentaries for Best Film in 44th Gawad Urian
FOR the first time, not one but two documentaries and an animated film are being considered for Best…
Ending the War
The 15th of August 1945 was the end of World War II. This was about a week after…
Meet the ‘Last Madame’
Candor is always a lovely instrument to use when a film confuses you. Or, when you are at…
Tattoos, taboos and trading: Riddles of culture (With apologies to Marvin Harris)
A war is raging online. It is not on drugs; it is neither between nations. It is about…
Acting in ‘Tennessee Williams’s Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh’
IN February 1983, Tennessee Williams flew off alone to London, Rome and Italy. A week after, he was…
My own rhapsody in August
The clouds were few and the view of the city from above was clear. It was the right…
Virtually covering the Games
THERE is an interesting angle to the Olympics happening at present in Tokyo: the intense online streaming of…
Symbols and sports: The Tokyo Olympiad
History plays a significant role in the return of the Olympics to Japan. In 1964, Japan was granted…
‘The Politician’: Dangerously disarming
THERE is a fabulous series on Netflix. It is delicious to the senses, endearing in its evil ways.…
Minding the past
“War is a great silencer of hypocrisy.”—James H. Blount James H. Blount is the author of the book, The…
What is thing called vlog?
Practically, everyone knows—meaning, an awesomely significant number of people—what a vlog is. Video log or video blog, a…
Philippine education: Once more with feeling
(For My Mother, Liliosa Genova Valiente and all those teachers who had to cross streams and rivers to…
The barber, the tailor and the governor
THERE is a major actor on-screen and he is Arjo Atayde. The sterling proof is in this on-demand…
Shaming education
This week, a report rocked this island-republic again. The other report did not so much shock us as…
Beauty in death, violence in love
Action in Rurouni Kenshin: The Final blazes and seethes. In this world, space has seemingly forgotten its primacy…
Imperfect condolences
BY the end of the simple and moving funeral of President Aquino, Bayan Ko was played, a song that had…
Time is our enchantment
AT five in the afternoon, the light from the west was kind. I was at the porch. The…
From comics to cinema: Promising rainbows and rains
IF anyone tells me “There is this fine and funny series on TV about TV, you should watch…
The loneliness that kills
The Japanese have a term for it—kodokushi, or lonely death. This refers to, in the context of Japanese…
Wanted: ‘Extinct or Alive’
Forrest Galante is an American biologist and conservationist. But he has been called many names, like “international adventurer”…
Permanence of the ephemeral in the work of Martin Genodepa
Do they move with the wind? What happens when it rains? Do they change colors according to the…
The tricks about tributes, eulogies and the afterlife
The series of deaths among relatives and friends should have made us experts in expressing our griefs. We…
Not alone: ‘Hitler’s Circle of Evil’
Viewed from the perspective of the power dynamics among the most important members of the Nazi Party, Hitler’s…
Murdering and burying identities
sinite parvulos venire ad me Suffer the little children to come unto me…—Matthew 19:14 The news is disturbing:…
Actors on acting
MUCH as I try to efface this habit of making cinema actor-centric, the areas of performance on-screen and…
Cleaning dishes and consciousness
IT is never my duty to do some cleaning in our home. My age has exempted me from…
‘Dance of the 41’: Homophobia historicized
IT seems, whenever persecutions happen to marginalized individuals, including those seen as homosexuals or gays, judgment always happens…
Contemplating our generations
There is a long note that has been circulating online. It has different versions, having reincarnated from a…
Nora
IT is tempting, but facile, to use the wine as metaphor for Nora Aunor, with another year added…
Agua de Mayo
There is a kingdom by the sea that subsists on rains, sunshine, and lies. When May comes, they…
Fabulous travels with Joanna Lumley and two Asian pop idols
There are two friggingly fabulous travelogues in Netflix right now. One has Joanna Lumley as our indefatigable, elegant…
The diaries of the dying are the thoughts of the living
A person I knew passed away this week. Another person had called my attention to look at his…
No great lesson from ‘My Octopus Teacher’
For those not feeling buoyant as they sail over the waves of life (indulge me with this hokey…
We don’t really need another hero
There is a conflagration online, and it began with a young would-be politician from the Revilla clan praising…
To ‘Colette’ the Oscar goes: A documentary on loss
Directed by Anthony Giacchino, Colette, a short film featured in the Oculus VR game Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, is the winner of this year’s Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject). Presented by Oculus Studios and Electronic Arts’ Respawn Entertainment, and later acquired and distributed by The Guardian, it is said to be the first time a video game industry project has won an Oscar.
Reconfiguring surplus and kindness
IT began in a small village: a table was loaded with vegetables and other food items and with…
Leading lives: Marlene Dietrich
“TODAY filmmakers know all about camera placement and visual angles. But TV cameras often distort contours much to…
Memories of identities
There is an online group called “Memories of Naga and Bicol,” of which I am a member. It…
‘Divine Comedy’: Journeying through truth and love
DIVINE Comedy begins with a book and ends with a book. And, in the 27-plus-minute short film of…
Counting online losses, and still hoping
WE have been counting losses online. Deaths by Covid-19. The technologies have given us symbols with which to…
The terrible beauty of dancing for life
THE story has been done many times: a person is imprisoned, convicted of a crime, and now faces…
Memories of identities
There is an online group called “Memories of Naga and Bicol,” of which I am a member. It…
‘Divine Comedy’: Journeying through truth and love
DIVINE Comedy begins with a book and ends with a book. And, in the 27-plus-minute short film of…
Counting online losses, and still hoping
WE have been counting losses online. Deaths by Covid-19. The technologies have given us symbols with which to…
The terrible beauty of dancing for life
THE story has been done many times: a person is imprisoned, convicted of a crime, and now faces…
Violating the invisible: Asian women in the US and somewhere
IT began in cinema, where else but in spaces of artifice and allure. In films, Asian women are…
Sing, racism: The invisible, invincible jazz divas
People are talking about this new Billie Holiday. We do not mean another jazz great because there could…
Restoring vision
Nothing political or ideological here, by vision, I mean that which refers to the eyes. My two eyes.…
Changing amid changes: News from the Tokyo International Film Festival
THERE is hope in our film industry. A communication from the organizers of the Tokyo International Film Festival…
Finding us
This essay is as much about the title as the content. In another century, and another domain, the…
Including and excluding: Identities in Netflix and cinema
There is a study that is appropriate for this month of March, Women’s Month. It is called “Inclusion…
Colonizing the Arts: The Case of Magellan, the Queen and the Sto. Niño
“Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”—Chinua Achebe,…
Cinema Rehiyon 13 goes global
WHEN the 12th Cinema Rehiyon ended last February 2020 in Naga City, the news of the Covid-19 virus…
Where were you during the revolution?
IT was a Sunday, the 22nd of February. I should have left by that time for Morong, Bataan,…
The melody lingers on
AND that is the title of the book I came across in a second-hand bookshop in our small…