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Commentary on Jose Maria Sison’s “The Need for a Cultural Revolution”
This text aims to provide a commentary on Jose Maria Sison’s brief text, “The Need for a Cultural Revolution.” The currently existing text to be cited in this essay is the one published on Sison’s website. The text was originally from a lecture delivered by Sison on September 30, 1966. It is important to consider…
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The Many Deaths of Lino Brocka
This year marks the 30th death anniversary of the nationalist filmmaker, Lino Brocka. Even after May 21, 1991, he’s been dying multiple deaths. Some may recall how Patrick Flores’ polemic against Brocka, incidentally published day after Brocka died sparked controversy as one which provoked later the extent of political criticism. Flores’ mistake however is merely…
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The Audience Problem and the Film-as-Art Ideology
Last night’s Sipat Film School’s roundtable on Piracy has turned into something else on the sidelines. Discussion over the classroom chat has turned towards the relatively old debate between “mainstream vs indie” and how it is the audience’s fault that more “relevant” films are not being appreciated. For long that I’ve been around cinephilia, or…
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Para kay Chris (repost)
Itong post na to ay originally nasa Kawts Kamote. Published noong November 2, 2014. Bago tong araw na to, binalikan ko yung mga lumang post ng lumang blog. Naalala ko kasi si Chris Fajardo, isang kaibigan na wala na ngayon. Sa Titus Brandsma ko pa nakilala si Chris non, panahon na una pa lang akong…
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Dalawang Tala tungkol sa Kamatayan
Unang isinulat ang dalawang tala na ito para sa binubuong mga instructional materials para sa asignaturang Introduction to Philosophy of the Human Person para sa Senior High School. Nilayon ko na talakayin ang ideya ng kamatayan na tumutugon sa konsepsyon nito mula sa iba ibang punto, partikular itong kagyat na tugon sa nosyon ni Martin…
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We once had two cats
We used to have a cat named Petpet. We had him ever since some stray decided to give birth to him and two of his siblings at a shelf near our bed. (We had a make-shift double-deck bed, and we (my sister and I) used to sleep on the top bed when we were in…
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The Aesthetics of Confinement
The title is misleading, or perhaps tautological. Essentially, aesthetics has always been dependent on a certain sense of confinement. Sensual experiences depend more on the space that surrounds us, not the ones we occupy. What we see in front of us, what our ears capture, what can be smelled from meters away, etc. Cinema, if…
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Words (for Edel Garcellano)
(photo by Karl Castro, taken from his post at the Edel Garcellano Study Group Facebook Page) Yesterday flowed in a rather strange way. Very early after midnight, my faculty colleague, the scholar Led Villafuerte, who was formerly an aide for poet and critic Edel Garcellano back when he was still teaching at the Polytechnic University…
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We March Along with the Future
Scattered throughout the writings of the late Mark Fisher is this concept of lost future identified with a stasis buried behind “a superficial frenzy of ‘newness’, of perpetual movement.” This is in agreement with Franco Berardi’s declaration of the slow cancellation of the future as experienced by the psyche in the cultural superstructure. Fisher did…
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Notes on Audience-Taste, Education and Capture
Disclaimer: This convoluted essay is a product of me processing recent events and my writing projects in Media Studies. But just because this is related to a school project, doesn’t mean I do not take these seriously. In fact, I’m probably more serious about this now more than ever. Writing these down to at least…