While last year’s Cinemalaya celebrated filmmakers navigating a changing industry, the 22nd edition of the festival this month has turned its lens inward. Under the theme “Reel Reflections,” the country’s preeminent indie showcase honors cinema as a powerful mirror of the Filipino experience. This focus blazes through the themes of the festival’s nine competing feature-film entries—from the harsh...
Tag: Cinemalaya
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From polarizing themes to meta-style troubleshooting: Revisiting the best films and performances of 2025
Hollywood may have wrapped up its award-giving season in March, but its local counterpart in the Philippines has yet to start rolling out the red carpet for the top achievers of the 2025 film season. The first mainstream group to honor its top picks on July 5 is the entertainment editors’ Eddys, followed thereafter by...
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Thoughts on the 20th Cinemalaya
The 2024 Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival isn’t over yet. It concluded its official annual run last Aug. 11 at Ayala Malls Manila Bay and other cinemas, but there are still screenings reserved for some post-event schedules. And there are still thoughts left unsaid. Classified by a film buff as “The Best of Cinemalaya at...
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Pelikulove presents anthology of young voices in Cinemalaya Festival
“How to Make an Effective Campaign Ad” reels you in from the opening scene: An inmate swaggers along the corridors of a provincial jail while escorting two young men past rows of crowded cells into the cell of a jailed politician. The young men are scholars of “Gov,’’ and they are there to shoot a...
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Cinemalaya: back with a vengeance
Through the years since 2005, the Cinemalaya festival, a project of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), has been providing the more discerning moviegoers—many of them young people—some memorable films. During that first year, one of the independently produced movies in the full-length category was “Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros.” It did not win...