Filipino film scholar lectures on film and media

MANILA, Philippines - Dr. Bliss Cua Lim, author of Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic and Temporal Critique (Ateneo Press, 2011) and associate professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California-Irvine, will give a series of talks on various aspects of film in general and Philippine cinema in particular.

On Sept. 8, 11 a.m., she spoke on “Gambling on Life and Death: Two Films by Jeffrey Jeturian,” at the Cineuropa panel discussion, Shangri-La Premier Theater, EDSA, Mandaluyong City, focusing on filmmaker Jeturian’s Pila Balde (Fetch a Pail of Water, 1999) and Kubrador (Bet Collector, 2006). The talk juxtaposed these two films, both made in periods of economic and state crisis, in relation to their linked motifs of gambling, death, and communitarian reciprocity.

On Sept. 13, 2.30 p.m., her talk will be on “Aswang Transmedia,” at the UP College of Mass Communication auditorium, Diliman, Quezon City.

Aswang, a ubiquitous presence in local folkore, is often conceptualized as a national symbol for monstrous asociality. The talk will explore aswang

accounts across various media — archival sources, feminist comics, a novel, and film shorts — to show that contrary to the dominant conceptual paradigm, the aswang is not an asocial other, but rather relatives, friends, or sweethearts in the grip of supernatural transformation.

On Sept. 26, 4:30 p.m., Dr. Lim will tackle the crises in film archives in her presentation, “Archival Fragility and Anarchival Temporalities in

Philippine Cinema,” at the Faura AVR, Ateneo de Manila University, Loyola Heights, Quezon City. Through a consideration of two LVN studio films, Giliw Ko (1939) and Victory Joe (1946), Dr. Lim explores the impending deterioration of surviving film archives, as well as efforts to combat the expectation of archival decay.

Dr. Bliss Lim’s scholarly work on her myriad interests has appeared in well-regarded journals and anthologies. She has also published three books

of poetry, and is at work on a new book on the crises of archival preservation in Philippine cinema.

Her publications Translating Time, and Geopolitics of the Visible (ed. Rolando Tolentino, 2000), where her essay “True Fictions, Women’s

Narratives, and Historical Trauma” appears, are available at the Ateneo Press (unipress@admu.edu.ph) and by customer order at select bookshops.