Archive - Arts & Culture

By Jake Soriano (Screenshots from YouTube) It had been a most satisfying year for Philippine cineastes. Here are ten  films this year that made going to movies an enriching experience: Apocalypse Child (Mario Cornejo, Philippines). A surfing instructor in Baler (who may or may not be the child of Apocalypse Now director Francis Ford Coppola)

Chancellor Dr. Michael Tan: “The pet run in October and the Lantern Parade contingent should help convince people pets are not just OK, but integral to UP Diliman”

Puzzle Café, which Canoy and her siblings set up in Quezon City a year ago, aims to raise awareness on autism and train persons with developmental disabilities for employment.

    By PATRICK KING PASCUAL  “MORE than the parade, more than the march and festival, this celebration is the delivery of actual programs and policies for LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) people,” Percival Cendaña, commissioner of the National Youth Commission, said of the recent LGBT Pride celebration in Quezon City. The celebration took special

Click to view the story map in full width

By YVETTE B. MORALES DESPITE a law mandating the creation of a Persons with Disability Affairs Office (PDAO) in all cities and municipalities across the country, Makati and San Juan have yet to comply. Officials say the size of their PWD population has influenced their decision to go slow on the establishment of the office

By VERLIE Q. RETULIN TAGUIG City prides itself as one of the first local government units to establish its own Persons with Disability Affairs Office (PDAO). In 2011, almost two years after Republic Act 10070 was signed into law, a city ordinance was issued mandating the creation of the PDAO and the abolition of then Office

  By JAKE C. SORIANO The “Nick” in the movie “Dahlin’ Nick,” is the famous Filipino writer, Nick Joaquin. With a running time of more than three hours, “Dahlin’ Nick,” directed by Sari Dalena with Raymond Bagatsing playing the title role, is many things: hybrid docu-fiction, historical epic, biographical film. Yet, what makes it stunningly original

  By NORMAN SISON SOME Filipino moviegoers had several questions after watching the historical film “Heneral Luna,” which ran for eight weeks. That’s a milestone for local movie standards. Did Emilio Aguinaldo have his own commander of the then nascent Philippine Army in 1899, Gen. Antonio Luna, assassinated? Were there really women who fought as

 By ELLEN T. TORDESILLAS OCTOBER has been designated as the month for the Elderly. In a world where we celebrate youth and vigor and everything is digital, to be old is considered a burden and to be ignorant about Facebook and Twitter is considered a defect. If you feel irritated by your parents ignorance or

Why Luna died at the hands of his own countrymen is a fact that rankles Filipinos to this day. And like many unsolved crimes in the Philippines today, people have an idea who the mastermind was.

  By MYLAH R. ROQUE “HENERAL LUNA” is a movie that deconstructs the stereotype of Antonio Luna as a “barumbado” who did not win any wars and was a lesser hero than his contemporaries. The movie showed a very human and flawed Luna played by John Arcilla: he had a violent temper  and  he put

By  ELLEN T. TORDESILLAS  ABOUT two hours from  Beijing by bullet train is the city of Dezhou in the province of Shandong. In Dezhou, there’s Chinese-Muslim village, many of whose inhabitants trace their roots to the Sultan of Sulu. They have concrete proof of that connection: the tomb of the 13th century Sultan of Sulu

  By PABLO A. TARIMAN WORLD-CLASS Filipino pianist Cecile Licad will once again define herself as a musician when she plays Bartok’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Spokane Symphony in Washington on September 19 and 20 and in Manila on October 2, 2015 with the ABS CBN Philharmonic under the baton of Gerard Salonga.

  By NORMAN SISON IT is not exactly like the Adam Sandler movie series “Night at the Museum” in which the exhibits come to life, but the idea is the same. For museums, the constant challenge is to pique people’s interest and get them to come inside. That has become even more difficult in today’s

(Seventy years ago, on Sept. 2, 1945 Japanese delegation led by Japanese foreign affairs minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed the instrument of surrender about the American battleship USS Missouri ending the six year war that killed an estimated 60 million. The survivors had to live with the trauma of war. (Businessman and former ambassador to Spain

  By PABLO A. TARIMAN A most welcome sight at the opening night of La Cenerentola at the Meralco Theater last weekend was Berlin-based Filipino soprano Andion Fernandez with her two kids (a boy and girl) in tow. It’s been years since she last sang in Manila and finally she is back to appear in

  By PABLO A. TARIMAN ROSSINI’S La Cenerentola made its Philippine debut Saturday night (August 15, 2015) at the Meralco Theater with a cheering crowd who loved opera’s retelling of Cinderella with another twist: no overbearing stepmother, no missing golden slippers. Instead we are treated to a tale of the bracelet which ultimately sealed the

                                                  By ELLEN T. TORDESILLAS KINARAY-A is the language spoken mostly in West Visayas. It is spoken in Antique, where I come from. Writer Alex de los Santos , author of the book, “The Rise of Kinaray-a”, said Kinaray-a is also spoken in some parts of Aklan and Capiz, most of Iloilo and even in

By ELIZABETH LOLARGA Photos by ANNA LEAH SARABIA THE cast and music directors of La Cenerentola promise not to change a thing that Gioachino Rossini had written in his opera. Well, maybe skip parts or let the voice of the storyteller take over but to change to make it easier for the human voice? No

Text, photos and video by JHESSET THRINA ENANO IN contrast to the busy urban scene outside, the halls of St. Paul University in Manila are quiet on a Saturday afternoon. At its College of Music and the Performing Arts, however, voices resonate through the corridors, singing to the accompaniment of a piano. The maestro on

By DANIEL ABUNALES RAY Charles, Stevie Wonder, Andrea Bocelli: world-renowned artists with visual impairments yet with exceptional musical talents. They’ve had countless performances before admiring fans. Unfortunately in the Philippines, visually impaired talents are often relegated to street sidewalks or found performing under a bridge, a donation box close by. Stationed in crowded areas, they

Text and video by GRAZIELLE CHUA THE multi-awarded athlete holds his right fist to his chest as he recalls the moment the Philippine flag was being raised after he won at the 9th Far East and South Pacific (FESPIC) Games in Kuala Lumpur in 2006. Besting more than 40 countries in the pentathlon wheelchair event

By VJ BACUNGAN DRIVING a manual can be agonizing for many drivers, especially in the stop-start traffic of the often-gridlocked metro. Anyone who has been on EDSA or C-5 during rush hour knows the strain of constantly pushing and balancing the clutch pedal just to move at a snail’s pace, like a sadistic dance between

By CAMILLE AGUINALDO RAPHAEL Torralba never thought that a fall from the stairs would change his life forever. The impact of the accident when he was two years old left him with tinnitus, a ringing in the ears. He tried to subdue this unnerving feeling by covering his ears but to no avail. Every time

    By PATRICK KING PASCUAL THE countdown has begun for the last months of President Benigno Aquino III. Activists from the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community hold out little hope that the Aquino administration will address their grievances in its final months after it failed to respond to their needs in its

[metaslider id=32442] Text and photos by KRIXIA SUBINGSUBING VOICES echoed across the Senate conference room as senators and representatives of various persons with disabilities organizations across the nation discussed the creation of PWD Affairs Offices (PDAOs) at the local government level in 2008. Charito “Chato” Manglapus, then president of Cerebral Palsied Association of the Philippines

Text and photos by JOHN FRANCES C. FUENTES DAVAO CITY — Wheelchair user Sofronio Floro, 54, has carefully assembled an armchair, one of the hundreds he and his fellow workers with disabilities have made the past couple of days. The armchairs and desks will be shipped hundreds of miles away from the city — to

By YVETTE B. MORALES CZARINAH Mercado was nervous. It was her first time to stand before a huge crowd. Clad in a persimmon dress made by a famous Filipino designer, she knew all eyes were on her. Only she couldn’t see them. Guided by a white cane, Mercado confidently strutted down the runway to show

  By COOPER RESABAL, VERA Files MARIBOJOC, Bohol – A middle-aged woman sweeps her hands across what appears to be a mosaic painting of stylized young seedlings on the front wall of a bamboo cottage in Toril village in this town. “This was made by volunteer tourist students of the Asian Institute of Tourism (AIT)