Archive - Arts & Culture

In a virtual tour of Mt Cloud Bookshop on Yangco Road, Baguio City, co-owner Feliz Lim Perez showed and proved how such a business can conquer the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic that kept the place shut for the first three months of the lockdown.

We associate rats with filth and sewers and the carrier of leptospirosis in the country. And yet, cloud rats are fluffy and cuddly animals, and yes, they are rodents.

Alice Sun Cua, a perennial Manila Critics’ Circle awardee, is that rare creature. She is a physician (obstetrics-gynecology is her specialty at San Juan de Dios Hospital) by day and a literary writer and now a translator during her free hours. The Santo Niño de Cebu Publishing House recently launched its first title, and the good doctor was their buena mano. It published her translation of contemporary Spanish novelist Carmen Laforet’s novel Nada in Hiligaynon.

The Independence Day offering of Manila Pianos Artist Series featuring soprano Jasmin Salvo and pianist Gabriel Paguirigan last June 12 is a breath of fresh air in the area of virtual concerts.

A Philippine choir does it again!

It must be a blessing living in Taiwan in time of the pandemic.

It is difficult to imagine our food today without tomatoes, peanuts, chili peppers, or cacao. It means no afritada, turrones de mani, Bicol Express, sinamak, sili sigang, or even champorado, as we know it.

Into the 15th month of the lockdown that closed performing arts venues beginning of March 2020, Filipino musicians reflect on how the pandemic affected them not just as musicians but as ordinary human being.

The change of name of the fully renovated Manila Metropolitan Theater to NCCA Metropolitan Theater --scheduled to re-open June 12 with a theater piece on Lapu-Lapu – does not sit well with many in the arts and culture community in the country.

From the humble clay moulded into earthenware pottery, the clay pot tells the story of our people and our culture long before the existence of written records.

We do not have a Borobudor, or an Angkor Wat. Instead, we have colonial stone churches, hundreds of them scattered across the archipelago. Architectural influences overseas led to different styles and designs of stone churches in the country synthesized locally to suit the prevailing taste of the times. Thus, we have a distinctive church architecture, uniquely Filipino.

Striking Affinities, a solo exhibition on Santiago Bose (1949-2002), marks the second series of a three-part exhibition entitled Santiago Bose: Painter, Magician by Silverlens Galleries. Included are Bose’s journals and sketches, interviews, and recordings of art performances.

The Philippine Center New York Core Collection of 1974 is back home in Manila after 47 years, with all 115 out of 120 art works by 52 Philippine artists for the inauguration of the Philippine Center, New York City.

Just as the protesters continue rallies and strikes against the Myanmar military’s coup amid the brutal crackdowns by security forces, so have the journalists have been pushing ahead and struggling to do their jobs as storytellers. In this toxic situation, media networks and groups continue to sprout up among Myanmar journalists, whether online and on social platforms, and by telephone.

The 1988 pro-democracy protests in Myanmar were heady days, a time when danger and excitement mixed freely among university students like me in the streets of Magway, my hometown in the country’s central region. Soon after, the terror of the military regime of the 1990s era kicked in, until the country’s supposed transition to democracy started around 2010.

The foremost prisoner of conscience in the country has just been acquitted of one of three drug charges against her and moves ever closer to freedom after nearly four years of unjust detention at Camp Crame, Quezon City.

​ Filipino mothers bear the brunt of lives disrupted by the ongoing global pandemic, as detailed out in an e-book, In Certain Seasons: Mothers Write in the Time of Covid, 2020, published by the CCP Intertextual Division and its partner, the Philippine Center of PEN International. ​

Allegories & Realities, Ofelia Gelvezon-Tequi: In Retrospect has been relaunched as a virtual exhibition at the Cultural Center of the Philippines website as part of its 50th anniversary.

North Korea reacted negatively to the hit Korean drama “Crash Landing on You,” yet has maintained its silence on Ryan White’s documentary “Assassins” since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this time last year. If the film's premise is to be believed, Pyongyang is only being consistent as the unseen yet powerful character in this seemingly unreasonable tale of murder reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s tomes.

On the 11th month of the pandemic lockdown, TV viewers in Metro Manila and the provinces suddenly found themselves watching a drastic change in TV programming.

"Solidarity with the Filipino Community During the Covid-19 Crisis" is the theme of the Ateneo Art Gallery's online exhibition of 54 works on paper made by 50 artists. It is online at the AAG website until May 21, 2021.

The year 2020 is many things to cultural watchers.

Last year’s edition of the 2020 Metro Manila Film Festival has many things going for it. It had 10 fairly well-made entries on various genres from comedy to drama.