Archive - Arts & Culture

Watching Jun Lana’s “Big Night” is like watching a Senate hearing on the police’s anti-drug operations in the country.

Reading Tikim again today feels fresh and relevant, even after it was first published 27 years ago.

In the news lately was the strong position that the recipients of the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Thirteen Artists Award (TAA), led by National Artist BenCab, took against the possible return of the Marcos and Duterte families in Malacañang. Together, the more than 100 awardees called their position paper their “Stand for Freedom and Democracy.”

With a Covid-19 death in the family, the unthinkable in Philippine life has happened. No wakes, and not even a last look and a last goodbye. Cremation must be done within 12 hours of death. Only an urn is handed back to the family. Such is the reality of the pandemic amongst us.

The health care sector took among the heaviest beating in this pandemic. And yet, the frontline workers from doctors to medical staff like janitors are also the most overlooked. The recent premiere of the milestone music video “Heroes Unmasked,” composed by National Artist Ryan Cayabyab and sung as a duet by Lea Salonga and Gary Valenciano (a first-time collaboration), served to correct this oversight.

If you’ve never been to Iloilo yet, what’s your idea of Iloilo food? Typical answers would include the ubiquitous batchoy, pancit Molo, or the catchall seafood.

He is more known as a practitioner of celebrity journalism, having covered rising and established talents in the arts and entertainment field for half a century. But it was his series of soul-wrenching poems that initially appeared in Facebook after the COVID-19 lockdown that drew him the widest and most receptive audience he has ever known. So wide that even the young American poet laureate Amanda Gorman posted one of his poems, “The Poet Is a Lonely Hunter,” on her FB timeline.

The early months of the COVID-19 pandemic were periods of anxiety, fear, paranoia, even plain cluelessness.

The Ateneo Art Gallery (AAG) has announced three winners of the 2021 Ateneo Art Awards, namely, Nice Buenaventura, Christina Lopez, and Jo Tanierla.

Traditional baskets are familiar objects that we do not give them much thought. Until one bilao was advertised as a rustic art décor for US$ 299 by an international furniture company, and the news went viral. Indeed, an arty price for an ordinary bilao!

Pigafetta’s Philippine Picnic: Culinary Encounters during the First Circumnavigation, 1519-1522 by Felice Prudente Sta. Maria is a retelling of Ferdinand Magellan’s (c.1480-1521) expedition in search of the Spice Islands (Maluku Islands, Indonesia). The expedition sighted the Philippines, then named as the Archipelago of St. Lazarus, on March 16, 1521.

Bilang paggunita sa ika-64 kaarawan ng batikang mamamahayag at guro na si Lourdes “Chit” Estella-Simbulan, narito ang “Tatlong Kuwento Para Sa Batang Pilipino,” isang libro na naglalaman ng mga kuwentong pambata na isinulat ni Chit para sa kanyang tatlong pamangkin noong siya'y nabubuhay pa.

With 22 known rock art sites in the country, the Angono-Binangonan Petroglyphs remains as the best-known site since its discovery in 1965. Some other sites, mostly archaeological, are found in Peñablanca, Cagayan; Anda, Bohol; Alab, Bontoc; and the Pälaqwan cave drawings in Rangsang, Palawan.

The town of Pandan in Antique is in a state of anxiety these days.

There are now 715 political prisoners in the Philippines of whom 132 or around 18.5 percent are women. The figures are a scandalous rebuke against what is supposedly a liberal democratic society. Such a society may just be a masquerade for all the human rights violations that are taking place in a regime that is increasingly authoritarian.

KAAGI: Tracing Visayan Identities in Cultural Texts is an ongoing virtual exhibit, as part of the recently concluded 6th Annual Philippine Studies Conference by SOAS University of London, on Visayan identities.

The more filmmakers come to terms with the reality of the pandemic, the more they can sharpen their creative process. They can’t go back to the old ways of film making.

A short documentary on a 15-year old student trying to survive as a ballet dancer won the Best Short Documentary at the Cannes Indies Cinema Awards.

Damodar Das Castillo, 13, made music history when he won his fifth first prize in international music competition recently.

Four persons who have known Arturo Luz (1926-2021) through the years shared their sweet thoughts and memories of the artist who passed away recently. Arturo Luz: Personal Views celebrates the life of Arturo Luz through four of his closest friends. (see YouTube, ArtFairPH/Talks 2021)

Dr. Saturnino Javier, medical director of the Makati Medical Center (MMC), is not Nostradamus. He cannot predict when the pandemic will taper off and finally end. But this he is sure of: “We need to move forward.”

The winning streak of the Manila Symphony Junior Orchestra (MSJO) continued after it struck gold in the youth orchestra category B of the Vienna-based World Youth Festival which transpired June 12-26, 2021.

Things are looking up in the concert world.

Erik Matti’s A Girl & A Guy has many things going for it.

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.