Archive - Arts & Culture

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.

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.