The End of National Cinema in the Philippines?

In September 2016, Filipino director Lav Diaz won the Golden Lion at the 2016 Venice International Film Festival for his film Ang Babaeng Humayo (2016). Earlier in the same year, Jaclyn Jose became the first Filipina to win the Best Actress award at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival for her performance in Brillante Mendoza’s Ma’Rosa (2016). In February, just months before Jose’s success in Cannes, Diaz won the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer award for his film Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis (2015). Other Filipino films, such as Bradley Liew’s Singing in the Graveyard and John Torres’s People Power Bombshell: The Diary of Vietnam Rose (2016) continue to tour international film festivals. Filipino Cinema is blossoming at the moment, and Patrick F. Campos’s monumental work on The End of National Cinema, an investigation of national cinema in the context of an increasing presence of Filipino film at international festivals, is published at the right moment.