Members

The Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle is composed of members of academe who, through the years, have become attentive observers of Philippine cinema. Coming from various disciplines, they bring into the analysis of film an interdisciplinary approach.

In this perspective, the word “young” in the Young Critics Circle pertains not to a literal mode of understandings in age but rather to a metaphorical sense of appropriating youth. “Young” is construed as the daring of the new and the courage to be different.

YCC Members

Tessa Maria Guazon (Chair, 2012-2013) is Assistant Professor of Art Studies at the Department of Art Studies at the University of the Philippines. She has researched and written on contemporary images of Manila and their constructions through space, city planning, art and film. Published essays in Aghamtao, Philippine Humanities Review, Pananaw, the Asia-Europe Foundation’s portal Culture 360.org examine contemporary public art practice, cities and art’s pubics. A forthcoming essay in an international journal on urban issues proposes artistic mediations of urban conditions.Her art critical reviews on exhibitions and film have appeared in Humanities Diliman and Asian Art News. She is currently at work on a university-funded research grant on contemporary commissions for public art in Manila.

Patrick D. Flores is Professor of Art Studies at the University of the Philippines, which he chaired from 1997-2003, and Curator of the Vargas Museum in Manila. He is Adjunct Curator at the National Art Gallery, Singapore. He was one of the curators of Under Construction: New Dimensions in Asian Art in 2000 and the Gwangju Biennale (Position Papers) in 2008. He was a Visiting Fellow at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 1999 and an Asian Public Intellectuals Fellow in 2004.  Among his publications are Painting History: Revisions in Philippine Colonial Art (1999), Remarkable Collection: Art, History, and the National Museum (2006) and Past Peripheral: Curation in Southeast Asia (2008). He was a grantee of the Asian Cultural Council (2010) and a member of the Advisory Board of the exhibition The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds After 1989 (2011) organized by the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe and member of the Guggenheim Museum’s Asian Art Council (2011). He co-edited the Southeast Asian issue with Joan Kee for Third Text (2011).

Eulalio R. Guieb III obtained in 2009 his Ph.D. in Anthropology from McGill University (Montreal, Quebec, Canada). He completed his M.A. in Philippine Literature and B.A. in Broadcast Communication at the University of the Philippines. He has published two short story anthologies: Pamilya® (U.P. Press, 2003) and Pitada (Anvil, 2004). His artistic works have received recognition from the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, Cultural Center of the Philippines, New York Festivals, Sony Video Competition in Japan, the Catholic Mass Media Awards, and Gantimpalang Ani. His experimental films and video documentaries have been exhibited in Uppsala, Mannheim, Oberhausen, Torino, Osnabruck, New York, London, Montreal, Toronto, Tokyo, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur, among others. He teaches ethnography, development, criticism, teleplay and qualitative research at the U.P. Department of Broadcast Communication. His research interests include political ecology; ecological, development and legal anthropology; the history of the drama in Philippine television; and the politics of representation.

Eloisa May P. Hernandez is Associate Professor at the Department of Art Studies at the University of the Philippines where she teaches art history, photography, and Philippine cinema. She also lectures at the Ateneo de Manila University Fine Arts Program. She finished her B.A. Art Studies, M..A in Art History, and Ph.D. in Philippine Studies at the University of the Philippines. Her dissertation on The Political Economy of Digital Cinema in the Philippines, 1999-2009 will be published as a book. A recipient of the Southeast Asian Studies Regional Exchange Program grant, she researched on digital cinema in Southeast Asia, the results of which will be published as a chapter, “The Beginnings of Digital Cinema in Southeast Asia,” in the book Glimpses of Freedom: Independent Cinema in Contemporary Southeast Asia to be published by Cornell University. She is the author of .Homebound: Women Visual Artists in 19th-century Philippines.

J. Pilapil Jacobo holds the Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and the M.A. in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook, where he was a Fulbright Scholar; and the A.B.-M.A. in Filipino Literature from the Ateneo de Manila University, where he teaches Literary Studies and Literary and Theory and Criticism at the School of Humanities. His essays on the post-colonial poetic have been published in Bulawan, Ideya, Kritika Kultura, The Loyola Schools Review, and Unitas.

Aristotle J. Atienza is currently teaching at the Filipino Department of the Ateneo de Manila University. He acquired both his BA and MA degrees in Philippine Studies from the University of the Philippines Diliman. With Rolando B. Tolentino, he edited Ang Dagling Tagalog, 1903-1936 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2007).

Lisa Ito-Tapang is currently a lecturer in art history at the Department of Theory of the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts (UP CFA).  Her writings on the visual arts have appeared in Pananaw, Forum on Contemporary Art and Society, Asian Art News and Ctrl+P Journal of Contemporary Art. She co-authored Without Walls: A Tour of Philippine Paintings at the Turn of the Millenium (2010).  She holds a degree in Fine Arts from the UP CFA.

Skilty Labastilla is a Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology at La Trobe University (Melbourne). He obtained his M.S. in Social Development from the Ateneo de Manila University and his B.A. in Anthropology (cum laude) from the University of the Philippines. He has previously taught anthropology courses at La Trobe University, U.P. Diliman, and U.P. Mindanao. He is currently teaching at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ateneo de Manila University. He maintains Pinoy Rebyu, a website that houses reviews of recent Filipino films by local film reviewers/critics.

JPaul S. Manzanilla is Assistant Professor in the Philippine Arts Program of the Department of Arts and Communication, College of Arts and Sciences, University of the Philippines at Manila. He has recently defended a graduate thesis on the photography of the EDSA People Power Uprising of 1986, and has presented papers on Philippine cinema, comics, photography, and literature in several conferences.

Jema M. Pamintuan obtained her Ph.D. in Philippine Studies from the University of the Phiippines, and currently teaches at the School of Humanities, Ateneo de Manila University. Some of her critical essays have appeared in Bulawan Journal of Philippine Arts and Culture, Plaridel, Humanities Diliman, and Positions East Asia Critique. Her chapbook of poems, Bunton-buntong Hininga, was published by the National Commission on Culture and the Arts. She created the films scores for the following independent, full-length features: Ang Panggagahasa kay Fe (The Rapture of Fe), Gayuma (Pilgrim Lovers), and Ang Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa (The Dance of Two Left Feet, co-scored with Christine Muyco), which received the Cinemalaya 2011 Best Original Music Score.

Choy Pangilinan teaches at the Department of Broadcast Communication of the College of Mass Communication of the University of the Philippines. His critical essays have appeared in Plaridel: Journal of Philippine Communication, Media and Society; KONTRA-GAHUM: Academics against Political Killings (Ibon, 2006); and SERVE THE PEOPLE: Ang Kasaysayan ng Radikal na Kilusan sa Unibersidad ng Pilipinas (Ibon, 2008). He has also co-authored a screenplay awarded first prize by the Film Development Foundation.

Jaime Oscar M. Salazar graduated with degrees in Literature and Business Managament from the De La Salle University.He is a part-time faculty member at the Department of Literature of the same institution, and is working toward his M.A. Art Studies at the University of the Philippines. He was Fellow to the 3rd UST Varsitarian – J. Elizalde Navarro National Workshop on Arts Criticism.

ON  LEAVE

Romulo P. Baquiran Jr. is a reviewer, editor, translator, and poet. His articles appear in Today and the Philippine Daily Inquirer. He edited the classic Urbana at Feliza, ASEANO: Poems from Southeast Asia, and a number of literary anthologies, including Beauty for Ashes and Kuwentong Siyudad. He translated into Filipino Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Anthony and Cleopatra. He won five times in the Filipino category of the Palanca Awards. His poetry books were published by Anvil Publishing in 1992, and most recently, by the University of the Philippines Press.

Flaudette May V. Datuin is Associate Professor of Art Studies at the Department of Art Studies at the University of the Philippines. Recently appointed as Visiting Research Fellow of the University of New South Wales (2010-2013), she was also a recipient of  Visiting Fellowship at the Australian National University, research grants from the Asian Scholarship Foundation (ASF) and Asian Public Intellectual (API) fellowships, which enabled her to conduct pioneering research on contemporary women artists of China, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Japan. Major exhibitions and multi-pronged projects on women artists, trauma and migration emerged from these field works, the most recent of which is Nothing to Declare, held October 2011 to January 2012 in three venues in Manila. She is co-founder of the House of Comfort Art Network, Ctrl+P, digital journal of contemporary art, and author of two books on women artists of the Philippines.

Noel D. Ferrer is a Philosophy graduate of the Ateneo de Manila University where he is taking up his M.A. in Communication. He has lectured on literature and media studies at the Departments of Filipino, English and Communication of the Ateneo de Manila University as well as at U.P. Diliman. He is a producer-headwriter in various print and broadcast media projects.

Nonoy L. Lauzon is the Programmer for Screenings at the U.P. Film Institute. He has double degrees in Philosophy and Humanities from the University of the Philippines. He is a published film critic and has previously worked for a number of national newspapers including the Philippine Journal, People’s Journal and The Manila Times. He used to contribute a column for the old Mirror Weekly and now regularly writes for two of the country’s leading national tabloid dailies. He is currently pursuing an M.A. in Media Studies (Film) at the U.P. College of Mass Communication.

Eileen C. Legaspi-Ramirez received the A.B. in Journalism and the M.A. in Art History from the University of the Philippines. She is Curatorial Consultant at the Lopez Museum and Member of the Advisory Board of Asia Art Archive. She teaches courses on art criticism, curatorship, and visual literacy at the Department of Art Studies, University of the Philippines and was a 2009 fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts Journalism Institute in the Visual Arts at Washington, D.C. Her writing has appeared in the Philippine Humanities Review, Daluyan: Journal ng Wikang Filipino, Forum on Contemporary Art and Society, n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal, C-Arts: Asian Contemporary Art and Culture, Metropolis M: Magazine on Contemporary Art, Pananaw: Philippine Journal of Visual Arts, and Ctrl+P: Journal of Contemporary Art. She is Guest Curator at the 2011 Jakarta Biennale.

Gerard Lico is a Professor of Architecture at the College of Architecture, University of the Philippines in Diliman and practices architecture as the Campus Architect of the university. He is the author of several books in Philippine architecture and design. He is currently the Head of the National Committee on Architecture and Allied Arts of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, the Research Program Director of the U.P. College of Architecture and the Curator of the Museum of Filipino Architecture.

Jerry Respeto teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Philippine Literature and Theater at the Department of Filipino, School of Humanities, Ateneo de Manila University where he served as Chair from 2000 to 2001 and 2009 to 2011. He obtained his A.B. Social Science, M.A. Philippine Literature, and Ph.D. Philippine Literature from the University of the Philippines. He has published essays on Philippine theater history, film criticism, theater translations, public rituals, and sacred performances which merited recognitions from the Ateneo’s Loyola Schools Publications Awards. His translations of plays from English to Filipino have been staged by major theater companies in the Philippines. As Fellow to the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, he attended courses in theater and humanities at the International Christian University (Japan) and St. Olaf College (U.S.A) from 2004-2006.

Neil Martial R. Santillan teaches Philippine and Asian History at the University of the Philippines where he completed his A.B., M.A., and Ph.D. in History. He is currently Associate Dean of the U.P. College of Social Sciences and Philosophy. he is a scholar and writer on film history, contemporary Philippine history and Mindanao Studies. he is co-editor of a book of essays on Philippine History and Culture. He is presently conducting intensive research on the urban history of Cagayan de Oro.

Galileo S. Zafra is Professor at the Department of Filipino and Philippine Literature at the University of the Philippines. He is a summa cum laude graduate from the U.P. where he completed his Ph.D. in Philippine Literature. He served as Director for two terms of the U.P. Sentro ng Wikang Filipino which is tasked to develop the Filipino language as the primary language of academe. He is currently Visiting Professor at Osaka University. He is an active cultural scholar, writer, translator, and editor in the fields of language, literature and film.