Sari Dalena's films screened in retrospective

THE FEATURE films, documentaries, hybrids, experimental works, and video art of filmmaker Sari Dalena are being screened in a multi-site retrospective which started in March and continues until May.

- Brontë H. Lacsamana

Film scholar and programmer Patrick F. Campos curated the program, titled “Counter-Archives of a Film Guerrera: A Retrospective of Sari Dalena’s Cinema.” It aims to look at “film as a counter archive: a made form of evidence shaped by testimony, return, montage, and the risks of visibility, especially where women’s labor and memory have been pushed to the margins of official history.”

Following screenings, masterclasses, and talkbacks at the University of the Philippines Film Institute in Diliman, Quezon City, and the University of the Philippines Mindanao and The Green House Cinema, both in Davao City, a few more stops lie ahead.

Ms. Dalena’s short films were screened on April 15 at the Mowelfund Film Institute in Quezon City, and will be shown again there on April 22. That first day she told BusinessWorld that “the guerrilla energy of filmmaking in the '90s is impossible to recreate now, though it lives on in different ways.

“It was important for me to establish a sense of support from my family and from collaborators. I found a community and felt comfortable working with smaller crews back then,” she explained.

Ms. Dalena’s most recent film, Cinemartyrs, was part of the Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival lineup last year — and was also the driving force behind Mr. Campos’ decision to mount a retrospective about the filmmaker.

“I observed it had a way of baffling so many people, because it makes you think, ‘what is this film?’” he said, at the opening remarks of the Mowelfund screening program. “That's her cinema. It makes you ask ‘what is this?’ so I thought it was the right time to do a retrospective.