Quezon City, Philippines — From March to May 2026, a multi-site retrospective presents the cinema of filmmaker and professor Sari Dalena across the University of the Philippines Film Institute (UP Diliman), Mowelfund Film Institute, University of the Philippines Mindanao, The Green House Cinema (Davao), and Mindanao State University–Iligan Institute of Technology.
Titled “Counter-Archives of a Film Guerrera: A Retrospective of Sari Dalena’s Cinema,” and curated by Patrick F. Campos, the program gathers Dalena’s documentaries, hybrids, experimental works, and video art into a sustained look at how film can function 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.
The retrospective opens Friday, March 6 at the UPFI Cine Adarna with a screening of Memories of a Forgotten War and Cinemartyrs, timed with the start of Women’s Month and in commemoration of 120 years since the 1906 Bud Dajo massacre, a central historical wound revisited by both films. Post-screening conversations will follow.
Exhibit: Notes Toward a Guerrera Cinema
An accompanying exhibit, Notes Toward a Guerrera Cinema, runs March 28 to April 7 at the UPFI Ishmael Bernal Gallery. Conceived as a “working room,” the exhibition foregrounds process and material intelligence: early 16mm shorts, tools and traces of celluloid labor, storyboards and sketches, alongside paintings and sculptures that thread through Dalena’s practice.
The exhibit opens March 28, coinciding with Dalena’s masterclass under UPFI’s Sinemaestra series.
Selected public dates (highlights)
* March 6 (UPFI Film Center, Diliman): Memories of a Forgotten War + Cinemartyrs (opening screening)
• March 7 (The Green House Cinema, Davao): Puting Paalam + Memories of a Forgotten War
• March 18–19 (UPFI, Diliman): Programs featuring Rigodon, Ishma, Himala Ngayon, and more
• March 28 (UPFI, Diliman): The Guerrilla Is a Poet; Sinemaestra masterclass; exhibit opening
• March 30 (UPFI, Diliman): Ang Kababaihan ng Malolos + History of the Underground
• April 6 (UP Mindanao): Guerrera and other titles, with conversation
• April 15 & 22 (Mowelfund Film Institute): Shorts program; Guerrera + Jamming on an Old Saya
• May 6 (MSU-IIT, Iligan): Memories of a Forgotten War + Cinemartyrs with panel conversation
Admission, reservations, and venue-specific details will be announced by each partner site.
Started in 1927, the Philippines Graphic is the longest-running printed magazine of national circulation that provides relevant news and features and promotes Philippine literature.
