Inside Sari Dalena’s cinematic revolution

Sari Dalena’s retrospective runs March–May 2026, featuring screenings, exhibits, and post-film conversations nationwide.

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 opened on 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:

• 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. Follow their social media channels.

 

 

The retrospective opened on March 6 with “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.

 

 

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