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Lumalaban sa lansangan, lumalaban sa kulungan: The plight of political prisoners

It started with a simple request from the police. Well into the second day of their nationwide protest to decry the insufficient pandemic response that has left drivers to fend for themselves, transport group Pinagkaisang Samahan ng mga Tsuper at Operator Nationwide (PISTON) was summoned to the Caloocan city hall. “Pagkatapos kausapin ng hepe, ay…

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Rant and Rave: Why care a lot about I Care A Lot?

While male characters have long been afforded complexity onscreen through the likes of Michael Corleone or Charles Foster Kane, female characters are relegated to the sidelines as love interests, mothers, or friends—one-dimensional roles that serve to prop up men’s character development. J Blakeson’s I Care A Lot flips the script with a ferocious female anti-hero…

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A menagerie of love: Eros, agape, and everything in between

Love is a many-splendored thing. It is infinite in its mutability, pervading and shaping our art and stories since we first comprehended our existence. The complex beings that we are, it is only fitting that what compels us is equally complex too. This Valentine’s, The LaSallian presents love in all its confounding forms with the…

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Rant and Rave: Malcolm & Marie crashes and burns

As the movie industry faces restrictions during the ongoing pandemic, Netflix’s Malcolm & Marie was the perfect opportunity for a back-to-basics movie-making approach—one set, two powerhouse actors, and an explosive script. Arriving home late at night after rising director Malcolm’s (John David Washington) successful movie premiere, his celebratory mood is disrupted by his girlfriend Marie’s…

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Lest we forget: Lessons from the Diliman Commune

“My memory is not that sharp anymore,” Dr. Judy Taguiwalo confesses. With her recollection weathered by time, she has taken to writing and archival research as a means to preserve her memory. For the former UP-Diliman professor, forgetting would be an unforgivable crime. And so if you ask her about the events of the Diliman…

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Rant and Rave: The desert’s no home for a ‘Yellow Rose’

Since its introduction to popular culture in 1931, a steady influx of migrants from across the globe travel to the United States of America with the worthwhile goal of living the so-called American Dream. They leave their homelands, risking discrimination and deportation, in search of a better life in the land of the free and…

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Ang mantsa ng puki: Demystifying the female body

For the longest time, women’s bodies have been a taboo topic. Coochie, flower, kitty—these are just some of the names we use to skirt around the word vagina. In our language—puki, tinggil, and puwerta are scientifically accurate parts of the vagina, yet there is a certain stigma when these words are said. As Eve Ensler…

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Rant and Rave: ‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ comes to a fateful end

Determined to separate itself from its lighthearted source material, Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina has given us camp and chaos for the last four years. Reveling in its tongue-in-cheek stories and deliciously dark themes, the story follows teenage witch Sabrina reconciling her dual nature as she battles against malicious forces threatening her family and friends.…

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Rant and Rave: MMFF 2020 welcomes the old and new—Part Two

The parade of films for the 46th Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) continues. One feature simply wouldn’t do to showcase all the diverse films that the festival has to offer. Thus, The LaSallian presents the second part of the MMFF 2020 review. Suarez the Healing Priest, Sarah Writer-director Joven Tan’s Suarez: The Healing Priest is…

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Rant and Rave: MMFF 2020 welcomes the old and new—Part One

For 46 years, the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) has been a fixture of Filipino Christmastime. Starting December 25 each year, families would flock to cinemas like clockwork for a lighthearted Christmas spectacle—you have the Vic Sotto ensemble film with the banal jokes and the revolving door of fresh-faced loveteams, the gaudy self-deprecating Vice Ganda…