In City of Screens Jasmine Nadua Trice examines the politics of cinema circulation in early-2000s Manila. She traces Manila's cinema landscape by focusing on the primary locations of film exhibition and distribution: the pirated DVD district, mall multiplexes, art-house cinemas, the university film institute, and state-sponsored cinematheques. In the wake of digital media piracy and the decline of the local commercial film industry, the rising independent cinema movement has been a site of contestation between filmmakers and the state, each constructing different notions of a prospective, national public film audience. Discourses around audiences become more salient given that films by independent Philippine filmmakers are seldom screened to domestic audiences, despite their international success. City of Screens provides a deeper understanding of the debates about the competing roles of the film industry, the public, and the state in national culture in the Philippines and beyond.

Jasmine Nadua Trice is Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction  1
1. Revanchist Cinemas and Bad Audiences, Multiplex Fiestas and Ideal Publics  39
2. The Quiapo Cinematheque and Urban-Cinematic Authenticity  79
3. Alternative Exhibition and the Rhythms of the City  113
4. "Not for Public Exhibition": Cinema Regulation, Alternative Cinema, and a Rational Body Politic  153
5. "Hollywood Is Not Us": National Circulation and the Speculative State  189
Epilogue  230
Notes  241
Bibliography  281
Index  299