Ili-Likha Artists' Wateringhole

30/08/2026

‼️NEW SCREENING DATE! NEW SCREENING DATE!‼️

Calling all Kino Kunana friends! The 𝗖𝗼-𝗢𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗔𝗴𝗶𝘁 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻: 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗻 𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲 will be coming to a stop at rainy Baguio City this SEPTEMBER 5, Saturday.

Come watch 15 short films, curated by Roland Cartagena Roland Cartagena for Cinemata Asia Pacific that invite us into personal, regional, and transnational realities, and that ask us to take a closer look at the forces & systems shaping our world.

We'd love to hear what you think of the films screened, and will be striking up informal conversations with the audience after each set of five films. No pressure though, basta adda makuna yu lang (just as long as you want to say something) 😉

𝗦𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗙𝗥𝗘𝗘! See you then!

1-5pm | September 5 | Saturday
Balanghai ni Ikeng Independent Cinema
Ili-Likha Artists' Wateringhole

Register: bit.ly/agit-train
Programme zine: bit.ly/coat-zine

31/07/2026

“The table whets an appetite beyond hunger. In ‘Carry Over Heat,’ the artists reckon with food as an extension of who we are, from the land and hands that cultivate and cull, to the wills and wiles that shape the palate. Subsistence turns into sustenance. Craving courts denial. Abundance flirts with indulgence.

Food is a means of becoming: a fruit of labor and longing. We eat, and the world enters us. We feed and are remade.

Though National Nutrition Month has ended, the table is set all year-round. Take a bite, it’s alright.”

—Mariah Reodica

Join us on July 31 at 7PM for the opening reception of “Carry Over Heat.” It will be on view from July 31 to October 26, 2026.

13/05/2026

With what is perhaps the most extensive collection of pasiking in the world, the exhibition looks at the indigenous backpack common in the greater Cordillera region as both an everyday and ritual object. Traditionally made from natural fibers like rattan and bamboo, contemporary versions incorporate repurposed materials, such as plastic cargo strapping, rubberized conveyor belt, and nylon detonation cord from the numerous mines in the area. In this vein, the exhibition presents the material story of the object, its crafters, and the region.

The exhibition contains, in large part, selections from the A.V. and Maricel Cating Family Collection.

Join us on May 16 at 6PM for the opening reception. “PASIKING: Indigenous Backpacks of Northern Luzon” is on view from May 16 to July 16, 2026 at Victor Oteyza Community Art Space - VOCAS Gallery x Oh My Gulay

12/05/2026

Kino Kunana's programme this month, featuring shorts from the Philippines and Myanmar, features characters surviving conditions of exceptional violence: be it the consequences of unrelenting urban development, economic survival, or confronting a history of violence within your own family. Framed within the intimate setting of family relations, these films present the loss of innocence entailed in our contemporary moment.

Within these systems of oppression, in what ways can we cope, live with and perhaps reclaim our own agency?

NARIGAT, NGEM WHAT IF PAYT LADTA?
(Mahirap, pero paano kung laban lang?)

Saturday | May 23, 2026 | 4 PM
Balanghai ni Ikeng Independent Cinema,
Ili-Likha Artists' Wateringhole, Baguio City

Featuring the short films:
Tumatawa Umiiyak (2023, dir. Che Tagyamon)
Kinakausap Ni Celso ang Diyos (2024, dir. Gilb Baldoza)
Homecoming (2024, Myanmar, dir. Nyi Rai)
Necroeconomy (2024, dir. Nics Basco)



TOTAL PROGRAMME RUNTIME: 53 minutes

FREE ADMISSION! + Talkback after the screening! 🎤

See you at the cinema! 📽️

09/04/2026

Busking at Ili-Likha Artists' Wateringhole

28/02/2026

04/02/2026

SCREENING THIS SATURDAY!

GANGSTERISM{S}
Programme by missingcodec.com

February 7, 2026 | 5:30 PM
Balanghai ni Ikeng Independent Cinema,
Ili-likha Artists' Wateringhole

Admission: 150 PHP

# # #

𝐆𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐦{𝐬} : 𝐂𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐦𝐚 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐁𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐨𝐢𝐬 𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬 𝐀𝐧𝐱𝐢𝐞𝐭𝐲

After being released from warrantless detention, several participants from the September 21, 2025 protests against corruption are being called and charged with either inciting to sedition or sedition – both non-bailable offenses. Recent reports state that the Department of Justice has now charged more than 90 people, which includes people who were formerly arrested. This situation tells us two things: either the state has now lost all reasoning and are gearing towards a turn towards a full blown authoritarianism, or, that the riots have instilled fear and threat against the waning hegemony of the bourgeoisie and the ruling classes.

It’s not as if only one of those is true. It would even make more sense that this fear and threat that loom the bourgeois mind after instilling in their imagination the capacity of the lumpenproletariats to shake their very hold to power that their police panics at the sound of their own gunshots. A comrade says it best: after September 21, the bourgeoisie and their ruling bosses faced class anxiety. A recent farcical incident reflects it best: the very presence of the so-called “young stunnas” at the Bonifacio Global City – the gravitational point of bureaucrat-capitalism and imperialism in the Metro – threatens the illusion of development that they opt to openly be classist about the scenario.

Within this context, we find the words in the last poem published by the late Edel Garcellano being evoked in Gio Lingao’s 𝙃𝙤𝙬 𝙃𝙚 𝘿𝙞𝙚𝙙 𝙞𝙨 𝙉𝙤𝙩 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙞𝙖𝙡, contrasting footage as he tried sneaking out of police surveillance during the covid lockdowns. Unlike cameras looted by the police on September 21 from unsuspecting student journalists, Lingao’s filmmaker was able to salvage his footage. What is seen is a perspective from someone being tracked.

Carlo Cielo’s 𝘽𝙖𝙝𝙖 supplements Lingao’s journal with a transitional gaze as he edits footage from Reginald Kira of the September 21 protest in Mendiola. The camera of Kira captures the gravity shifts between protesters and state forces as it pans from left to right, challenging the meaning of power, making discourse out of violence, and violence out of discourse.

What initially attracts Isiah Medina’s latest feature in this programme is its very title that fits the critique of the “unruly” young stunnas of September 21, that, at least for some of the organized left, that what they showed was just a politically disorganized action. The vanguardists would note Mao’s lamentations of the “dangerous class” that can be “led to become a revolutionary force.”

Medina’s 𝙂𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙨𝙢 contributes to this discussion a cinematic form of the concept beyond its intended narrative. Like the young stunnas, 𝙂𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙨𝙢 exposes the very contradiction of contemporary political ecology, framed within the attempts of a filmmaker to create a film in an environment where the call of the day is asking for permission. Medina cuts his film to think and to be, as much as the young stunnas’ riot is a necessary intervention to urban history is a struggle to make themselves.

As the lumpenproletariats of the world – from the streets to cinema – assert themselves, forcefully shaking the being of the bourgeois standing. The bourgeoisie’s anxiety exposes them, once again, as paper tigers that a flicker of amber can burn.

For more information visit https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DgPFMnqV1/

30/01/2026

Come join us, Baguio friends, on Saturday, February 7, for a special talk with writer, educator, and filmmaker Epoy Deyto, where we'll be exploring ideas around experimental cinema. What is it? What are its concerns? What does it mean to experiment in cinema?

HOW NOT TO: Exploring/Enjoying Experimental Cinema with Epoy Deyto
Saturday, February 7, 2:00 - 4:30 PM
@ Balanghai ni Ikeng Independent Cinema
Ili-Likha Artists' Wateringhole
Assumption Road, Baguio City

ADMISSION IS FREE!

Epoy Deyto writes, teaches, and occasionally works as a filmmaker. He recently released the anthology Missing Codec: A Decade of Film Writing (PUP Center for Philippine Studies, 2025) and has authored multiple books under the Shonenbat Collective. He is the current Visual Arts Section Chief of PUP’s University Center for Culture and the Arts and teaches humanities and performing arts courses at the same university. His films include The Filipino Dream (First Prize, Experimental Category, Gawad CCP 2016), Philippine Cinema: A Century Hence (Special Mention, Experimental Category, Gawad CCP 2017), and Pixel Paranoia (QCinema 2017).

Epoy is also in town to screen a separate film program (see poster in comments) at the Balanghai ni Ikeng Cinema, featuring experimental feature and short films by Isiah Medina, Gio Lingao, and Carlo Cielo. 5:30 PM at the cinema after the talk, ₱150 per ticket, with a talkback with filmmakers after the screening.

As always, tell your friends! 😃

See you there! 📽️🎞️🌲

Screening by Kino Kunana
Text and poster by Kino Kunana

16/01/2026

ECHIGO OKUMIOMOTE FILM SCREENING + TALKBACK

Echigo Okumiomote: The Final Days of a Japanese Mountain Village follows the lives of matagi hunters in a now-submerged village in Niigata, directed by visual folklorist Himeda Tadayoshi.

Following the film’s digitally remastered release in 2023, JFM, in collaboration with the Center for Ethnological Visual Documentation, presents English-subtitled screenings and a Post-Screening talkback session.

Panelists:
Mr. HIMEDA Ran - Board member of Center for Ethnological Visual Documentation & Filmmaker

Dr. TAGUCHI Hiromi - Director, Center for Hunting and Gathering Culture & Professor Emeritus, Tohoku University of Arts and Design

Dr. Tala Aurora Salinas-Ramos - Anthropologist, Director of the ethnographic museum, Museo Kordilyera, and the Program Coordinator of the Ph.D. in Indigenous Studies Program of UP Baguio.

Dr. Analyn V. Salvador-Amores - Professor of Anthropology, College of Social Sciences and Project Leader, Cordillera Textiles Project (CORDITEX), UP Baguio.

Moderated by:
Ms. Giullienne Sanchez - Indigenous Creative, Filipino filmmaker, producer, and community advocate.

17 January 2026 - at the Ili-Likha Artists' Village, Baguio City
Screening starts 4:00 PM

ADMISSION IS FREE. Seating will be on a first come, first served basis.

text and photo from The Japan Foundation, Manila