Recent trends in film discourse are taken up and examined from a national position in Wages of Cinema: Film in Philippine Perspective. Issues such as deconstruction, historiography, cultural policy, postcolonialism, and psychoanalysis, plus reconsiderations of earlier questions on structure, genre, gender, race, autobiography, and authorship are discussed in the light of how these may best contribute to the interests of Philippine film criticism, production, and viewership.

Wages of Cinema presents a variety of film texts in the course of discussion. These include several Philippine titles such as Manila by Night and Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag, American products such as Nashville, Dressed to Kill, and Raising Cain, ethnographic works such as Cannibal Tours, the celebrated Japanese erotic sample In the Realm of the Senses, the Canadian queer sex film Super 8 1/2, and the French Vietnam War entry Indochine.

Published in 1998 by University of the Philippines Press

223 pages / Paperback