Bliss Cua Lim

Bliss Cua Lim is Professor at the Cinema Studies Institute. She is the author of Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic and Temporal Critique (2009) and a member of the Editorial Collective of Camera Obscura and the Advisory Board of Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication. Her next book, The Archival Afterlives of Philippine Cinema (forthcoming from Duke University Press), analyzes the crisis-ridden history of film archiving in the Philippines. In 2022/23, she will be teaching CIN3008HF: Topics in Film and Media History: Queer Girls and Racial Others and CIN451H1S - Queer Asian Cinema.

She is a member of the Editorial Collective of the journal Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, published by Duke University Press, and serves on the Advisory Board of Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication, Media and Society published by the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication.

Books

The Archival Afterlives of Philippine Cinema (Duke University Press; forthcoming)

Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic, and Temporal Critique
• Duke University Press, 2009. Selected John Hope Franklin Book.
• Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2011. Philippine Edition.

Poetry

Poems from Two Places. (Manila: Anvil, 1995).

And If I Were this Poem and Other Poems. (Manila: Vera Reyes, 1987).

“Archival Waters,” NANG Magazine, Issue 9: Archival Imaginaries (May 2021) 10.

Book Chapters

“The Ghostliness of Genre: Global Hollywood Remakes the ‘Asian Horror Film,’” in State of Motion: A Fear of Monsters (Singapore: Asian Film Archive, 2019), 85-91. Exhibition Catalogue. Abridged reprint of a chapter from Translating Time, 2009.

“Foreword” (“Prefazione”), in Autohystoria: Postcolonial Visions of New Philippine Cinema by Renato Loriga, (Aracne Editrice Postcolonial Film and Media Studies Series, 2016). 13-16 and 281-283. In English with Italian translation.

“A Pan-Asian Cinema of Allusion: Going Home and Dumplings”, in A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema, ed. Esther M.K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti, and Esther C.M. Yau (Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 410-439.

“Sharon’s Noranian Turn: Stardom, Race, and Language in Philippine Cinema”, in Stars in World Cinema: Screen Icons and Star Systems Across Cultures, ed. Andrea Bandhauer and Michelle Royer (London and New York: IB Tauris, 2015), 169-183.

“Fandom, Consumption, and Collectivity in the Philippine New Cinema: Nora and the Noranians”, in The Precarious Self: Women and the Media in Asia, ed. Youna Kim (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 179-203.

“Gambling on Life and Death: Neoliberal Rationality and the Films of Jeffrey Jeturian”, Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture, and Marxist Critique, ed. Jyotsna Kapur and Keith B. Wagner (Routledge: New York and London, 2011), 279-305.

“Generic Ghosts: Remaking the New ‘Asian Horror Film’”, Hong Kong Film, Hollywood And The New Global Cinema ed. Gina Marchetti and Tan See Kam (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 109-125.

“Serial Time: Bluebeard in Stepford”, Film and Literature: A Reader ed. Robert Stam (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2005) 163-190.

“True Fictions, Women’s Narratives, and Historical Trauma”, Geopolitics of the Visible: Essays on Philippine Film Cultures, ed. Rolando B. Tolentino, (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2000) 145-161.

Journal Articles and Cultural Policy Papers

“Global Spectres,” Red Pepper Issue 233 (Autumn 2021): 52-53.

“Fragility, Perseverance, and Survival in State-Run Philippine Film Archives,” Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication, Media, and Society, 15.2 (2018): 1-40. PDF available at:

"Queer Aswang Transmedia: Folklore as Camp", Kritika Kultura 24 (2015): 178-225.

“A Brief History of Archival Advocacy for Philippine Cinema”, 2013 Philippine Cinema Heritage Summit: A Report (Manila: National Film Archives of the Philippines, 2013), pp. 14-20.

“Analysis and Recommendations in the wake of the 2013 Philippine Cinema Heritage Summit”, 2013 Philippine Cinema Heritage Summit: A Report (Manila: National Film Archives of the Philippines, 2013), pp. 26-32.

"Archival Fragility: Philippine Cinema and the Challenge of Sustainable Preservation”, Kyoto Center for Southeast Asian Studies Newsletter (Spring 2013): 18-21.

“On Retrospective Reception: Watching LVN Pictures at the Cinemalaya Film Festival”, Flow 12.6 (August 13, 2010).

“Pepot and the Archive: Cinephilia and the Archive Crisis of Philippine Cinema”, Flow 12.3 (July 2, 2010).

“Introduction: The Afterlives of Embodied Translations”, Discourse 31.3 [Special Issue: Translation and Embodiment in National and Transnational Asian Film and Media] (Fall 2009): 185-194. [Wayne State University Press.]

“Sharon’s Noranian Turn: Stardom, Embodiment, and Language in Philippine Cinema”, Discourse 31.3 [Special Issue: Translation and Embodiment in National and Transnational Asian Film and Media] (Fall 2009): 318-358. [Wayne State University Press.]

“Remade in Silence: Silvia’ Kolbowski’s ‘A Film Will Be Shown without the Sound’”, Art Journal 66.3 [College Art Association] Fall 2007. 85-87.

“Cult Fiction: Himala and Bakya Temporality”, Spectator 24. 2 [Special Issue, Screening Southeast Asia] (Fall 2004): 61-72. [University of Southern California Press].

“American pictures made by Filipinos”: Eddie Romero’s Jungle-Horror Exploitation Films”, Spectator 22.1 [Special Issue, East Asian Images in Transnational Flux] (Spring 2002): 23-45. [University of Southern California Press].

“Spectral Times: The Ghost Film as Historical Allegory”, positions: east asia cultures critique 9.2 [Special Issue, Asia/Pacific Cinemas: A Spectral Surface] (Fall 2001): 287-329. [Duke University Press]

“Dolls in Fragments: Daisies as Feminist Allegory”, Camera Obscura 47 16.2 (Fall 2001): 37-77. [Duke University Press]

“Crisis or Promise: New Directions in Philippine Cinema” IndieWire August 14, 2000. 

“In the Navel of The Sea Shines at Filipino Film Showcase” IndieWire September 9,1998.

“Monstrous Makers, Bestial Brides: Situating Eddie Romero’s B-Horror Films in An Intricate Web of Histories”, Journal of English Studies and Comparative Literature 1.2 (January 1998): 37-61. [University of the Philippines Press]

“The Politics of Horror: The Aswang in Film”, Asian Cinema 9.1 (Fall1997): 81-98. [Asian Cinema Studies Society]

“Perfumed Nightmare and The Perils Of Jameson’s ‘New Political Culture’”, Philippine Critical Forum 1.1 (1995) 24-37. [National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines]

Edited Scholarly Journal

Discourse, Special Issue: Translation and Embodiment in Asian Film and Media
31.3 (Fall 2009).

Creative Writing

“Meanwhile and Elsewhere.” The Manila Chronicle, Newspaper Column, 1995-1996.