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, 2024)

Bliss Lim talks about her new book with the New Books Network: listen via podcast or watch the video interview.

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.