The Films of Mike De Leon: Visuality and Intertextuality

Angelo R. Lacuesta is a novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and filmmaker. He has written more than ten books and has won numerous national awards for his writing, including the Madrigal-Gonzalez Best First Book Award, the NVM Gonzalez Award, several Palanca Memorial Awards, Philippines Graphic Awards, and National Book Awards, among others. He has represented the Philippines at several international festivals and conferences concerning literature, cinema, and culture.

His most recent publication is the novel IRÔ, published by Milflores Publishing in 2025, with a forthcoming collection of new short fiction, entitled Affidavit, scheduled for the same year. IRÔ was selected as one of ten novels to be presented for possible film adaptation at the “Books at Berlinale” section of the 2025 Berlinale Film Festival.

In 2024 he wrote and produced the film An Errand, based on a short story he wrote, for the Cinemalaya Film Festival, one of Asia’s most important festivals for independent cinema. The film was also selected as part of the Bright Futures section of the 2025 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). In 2025, Song of the Fireflies, a film he also wrote and produced, had its international premiere at the Manila International Film Festival in Los Angeles, U.S.A., where it earned audience awards for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Supporting Actor.

He is co-managing director of Good Intentions Books, an independent publishing house based in Manila. He is editor-at-large at the Esquire magazine Philippines and is the current president of the Philippine Centre of PEN (Poets, Essayists, Novelists) International.

Nick Deocampo is a filmmaker, film historian, and author. He recently retired as a film professor at the U.P. Film Institute in the University of the Philippines – Diliman. He took up his Master of Arts degree in Cinema Studies at New York University and received his Certificate in Film in Paris, France. His documentaries have been screened and have won awards nationally and internationally. His books have garnered four of the country’s National Book Awards. As a recognized film personality, he has served as jury member in various international film festivals. As a scholar, he has been a recipient of various academic grants and fellowships. Among his publications is Alternative Cinema: The Unchronicled History of Alternative Cinema in the Philippines.

He is presently the chair of the UNESCO Philippines Memory of the World Committee. In 2023, he received the Premio Casa Asia, Spain’s highest cultural award. He is also the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Film Development Council of the Philippines for his achievements in cinema and the Gawad Tsanselor para sa Natatanging Guro from the University of the Philippines for his academic and teaching excellence.

Patrick Flores is the Chief Curator at the National Gallery Singapore (NGS). He is concurrently a professor at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. In 2015, he curated the Philippine Pavilion at the 56th Venice Art Biennale. In 2022, he was the curator of the Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Flores was a Visiting Fellow at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 1999 and an Asian Public Intellectuals Fellow in 2004. Among his publications are Painting History: Revisions in Philippine Colonial Art (1999); Remarkable Collection: Art, History, and the National Museum (2006); and Past Peripheral: Curation in Southeast Asia (2008). He was a grantee of the Asian Cultural Council (2010); a member of the Advisory Board of the exhibition The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds After 1989 (2011), organized by the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe; and a member of the Guggenheim Museum’s Asian Art Council (2011). 

He co-edited the Southeast Asian issue with Joan Kee for Third Text (2011). On behalf of the Clark Institute and the Department of Art Studies of the University of the Philippines, Flores organized the conference, Histories of Art History in Southeast Asia in Manila. He serves as the curator of the Philippine Pavilion for the country’s role as Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2025.