Arnel mardoquio biography

LOCATING TU PUG IMATUY

Patrick F. Campos

Tu Pug Imatuy has inspired many thoughtful reviews analyzing Arnel Mardoquio’s screenplay, which is informed by the lumad’s historical and ongoing struggle against encroachers, and commending Arbi Barbarona’s feat of working with nonprofessional actors and handling all the technical aspects of the creative process.

Instead of writing another review, I wish to contextualize it in the shifting patterns of “national,” “regional,” and “global,” cinema formations. I maintain that theorizing the relational spaces of marginality in polycentric cinemas of the new century can orient our critical intervention to diverse meanings that the previous debate on ‘indie vs.

mainstream’ has precluded.

Tu Pug Imatuy, while it portrays a centuries-old way of life, is a truly twenty-first century film, animated by “global” cinema as much as it contributes to “regional” cinema. In both contexts, the film occupies a marginal space, but the significance