Faculty of Arts and Letters and Graduate School faculty member Prof. Joyce L. Arriola, Ph.D., conducted a research study on the film adaptation of Filipino komiks stories, and this is now a published book, titled “Pelikulang Komiks: Towards a Theory of Filipino Film Adaptation.” The book is a landmark study of adaptation practices in the Philippines, particularly komiks-to-film adaptation in the 1950s.
The book examined 12 extant films from the 1950s that have been based on 12 extant komiks series. Using grounded theory, textual analysis, and social history of the 1950s, the study proposed a theory of Filipino film adaptation. The researcher’s eventual aim was to de-Westernize theory and to unravel Filipino film adaptation practices through indigenous concepts of narrative, appropriation and hybridity.
The introduction of the book was written by Filipino popular studies scholar Soledad Reyes, while the blurbs were taken from the reviews given by film scholar and theorist, Prof. Wimal Dissayanake of the University of Hawaii, and Temple University’s Professor Emeritus John Lent, who is not only a komiks scholar but is also the author of landmark books on Asian mass communication.
The book likewise featured key informants who are the most prominent scholars on the dialogue between film and komiks, such as National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera, renowned Filipino literary and film scholar Soledad Reyes, multi-awarded Filipino filmmaker Nick Deocampo, highly-acclaimed Filipino director and screenwriter Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr., Filipino komiks artist and publisher Boboy Yonzon, Filipino comic book artist Randy Valiente, literary and cultural studies scholar D.M Reyes, Art Studies professor and renowned art curator Patrick Flores, Art History professor Santiago Pilar, and mass communication historian Prof. John Lent. The interviews conducted with them provided the social and cultural contexts to the text analysed.
A number of the chapters included in the book have been presented in prominent national and international conferences. Corollary to this, Pelikulang Komiks (which is Arriola’s second), has been based on her Ph.D. Communication dissertation from the University of the Philippines Diliman and which earned her a Best Dissertation Award in 2013.
Arriola was also conferred the Distinctive Achievement in the Humanities Award by the National Research Council of the Philippines in 2018.
Aside from Arriola’s book was that of UST alumnus and CCWLS’s Carlomar Arcangel Daoana’s The Elegant Ghost: Poems, that was launched among the 24 new titles published and released by the University of the Philippines Press.
