Unframing Empire: anticolonial film practices and public discourse in Spain and the Philippines
Guia-Eriksson, Anna de (2025) Unframing Empire: anticolonial film practices and public discourse in Spain and the Philippines. PhD thesis, University for the Creative Arts.
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Unframing Empire is a study towards anticolonial film curation. It examines how moving-image practices negotiate and unsettle colonial worldviews. Drawing inspiration from anticolonial thinkers who identify culture as a site of imperial domination and resistance, it investigates the moving-image as both an archival object and pedagogical tool for unlearning imperialism. The project addresses a gap in scholarship on Spanish-Philippine colonial histories. While textual archives have been extensively studied, little attention has been given to how public spaces might function as sites of decolonial encounter. Beginning with a return to the moving-image archives of Spain and the Philippines, the research asks: how have Spanish and Filipino films represented this shared colonial history? This inquiry resulted in a newly defined corpus of moving-image works across a range of genres. Read collectively, they reveal the structuring fictions underpinning these respective countries’ national cinemas. These lists were activated through public screenings rather than simply catalogued, an exercise in instilling an irreverence to the archive as a hallowed space of knowledge.
Methodologically, this project contributes an innovative approach by synthesising multiple epistemologies –archival theory, anticolonial and decolonial thought, curatorial studies, and film programming– into a method of anticolonial curation and
screening practice. Archival research was combined with collaboratively curated screenings and post screening workshops in Spain and the Philippines. Drawing on anticolonial pedagogies and decolonial methodologies, these events were designed
towards dialogue, privileging situated knowledge and collective interpretation. These workshops were documented through video and sound, culminating in a film that reflects on these situated dialogues.
Thesis submitted in partial requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham.
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