The Quiapo cinémathèque: Transnational DVDs and alternative modernities in the heart of Manila

Abstract

This article examines Quiapo, the pirated DVD district in Manila. It contextualizes the ways in which public discourse in Manila narrativizes the local practices of global cinema consumption taking place on Quiapo's streets. Drawing from academic debates concerning the multiplicity of modernity, the article suggests that the self-reflexive accounts Manilenyos circulate in popular media, blogs and other arenas present a complex case of 'creative adaptation' to manifestations of global modernity, not through the diversity of local practices in self-conscious resistance to global culture, but rather through a more difficult ideological terrain that moves from the hybridity of postcolonialism to the cosmopolitanism of cultural globality. © The Author(s), 2010.