
Directing
Sari Dalena
Sari Dalena is an independent filmmaker from the Philippines and holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Film Production from New York University. She has been the recipient of the Fulbright-Hayes scholarship, New York Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, NYU Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Fellowship, and the 13 Artists Award at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Her films have screened at various local and international film festivals. Her most notable films include Memories of a Forgotten War, Rigodon, The Guerrilla is a Poet, Ka Oryang and Dahling Nick. She is a Professor and former Director at the University of the Philippines Film Institute.
Acting credits
Behind the camera
NRA documentary on National Artist for Literature Jose Garcia Villa, whose first love was painting and whose sensuous prose got him into trouble as a college student. He would later move to New York City to become a celebrated writer pushing the boundaries of poetry.
Viva Villa!
—
1.8A young woman witnesses the beginnings of a revolution during Martial Law.
Ka Oryang
2011
1.8A young woman witnesses the beginnings of a revolution during Martial Law.
Ka Oryang
2011
NRA young filmmaker is bent on recreating forgotten massacres from Philippine history, but when she begins shooting at a site where 1,000 men, women, and children were slaughtered, angry spirits are awakened and the lives of her team and the local villagers are put in peril.
Cinemartyrs
2025
NRA young filmmaker is bent on recreating forgotten massacres from Philippine history, but when she begins shooting at a site where 1,000 men, women, and children were slaughtered, angry spirits are awakened and the lives of her team and the local villagers are put in peril.
Cinemartyrs
2025
A musical docudrama about the brave and outstanding Women of Malolos to whom Jose Rizal addressed his famous letter in Feb 22, 1898.
The Women of Malolos
2014
NRThe story of Nick Joaquin, who only accepted the National Artist Award on the condition that the Marcos administration release a well-known writer who was being unjustly detained during Martial Law.
Dahling Nick
2015
NRThe story of Nick Joaquin, who only accepted the National Artist Award on the condition that the Marcos administration release a well-known writer who was being unjustly detained during Martial Law.
Dahling Nick
2015
5.5A bride walks on the desert. She takes off her bridal ornaments and turns into a harlot. A multitude of people crawl on their bellies, become sick and soon die. A volcano erupts. White ashes of lahar cover the earth. The bride remembers her betrothal and repents--symbolically paving the way for the resurrection of her people. A final bridal march into a new heaven and earth takes place.
The White Funeral
1997
NRThe tale of an activist’s journey during the turbulent years of Martial Law, until his capture in the mountains and the dark, nine years of imprisonment that followed, leading to his birth as a poet.
The Guerilla is a Poet
2013
8.0Rigodon follows the spiritual journey's of three Filipino immigrants in New York City whose lives intertwine in the age of racial profiling and government crackdowns.
Rigodon
2006
9.0A 2012 documentary about the making and the legacy of the 1982 drama masterpiece directed by Ishmael Bernal that ended up being one of the greatest Asian films of all time. The revelations about the theory of "Who killed Elsa?" will be answered and also, the impact of the film to the Filipino culture and society.
Himala Ngayon
2012
9.0A 2012 documentary about the making and the legacy of the 1982 drama masterpiece directed by Ishmael Bernal that ended up being one of the greatest Asian films of all time. The revelations about the theory of "Who killed Elsa?" will be answered and also, the impact of the film to the Filipino culture and society.
Himala Ngayon
2012
9.0A 2012 documentary about the making and the legacy of the 1982 drama masterpiece directed by Ishmael Bernal that ended up being one of the greatest Asian films of all time. The revelations about the theory of "Who killed Elsa?" will be answered and also, the impact of the film to the Filipino culture and society.
Himala Ngayon
2012
10.0In a small town, a painter's art comes to life as he paints idyllic dogs that loll inside the old church merged with an old woman's folk piety. His young daughter witnesses all this as she walks in faith.
Church Dogs
1994
1.0In the future, farming on Earth is outlawed due to the toxic environment and all agriculture is done off-world. But despite the ban, some scientists and farmers resist.
Alimuom
2018
NRA documentary on the life and works of Ishmael Bernal
Ishma
2012
NRAn examination of the tumultuous times of Filipino activists and revolutionaries from the end of World War II through Martial Law.
History of the Underground
2017
NRA critical look at the proliferation of the mail-order bride industry in Asia and its representations of Asian women in the West.
From Asia with Love
2002
NRA documentary on Gilda Cordero-Fernando's fashion theater show that was staged at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1995. “Is it a play? Yes, but more than. Is it a drama? Of course, but more than. A fashion show, I was told. Not quite,” Cordero-Fernando wrote in “My love affair with the ‘saya.’” Jamming on an Old Saya, staged in 1995 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, was all those things and more. Designers, couturiers, and artists reinterpreted the traditional dress for an anything-but-traditional event that included “dancers and an almost-nude man painted gold climbing a rope.”
Jamming on an Old Saya
1995
NRA short documentary that merges interviews, re-enactments, and animation, to examine the tumultuous chapter of Philippine migrant history beginning with the ‘Manong Generation’ – the first migrant labor in the dawn of the 20th century – and labor activism through the life and writings of Carlos Bulosan, the man who wrote the novel America is in the Heart.
Bulosan in the Heart of America
—
4.0The Filipino-American War is quite possibly the past century’s least known armed conflict, especially troubling as its horrors foreshadowed so many of the horrors to come. Everything that we later saw in the Korean, Vietnam and, most recently, the Gulf Wars - from water boarding to search-and-destroy tactics - already happened during the USA’s first major 'civilizing mission' abroad, as it was sold to the public at the time. In the decade following the Spanish-American War, more Filipinos were killed by US troops than by the Spanish during the 300 years of colonial rule. More than 1 million Filipinos died between 1899 and 1913. This experimental documentary about the Philippine-American War of 1899 combines archival photographs and turn of the century film, digital video and 16mm footage to create memories of a forgotten history. A contemporary Filipina-American narrator weaves this complex history through historiography, experimental documentary and intercultural cinema.
Memories of a Forgotten War
2001
4.0The Filipino-American War is quite possibly the past century’s least known armed conflict, especially troubling as its horrors foreshadowed so many of the horrors to come. Everything that we later saw in the Korean, Vietnam and, most recently, the Gulf Wars - from water boarding to search-and-destroy tactics - already happened during the USA’s first major 'civilizing mission' abroad, as it was sold to the public at the time. In the decade following the Spanish-American War, more Filipinos were killed by US troops than by the Spanish during the 300 years of colonial rule. More than 1 million Filipinos died between 1899 and 1913. This experimental documentary about the Philippine-American War of 1899 combines archival photographs and turn of the century film, digital video and 16mm footage to create memories of a forgotten history. A contemporary Filipina-American narrator weaves this complex history through historiography, experimental documentary and intercultural cinema.
Memories of a Forgotten War
2001
4.0The Filipino-American War is quite possibly the past century’s least known armed conflict, especially troubling as its horrors foreshadowed so many of the horrors to come. Everything that we later saw in the Korean, Vietnam and, most recently, the Gulf Wars - from water boarding to search-and-destroy tactics - already happened during the USA’s first major 'civilizing mission' abroad, as it was sold to the public at the time. In the decade following the Spanish-American War, more Filipinos were killed by US troops than by the Spanish during the 300 years of colonial rule. More than 1 million Filipinos died between 1899 and 1913. This experimental documentary about the Philippine-American War of 1899 combines archival photographs and turn of the century film, digital video and 16mm footage to create memories of a forgotten history. A contemporary Filipina-American narrator weaves this complex history through historiography, experimental documentary and intercultural cinema.
Memories of a Forgotten War
2001

