Cinemanila International Film Festival

The Cinemanila International Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Manila, the Philippines. It was founded by Filipino filmmaker Amable "Tikoy" Aguiluz in 1999. The focus of the festival is on the cinema of the Philippines as well as Southeast Asian cinema.

The Cinemanila icon is the bulol, a deity whose presence ensures good harvest. The Cinemanila International Film Festival invokes the bulol as a blessing towards the Filipino film industry in general – as a prayer towards good harvest, a plentiful bounty of excellent Filipino films. In the festival's competitive section, the top award is the Lino Brocka Award, given in honor of the acclaimed Filipino director, Lino Brocka. Another award, the Ishmael Bernal Award for Young Cinema, was first given at the 2000 festival, in honor of Filipino director Ishmael Bernal, to young independent Filipino filmmakers.

One of Cinemanila's running components is Sine Barangay - a three-day event with free film appreciation and education workshops, culminating in an outdoor screening to barangay residents. It was previously held at the Marikina Riverbanks and Bonifacio High Street. In 2012, Cinemanila will launch the "Cinemanila Moonlight Series", regular outdoor screenings expanded from Sine Barangay, to take place over the course of Manila's dry season.

The second Cinemanila was held from July 3 to 10, 1999 in Mandaluyong City. It was the first international film festival in the Philippines since the Manila International Film Festival, which had been held in the 1980s. (There is the Metro Manila Film Festival, but it is a national festival screening only Filipino films.) The festival featured a lecture on cinematography by Australian-Hong Kong cinematographer Christopher Doyle.

The festival has typically been a low-key affair in terms of red-carpet visits by foreign celebrities. However, in 2003, the festival honored Hollywood stars with Filipino-American roots, and was graced by Lou Diamond Phillips, Tia Carrere, Dean Devlin and Rob Schneider. The same year, the first Lifetime Achievement Award was given, honoring Indonesian actress Christine Hakim.

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