Manila, City of Islands: A Social and Historical Inquiry into the Built Forms and Urban Experience of an Archipelagic Megacity by Edwin Wise (review)

662 of distribution. The book’s contribution also lies in its use of interdisciplinarity, applying rhetoric, urban studies, geography, and anthropology to explain why alternative cinema remains limited in its circulation. Lastly, to those who lived through the period covered by Trice’s study, the book is a written record of how these initiatives to promote independent cinema started and ended, which makes one think of how ephemeral cultural artifacts and practices can be. But if anything, the book’s most poignant yet most grounded point may be Trice’s assertion that the formation of alternative film culture and speculative publics will remain an asymptotic process—never being fully finished but always within reach.