Linger, cling, delay. The past is a quiet shadow. Governing every movement, haunting every thought, lurking in every conversation. And maybe that’s okay.
Malate Literary Folio presents Tomo XL Bilang 2: /TomoXLBilang2
Gawa lang nang gawa, sining alay sa madla.
-——
Stay updated on Malate’s events and activities by following our social media accounts:
Facebook: /malateliteraryfolio
Twitter: /malatelitfolio
Instagram: /malatelitfolio/
Never benign, always at the cusp of life or death, entanglements and exaggerations tainting the everyday in scarlet. Red chooses sides.
Malate Literary Folio presents Tomo XLI Bilang 1: /TomoXLIBilang1
Gawa lang nang gawa, sining alay sa madla.
Visuals by Gabb Vitug
𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘪: 𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘷𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘦.
Life's journey unfolds in chapters, each marked by its own unique emotional landscape. This ever-evolving journey now lies before you.
Malate Literary Folio presents Tomo XL Bilang 1: /TomoXLBlg1
Gawa lang nang gawa, sining alay sa madla.
-------
Stay updated on Malate’s events and activities by following our social media accounts:
Facebook: /malateliteraryfolio
Twitter: /malatelitfolio
Instagram: /malatelitfolio/
Every island is shaped by the people who live on it.
In this one, artists, writers, and visionaries come together to turn fleeting ideas into something worth remembering—stories that are shared across and beyond its shores.
Some arrive with unfinished drafts. Others enter, searching for a place to begin. Either way, there is always room for one more resident, no matter the form their creativity takes.
Gawa lang nang gawa, sining alay sa madla
Spiel by Denise Valondo
Visuals by Reigne Adao
The curtains finally raise to reveal sapphires twinkling on a stage set for motion. Celebrating their 45th Anniversary yesterday, May 13, the La Salle Dance Company - Contemporary commemorates the ripple of motion wrought by memories, artistry, and legacies upheld.
Visitors filled the Teresa Yuchengo Auditorium, transfixed on the performers who restored home through the fragments of history left by time. They shone as the stars of a new night, gems echoing the soft footsteps of the generations that came before.
Spiel by Maria Ocho
Photos by Jyor So & Kenosis Yap
A new island is loading in!
Somewhere between new faces and unexpected stories, something (or someone) is about to begin here.
Proceed?
——
Spiel by Denise Valondo
Visual by Andrea Estrella
Under the scorching daylight, cracked concrete roads were invigorated with the fervor of the neglected masses. Banners and painted placards held the dissent echoed by each indignant chant on May 1 around Manila amidst rising prices, low wages, and insufficient subsidies. Calloused hands clashed with barricades as striking scarlet flags were raised higher, impossible to ignore.
Since 1903, the first of May has always been both a commemoration of the labor movement and a collective demand for fairer working conditions and better wages. However, the outcry only grows louder each year, as the common people are forced to bear the burdens of rising fuel prices with meager wages. The struggle for a secure livelihood is a fight that continues to persist centuries later and until workers can finally experience the fruits of their labor.
Photos by Zenaida Ilao
Spiel by Elle Louise
Lifelines stood still when the clock hands stopped working.
Last March 28, 2026, stained footsteps left traces at the Natividad Fajardo-Rosario Gonzalez Auditorium. The stage was flooded with red, as young creatives from each of Malate’s sections poured out different tints of wine, in resplendence to the efforts in forming a crimson repertoire that celebrates the liminality of opening old wounds.
Every shade of red seen in coagulation as the lingering spilt blood–staining the carpet, forming scabs. Though memories may wane, their aftershocks remain, only to be felt once more in the Scarlet Folio’s tainted letters.
Tomo XLI Bilang 1 archives the remains of past Malate postings, new additions, and LITAW-VISAW winning pieces, reinterpreting them in a sanguine-soaked warm tapestry. Offering pieces of absolution, solace, celebration, and remembrance of an unreliable time. In passing, the scarlet is understood, and felt, not as a testament to pain, but a reminder that even red fills all crevices, all gaps, and all wounds.
Malate Literary Folio presents Tomo XLI Bilang 1: /TomoXLIBilang1
Spiel by Francis Panes
Photos by Towmr & Kenosis Yap
There are rooms that were not built for them, yet here they are, filling the corners, pressing against the walls, and demanding entry into spaces they were once told never belonged to them. Sometimes, it is simply the weight of a presence that refuses to shrink—a stillness that insists on being seen, a name spoken into a room that pretended not to hear it.
This Women's Month, half the sky has always been theirs to hold. Women have always found ways to bloom in the cracks of what was never meant to open; not because they were given light, but because they learned to be it. The ground did not move for them. They moved anyway.
Photos by Zenaida Ilao, Towmr, Jyor So, Joaquin Tugot & Kenosis Yap
The color of urgency bleeds through the afternoon. Somewhere between vermillion and want, between rust and riot, Malate Literary Folio launches Tomo XLI Bilang 1, taking its first breath at the Natividad Fajardo-Gonzales Auditorium today, March 28, at 4:00 PM.
Come, and let the scarlet hour find you here.
Photos by Towmr
The sangria eye keeps watch behind red curtains. They fall. It sets its sight on a miscellany of shapes materializes.
The merlot tint on the packaging of canned sardines, the burgundy death blanket over an unrevealed mass, the crimson sheen of a Spiderman suit, the luster of Eve’s apple, and, staring back: the spider eye.
Gawa lang nang gawa, sining alay sa madla.
Each scene moved like wind through tall grass, unseen yet undeniable, leaving in its wake the slow, aching certainty that a fire long smothered had found its air. From March 11 to 14, the Natividad Gonzales-Fajardo Auditorium came alive as the DLSU Harlequin Theatre Guild unveiled Du La Salle 2k25, the annual showcase of artistic and managerial theatrical spirits.
This year, the stage became a vessel for “Tawang Lipod,” four interwoven stories that listened closely to the invisible. It was a production born from the guild’s enduring belief that theater is not mere performance, but prophecy.
The guild drew up from the quiet depths where oppression presses hardest and forgetting is most tempting to announce its own form of resistance. That stories rooted in the cultural, social, and political tremors of time carry the power to shake something loose in those who witness them.
Photos by JKJ, Owen, Jyor So & Kenosis Yap
