Bliss Cua Lim

Bliss Cua Lim is a Professor at the Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto, specializing in Philippine cinema, film archiving, and queer theory. She is the author of The Archival Afterlives of Philippine Cinema (2024) and Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic, and Temporal Critique (2009), which was a John Hope Franklin Book Prize recipient.

• Education: PhD in Cinema Studies, New York University; BA in English, University of the Philippines, Diliman

Her research explores intersections of cinema, folklore, and political histories, with a focus on archival fragility, transnational horror genres, and camp aesthetics in Southeast Asian media. Recent work analyzes the crisis of state-run film archives and the role of folklore in queer transmedia storytelling.

Key trends in her publications include: Queering the Filipinx Zombie Movie (2025) and Cosmopolitan Animisms (2022), which examine genre hybridity and postcolonial spectralities. Her 2013 writings on Philippine archival advocacy and 2015 essays on queer aswang narratives highlight institutional and cultural challenges in media preservation.

• Scientific Awards:
  • Selected John Hope Franklin Book Prize (2009)

Lim serves on the Editorial Collective of Camera Obscura and the Advisory Board of Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication. Her teaching includes courses on Queer Asian Cinemas, Sound and Animation, and Film Cultures II.