Rising young director Raya Martin, a favorite of the Cannes Film Festival, continues his daring historical trilogy on the history of the Philippines-the acclaimed Indio Nacional was the first installment-with the mesmerizing black-and-white Independencia, an investigation of American colonialism and simultaneously a “re-creation” of a lost era in Philippine cinema. Set during the American occupation of the early twentieth century, Independencia is shot like a classic Hollywood drama, complete with glistening black-and-white deep-focus photography, softly diffused close-ups, and elaborately fake sets. Merging an elemental plot (a man, a woman, and a child hide from American patrols in the jungle rains) with mesmerizing images (the film's deep 35mm beauty recalls such studio-era exotica as I Walked with a Zombie or Shanghai Express, with French cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie casting a dazzling spell of dark shadows and diffused light), Independencia provides a meditative discourse on culture, history, colonialism, and the legacy (and disappearance) of cinema itself.