The rise of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) along Manila Bay set in motion a series of irrepressible reclamations that endure until today. As a monumental construct whose final definition remains suspended, the CCP has served as both venue, a site for the contestation of the meaning of nation, and avenue, a route for approaching the internal contradictions of and making progress toward national cinema. Its history, which has harbored opposing ideals of culture and witnessed the opposition of state and society, spans half of Philippine cinema’s first century. It was in the post-Marcos period that the CCP Film Division was formed, among efforts to reclaim CCP and distance it from its elitist and decadent origins through Filipinization, democratization, and decentralization. Likewise, it participated in the production of an “independent” cinema through programs such as the Gawad CCP, FreeFest, and Cinema Rehiyon. Cinemalaya, emerging in 2005, was a practical and discursive outworking of these contending political and ideological strains. Hence, Scenes Reclaimed necessarily traces the interrogation of “independent cinema” in view of historical pursuits of freedom and independence in the national narrative. Located within historical efforts to reclaim spaces for alternate voices, alternate spaces, and therefore alternate futures for cinema, all the ways that Cinemalaya fails or succeeds in its aspirations propel us forward in the continuing project of reclaiming a free and independent nation.