Love Teams in 1970s Philippine Cinema

My research examines film couples in 1970s Philippine cinema which are called ‘love teams’. The era is particularly interesting because of the imposition of Martial Law in 1972, with singing teenagers and dictatorship characterizing the early 1970s and drawing large crowds for very different reasons. It examines love teams as a distinct category of stardom in the Philippines that privileges a couple's collaborative partnership rather than the celebration of the individual that usually characterizes star studies in Hollywood. I also explore the love teams' genre of the teenage jukebox musical, in which the young couples sing versions of popular American songs in plots that closely resemble their real lives. It interrogates notions of ethnicity, religion, courtship, marriage and youth in Philippine society in the 1970s.