The policy was approved by the UP Board of Regents (BOR) and aimed to encourage interaction and close collaboration between the involved constituents in terms of teaching, research, and extension activities.

[8] In September 1993, a triad committee was formed to review the status of the UPFC's attachment to the College of Mass Communication (CMC) which apparently had not been effected.

On July 28 or two months later, the BOR reconsidered in its 1079th meeting the implementation of its decision regarding the merger "in view of a proposal to make a 'Film Academy' out of the Film Center.

On September 22, former Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs Amaryllis Torres assembled a meeting with faculty and staff from both the UPFC and the CMC to discuss the formation of a UP Film Institute.

[9] On its 1169th meeting dated March 27, 2003, the BOR approved with finality its 1994 resolution to unify the UPFC and the DFAVC into one academic unit now recognized as the UP Film Institute.

[12] According to the merger proposal addressed to the BOR, the ACINETEC was rendered moot when Virginia Moreno requested on March 14, 2003, to have the UPFC's original autonomy restored under the university's Office of the President.

It opened lectures and workshops that gave students the opportunity to train under invited luminaries of the time, such as Vilgot Sjöman, Werner Schroeter, Peter Kern, Kōhei Oguri, Christopher Giercke, Don Pennebaker, Wolfgang Längsfeld, Dan Wolman, Alexander Walker, and Tadao Sato among others.

[14] One of the early outcomes of these exchanges was the Cinéma Direct Workshop facilitated by French filmmakers Alain Martenot and Jean-Loïc Portron, former directors of the Paris-based association Ateliers Varan.

[d] Part of a diplomatic program funded by the Embassy of France, the workshop ran for two months beginning late April 1982 and provided intensive training in Super-8 filmmaking.

[20] The Manila Short Film Festival focused on independent and experimental works and has been credited for its role in helping establish the alternative movement in Philippine cinema.

[25] As a degree-granting unit, the UP Film Institute trains and instructs its students in the practice and scholarship of cinema, culminating into individual production- or study-based theses.

[27] Among the prominent academics that have taught in the Institute are Grace Javier Alfonso, Tilman Baumgärtel, Joel David, Nick Deocampo, Ingo Petzke, Arminda Santiago, Nicanor Tiongson, and Roland Tolentino.

According to its mission, the UP Film Institute aims to produce graduates who would share in its goal of "contributing to the development of genuinely Filipino national cinema."

The journal "broadly covers national and regional perspectives on Philippine cinema and publishes academic articles, opinion pieces, reviews, interviews, and visual essays.

[40] In 2019, the Pelikula journal was revived by the UP Film Institute, led by Associate Professor Patrick F. Campos, as part of its commemorative event celebrating Philippine cinema's hundredth-year existence.

The building complex is recognizable by its predominantly red brick façade and consists of three facilities: the Cine Adarna and its extensions, the Ishmael Bernal Gallery and the Videotheque.

While most of the titles are local, the Cine Adarna is a lodestone for international film festivals and programs and showcases world cinema in cooperation with different embassies and cultural organizations.

[51] This makes the Cine Adarna one of the only two known exhibitors in the Philippines capable of screening movies in traditional film format, together with the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design of the De La Salle–College of Saint Benilde.

[59][60]: 255, 266, 275 [61] This has allowed the UPFI to exhibit films in their original, uncut versions which have otherwise been deemed unsuitable for public viewing by the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB), a government agency serving as the de facto censorship body in the Philippines.

Some of the MTRCB-sanctioned films that have been screened by the UPFI are The Last Temptation of Christ, Orapronobis,[59][62] Death in the Land of Encantos,[63] Imburnal,[64] Aurora (2009),[65] Sagwan,[66] Strictly Confidential: Confessions of Men,[67][68] and Bliss.

[70] Two years later on May 21, 2022, the UPFI reopened the Cine Adarna, albeit to an outdoor screening of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Accattone, in celebration of the Italian director's centennial.

In defense of UPFI, Professor Marichu Lambino of the College of Mass Communication stated in an online post that it is the UPFI's jurisdiction not the MTRCB's to decide on the film programming of the Institute since it is tied to its objectives of providing higher education and raising film literacy, academic matters over which the MTRCB "cannot in any official capacity be made to believe that they can exercise their monitoring function" [sic].

Antonio Parlade Jr., Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations of the AFP, who said in a report by CNN Philippines, "What's new is that they (CPP) are inciting students to rebel because of the issues on extrajudicial killings, that's why they have film showings."