Sine ni Lav Diaz

Description

This original collection fills a gap in the literature on Lav Diaz, and more broadly, on slow and durational cinema. The importance of the director in contemporary world cinema is beyond doubt. 

This collection considers Lav Diaz and his works holistically without being confined to a specific approach or research method. On the contrary, it involves almost all the major contemporary academic approaches to cinema. It focuses on an auteur who has been celebrated immensely in recent times and yet has remained largely unexplored in cinema studies. The book will address this research gap.

As such, this book aims to situate Diaz at the crucial juncture of ‘new’ auteurism, Filipino New Wave and transnational cinema, but it does not neglect the industrial–exhibitional coordinates of his cinema. The rationale behind this project is to raise questions on the oeuvre of a significant auteur, to situate him in and outside of his immediate national context(s), to present a repository of critical approaches on him, to reconsider the existing critical positions on him, to find newer avenues to enter (and exit) his canon that will consciously avoid the time-worn rhetoric of long take and slowness of the proverbial ‘slow cinema’ camp and to find corridors in him that will lead to informed ways of reaching other movements/auteurs in other times, other places.

It explores various other aspects of Diaz and his cinema whose notoriety, the editors believe, should not rely solely on its incredible running time. The collection looks at Diaz from the perspectives of a national and a transnational critic – one of the two editors is from the Philippines, the other from another Asian location. It concentrates both on the spatial and the temporal, to place him within the intricacies of the culture and creative industries and the distribution practices and politics in his native place, to allow space for his ‘detractors’ who (perhaps rightly) focus on and object to his ‘artlessness’, and also to read him in the context of his fascination for the epic novel and novelistic cinema, his engagement with Dostoevsky and Jose Rizal, among others.

This is the first book-length study on the Filipino auteur Lav Diaz. It looks critically at his career and corpus from various perspectives, with contributions from cinema studies researchers, film critics, festival programmers and artists. It offers a nuanced overview of the filmmaker and the cinematic traditions he belongs to for film enthusiasts, researchers and general readers alike.

Primary readership will be researchers, scholars, educators and students in film studies. Also academics and researchers interested and working in cultural studies and Philippine studies.

Foreword

         Clodualdo del Mundo Jr.

Preface

Acknowledgements  

 

1. Introduction

               Parichay Patra and Michael Kho Lim

2. Lav Diaz through cinematic histories
   
   
   
   a) After Brocka: Situating Lav Diaz in Philippine cinema
   
   Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr.
   
   
   
   b) Homeward hill: Messianic redemption in Diaz and Dostoevsky
   
   Tom Paulus
   
   
   
   c) Long walk to life: The cinema of Lav Diaz
   
   May Adadol Ingawanji
   
   
   
   d) Freedom is a long shot: A chronicle of Lav Diaz’s artistic struggle
   
   Michael Guarneri 
   
   
   
   


3. From death to the gods: The resurrection of the national?
   
   
   
   a) Never, always and already Saved: Soteriology in Century of Birthing (2011); Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012); and Norte, the End of History (2013)
   
   Marco Grosoli
   
   
   
   b) The idyllic chronotope and spatial justice in Lav Diaz’s Melancholia
   
   Katrina Macapagal
   
   
   
   


4. No cinema, no art either
   
   
   
   a) How do you solve a problem like Lav Diaz?: Debating Norte, the End of History
   
   Adrian Martin
   
   
   
   b) Evolution of a Filipino Family and/as non-cinema
   
   William Brown
   
   
   
   c) Jesus, Magdalene and the Filipino Judas: Lav Diaz and his ‘artless’ epics
   
   Parichay Patra
   
   
   
   d) Distributing the cinema of Lav Diaz
   
   Michael Kho Lim
   
   
   
   

5. Interview with Lav Diaz
   
   A Lav affair with cinema
   
   
   
   

6. Tribute  
   
   Indictment and empowerment of the individual: The modern cinema of Lav Diaz
   
   Alexis Tioseco

 

Sujets

• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinema
• Film
• ART
• History of film
• Video
• Cinema of the Philippines

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 03 août 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789384260
• Langue: English

Extrait

Sine ni Lav Diaz

Sine ni Lav Diaz

A Long Take on the Filipino Auteur
edited by
Parichay Patra and Michael Kho Lim
First published in the UK in 2021 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2021 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2021 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copy editor: Newgen
Cover and frontispiece designer: Aleksandra Szumlas
Production manager: Sophia Munyengeterwa
Typesetting: Newgen
Cover and frontispiece image: Lav Diaz on the set of Ang Hupa ( The Halt ),
Antipolo City, 24 January 2019; photography by Cielo Bagabaldo
Print ISBN 978-1-78938-424-6
ePDF ISBN 978-1-78938-425-3
ePub ISBN 978-1-78938-426-0
Printed and bound by CPI.
To find out about all our publications, please visit
www.intellectbooks.com
There you can subscribe to our e-newsletter,
browse or download our current catalogue,
and buy any titles that are in print.
This is a peer-reviewed publication.
Contents
Foreword: Lav Diaz, Artist
Clodualdo del Mundo Jr
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Lav Diaz: Cinema beyond Time
Parichay Patra and Michael Kho Lim
PART 1: LAV DIAZ THROUGH CINEMATIC HISTORIES
1. After Brocka: Situating Lav Diaz in Philippine Cinema
Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr.
2. Homeward Hill: Messianic Redemption in Diaz and Dostoyevsky
Tom Paulus
3. Long Walk to Life: The Films of Lav Diaz
May Adadol Ingawanij
4. Freedom Is a Long Shot: A Chronicle of Lav Diaz’s Artistic Struggle
Michael Guarneri
PART 2: FROM DEATH TO THE GODS: THE RESURRECTION OF THE NATIONAL?
5. Never, Always and Already Saved: A Soteriological Reading of Norte and Florentina Hubaldo, CTE
Marco Grosoli
6. The Idyllic Chronotope and Spatial Justice in Lav Diaz’s Melancholia
Katrina Macapagal
PART 3: NO CINEMA, NO ART EITHER
7. How Do You Solve a Problem Like Lav Diaz? Debating Norte, the End of History
Adrian Martin
8. Evolution of a Filipino Family and/as Non-Cinema
William Brown
9. Jesus, Magdalene and the Filipino Judas: Lav Diaz and His ‘Artless Epics’
Parichay Patra
10. Distributing the Cinema of Lav Diaz
Michael Kho Lim
PART 4: INTERVIEW WITH LAV DIAZ
11. A Lav Affair with Cinema
Michael Kho Lim and Parichay Patra
PART 5: TRIBUTE
12. Indictment and Empowerment of the Individual: The Modern Cinema of Lav Diaz
Alexis Tioseco
Notes on Contributors
Foreword: Lav Diaz, Artist
Lav Diaz is a well-known name in independent film-making and film festival circles. Anybody who is interested in Philippine cinema would be familiar with the name. Whether those who profess to know him have seen his films is another matter. The films of Lav Diaz do not attract droves to the theatres (if his films get any screening time at all). They are known to be utterly long and very slow. But Lav Diaz does not care. The audience is the least of his concerns. He does not care if anybody watches his films; he does not care if viewers step in and out of the screening room. However, he would not mind if more people watched his films, which is why his recent films star established actors such as Sid Lucero, John Lloyd Cruz, Piolo Pascual and Charo Santos. He looks at film-making as a cultural struggle for a greater cinema. If popular actors would help him in that struggle, so be it. Lav Diaz is not a communicator. He is an artist. His main concerns are his work and the art of cinema.
I learned more about Lav Diaz, the artist, when we interviewed him for our documentary series Habambuhay, Remembering Philippine Cinema , a project of TBA Studios for the celebration of the centennial of Philippine cinema. Lav talked about his family and his younger years in Tupaglas, Maguindanao, a province in Mindanao, the southern island in the Philippines, known for being the hotbed of the secessionist movement. His parents, both public school teachers, exposed their children to literature and, quite interestingly, cinema. The family would make weekend excursions to the town of Tacurong for movie binges in the theatres. They would stay overnight in the town until they had seen the double features in the four second-run theatres – films ranging from Fernando Poe Jr action films to Nora Aunor musicals, from Hong Kong martial arts movies to Italian spaghetti westerns. Sometimes, a classic foreign film would be thrown into the repertoire, like Kurosawa’s Ikiru showing in the French theatre that was run by a Frenchman. At home, over dinner, Lav’s father would proceed to discuss the films. Lav’s exposure to literature and cinema would continue during his maturing years in college until the lure of film-making became an obsession.
Like the other film-makers of his generation, Lav Diaz looked for an opening that would allow him to break into the world of film-making. The offer to do a pito-pito movie for Regal Films signalled this opportunity. Named after the herbal medicine called pito-pito , meaning a concoction from seven wondrous herbs, Regal’s pito-pito meant seven days of shooting and seven days of post-production. Lav took this opportunity of a lifetime to do a feature film. The plunge into this crazy world of cheap moviemaking resulted in promising movies, if not the promise of things to come ( Serafin Geronimo: Ang Kriminal ng Baryo Concepcion and Burger Boys ). His first cut of Serafin Geronimo ran for three hours and thirty minutes. Naturally, Mother Lily of Regal Films would have none of it. Lav was convinced or forced, most probably, to cut it down to a ‘viewable’ length – a little over two hours.
Lav saw the futility of working in the mainstream of the industry. His reflections on what was happening in the industry, on why cinema was so far behind literature and the other arts and on what he really wanted to do resulted in what we know today about the films of Lav Diaz – uncompromising, anti-conventional and subversive, personal but committed.
Lav Diaz’s process of doing films does not follow conventions. A semblance of a treatment or a ‘dummy’ (his word) screenplay is used to guide the production budgeting and scheduling or to give the actors a rough idea of the film; or there may not be a script at all. For example, Lav overhears a typhoon coming to hit a province, and the film muse creates an image in his fertile mind – a pregnant, crazy woman meets a lost, crazed artist in the raging rain. Inspired by this, Lav forms his team – two actors for this particular project – and they travel to the north that will be hit by the typhoon and shoot the scene that would become the ending of a film. The ensuing shoot will be developed day-to-day; Lav works on the material to be shot in the wee hours of the morning, gives a copy to the actors and they shoot. How can one be more unconventional than that? Lav describes the essence of his process as one of discovery. He follows the characters day by day and develops the story as shooting goes along, involving his actors and staff in the process.
Lav’s style – long take, one shot equals one scene, slow pace – is definitely unconventional or, more accurately, subversive. One can say that he is harking back to the early years of cinema when the entire film was taken in a single shot, the early years before the idea of editing and the Hollywood style of filming ruled the world of cinema. Moreover, the concept of ‘waiting’ in Malay culture is crucial to this style. Lav credits the works of film-makers such as Tarkovsky with encouraging him to take the plunge and free cinema from the conventions of film language and the demands of economics. In his attempt to free cinema, he is able to be closer and committed to his ideal of a cinema that reflects the political, social and economic realities of his environment and mirrors the truth as he sees it.
This anthology of essays on Lav Diaz, co-edited by Parichay Patra and Michael Kho Lim, is a welcome addition to the scant material on Philippine cinema and Filipino film-makers. The chapters will not be an easy read, for sure. The films under scrutiny and analysis, after all, are not an easy watch.
Clodualdo del Mundo Jr
Preface
The idea of an edited volume dedicated solely to Lav Diaz germinated during our sojourn in Melbourne, at the time of our doctoral research at Monash University. The city of Melbourne, with its cinematheque, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, and several film festivals, perpetually exists in a condition conducive to a project like this. It also houses a considerable Filipino diaspora, especially in its universities. Diaz’s films have been featured in the various editions of the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) between 2013 and 2016: Norte, the End of History (in 2013), From What Is Before (in 2014), Storm Children: Book One (in 2014) and A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery (in 2016). Thanks to the MIFF programmes, we have had the rare and much-needed theatrical experience of Lav Diaz. The cinephilia that has existed in Melbourne for years, well before and despite the advent of cinema studies as a university discipline, contributed significantly to this project.
At the completion of our respective research, we left the Antipodes and took the project with us to various parts of the world. In March 2017, Parichay Patra participated in a symposium and exhibition titled Lav Diaz: Journeys in London, organized and hosted by the University of Westminster and curated by May Adadol Ingawanij. Meanwhile, Michael Kho Lim’s experiences in and research on the independent film-making landscape in the Philippines, his several meetings and interviews with Lav Diaz and his ind