Lav Diaz

Jonathan Romney, Vienna IFF wrote:
A relatively concise example of Lav Diaz’s expansive essays on Filipino history and imagination, HISTORY OF HA is a period drama set in 1957, although Diaz is characteristically cavalier about authenticity, with modern wheelie suitcases visible and references to algorithms sprinkled across the dialogue. But the past is always visible in the present in his films, and vice versa. This is often expressed by the idea of living in the wake of something, in this case, the death of the Philippines’ then president Ramon Magsaysay in a plane crash.Read More »

The search for the body of Andres Bonifacio.

Clavis Films wrote:
A cinematographic fresco on the Philippine revolution against the Spanish colonial regime at the end of the 19th century. The film tells the story of several women, one of whom is in search of her husband kidnapped by the settlers. These damned souls roam a jungle of astonishing beauty. Like Bela Tarr, Lav Diaz is reinventing cinema here.Read More »

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Madmen control Manila in 2034 after massive volcanic eruptions have plunged Southeast Asia into darkness.Read More »

An artist struggles to finish his work. A storyline about a cult plays in his head. Fundamentalism will destroy the world. The artist destroys his muse in the process. He redeems her in the end.Read More »

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After spending the last 30 years in prison, Horacia is immediately released when someone else confessed to the crime. Still overwhelmed by her new freedom, she comes to the painful realization that her aristocratic former lover had set her up. As kidnappings targeting the wealthy begin to proliferate, Horacia sees the opportunity to plot her revenge.Read More »

A FICUNAM commission for four directors, Liminal seeks to play with poetic affinities between film and music. Moving across aesthetic and generational differences, the film-makers explore this relationship through four distinct stories as to context and imaginary.

Within the category of world cinéma d’auteur, Philippe Grandrieux and Lav Diaz have much in common in terms of their affinities with radical cinematographic form: both are extremely inventive in their practical relationship between music and narration.Read More »

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An especially long film. And a special long film. An even more special detail is that, while watching it, the film gives you an inevitable feeling that it should last exactly this long, if not longer. The manner of production is also noteworthy. The film was shot bit by bit over a period of nine years, first on film and more recently on video. It is a method of shooting that was partly necessitated by financial considerations, but that also fits in well with the epic story that extends over a period of more than fifteen years. The film spans the Marcos regime’s state of siege in the Philippines (1971-1987). As the title indicates, Diaz follows the adventures of a family against the backdrop of the social and political developments in this crucial period in history. Read More »

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Diaz’s contribution to the 2009 Jeonju Digital Project.

Canadian Martha (Lois Goff) returns to the site of her Filipino upbringing, now a depressed ex-mining town. Her childhood friend Willy (Willy Fernandez) still carries something of a torch for her, but the bitter, ambitious Mang Ferding (Dante Perez) soon thrusts him into a test of loyalties.Read More »

Taking leave from their jobs at a gold mine, three workers journey to their home village on foot through the spectacular yet unforgiving wilderness of the mythical island of Hugaw. As time passes and their conversations intensify, buried histories emerge and a sense of psychosis invades the scene. As ever, Lav Diaz’s exquisitely subdued black-and-white images and patient rhythm lend a Brechtian register to the drama; almost always filmed from the same fixed distance, each scene is an immaculate tableau vivant. Behind the film’s folkloric façade, Diaz once again taps into the collective memory of defiant struggles against the tyranny of both contemporary Filipino society and colonial brutality, centred on the timeless image of men walking – one of the key traits of Pan. (Hyun Jin Cho, BFI)Read More »