An intimate epic made with uncompromising and austere seriousness, Lav Diaz’s “Evolution of a Filipino Family” patiently and methodically observes the collapse and hopeful revival of a poor farming clan, meant to symbolize a nation’s history spanning 1971 to 1987. Ten-hour running time, radically slow pace and hyperminimalist mise en scene will excite international cinephiles at the most daring fests and showcases, which are the only conceivable venues outside of homevid.Read More »
The latest effort from a slow-cinema auteur known for his epic running times, “From What Is Before” is a longer sit than “Norte” (250 minutes) but a brisk jaunt compared with the likes of “Melancholia” (450 minutes), “Death in the Land of Encantos” (538 minutes) and “Evolution of a Filipino Family” (593 minutes). As ever, the effectiveness of Diaz’s approach depends on his finding a subject worthy of sustained rumination, and in this film, which he aptly describes as “a memory of a cataclysm,” it is the very act of remembering, of recalling the specific texture and atmosphere of his lost childhood, that seems to determine the duration of every shot and the placement of every cut. A poet-historian of longform cinema, Diaz seeks not merely to relay a series of events, but to draw us into a fully inhabited world.Read More »
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Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a progressive degenerative disease found in individuals who have been subjected to multiple concussions and other forms of head injury. A variant of the condition, dementia pugilistica (DP), is primarily associated with boxing. CTE has been most commonly found in professional athletes participating in American football, ice hockey, professional wrestling and other contact sports, who have experienced head trauma, resulting in characteristic degeneration of brain tissue and the accumulation of tau protein. Individuals with CTE may show symptoms of dementia such as memory loss, aggression, confusion and depression which may appear within months of the trauma or many decades later. (Wikipedia)
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A military junta has taken power on the Philippines. Their takeover is fought by Moslem separatists, communists and rival military. In the middle of the chaos there is Hesus Mariano: academic, musician, poet and sniper. Politically tinted science-fiction action drama with an attitude.
It’s the year 2011 and the Philippines has been taken over by a military junta; the leader, a General Racellos, wields tight control over the country’s single TV station, radio station and newspaper. Racellos’ power is being challenged by Muslim secessionists, by the Communist movement and by a rival military group. In the middle of this turmoil stands Hesus Mariano (a quietly volatile Mark Anthony Fernandez) – scholar, musician, sharpshooter, poet, warrior. Jesus the Revolutionary was made on a shoestring budget (around five million pesos / 75,000 euro) and shot in roughly twenty days, but the ideas teeming in it are enough to fill a half-dozen lesser films. Except for the deserted streets and spray-painted graffiti, you won’t see any evidence of progress, of advanced technology, any sign at all that it’s almost a decade into tomorrow; if anything, things appear to have gotten worse… which is probably precisely Diaz’s point. It’s an action flick with an attitude, a political satire with a philosophical bent, a science-fiction drama with a committed political stance. The film mixes the influences of George Orwell, Jose Rizal and video games, using the future as a prismatic lens to focus on the follies of the present. (NV)Read More »