Preliminary note: This section features recent events on Lav Diaz’s cinema, monitored from Google Searches and local print publications. The coverage for now will be for 2017 only. By ‘recent events’, any newsworthy public event that features Diaz’s cinema. This includes the following: (1) Commercial/Special/Film Festival Screenings, (2) Exhibitions (i.e. Gallery, Museum, Art Spaces, Public Spaces), (3) Symposiums, (4) Conferences, (5) Public Appearances and Speeches (i.e. and (6) other events that are not recorded in any media. Lav Diaz’s interviews (Radio/Print/TV) are segregated in a separate section although they are also considered as events in themselves.
If you have any leads on Diaz’s whereabouts or any event/theatrical/online screening of his films, even those seen in informal and restricted spaces, please email me at adrian.lessegers@gmail.com. Thank you!
APRIL
from the FB page of Ang Panahon ng Halimaw
- April 19: A film entitled Ang Panahon ng Halimaw emerged online with production description that goes: “isang rakopera. presented by Epicmedia, Sine Olivia Pilipinas and Globe Studios” [link]
- Apr 13: Lav Diaz wins Best Director in Dublin Film Critics Circle Awards, held at the Audi Dublin International Film Festival. [link][official list]
MARCH
- Mar 19: Lav Diaz’s newest film will star local Filipino stars Shaina Magdayao and Piolo Pascual [link].
- Mar 7: Lav Diaz Ang Babaeng Humayo to open 3rd ASEAN filmfest [link] on May 4-6, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia.
- Mar 4: Screening of Ang Babaeng Humayo (The Woman Who Left, 2016) at Harvard Film Archive. [link] Lav Diaz was invited to introduce his film.
- Mar 4: Lav Diaz: Journeys, exhibition @ University of Westminster (UW) // 27 January – 12 March 2017 (9:00am – 9:00pm) // Location: London Gallery West Harrow Campus, Watford Road, Northwick Park, Middlesex, HA1 3TP (event link)
Notes: More or less this is a major exhibition of Diaz’s films. The whole exhibition is comprise of roughly four segments: a gallery exhibition of his films; several galley talks where invited curators, academics and artists are invited to talk about his cinema; an academic symposium; and a special 35-mm screening of Batang West Side (2001) with a followed by a Q&A with Lav Diaz in person (watch Q&A here: c/o Teo Cruz).Six films of Lav Diaz was screened for the exhibit: From What is Before (2014), Heremias (Book One: The Legend of the Lizard Princess) (2006), Death in the Land of Encantos (2007), Batang West Side (2001), A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery (2016), The Woman Who Left (2016). All are from his ultra-length period in filmmaking, probably to highlight the first and the latest works that defy conventional running time. No short films were included.There were four gallery talks mostly given curators, exhibitors, artists, academics and etc. Filipino artist Pio Abad gave the first gallery talk last Feb 4. His talk was about the ‘significance of Diaz’s films and mode of artistic practice in the contexts of contemporary cinema and national political history.’ I wonder how the talk turned out. But the concept ‘national political history’ informs us that this might include a discussion of some of Diaz’s films and their narrative or symbolic tangents with the historical narrative of the Philippines. In the second gallery talk, held last Feb 5, a film programmer and UW graduate Chiara Marañón and curator Adam Roberts engaged in a dialogue to talk about ‘historical and contemporary experimentations with exhibiting durational moving image works.’ So this is essentially a meta-talk to problematize their positions as curators of Diaz’s long durational cinema. Chiara Marañón is also responsible for curating Diaz’s films online @ MUBI.com (check it out). Film theorist Tiago de Luca conversed with curator Dan Kidner on the curatorial potential of slow cinema during the third gallery talk last Feb 12. The fourth gallery talk was rather curious, the description says: ‘Diaz’s films carry the legacy of third cinema and their critical exploration of political messianism.’ The ideas of third cinema and political messianism are indeed problematic in a sense that Diaz’s films were, in my own reading, never third cinema. Also, political messianism has been one of my majors problems with Lav Diaz’s cinema. I’m glad that film theorist Professor Lucia Nagib and art historian Professor Ashley Thompson were able ‘to discuss the entanglement between the aesthetically radical and the theological’ in relation to Diaz’s cinema.The symposium held last March 4 and organized Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) is one of the first international symposium ‘exploring the significance of Diaz’s films and mode of artistic practice.’ This is a pioneering attempt by graduate students and professors of University of Westminster. The symposium was held at UG.05 Regent Campus, 309 Regent Street, London. Reading through the abstracts of the symposium, the approach is interdisciplinary. There are also several attempts to localized the analysis vis-a-vis local myths, visual art history, nativist discourse, and catholic-animist aesthetics. Only Christina Juan is the Filipino presenter for the symposium.
Photos grabbed from George Clark.
FEBRUARY
- Feb 22: A Kickstarter project, launched by Dissidenz Films, a film distribution company based in Paris, France, if successful, will relauchned Death in the Land of Encantos (2007) in DVD and Blu-Ray. They have until the March 25, 2017 to gather a USD 8,614 worth of budget to kickstart the project. You can support them here.
JANUARY
OMNITUDO 