Encantos

Melancholia di lav Diaz

2010-12-20T11:37:00.000-08:00

di Michele Faggi

Il cinema di lav diaz è un fiume in piena, i 450 minuti di Melancholia restituiscono un rapporto complesso con il concetto di durata, costituito da una serie di piani sequenza il film del regista filippino complica e disassembla il tempo del racconto con quello di una visione che non è semplicemente materializzazione del tempo nello spazio dell’inquadratura quanto accumulazione di punti di vista capaci di rivelare una relazione intima e allo stesso tempo storica con la cultura delle filippine. Se rimangono tracce di cinema documentario in Melancholia, queste emergono dall’ordito di relazioni che legano i personaggi del film, sempre in bilico tra verità e performance, simulazione e partecipazione. E’ un vortice che non punta verso il basso, ma è al contrario ricco di aperture; la tentazione è quella di considerare questa percezione del tempo come flusso lineare solo per la persistenza colossale e ipnotica delle inquadrature o al contrario di leggerla come un racconto a ritroso; il movimento è in verità molto più complesso e anche quando si riavvolge su se stesso aggiunge elementi centrifughi che non chiudono mai le possibilità della visione rilanciandola in avanti. Diaz ci presenta tre individui alla ricerca di se stessi e a poco a poco ci impedisce una completa immedesimazione allontanandosi dal loro ruolo, rivelandocelo da un angolatura ambigua situata tra il vero e il falso, stratificando una storia di dolore che esce continuamente dai confini della finzione e penetra forme di ricerca più intime. Una prostituta, una suora che raccoglie fondi per i poveri deambulando senza posa per le strade remote di Sagada minacciate dalla natura , un magnaccia, tre visioni estreme sulle filippine soggette ad improvvisa mutazione nel gioco di ruolo concepito da un regista sperimentale, un insegnante e una donna che non regge il peso emotivo della simulazione, uccidendosi. Il centro della ricerca è quello su due corpi rimossi, “missing” che a poco a poco erode tutti i piani del racconto e riconduce alla verità della performance, immersa in una relazione estrema, intima e dolorosa con la terra, la natura e il dolore. Diaz filma in video e in bianco e nero con pochissimi mezzi, microfonando gli ambienti con un approccio diretto senza cancellare le imperfezioni del suono causate dalle intemperie, ma al contrario accentuandole in primo piano proprio quando il rigore del tempo sembra restituirci uno sguardo immobile ed estenuante. Dopo le nove ore di Death in the land of Encantos, menzione speciale nella sezione Orizzonti a Venezia 64, Lav Diaz costruisce il suo cinema estenuante e d’impatto, potente e riflessivo; il ritorno alla terra natale del poeta Benjamin August nella terra distrutta dal tifone Reming viene quasi completamente interiorizzato nel processo di ricerca affrontato da Alberta, Julian e Rina in Melancholia; il titolo non è casuale e si riferisce a questa ricerca che costruisce un testo intimo e fortemente politico; nel parlare di Sagada, Diaz dice “…quando ci sono stato, per me tutto era tristezza; l’ambiente non ha offerto vero sollievo, ma ho avuto tempo per confrontarmi con questa depressione. In quel momento e in quel luogo ho compreso che non c’era una vera cura per la malinconia. Questa è la verità. Sai, ho letto Freud e, nel brano che dedica al lutto, dice che la libido è la cura per la malinconia. Uno studio offre l’uso clinico del suono e del movimento come strumenti psicologici per curarla. E, si, io ho provato tutto questo. La mia pratica del suonare la chitarra è fondata giusto sulla creazione di pattern sonori e di semplice rumore, mentre immagino movimenti, e lo faccio per curare me stesso da questa tristezza che mi sta uccidendo. Certo, la medicina moderna ha inventato il prozac, il litio e tutti questi prodotti chimici, e gli psichiatri, per bilanciare il triste mistero pieno di sofferenza che è la nostra esistenza, ma ci si risveglia sempre per scoprire che non c’è davvero cura. Alla fine, si deve affrontarla a modo proprio. Quindi si, Freud ha fallito…”

Ovvio e anche scontato, per chi si trovi a vivere questa esperienza visiva, riferirsi, anche superficialmente, al cinema di Straub-Huillet, a quello infinito di Bela Tarr, alla persistenza crudele del cinema di Pedro Costa, alle sculture temporali Tarkovskjane, alla storia selvaggia di Julio Bressane, in verità nel cinema di Lav Diaz c’è un movimento partecipativo e per improvvisa collisione, raggelante, che incolla i personaggi dentro una cornice naturale eccessiva nel suo uscire dai margini dello schermo, mentre percezione visiva e auditiva vengono travolte. Melancholia è stato concepito e sviluppato in un periodo di tempo piuttosto breve, considerando la sua durata; Diaz si è recato a Sagada senza sceneggiatura, senza storia, senza una mappa precisa del posto, da solo con i tre attori e la troupe ha penetrato il dolore e la solitudine del luogo, scrivendo di notte e sviluppando una ricerca che invece di procedere in avanti o riavvolgersi attorno ai segni della memoria, si infila nel non tempo di una percezione intima e solitaria.

Pubblicato il 8 settembre, 2008
In Venezia-65, nuove illusioni, orizzonti venezia 65, recensioni

Avenue of Broken Dreams

2010-12-16T12:22:00.000-08:00

Batang West Side – Lav Diaz

By Etchie

"... it is the epic scope, the undaunted ambition, and the artistic integrity of Batang West Side that beacons the brave and
independent spirit that relentlessly ignites this new generation of Filipino filmmakers."
-- Francis "Oggs" Cruz

"A curiously oblique film that builds almost imperceptibly, Lav Diaz's five-hour "Batang West Side" -- at once deadly serious and howlingly absurd -- is a masterpiece."
-- Ronnie Scheib, Variety

Brutally frank and mercilessly honest, Lav Diaz’s Batang West Side (2001) is a searing indictment at the Filipino diaspora culture- -a culture of indifference and ignorance. Likewise, at the very shadow of it lies a more sinister superimposition that is practically the representation of our social cancer. As we realize whether the decision to leave justifies the necessity, cognizant of the eventual degradation of the Filipino morals and ideals, or are we simply a gathered bunch insensitive to all of it, deprived of perception by the lure of an erstwhile fantasy of a greener pasture?

Batang West Side starts out with a fatal shooting of a Filipino teenager, Hanzel Harana (Yul Servo), on a whiteout-drenched West Side Avenue in Jersey City. A Filipino-American detective, Juan Mijares (Joel Torre) is dispatched to the scene of the crime and starts a tooth and nails crusade to find out who killed the hapless youth. His investigation sends him to interview a cornucopia of characters–from Hanzel’s mother, Lolita (Gloria Diaz), Dolores, the girlfriend (Priscilla Almeda), the grandfather, Lolo Abdon (Ruben Pizon), to his hard-luck friends and even former “bosses”. Each has their own picture of what Hanzel’s life is before his carefree life is cut short on a cold pavement in a place he is not supposed to be. The film is not so much a police procedural than as a run-of-the-mill formulaic melodrama, but the true mystery reveals not the who but on the circumstances. It is not a crime-thriller where you are treated to a plethora of the conventional recipe that identifies it as one, rather transcending into an effective character sketch and at the same time portraying a situational image of a community of minorities struggling to find its lost identity.

Contemplative in its aesthetic and intrinsic interpretation, Lav Diaz deftly illustrates a young man’s gradual deconstruction as he helplessly wrestles through a familial dysfunction to the unavoidable immersion into a world of substance abuse. The social relevancy also indicates the necessity of the Filipino displacement as the ultimate truckstop to a life after poverty. Yet the film’s concrete lefthook lands a powerful punch towards the perennial predicament that afflicts the contemporary Filipino youth: shabu (or crystal meth–or as they casually call it, poor man’s cocaine). Diaz’s static camera shots construe a meditative interplay of the bleak snow-blanketed milieu and an individual disoriented by a profound shock, allowing us a kind of voyeuristic verisimilitude as we witness an inescapable and tragic transformation.

Unrestrained by obligations by a production studio contract, Lav Diaz exercises such a given liberty through this film, with a running time of five hours–a complete detachment from the Godardian experimentation of Burger Boys (1998) to the mainstream sensibilities of Serafin Geronimo: Kriminal ng Baryo Concepcion (1999) and Hubad sa Ilalim ng Buwan (2000). In Batang West Side, Diaz captures the nitty-gritty survivalist instincts of his migrant compatriots and expatriates alike, with its Darwinian kill-or-be-killed philosophy at heart, in the middle of the urban battlefield of a distant western city.

The dramatis personnae, who fundamentally supports the films’ near-fluid narrative, centers on Mijares. His own personal battles aside, likewise, he has a tendency to collapse, like Harana. He constantly dreams of his sick mother (played by Angel Aquino) who, at the beginning of the film, is in a state of coma, however he tends to avoid discussing it with his psychiatrist, frightened of opening up his true self and uncover skeletons tucked undisturbed in his closet. He harbors a terrible secret and as he does away with it in front of a documentary filmmaker’s camera near the end, we feel a sense of liberation. Not because he manages to release himself from the similar quicksand that has trapped and ultimately eaten up Hanzel Harana, but we are to discern a freedom from the nightmarish reality that is supposedly a prelude to a better dream.

There is Lolita, Hanzel’s mother, who escapes an impoverished life in the Islands–deserting a husband and four kids–and marries a paraplegic, trapped in her own mansion of riches. She brings Hanzel from the Philippines and prods him to live with her, her husband and her lover, Bartolo (Arthur Acuna)–the personification of malevolence in the film, suffocating with opportunity his sinister love affair with Lolita. Exactly Lolita’s methods are vivid examples of the inherent Filipino tendency to rescue and resuscitate the dying hope of her family swimming in destitution back home. From here we are forced to realize whether the judgment she makes precipitates Hanzel’s early demise and leaving a relentless quandary on the morality of decision. Lolo Abdon, who, we come to know as the traditional, stick-in-the-mud grandfather, the only paternal figure Hanzel looks up to, subtly wondering if his betrayal of his grandson’s trust and friendship could have been a catalyst to such a tragedy. And then there is Dolores, whose acceptance and compassion towards Hanzel is, unusually, perceived from a Filipino girl born and reared in the west. It is through her that belies the notion of the disaffected youth, a contradiction versus the tight upbringing of Filipino children back home. Her attitude towards Hanzel, while at times, subservient, is sufficient to say of the kind of guidance she is attempting to bestow however unreciprocated that may be.

In retrospect, Batang West Side may be Lav Diaz’s own take at Wilfred Owen’s Anthem for Doomed Youth, and possibly a sort of auto-da-fe. His belief that the Filipino society represented by the temporarily displaced youth–the Hanzel Haranas of the world, would rather barter a future of happiness yet bound by poverty to a promise of existence marred by definite uncertainty, somehow will always be a question that incessantly resonates within us.

From the Blog, Brainstorms From The Shower, November 24, 2010

Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino (Evolution of a Filipino Family)

2010-07-26T19:30:00.000-07:00

By Francis "Oggs" Cruz

It was Dec. 17, 2004, an hour before midnight. The sun seemed like a distant memory. The black-and-white images on-screen — images of the families of a farmer and a miner struggling through the torturous passage of languorous time — felt more immediate, more real. The nearly 12 hours I spent inside the aging Cine Adarna theater at the University of the Philippines, watching "Ebolusyong ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino" felt like a lifetime. The theater is named after the mythical, elusive Adarna bird, a creature whose songs can cure many illnesses and induce anyone to sleep. As director Lav Diaz painstakingly created a cinematic universe with a heartbreaking resemblance to reality, there were times when the movie had an Adarna-like effect, even lulling me to sleep.

But the movie also cured me of the misconception of what cinema can be. The movie's official 10-hour running time kept growing because Diaz practices the do-it-yourself independent filmmaking style that he preaches. The production of every Diaz film typically lasts up until the moment that it is projected. The director was still finalizing post-production on "Ebolusyon" on the day of the Adarna screening, so he kept traveling via taxicab from Cubao, where he was editing, back to the campus every few hours, delivering another section of the film, then getting in the cab and going back home.

Unsurprisingly, there were many walkouts. But for the hardy few that spent half a day in the darkness of Diaz's vision, this was a life-changing theatrical experience — a 12-hour moment that defined cinema as not only pleasurable but also prolonged and painful; an experience that, despite its aches, you long for, search for, live for and love, not because it gives you pleasure, as most films do, but because it defines you.

From the site Film Salon. Slide Show: The movie experience I can't forget moderated by Matt Zoller Seitz

Evolucao de Uma Familia Filipina

2010-07-26T18:07:00.000-07:00

Por Fabricio Duque

Apresentação

Conhecer o Cinema Filipino necessita-se de tempo. Há a preparação prévia do espectador. Nesse filme em questão, a duração é de 643 minutos, traduzidos em 10 horas e 43 minutos, divididos em 12 fitas mini-dv (mídia digital). A maratona começou às dez horas da manhã, no CCBB RJ, terminando 21 horas e 45 minutos, com intervalo de 40 minutos para almoço e 20 para o lanche, totalizando uma hora (sem exceder o tempo). Os organizadores não atrasaram a exibição, possibilitando uma viagem cinematográfica única, sem percalços e sem irritabilidades. Lav Diaz é o diretor desta epopéia. Na mostra, há outros dois filmes. "Melancolia", por exemplo, possui 441 minutos. É o cineasta dos épicos.

A opinião

O Cinema Filipino distancia-se do estilo cinematográfico comercial. Escolhe-se o alternativo, o independente. A experimentação pulula em cada mudança de cena, enquadramento, camera, enfim, em toda parte técnica, em interpretação e narrativa. O diretor privilegia planos longos, respeitando o tempo narrado. Objetiva-se o dia-a-dia real, com ações naturais. A camera aguarda, espera. Ora comportando-se como personagem, ora como observadora, deixando os personagens longes, quase como borrões de imagem, por causa do posicionamento da camera: de frente ao sol.

Há silêncios, não havendo a necessidade de utilizar o recurso da música para compor o trama apresentada. Com isso, o espectador absorve e questiona o valor do sentimento, com sutilezas aprofundadas das interpretações. Há a busca do amadorismo quando realiza a interação metalinguística. Comporta-se como um DOGMA 95, já que a iluminação é natural, muitas vezes escura, com sombras, com reflexo do fogo ou da luz da lanterna dos mineradores.

A saga da pobre família Gallardo, que vive em uma comunidade rural das filipinas. Sua trajetória serve como metáfora da história do país durante a imposição da lei marcial pelo presidente Ferdinand Marcos e o crescimento da atividade guerrilheira, entre 1971 e 1987. Enquanto as economias vão acabando, a família Gallardo, lentamente, se separa. O filme começou a ser feito em 1993, sendo realizado durante dez anos até ficar pronto.

A parte inicial da família vai aos guerrilheiros, que intercala imagens de arquivo de guerra contra o imperialismo filipino. Há digressões em saltos de narrativa, que explicam os integrantes da família. Entre sonhos, epifanias, realidades, futuros e passados, conta-se a história de uma dominação ditatorial. A trama não se apresenta de forma linear.

Demora-se um tempo para que se possa concatenar e juntar as peças de tudo. Leia-se algumas horas. Mas a lentidão é válida e extremamente necessária para o desenrolar de todas as questões. São várias histórias dentro de histórias que se juntam. Uma delas é de Ray, o bebê das formigas, encontrado "supostamente" em Manila. Outra é a mãe que não aceita a filha. "Ela trouxe má sorte, nunca poderei perdoá-la", ela diz.

Os personagens são retratados em seus crescimentos, erros e acertos. Há a humanização deles, os descrevendo como ingênuos naturais. Sofrem as mazelas da crueldade do mundo, das fofocas dos membros da própria comunidade e precisam lutar pelo pedaço de terra e trabalho, dentro de uma sociedade maior que dita as regras, favorecendo os próprios interesses. É a lei dos mais fortes. Mostrando que o trabalho permanece presente. Sem ele não se vive.

O rádio é um elemento constante. Por ele passam-se todas as histórias. Uns ouvem, outros participam. "400 pesos", é o seu preço. Os programas deste veículo abordam desejos, anseios, fornecendo a percepção que os problemas são iguais em qualquer família. A novela dramatiza a vida real. A conversa é quase narrada, brega, clichê, folhetinesca. É uma crítica a banalização do que se acontece no cotidiano. Entre uma escutada e outra, diz-se "O alho está ficando caro demais". Há o realismo conhecido, que busca a fantasia para alienar-se. "Qual o problema em ouvir histórias", diz-se sobre a imposição do "possível" certo.

É um filme político, que utiliza a metáfora para abrandar e folhear o que se quer transmitir. A cegueira de um, a ‘mudice’ de outro, o patriarca autoritário, a prisão real, as regras carcerárias, a busca por um mundo melhor e de novo o rádio. Há também a guerra, a violência, a obediência e a ordem. As vítimas e os sobreviventes não visualizam o futuro. As consequências: mortos e feridos. Em contra ponto, há a simplicidade das crianças brincando na praia e pulando corda, vivenciando o que se pode viver. Há o existencialismo sobre a vida de um inseto. Há referências que respeitam quem está do outro lado da tela.

Há profundidade nos personagens, que sofrem, expressando raiva e descontentamento de uma vida sem perspectiva. Expurga-se cortando madeiro, por exemplo. Não parece ficção. Os diálogos da cena entre a neta e a sua avó são reais, naturais, sem encenação. Eles acontecem por si só, como na própria vida, que segue. A colheita, a lama, lavrar a terra. Trabalho rural. "Não são burros, apenas cresceram em um mundo diferente", diz-se sobre jovens que não pensam como os mais velhos. De novo, repito, a construção da narrativa fornece realismo aos diálogos. Há cenas que acontecem. A dança e o canto em volta da fogueira. Há mineração e escavação. O longa passeia por todos os elementos épicos e destrincha formas de sobrevivência filipina.

O objetivo, questionado no próprio filme, é redescobrir o que é ser filipino. Quebrar os estereótipos. Há interação com um diretor de cinema fictício. Há making of do programa de rádio. Há experimentação de imagem em imagem. "Somos todos filipinos", diz-se em cenas de revoltas à ditadura, em meio a crises existenciais, culpas e resignações sofridas.

O recomeço. Espera-se lentamente a vida voltar ao normal. "Os tempos mudaram. Ficaram mais escuros", sobre a metafísico do escurecimento do dia às dezoito horas. Infere-se o lado sombrio do ser humano, cada vez mais embrutecido, em meio a cenas simétricas de imagens. Recomeçar vendendo pudim de soja. Há epifanias silenciosas. Há catarses melancólicas. Há a explicação explícita da proibição dos filmes e do Festival de Cinema do ditador. "Uma ditadura cinematográfica. Do roteiro à narrativa. O filme do Scorsese 'Última tentação de Cristo', foi proibida também". Busca-se a "liberdade dos cineastas". Há uma cena que pode ser considerada como a morte mais longa da história do cinema. Tudo pelo fim da militarização.

A vida continua. A espera também. As mesmas ações. O mesmo trabalho. É um filme de imagens, que retrata uma época, rica em seu material. "Perdas acontecem. Segue-se em frente da mesma forma. Muda-se uma coisa ou outra, mas é quase tudo igual", finaliza-se. Vale muito a pena ser visto. É um encontro sensorial em todos os aspectos. Recomendo.

O Diretor

Lavrente Indico Diaz é um premiado cineasta independente que nasceu em 30 de dezembro de 1958. Ele atua em diversas funções concomitantemente, como diretor, roteirista, produtor, editor, diretor de fotografia, poeta, compositor, ator e diretor de arte. É especialmente conhecido pelo comprimento de seus filmes, alguns dos quais chegam a durar até onze horas. Após trabalhar durante anos para a principal empresa produtora das Filipinas, a Regal Films, comandada por Mother Lily, Lav dirigiu em 2001 Batang West Side , divisor de águas em sua carreira e marco do cinema independente filipino. O filme foi o primeiro de sua trilogia Filipina, completada por Evolução de uma Família Filipina e Heremias . Seus dois últimos longas, também épicos de longa duração, participaram, com sucesso, do Festival de Veneza. O primeiro, Death in the Land of Encantos , ganhou menção honrosa na mostra Orizzonti em 2007, e Melancolia conquistou o prêmio principal no ano seguinte. Por toda sua trajetória, Lav é considerado o pai ideológico do cinema independente filipino.

From the blog vertentes do cinema, July 15, 2010

Lav Diaz: Mini-Dosier

2010-07-19T17:02:00.000-07:00

Von Lukas Foerster

Über Lav Diaz wird viel geschrieben, seine Filme werden selten gezeigt. Die zentrale Figur des neuen philippinischen Kinos – und mein Lieblingsregisseur im Gegenwartskino – stieß erst verhältnismäßig spät, mit 40 Jahren, zum Film, davor arbeitete Diaz vor allem als Journalist. Vielleicht auch deswegen ist er nicht nur der ästhetisch interessanteste, sondern auch der politisch artikulierteste Regisseur seines Landes. Seine ersten Filme entstanden innerhalb der kommerziellen Filmindustrie. Der erste Film außerhalb derselben entstand 2001 und ist heute aufgrund seiner faktischen Unsichtbarkeit so etwas wie der heilige Gral des philippinischen Gegenwartskinos: Die einzige theoretisch vorführbare Kopie des sechsstündigen Emigrantenepos Batang West Side liegt bei einem durchgeknallten Produzenten unter Verschluss. Die späteren Filme sind – zumindest im Kino, wo sie hingehören – nur minimal sichtbarer.

Naked Under the Moon (1999): Ein frühes Drama um zwei Schwestern, Vergewaltigungen, Schlafwandeln, Untreue, relifiöse Verblendung und vieles mehr. Auf den ersten Blick enthält das alles nur wenige Elemente des reifen Werks. Auf den zweiten beschreibt allerdings auch Naked Under the Moon schon eine eindringliche “Evolution of a Filipino Family”, die noch in ein melodramatisches Kokon verpackt, was später zur nationalen Allegorie reifen wird.

Hesus the Revolutionary (2002): Diaz’ letzte und ambitionierteste kommerzielle Arbeit ist ein politischer Actionfilm. Hesus the Revolutionary kann als Versuch betrachtet werden, im Stil eines Lino Brocka oder Chatrichalerm Yukol Genreformeln für radikale politische Kritik zu instrumentalisieren. Der als Science Fiction deklarierte Film ist leicht als Allegorie auf die Marcos-Diktatur zu lesen und ruft gleichzeitig zum Widerstand gegen die Remilitarisierung der philippinischen Innenpolitik seit dem Ende der Neunziger Jahre. Der Held, Anführer einer Rebellenorganisation, nimmt bereits die Märtyrergestalten der späteren Epen vorweg. In letzter Instanz ist Hesus the Revolutionary zwar ein sehr interessanter, aber doch ein gescheiterter Film, nach dem die radikale Abkehr vom Markt nur folgerichtig wirkt.

Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004): Das Magnum Opus, mit dessen Planung und Produktion Diaz bereits vor seinen ersten Schritten in der kommerziellen Filmindustrie begann. Es gibt viel zu diesem Film zu sagen, an dieser Stelle nur die paar Sätze, die ich im Programmheft unserer Reihe verfasst habe: “Der Schlüsselfilm des Neuen Philippinischen Kinos: Ein Jahrzehnt lang arbeitete Lav Diaz an seinem magnum opus, dem elfstündigen Ebolusyon ng isang pamilyang Pilipino (Evolution of a Filipino Family). Die ältesten Aufnahmen stammen aus der Mitte der 1990er Jahre, im Laufe des Films kann man einer der Hauptfiguren buchstäblich beim Aufwachsen zusehen. Diaz entwirft eine komplexe Familienchronik, die eng mit der politischen Geschichte der Philippinen während der letzten Jahre der Marcos-Diktatur verknüpft ist. Es geht um Findelkinder und Geisteskranke, um Vergewaltigung, Mord und Rache, schließlich um eine apokalyptisch anmutende Goldsuche. Außerdem ist der Film durchsetzt von historischen Filmaufnahmen, Radio-Seifenopern und anderen historischen Artefakten. Vor allem geht es aber um ganz alltägliche Handlungen, um Mahlzeiten, um Streitgespräche, ums Warten, um Klatsch und um Liebe, kurzum darum, das Leben selbst aus den Fängen der dominanten Geschichtsschreibung zu bergen. Gegossen ist dieser Film über den Leidensweg einer ganzen Nation in kontrastreiche, digitale Schwarz-Weiß-Bilder, einzelne Einstellungen dauern nicht selten zehn Minuten. „Die Spuren der Zeit sind unauslöschlich eingetragen in das Bildmaterial und die Geschichte selbst.“ (Ekkehard Knörer).”

Heremias (Book One: The Legend of the Lizard Princess) (2006): Mein Text für die Splatting Image: “Eine staubige Landstraße schlängelt sich durch spärlich bewachsenes Hügelland. Anfangs ist kaum eine Bewegung zu erkennen. Ganz langsam verdichten sich im Hintergrund einige digitale Bildpunkte zu noch nicht genauer definierbaren Gefährten, die sich der Kamera nähern. Dass es sich um Ochsenkarren handelt, ist erst nach ein paar Minuten zweifelsfrei festzustellen. Das Kamerablickfeld verlassen werden diese Ochsenkarren erst nach gut zehn Minuten. Währenddessen durchqueren einige Male Automobile die Leinwand und benötigen dazu kaum länger als dreißig Sekunden. Der Film aber wartet, bis auch der letzte der Ochsenkarren den Straßenabschnitt passiert hat. Jeder Film steht vor der Wahl, ob er sich für die Autogeschwindigkeit oder die Ochsenkarrengeschwindigkeit entscheiden möchte. Wie viele Filme die Autos wählen, wird erst klar, wenn ein Film wie Heremias daherkommt, der sich ganz und gar den Ochsenkarren verschreibt. „I survived Lav Diaz’s Heremias“ lautet der Titel eines Blogposts, das sich mit dem neunstündigen philippinischen Film beschäftigt. Nicht nur in diesem Fall scheint eine Auseinandersetzung mit Werken wie Heremiasselbstreflexive Überlegungen des Kritikers / Zuschauers automatisch mit einzuschließen. Der eigene Blick auf den Film wird plötzlich mindestens ebenso interessant wie der Film selbst. In der Tat stellt Heremias das konventionelle Rezeptionsmodell schon alleine aufgrund seiner bloßen Länge in Frage. Ein neunstündiger Film transformiert das Zeiterleben um einiges radikaler als ein klassischer, 90 bis 120-minütiger Spielfilm. Selbstverständlich setzt auch ein solcher die reale Zeit in mancher Hinsicht außer Kraft und ersetzt sie durch eine filmische. Doch in seiner Gesamtheit passt er sich ohne Probleme in die Muster des Alltagslebens ein und orientiert sich an einem Intervall, das von Schulstunden oder Universitätsvorlesungen bestens bekannt ist. Ein neunstündiger Film sprengt solche Alltagsbezüge, er lässt sich nicht ohne weiteres in die Tagesplanung integrieren, stört den Fluss der fein säuberlich segmentierten Zeit. Ein neunstündiger Film stellt per se einen Exzess dar, der irgendwie unzulässig erscheint, wohl auch, weil er beim besten Willen nicht mehr in dem Bedürfnis nach Unterhaltung aufgeht, das das Kino als seine Existenzberechtigung voraussetzt. Ein neunstündiger Film ist eine Herausforderung für das Selbstverständnis des Publikums wie des Kritikers und verlangt eine Reaktion. Leider sind in diesem speziellen Fall „Publikum“ und „Kritiker“ fast identisch. Regisseur Lav Diaz gehört zu einer Gruppe junger philippinischer Filmemacher, die seit einigen Jahren die Festivalleinwände dieser Welt mit digital gedrehten Werken jenseits aller klassischen Kategorien unsicher machen. Zunächst feierte man Diaz sowie seine Kollegen Raya Martin, Khavn und John Torres an den Rändern des Fesitvalzirkusses, in Rotterdam, Buenos Aires oder der heimischen Neugründung Cinemanila, inzwischen haben sie Venedig, Berlin und Cannes erreicht. Außerhalb dieser cinephilen Parallelwelt bleibt das Kino – abgesehen von wenigen, umso wertvolleren Ausnahmen – unsichtbar. Bevor ein deutsches Arthauskino einen philippinischen Film in sein Programm aufnimmt, läuft im Cinestar Heinz Emigholz. Und auch alternative Vertriebswege wie DVD oder Internet sind Diaz und Co bislang keine große Hilfe. Lav Diaz hat im Gegensatz zum Großteil seiner Mitstreiter eine kurze Karriere in der lokalen Filmindustrie hinter sich. Seine ersten Streifen inszenierte er für den Giganten Regal Films in den späten Neunziger Jahren. Als im Jahr 2001 dann Batang West Side erschien, ein fünfstündiges Epos über Exilphilippinos in New Jersey, war klar, wohin die Reise führt. Das philippinische Kommerzkino steckt heute in einer schweren Krise. Vielleicht war Diaz’ bewusste Entscheidung für die Ränder des Arthausghettos rückblickend karrieretechnisch nicht die schlechteste. 2004 folgte der Zehneinhalbstünder Evolution of a Filipino Family, dann Heremias und letztes Jahr schaffte es Death in the Land of the Encantos mit ebenfalls neun Stunden Dauer sogar in Venedig in den Wettbewerb. Gesehen habe ich von diesen anderen Filmen noch keinen einzigen. Selbst in Berlin sind und bleiben solche Werke faktisch unsichtbar. Heremias ist Teil eines parallelen Kinos, eines Kinos der Insider und Hippster. All denjenigen, die nicht zum auserwählten Kreis des Festival-Jetsets gehören, bleibt keine andere Möglichkeit, als auf die raren festivalfernen Screenings zu warten. Dieses Warten ist vielleicht nicht einmal die schlechteste Einübung auf einen Film wie Heremias. Irgendwann ist die erste Einstellung zu Ende. Die zweite zeigt dieselben Ochsenkarren auf einem anderen Straßenabschnitt, diesmal während der Dämmerung am späten Abend. Die Einstellung dauert so lange, dass der Einbruch der Dunkelheit nachvollzogen werden kann. Wieder nähern sich die Fahrzeuge aus dem Hintergrund, sind zunächst kaum sichtbar, wachsen dann, je näher sie der Kamera rücken, ins riesenhafte. Mit herunterhängenden Schultern sitzen die Ochsentreiber Gespenstern gleich auf ihren Karren, fast leb- und völlig bewegungslos. Heremias macht die einfachsten filmischen Mittel, die im restlichen Kino selten mehr sind als ihre eigenen Klischees, wieder in ihrer spezifischen Eigenart sichtbar. Die Großaufnahme der Ochsentreiber ist nur deshalb so furchteinflößend und monumental, weil sich der Film minutenlang auf sie vorbereitet. Analog dazu ist auch die erste Kamerabewegung des Films nur deshalb so brutal, weil sie erst nach zwei Stunden Laufzeit stattfindet. Ein kleiner Linksschwenk nur, und doch zerreißt er den filmischen Raum mit ungeheuerlicher Kraft, als handele es sich um eine der radikalsten filmischen Gesten der Kinogeschichte. Gleichzeitig setzt diese kleine Kamerabewegung in der Binnenstruktur des Films die Erzählung in Gang. Vorher lernten wir, während Futterpausen und nächtlicher Gespräche am Lagerfeuer, sehr beiläufig Heremias kennen. Heremias ist Mitglied einer Gruppe Ochsentreiber, die von Stadt zu Stadt zieht und von ihren Wagen Haushaltswaren verscherbelt. Heremias scheint sich von seinen Kollegen entfremdet zu haben. Der erwähnte kurze Schwenk genügt, um ihn von ihnen zu trennen. Er hört nicht auf die Warnungen seiner ehemaligen Gefährten und macht sich alleine auf den Weg in eine unwirtliche Bergregion. Eine weitere Stunde verfolgt der Film Heremias, wie er alleine dem Regen und der Landschaft trotzt, seinen Ochsen steile Bergwege hinauftreibt und umgefallene Bäume beseitigt. Die Kamera hat sich aus ihrer Starre befreit und ist mobil geworden. Nach der dritten Stunde sucht er Unterschlupf in einem verlassenen Bauernhaus. Einige Bewohner des nahe gelegenen Dorfes leisten ihm Gesellschaft und erzählen Geschichten aus dem zweiten Weltkrieg über einen japanischen General mit Namen Oshima. Als Heremias am nächsten Tag aufwacht, ist sein Wagen verbrannt und der Ochse verschwunden. Den Großteil des restlichen Films wird Heremias mit der Suche nach dem Schuldigen verbringen. Der zuständige Polizist macht ihm nach einigen lieblosen Routineuntersuchungen klar, dass er ohne den zusätzlichen Anreiz eines Bestechungsgeldes nicht weiter von Nutzen sein wird. Der bitterarme Heremias hat keine andere Möglichkeit, als selber in die Rolle des Ermittlers zu schlüpfen. Hinter der spröden, formalistischen Schale kommt im Laufe der Stunden eine komplexe Auseinandersetzung mit Geschichte und Sozialstruktur der Philippinen zum Vorschein. Und die Philippinen sind zuallererst ein bitterarmer, unterentwickelter Agrarstaat. Heremias durchquert mit den fahrenden Händlern und ihren Ochsenwagen die ländliche Einöde ebenso wie die Slums der Städte. Auf diesem Weg dringt nicht nur das Alltagsleben der verelendeten Massen in den Film ein, sondern auch deren oral history, in Form von Volksliedern und mystischen Legenden. Im Lauf der Zeit dringen in den Film selbst mystische Elemente ein. Von Anfang an ist Heremias in seiner Irrationalität ein sonderbarer Protagonist. Gegen Ende seines Abenteuers verwandelt sich der Held in eine Art metaphysische Erlöserfigur, in der sich soziopolitische und spirituelle Motive vermischen. Nicht verwechseln sollte man diese Wendung ins Mystische mit esoterischem Ethno-Quatsch. Von so etwas ist ein Film wie Heremias, der sein künsterisches Konzept kompromisslos wie kaum ein zweiter ausbuchstabiert, denkbar weit entfernt. Eher geht es – doch dies ist nur ein vorsichtiger Versuch meinerseits, in dem die Komplexität Diaz’ Werkes bei weitem nicht aufgeht – darum, im Sinne der postkolonialen Theorie den imaginären Selbstentwürfen der Unterdrückten ihr Recht zu lassen und sie gleichzeitig in ihrer soziopolitischen Bedingtheit sichtbar zu machen. Wie fast alle Filme des neuen philippinischen Kinos ist Heremias mit digitaler Kamera gedreht und zwar mit einer, der die Kinderkrankheiten der neuen Technik noch nicht ausgetrieben sind. In körnigem Schwarz-Weiß kommen die Bilder daher, oft dauert es eine ganze Weile, bis man sich in den spärlich beleuchteten Panoramen zurechtfindet. Vor allem eine längere Sequenz im Wald (und lang bedeutet in diesem Fall: stundenlang) stellt einen einzigen Angriff auf das Prinzip der Sichtbarkeit dar. Zwischen dem Astwerk erahnt man die Vorgänge mehr als dass man sie erkennt, sonderbar geformte Blätter verwandeln sich in Monster und geben ihre harmlose, pflanzliche Natur nur langsam Preis. Die digitalen Tapes erlauben Aufnahmen von einer Stunde Länge und damit eine Longshot-Ästhetik, die auf 35mm nicht, oder nur mit Tricks, möglich war. Hier, im Wald, nutzt Lav Diaz die neuen Möglichkeiten mit aller Konsequenz aus. Eine ganze Stunde lang beobachtet Heremias – und der Film mit ihm – eine Gruppe Jugendlicher beieinem Besäufnis, das sich langsam aber sicher in ein apokalyptisch anmutendes Horrorszenario verwandelt. Irgendwann ist auch diese nervenaufreibende Stunde zu Ende und tatsächliche findet Heremias schließlich zu einem Abschluss. Doch dann fällt der Blick auf den Untertitel: „Book One: The Legend of the Lizard Princess“. Fortsetzung folgt.”

Death in the Land of Encantos (2007): Aus meinem Text für die Splatting Image: “Death in the Land of the Encantos nimmt die Verwüstungen des Taifuns Durian zu Füßen des Vulkans Mayon als Ausgangspunkt. Anfang Dezember 2006 starben mehr als 1000 Menschen an den Folgen der Naturkatastrophe auf den Inseln im Umfeld des Vulkans. Nur eine Woche nach der Katastrophe begann Diaz vor Ort zu filmen, mit digitaler Kamera und minimalem Büdget: Weniger als 10000 $ kostete der neunstündige Film insgesamt. Die Zerstörung prägt den Film in jeder Hinsicht. Die Bilder zeigen eingestürzte Wellblechhütten, Trümmer, Kleidungsfetzen, aber auch umgestürzte Bäume, Flüsse, die sich neue Wege gebahnt haben, Schlamm, Dreck. Kultur und Natur sind gleichermaßen am Boden. Der Film ist dann eine einzige, delirierende und dennoch konsequente Öffnung hin auf dieses zerstörte Land. Death in the Land of the Encantos wählt, ganz im Gegensatz zu den streng strukturierten, exakt konstruierten übrigen Filmen des Regisseurs, die sich nach der Länge der einzelnen Videotapes, aus denen sie bestehen, strukturieren, dafür eine fast völlig offene Form. Ausgehend von immer wiederkehrenden Trümmerbildern in grobpixeligem Schwarz-Weiß und dem diaztypischen Antihelden Benjamin, einem Dichter und politischen Aktivisten, der aus dem russischen Exil in die Philippinen zurückgekehrt ist, unternimmt der Film Reisen in die unterschiedlichsten Richtungen und entfernt sich doch nie von seinem Anliegen. Mal bewegt sich Diaz in Richtung auf dokumentarische Formen, mal in Richtung Selbstreflexivität, einmal sogar zurück zum Vorgänger Heremias (siehe SI 74), dann wieder unternimmt er dialogreich Ausflüge in diverse Diskursfelder, vor allem in die politische Geschichte und Gegenwart der Philippinen, aber auch in die Philosophie und in die Kunstgeschichte. Er erkundet andere Räume, naheligende und weniger naheliegende, Russland besipielsweise, das freilich nicht das echte Russland ist, sondern nur die Projektion eines Russlands, ein “country built against the sky”, schließlich auch und vor allem die philippinische Hauptstadt Manila, deren bedrohlichen, düsteren und menschenfeindlichen Hochhäuser eine grundsätzlich andere, vertikale Raumorganisation etablieren. Immer wieder bewegt sich Death in the Land of the Encantos gleichzeitig hin zu den zahlreichen Frauenfiguren des Films, zu Frauen die teilweise ineinander verschwimmen und deren ontologischer Status nicht in allen Fällen gesichert ist. Diese in sich jeweils sehr unterschiedlichen Bewegungen hin zu den Frauen sind vielleicht das beeindruckendste an diesem unendlich beeindruckenden Film. Lav Diaz scheint den Versuch zu unternehmen, so viel wie nur möglich auf diese Frauen zu projizieren und doch übt er dabei in keiner Weise ungebührlich Macht über sie aus. Gleich zu Beginn schneidet Diaz von einer langen Einstellung, die sich unsicher tastend über die verwüstete Landschaft bewegt auf eine nackte Frau, die im Bett liegt. Die Kamera schwebt dann mit genau derselben Unsicherheit und Vorsicht über dem Körper diese Frau, das existentielle, chaotische Elend wird umgeschrieben auf makellose, glänzende Hautpartien. Später tauchen andere Frauen auf, Benjamins Mutter zum Beispiel, dann eine Russin, eine tote Schwester, die Ex-Freundin Catalina und noch ein paar weitere und irgendwie scheint der mythische, brutale, wunderschöne Vulkan Mayon auch mit diesen Frauen, oder zumindest mit einer der vielen Ideen von Weiblichkeit, die der Film entwirft, zu tun zu haben. (Es gibt, und bei weitem nicht nur pro forma, auch feministische Diskurse in diesem Film und wie auch in anderen Diaz-Filmen ist die einzige Figur, die einen zumindest teilweise produktiven Weltbezug errreicht, eine Frau, nämlich Benjamins Ex Catalina, verkörpert von Angeli Bayani, die ein Jahr später in Melancholia eine sehr ähnliche Rolle übernehmen wird.) Die ersten Stunden bewegt sich der Film frei durch Zeit und Raum, umkreist auf immer neuen Bahnen die reale Verwüstung, an der er sich entzündet. Doch je länger er dauert, desto mehr verlagert sich diese urwüchsige Dynamik auf Benjamin, dem im letzten Drittel dann ein Martyrium bereitet wird, das in der Filmgeschichte seinesgleichen sucht. Der eigentliche Beginn dieses Martyriums ist, nach einer längeren Passage, in der er ganz aus dem Film verschwindet, eine unglaublich intensive Szene in Manila. Zunächst führt der Film die Stadt als einen Ort der bedrohlichen, grausamen Vertikalität ein, die erste Einstellung in Manila zeigt eine Straße, die an drei Seiten von finster glänzenden Hochhäusern umgeben ist, die jegliches Leben, jede Bewegung im Keim und in ihren Schatten ersticken. Nach einer kurzen Passage mit bewegter, desorientierter Kamera durch diesen vertikalen Alptraum findet der Film Benjamin in einem Cafe, im Hintergrund vorbeifahrende Autos, auf der Tonspur Straßenlärm. Benjamin sitzt und liest, irgendwann setzt sich ein weiterer Mann zu ihm, der sich als ein Mitarbeiter der Geheimpolizei entpuppt, der Benjamin einst folterte. Es folgt ein verbitterter und unerbittlicher Schlagabtausch, Benjamin wirft seinem Peiniger seine ganze Verzweiflung und den letzten Rest an Hoffnung, der ihm noch geblieben ist, entgegen, er appeliert an einen Rest an Humanität, den er in seinem Peiniger vermutet, doch alles vergeblich. Sein Gesprächspartner macht sich nicht einmal die Mühe, auf moralische Appelle zu antworten, er bleibt stumpfes Vollzugsorgan des brutalisierten Staatsapparates und wiederholt ständig dieselben Drohungen. Als der Geheimpolizist schließlich nach einem Gespräch, das im Grunde gar keines war, verschwindet, haben sich die Lichtverhältnisse geändert. Benjamin ist nur noch eine schwarze Silhouette vor dem Hintergrund des hell erleuchteten Fensters, weiße Lichtreflektionen schimmern gespenstisch und schieben sich vor diese Silhouette. Im Grunde stirbt Benjamin bereits in dieser Einstellung, durch den restlichen Film bewegt er sich wie ein Geist. Endgültig zu diesem Gespenst wird er später (bei Lav Diaz muss so etwas immer gelesen werden als: Stunden später) in Catalinas Haus, im Wohnzimmer. Am Ende einer weiteren verstörenden Szene bewegt sich der vom Schicksal gezeichnete Benjamin zum Fenster, über sein Gesicht legt sich ein weißer, kalter Lichtstreifen wie eine Totenmaske. Noch ein letztes Aufraffen ist ihm gegönnt, in seltsam aufrechter Körperhaltung unterhält er sich mit seinem Jugendfreund und ewigen Kontahenten Teodoro und breitet vor diesem sein ganzes Martyrium aus. Am Schluss dieses Gesprächs ist nicht nur Benjamin am Ende, sondern auch Teodoro, der sich bis dahin in Indifferenz geflüchtet und damit gut gefahren ist, der aber in dieser Szene zu einem zweiten Benjamin wird und nach dessen Tod dessen Erbe antreten kann und muss. Nun ist Benjamin bereit, ganz und gar und in jeder Hinsicht zu sterben. Der Film figuriert diesen Tod multiperspektivisch und multimodal. Eine längere Passage, in der Catalina und Teodoro Benjamin gegenüber einem zynischen Reporter verteidigen, verhindert ein Abgleiten in Fatalismus, unendlich bitter und verheerend sind diese letzten Stunden dennoch. Und erst recht die allerletzte Szene, eine schreckenerregende Miniatur irgendwo zwischen ins durch und durch Finstere gewendeter homoerotischer S/M-Fantasie (die Frauen sind sehr radikal abwesend in dieser letzten Szene) und klinisch reiner Grausamkeit (an der Wand hängt ein Yuppie-Wandspiegel). Tiefschwarz und wie der gesamte Film sowohl physisch wie auch psychisch weit jenseits der Schmerzgrenze.”

Melancholia (2008): Im selben Text schreibe ich auch über Melancholia: “Nur ein Jahr später dreht Lav Diaz ein weiteres Epos. Melancholia ist eine Stunde kürzer als Death in the Land of the Encantos, kostete ebenfalls weniger als 10000 $ und lief ebenfalls in Venedig im Wettbewerb. In diesem neuen Film geht es nicht mehr primär um die rohe Gewalt einer Staatsmacht, welche eine Auseinandersetzung mit der eigenen Geschichte und der sozialen Gegenwart verunmöglicht. Vielmehr entwirft Diaz eine moralische Selbstbefragung der Rebellen und ihres Märtyrertums. Und wie in Koji Wakamatsus fellow masterpiece United Red Army hat auch bei Lav Diaz diese Selbstbefragung ihren Preis. Melancholia beginnt in einer philippinischen Kleinstadt. Zunächst sind da nur drei Menschen, zwei Frauen und ein Mann, die sich auf den Straßen dieser Kleinstadt durch Lav Diaz’ starre, minutenlange, grobpixelig schwarz-weißen Einstellungen bewegen, ohne erkennbares Ziel. Manchmal begegnen sie sich auf den Straßen. Zunächst scheinen sie sich nicht zu kennen, doch einmal lacht die eine Frau verhalten lachen, als sie die andere sieht. Eine der Frauen ist durch ihre Kleidung als Nonne erkennbar und bittet Passanten um Spenden für die Armen, die anderen beiden Figuren werden erst durch ihre späteren Handlungen als Prostituierte und Zuhälter identifiziert. Der Zuhälter inszeniert Live-Sex-Shows für zahlungskräftiges Publikum, die Prostituierte bricht in Anwesenheit eines ausländischen Freiers in Tränen aus. Noch später wird klar, dass die Nonne keine Nonne ist, die Prostituierte keine Prostituierte und der Zuhälter kein Zuhälter. Melancholia beginnt mit einer Charade. Drei Stunden dauert diese Charade, sie gewinnt in diesen drei Stunden eine bedrückende Eigendynamik und doch geht der Film nach dem Ende der Charade erst richtig los. Der sonderbare Anfang von Melancholia inszeniert in dieser Charade eine eigenwillige Form von Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Die Nonne Rina, der Zuhälter Julian und die Prostituierte Jenine, die eigentlich Alberta heißt, sind, das offenbart sich nach und nach, im echten Leben traumatisierte Intellektuelle, die einst in militanten linken Untergrundorganisationen tätig waren und in ihren bürgerlichen Berufen nicht glücklich zu werden vermögen. Es geht in Melancholia um ein dezidiert intellektuelles Millieu. Das ist neu im Werk des Philippinos, in den vorherigen Filmen stand die arme Landbevölkerung im Mittelpunkt. Dieses intellektuelle Millieu hat Auswirkungen auf die gesamte Ästhetik des Films. Melancholia ist bisweilen in fast schon klassisch modernistisch-selbstreflexiver Film. Und das vor allem, weil Julian und seine Mitstreiter ihr eigenes Handeln nur noch als reflexives, abgeleitetes, nicht mehr als authentisches erleben können. Erst ganz am Ende, in den wiederum äußerst intensiven letzten beiden Stunden des Films, bricht die alte, urwüchsige Lav-Diaz-Zeit wieder über Melancholia herein. Der Film findet in den Dschungel zurück. Dorthin, wo alles angefangen hat und wo Charaden nutzlos sind. Julian ist zwar ein archetypischer Lav-Diaz-Held, aber er ist auch, das stellt sich hinterher heraus, Initiator der Charade. Es ging, das führt er schließlich lang und breit aus und seine Zuhörerin Alberta möchte dem immer selbstherrlicher auftretenden Julian dabei fast an die Gurgel springen, in dieser Charade nicht darum, durch Verkleidung der Wirklichkeit zu entfliehen. Ganz im Gegenteil sucht Julian, und mit ihm Lav Diaz, in der Verkleidung die Wahrheit. Doch ob der Weg den Julian einschlägt, der Richtige ist, das lässt Lav Diaz offen. Das Verhältnis des Films zur Hauptfigur bleibt deutlich ambivalenter als in den Vorgängern. In vielem ist Benjamin eher Narzisst als Märtyrer. Melancholia ist ein Film über Menschen, die von ihrer Vergangenheit wieder und wieder heimgesucht werden und dennoch kaum in der Lage sind, etwas aus ihr oder auch nur über sie zu lernen.”

Upheaval (2008): Ein Nebenwerk, aber was heißt das schon bei Lav Diaz. Das größere Projekt, von dem dieser Performancefilm ursprünglich nur einen Teil darstellen sollte, scheint sich bis heute noch nicht materialiert zu haben. Ich habe darüber geschrieben: “Upheaval ist eine gefilmte Tanzperformance (der erste Teil einer geplanten 15-teiligen installativen Arbeit, wenn ich das richtig mitbekommen habe). Das Genre “gefilmte Tanzperformance” hat mich bislang noch nie um den Schlaf gebracht und wird es auch in Zukunft nicht tun. Aber Upheaval ist eine gefilmte Tanzperformance der Lav-Diaz-Art. Eine Tanzperformance, in der die meiste Zeit gar nichts performt wird. Oder falls doch, dann ist dieses Performen nicht immer unterscheidbar vom ganz normalen Straßenleben einer philippinischen Großstadt. Die statische positioniert sich am Rand eines Flusses. Das Ufer wird im unaufdringlich symmetrisch gegliederten Bildausschnitt zur Bühne, die urbane Umgebung zum Publikum. Rechts der Fluss, links eine Straße, im Hintergrund Hochhäuser. Im Vordergrund sitzt zu Beginn eine Frau im weißen Kleid, im Mittelgrund sitzt eine andere auf einem nicht näher definierbaren Gestell und liest. Die Frau im Vordergrund beginnt zu tanzen, erst dreht sie sich, dann windet sie sich, wirft sich hin und her, das wirkt nicht direkt ekstatisch, aber doch ist das ein Tanz, der nicht organisch aus den Alltagsbewegungen entspringt. Nicht allzu lange tanzt sie so. Irgendwann verschwindet sie einfach aus dem Bild. Im Mittelgrund sitzt immer noch die lesende Frau. Viel mehr als lesen wird sie während der 45 Minuten, die Upheaval andauert, nicht machen. Der Kreditsequenz nach zu urteilen, gehört sie dennoch zu den Performern. Wenige Minuten nach dem Verschwinden der Tänzerin taucht ein Mann mit Gitarrenkoffer auf und setzt sich auf dasselbe Gestell, auf dem schon die lesende Frau sitzt. Er legt sich hin und scheint einzuschlafen. Und das ist dann der Hauptteil der Performance. Sie liest, er schläft, neben ihm liegt der Gitarrenkoffer. Aber natürlich ist das nicht alles. Im Hintergrund fahren Autos über eine Brücke, vorne fahren andere Wagen auf die Kamera zu, manchmal laufen Kinder direkt an ihr vorbei und blicken auch mal scheu in ihre Richtung. Die Performance ist zu Alltag zerflossen und wird sich schlißlich aus diesem heraus wieder neu konstituieren. Denn am Ende von Upheaval passiert noch einmal etwas und zwar nicht nur in dem Sinne, in dem bei Lav Diaz ohnehin immer etwas passiert. Was da aber in diesem Fall passiert, das sei hier nicht verraten.”

Butterflies Have no Memory (2009): Ein Versuch in der kurzen Form, entstanden im Rahmen des Jeonju Digital Projects. Auf cargo-online schreibe ich: “Ironischerweise ist Butterflies Have no Memories gerade wegen seiner überschaubaren Laufzeit ein äußerst ungünstiger Einstiegspunkt in Diaz’ Werk: Wer die Vorgängerwerke kennt, für den lädt sich jedes einzelne Bild mit zahllosen Assoziationen und Querverbindungen auf. Auf alle anderen muss der Film zwangsläufig einen unfertigen Eindruck machen. Bis zu einem gewissen Grad bleibt der Film in jedem Fall ein Mysterium. Auch hier machen bereits die ersten Minuten klar, in wessen Welt man sich befindet: Die erste Einstellung zeigt ein Gespräch in einem Cafe zwischen Mang Ferding, der Hauptfigur des Films und einem Freund, die Kamera ist schräg hinter den Figuren positioniert, das seitlich einfallende Sonnenlicht blendet, lässt das Gesicht der Hauptfigur verschwimmen und verleiht dem Film bereits hier etwas Apokalyptisches. Das Gespräch dreht sich um die Schließung einer Mine, die für das Dorf, in dem die beiden Gesprächspartner leben, lange Zeit die einzige Erwerbsquelle war. Im Mittelpunkt des Films steht zunächst Martha, eine junge Frau, die in ihrer Kindheit nach Kanada ausgewandert ist und nun ihr Heimatdorf besucht. Sie trifft auf alte Freunde und neue Verehrer, stolziert zwischen abgerissenen Hütten umher, fotografiert mal dies, mal das und spricht mit jedem, dem sie begegnet, in ihrem lupenreinen Englisch. Währenddessen sitzen der langhaarige Mang Ferding und seine beiden Begleiter, die eher Untergebene sind als Freunde (Mang ist eine in mancher Hinsicht ähnliche Figur wie der ehemalige Rebellenführer Julian aus Melancholia) auf der Straße und trinken. Nicht erst, als Mang Martha seine Waffensammlung zeigt, ahnt man, dass sie gut daran getan hätte, in Kanada zu bleiben. Butterflies Have no Memory leidet vor allem in den Anfangsszenen sichtlich unter seiner zeitlichen Beschränkung, unter dem Zwang, Plotpoints setzen zu müssen, die sich nicht organisch aus seinem Material ergeben. Erst als der Film die düstere, selbstzerstörerische Wendung nimmt, die im Grunde bereits in der ersten Szene angelegt ist, kommt er langsam zu sich selbst. Eine ganz und gar echte Lav-Diaz-Einstellung ist nur die allerletzte. Diese letzte Einstellung allerdings ist eine seiner bizarrsten und furchterregendsten überhaupt.”

From the blog, The Canine Condition

Melancholia

2010-07-19T16:53:00.000-07:00

by Allan Fish

Just the night before first sitting down for the marathon sitting of Lav Diaz’s entire opus, I had been rewatching the flawed 1995 TV film England, My England, John Osborne’s final work detailing the life of Henry Purcell. It had the feel of a funeral, not just because of the use of Wendy Carlos’s reworking of the immortal Purcell ‘Funeral March of Queen Mary’ for A Clockwork Orange, but in addition to Osborne’s final work it was also the last performance of Robert Stephens as Dryden. So far, so how is this relevant?

And so it was that I took on Diaz’ masterpiece less than 24 hours later. A film that took me through a door that I thought had long closed and untouched since the heyday of Jacques Rivette. There had been long films since, films that would never be seen as commercial propositions, but Diaz was going further than anyone before. None of his films are on DVD, and this one wasn’t even his longest. It’s the only one I have been able to track down at the time of writing and is enough to convince me that he belongs in the higher echelons of cinematic visionaries still working today, with Lynch, Malick, Von Trier, Davies, Tarr, Haneke and Sokurov. All this from a film which could be argued as an oxymoron; the eight hour plea for cinematic minimalism.

Take three characters – a prostitute, a pimp and a nun – who live in the remote small town of Sagada in the Philippines. Their paths intersect at various points prior to their meeting in the ruins of an abandoned building one wet afternoon. What transpires is that these three people actually know each other and are enacting parts, escaping and withdrawing from a world which has become too painful following the assumed death of loved ones. The pimp Danny Boy is really writer Julian, the mastermind of the ‘process’, the prostitute Jenine is really Alberta, widow of a rebel and adopted mother to a girl, Hannah, who is close to falling into her own abyss. The nun is Rina, and she finally cracks, taking her own life and causing the other two to question their own mindsets.

Or that’s one take on it. Leaving aside the surface plot, just take in the detail, the pin-sharp monochrome hi-def photography, the deliberately natural sound which would make some dialogue inaudible but for subtitles, the way Spanish segues into English and back again, often in the same sentence, the way scenes don’t so much end as drift away before stopping abruptly. The camera barely moves, the characters moving slowly in and out of scenes so that the eye becomes quickly accustomed to examining the edges and far off distances of frames for characters or movement. Emotions are banished, exiled from the id, Julian organises sex shows for visiting tourists but the sex is at best mechanical, functionary, even tedious.

Stylistically, it probably owes most to Béla Tarr, while Diaz himself was obviously inspired by Lino Brocka (even the music is done by his own ‘group’, the Brockas). Still, though, we go back to Rivette, that ferryman across the Styx of the id to a Wonderland beyond even Lewis Carroll’s imagination. Diaz’s version is a forbidding place, where characters feel safer in the dark and light scares, where storm clouds, both figuratively and physically, gather overhead like vultures surveying carrion and any form of coping mechanism, or ‘process’ to use the euphemism of choice, is better than living with reality, even screwing men for money. While its creator, Julian, can be seen as a God, a Christ-figure who in one scene looks at first glance like he’s walking on water. The characters, especially in the opening reels, move as if in a trance and, suddenly as if hypnotised, I recall the words of Robert Stephens as Dryden the night before; “our world has disintegrated. We moved as in a dream, shadows without substance. Thus did our life become. ‘Tis all a cheat, yet fooled with hope men favoured the deceit. Trust on, and think tomorrow will repay, tomorrow’s falser than the former day.” Diaz’s film summed up, the sadness of the world as timeless as its joys.

From the blog Wonders in the Dark, July 18, 2010

Melancholia

2010-07-04T18:10:00.000-07:00

Horacio Munoz Fernandez

Un sólo ser nos falta y todo está despoblado .

Desde hace ya unos años se esta produciendo un interesante "seísmo" cinematográfico en parte del suroeste asiático, como lo atestiguan cineastas con un indudable talento : el indonesio Garin Nugroho , el camboyano Rithy Panh , los malasios James Lee y Tan Chui Mui o los filipinos Raya Martin y Lav Diaz , entre otros muchos , que nos acercan propuestas interesantes, radicales y provocativas , que nada tienen que ver con el mero exotismo oriental o con la moda pasajera de unos cuantos nombres.

"¿Pero , cómo se puede sentir el tiempo de un plano?. La sensibilidad surge si tras el acontecimiento visible se hace patente una verdad determinada e importante. Cuando se reconoce clara y nítidamente que lo que se ve en ese plano no se agota en aquello que se representa visiblemente [...]". Desconozco si Lav Diaz es conocedor de cine Tarkovski o si ha leído Esculpir el tiempo , pero en Melancholia el director filipino lleva hasta al paróxismo muchos de los principios que cineasta soviético pusiera por escrito en su famoso libro.

Y es que el tiempo se convierte en un elemento fundamental de la película , no sólo por su duración 450 minutos, sino por la forma por la cual Diaz lo fija en su cámara ,estática la mayor parte de los momentos, recogiendo interminables "tiempos muertos", acciones cotidianas , silencios y esperas que no hacen más que desvelar el abatimiento y la tristeza de unos personajes que no consiguen superar la desaparición de sus seres queridos.

El sueño de Godard era hacer películas ficción que fueran como documentales , Lav Diaz consigue crearnos la sensación de estar asistiendo a lo que los documentalistas llamarían una película de carácter observacional, en muchos instantes parece imposible que lo que vemos sea un ficción , una representación orquestada por alguien, que los actores estén actuando o que exista un guión prefijado.

"Un sólo ser nos falta y todo está despoblado " decía Alphonse de Lamartine. Los personajes que circulan por Melancholia , transmiten un sentimiento de tristeza , de abatimiento , provocado por unas desapariciones de sus familiares y seres queridos , instigadas por un gobierno 5 años atrás que para eliminar culquier atisbo de oposición, había realizado una limpieza de disidentes. Nada parece dar consuelo al ni a Julian , ni a Alberta , personajes que que quieren ser otros para intentar superar la perdida y la desaparición de sus familiares. Que huyen de sus vidas para ólvidar el drama del que están presos. Pero el drama de los desaparecidos , es un luto permanente. Una melancolía que se acrecienta por lo inútil de la búsqueda , y el remordimiento de haber podido hacer algo más. Un remordimiento que no hace más que acrecentar la certeza de la irreversibilidad del tiempo.

Una mujer, canta a capela una desgarradora canción en medio de la selva:"El aire es frio, frío está el corazón,el cielo es frágil, la melodía se desvanece, yo te busco, te busco , te busco, cuando la noche llama y el calor se aplaca , toma este momento y recuérdalo siempre. El advenimiento del dolor, causado por la angustia, permanecerá a mi lado, un recuerdo de tu presencia." . Patricia la mujer de Julian , aparece como un fantasma ,por dos ocasiones recitando solitaria estos versos que bien pueden aparecer como sinópsis de esta monumental película.

PUBLICADO POR HORACIO MUÑOZ FERNÁNDEZ (from the blog La Primera Mirada)

Melancholia: Lav Diaz

2010-04-11T05:32:00.000-07:00

Roberto Herrera

Existen películas y directores, hechas(os) en nombre de la libertad creativa y individual, que ignoran cualquier compromiso comercial que impere sobre el riesgo de su propuesta. En el primer día del festival se proyectó el film "Melancholia", realizado por el director filipino Lav Diaz, una pieza de 8 horas de duración que ya había sido premiado en la 65th mostra de Venecia, en la sección orizonti, y que en Rotterdam está seleccionado en la sección spectrum.

Es necesario un esfuerzo al analizar esta obra, para no caer en convencionalismos en el intento de clasificarla, pues al nominar en film como este, encuadrándole en un genero por ejemplo, seria el primer paso para tornarle más comercial. La palabra independiente ya es un síntoma de este tipo. Cuando hablamos de un cine hecho de forma libre, no es solo decir libre de lo comercial, pues seria más bien, libre de lo convencional, donde el único compromiso real es el del autor con su obra; del autor con el cine, y to lo que eso lleva implicado.

Estamos hablando de una película que podría ser muchas. Sus actores adoptan más de un personajes, entran y salen de la narración, viviendo en metamorfosis en otros caracteres, que se constituyen en una historia coral (al menos 3 líneas de narración son inseridas progresivamente, que mantienen lazos narrativos cada vez mas abstractos en la mediad que el tiempo transcurre). El momento crucial del film sería un dialogo consigo mismo que uno de los personajes (Renato) hace, mientras esta en floresta filipina luchando por la revolución de su país : "Porque hay tanta tristeza en este mundo? La felicidad es apenas un concepto? La vida del hombre es solamente un proceso para superar su dolor?”

En lo general, el film posee muy pocos diálogos, y ellos inseridos en acciones sencillas; como una persona buscando a otra por llamadas telefónicas (Julián a Alberta), o una monja que va por la calle pidiendo caridad ($$). El film se presenta sobre innumerables planos estáticos que al final se tornan secuencias estáticas. La estructura es: Un plano=Una acción interna=Una secuencia. Corte. Otro plano=Otra secuencia. Raramente el plano corta en la misma acción para resaltar una idea, o ver algún detalle, el concepto seria que exclusivamente a través de la larga duración del plano secuencia; el tiempo es suficiente para entender todos los detalles. De esta forma, cuanto más el tiempo se dilata, más la narración se abstrae, y como en que en un sueño los personajes van cambiando de cara, creando en el espectador una experiencia multi facial. Este dialogo que lo he citado, lo que seria el leitmotiv del film, ha sido dicho en la hora 7, después de un largo trayecto de los personajes metamórficos.. La estructura formal también mencionada, quedó bastante familiar después de las 8 horas, algo que me resultó en una gran dificultad al visionar otra película después de esta.

Una de las constataciones cinematográficas que "Melancholia" puede generar, es que se trata de un film absolutamente riguroso y conceptual, dado que el estricto estatismo formal vs movimiento interno, se mantiene fiel del primer minuto hasta al final de las 8 horas. Cual seria entonces el concepto del riguroso encuadre estático de la cámara de Lav Diaz? Son muchas las posibles respuestas para esta pregunta teórica; quizás demasiada personal para que un director se nos cuente, tanto que cuando entrevistamos a Lav Diaz, y le preguntamos sobre que el considera entonces un movimiento de cámara, su respuesta a sido a la no teoría de su cine; y que la libertad debe predominar por encima de cualquier concepto cerrado. Si Lav Diaz se pregunta si la felicidad es un concepto, lo hace seguro que la libertad que tiene para preguntarse, no lo es.

From the blog Imagemtexto

Evolution of a Filipino Family

2010-03-19T17:17:00.000-07:00

By Raya Martin

Everything is told, but nothing was ever written.

The decade closed like a baffling movie ending: film critics Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc were shot dead during a robbery in the former’s home in Manila. In addition to being one of the few defenders of true independent cinema in the region, Tioseco was also the greatest supporter of Lav Diaz, the Philippines’ standard-bearer of so-called contemplative cinema (or cinema of comatose, as Noel Vera puts it) and arguably the country’s most important working filmmaker. Yet his death also came at a time when the most recognized contemporary Filipino director, Brillante Mendoza, had just won the Best Director award at Cannes for Kinatay (2009), lamentably cementing the country’s identity as a purveyor of “poverty porn.”

Unlike Mendoza, who is a direct heir of Lino Brocka, Diaz’s references are more diverse. His films are founded in comic magazine literature (which Diaz wrote for in his early days), played in the style of traditional local melodrama, and strengthened by knowledge of foreign literature and film (Dostoevsky, Tarkovsky, Tarr). The result is like nothing else in Philippine cinema: part history class, part film history, and pure cinema. Batang West Side (2001), the first film outside his studio career and the first in what has now become his signature aesthetic, is a formidable example. The film is a crime story without any shoot-outs, a melodrama without the histrionics, yet everything is so very familiar, so Filipino that it would cover the gaps in our country’s best works: the thrillers of Mike De Leon, sophisticated ensembles by Ishmael Bernal, even Brocka’s social-realist tales.

Even after five epic works, varying in length from five to 12 hours, Evolution of a Filipino Family still stands as Diaz’s canonical achievement. Filmed from early 1994 to late 2004 and accompanied by a dynamic post-production, the film follows neither a traditional studio method nor the organic process of a Kidlat Tahimik, whose cinema is propelled by spontaneous ideas and intuitively constructed from hours of celluloid and video footage, whichever was available at the moment. By contrast, Diaz’s embrace of spontaneity and chance collaborates with the presence of a script, which he sometimes constructs a night before shooting depending on previously organized casting and locations.

Set during the martial rule of the Marcos regime, Evolution of a Filipino Family follows Raynaldo, an orphan rescued from a garbage dump by the mentally ill Gilda, who is soon after raped and murdered. Taken in by Gilda’s brother Kadyo, the boy is confronted by a grandmother who constantly blames everyone for their misfortunes, an uncle’s involvement with the rebels and the underworld, and granddaughters forced to work for their survival.

In a decade where veteran filmmakers were often more progressive than their younger counterparts, Lav Diaz preserved the spirit of local storytelling. Though reliant on a traditional narrative structure, Diaz’s cinema distends it drastically—not as aesthetic experiment, but in pursuit of a certain truth. Diaz claims that the sense of time in his films is based on that of rural people, and our repulsion (or admiration) lies in the fact that this truth is far distant from ours. Evolution then becomes a simple, honest reminder about cinema: whose story to tell, and how to tell it.

Diaz’s film is a selfless act of love, an achievement all the more exceptional in light of the fact that it was made on Third World soil, where cinema is condemned to the multiplexes and the hands of studio producers. It is an urgent film where an immediate audience does not matter; only when one comes to realize and accept the filmmaker’s generosity will he be able to fully appreciate the gift. Evolution’s grandeur is simple: it mirrors those complexities of our history that affect our people’s often misunderstood attitudes and ambitions. And much like the film, much like ourselves, the evolution remains unfinished.

From Cinema Scope, A Decade In Review

LIVING TIME, SURVIVING TIME

2010-02-27T16:25:00.000-08:00

An Overview of the Life and Films of Lav Diaz

By Jan Philippe V. Carpio

“I could never really believe that any artist could work only for himself, if he knew what he was doing would never be needed by anybody.”

“The only condition of fighting for the right to create is faith in your own vocation, readiness to serve, and refusal to compromise. Artistic creation demands of the artist that he ‘perish utterly’, in the full tragic sense of those words.”
 Andrei Tarkovsky

Unang Bahagi: Ang Alamat ni Taga Timog (Part One: The Legend of From the South)

Even though a once reliable memory betrays me for the exact details, some years back, somewhere in between films, some time after midnight, under roof or moonlight, perhaps over coffee (for at the time and until recently, he had sworn off taking any alcohol), Lav Diaz, the streaks of white much lesser then than they are now on his long, dark, rock star hair with or sans ponytail, narrowed his eyes that reveal a calm intensity as well as a deep sadness all at once for all they have witnessed and recorded up to that point, in a soft, low voice that reminds one of something encased in rubber and fuzz – but not at all artificial or unpleasant – said to me, “Filmmaking … It’s war man.”

Like any young person not wishing to displease someone he admires and looks up to, I nodded my head in agreement. Like any young person wishing to appear older and wiser beyond my years, I nodded my head as if I understood.

Nodding my head in agreement is pretty much all I am certain of to be true then since all I understood was the concept of the words, but it was only years later that, after my own experiences of bombardment, that I learned, in my own way, where their blood could be found spilled.

Southern Beginnings

Looking back at Diaz’s own beginnings, the statement relating filmmaking and war seems apt. He was born in Datu Paglas, Maguindanao, Mindanao, Philippines on December 30, 1958, the day Philippine National Hero Jose Rizal was executed by Spanish colonizers in 1896. One of the largest islands in the world, where the southernmost regions and provinces in the Philippines are located, Mindanao holds a paradoxical and misunderstood place in the country’s history and daily life. It is perhaps the greatest representation of the country’s undeniable multiethnic, multicultural background – composed of numerous indigenous tribes, ethnic groups, Christians and Muslims – but at the same time containing the long standing prejudices, and at times, deep hatred of each group for the other. One of the deepest centers for the country’s spirituality – indigenous, Christian and Muslim – it is also the site of numerous ethnic, political, religious and clan wars that have claimed many lives over the generations. Much of its natural life sustaining beauty is ironically preserved from commercial exploitation by this very situation of peace and order. It has a long and proud history of its people successfully fighting off Spanish and American colonizers, while more recently Muslim separatists have waged one of the world’s longest wars against the national government. Touted as the country’s food basket, it is also where some of the country’s poorest provinces are located, and a long history of being unfairly neglected by the national government when it comes to infrastructure development and distribution of resources. Containing areas in the country with the most potential for growth and development, it has also become a strategic military location and power playground for both the Philippine and American governments. Mindanao is an essential part of the country, but sadly, for the most part, for many of the citizens from the other parts of the Philippines, “what happens in Mindanao – the violence, the bloodshed, the suffering – stays in Mindanao. It has nothing to do with me.” All this seemed to change – albeit temporarily – last November 23, 2009 when Maguindanao became the site of the horrific Ampatuan Massacre. An electoral motorcade of around 60 people that included a local Muslim gubernatorial candidate’s wife and female family members, drivers, journalists and lawyers were on their way to file his certificate of candidacy at a nearby town. There were also a number of motorists who were not part of the motorcade driving behind them. Before they could reach their destination, they were stopped and pulled off the road by a large force of armed men, a private army allegedly under the command of the province’s reputed warlords, the Ampatuan family. (The Ampatuans are political rivals of the Mangudadatu family who were on their way to file the certificate of candidacy.) The private army was also allegedly in collusion with members of local law enforcement and the military. The victims were taken to a hill some distance from the road, horribly mutilated, shot and hastily buried along with their vehicles. National and international condemnation of the murders was so swift and intense that it pressured President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s administration – who has deep personal and political ties with the Ampatuan clan – to arrest their members and put them on trial. In an e-mail to writer Jessica Zafra regarding the massacre, Diaz wrote,

“Maguindanao… ang hirap, ang sakit. I’m numbed. Puro iyak at galit na lang ang nagagawa natin.” (Maguindanao… it’s so difficult, it’s so painful. I’m numbed. All we can do is grieve and be angry) (Zafra, 2009).

As a young man, Diaz had witnessed first hand the full price of loss from these conflicts when in 1971, while in high school in Maguindanao, a war erupted between Christians and Muslims where “he saw friends from both faiths killing each other.” The Diaz family became refugees and were forced to relocate away from the conflict to the town of Tacurong in the province of Cotabato (Manrique, 2006). In an interview with the late film critic Alexis Tioseco (2006), Diaz also recounted the deep wounds caused by the declaration of Martial Law in 1972 by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos and how this exacerbated the growing armed conflict in the region.

“I grew up during the Martial Law years. And my experience of Martial Law was very brutal. I was in second year high school when Marcos declared [Republic Act] 1081 upon the land. In Cotabato, the year before the imposition, the pent-up tensions between the Muslims and Christians had exploded into a full-scale war. It was bloody, very bloody, terrifying, horrifying. And it became bloodier during Marcos’ reign of terror. While Christians and Muslims were on a rampage butchering one another left and right, the military entered the scene with an even unheard of fascistic fierceness and cruelty. They’d set up checkpoints in all directions; they’d hamlet communities; they’d be declaring so many areas as no-man’s lands and shooting any person seen at will, no questions asked.”

These experiences of conflict, violence, death, pain and suffering, and living up to their responsibilities and consequences would later become an integral part of Diaz’s life and work. Despite the extreme difficulties, Diaz’s parents, both pioneer public school teachers of Datu Paglas, worked hard to properly raise Lav and his siblings. The third of three sons and one daughter, he seemed almost centrally cast at birth as the perfect filmmaker to record and investigate “the nature of the Filipino soul”. Even though he was born and raised in Mindanao, his late father Mario Vigilia Diaz was an Ilocano (an ethnic group from the northernmost part of Luzon island), while his mother Maria Linis Indico Diaz is an Ilonggo (an ethnic group from the middle group of islands of the Visayas). By blood, culture and residence, Diaz embodies his country’s multiethnic and multicultural background. Sharing Diaz’s Ilonggo ethnic heritage, I recall a humorous story he told me from his childhood that illustrates the ethnic and cultural differences between his parents. It was some time in the evening in Datu Paglas. The Diaz family was spending a relaxing evening at home, when suddenly, the silence of the night was disturbed by the sounds of “Tiktiktiktiktik!” coming from somewhere outside. (In Philippine culture, the tiktik sound indicates the presence in the vicinity of an aswang – one of the many types of Philippine supernatural beings that feast on human flesh and blood. Although belief in aswangs is prevalent all over the country, according to Diaz, their mythological origins can be traced back to the Visayas.) Upon hearing the sounds, his mother began setting fire to small pieces of tire rubber. (This gives off a smell that reportedly drives away the aswangs.) She then grabbed a bolo (Filipino machete), ran outside, and began screaming into the darkness in the Ilonggo language for the aswang to leave them alone or die. Instead of joining her outside, Diaz’s father merely shook his head and remarked to Lav in the Ilocano language something like, “There goes your crazy mother again.” Whereas his mother’s devout Catholic faith and strong spirituality may have played a part in influencing the spiritual nature of Diaz’s films, he credits his public school supervisor father for instilling in him a love for the film medium itself. During weekends, his father would bring the children to urban center of the province where they would “watch up to eight movies in movie houses that had double features” (Manrique, 2006).

“My father was really a ‘film maniac’," says Diaz. "We would watch all the movies on Saturday and Sunday, and then we would sleep in the bus station. My mother would be mad at my father because we had mosquito bites all over. That was really my early education on cinema.” (Manrique, 2006).

“Subliminally, my father was my film mentor. He is the quintessential cinephiliac. We were living in the middle of a forest in a far-flung village in Cotabato, Mindanao, but every weekend or [on] holidays we’d never miss [going to] the cinemas. There were four cinemas then in a nearby town, about two hours’ drive from the village, and they’d always show double bills and we’d watch them all and we’d talk about them after watching. And my parents are bookworms and storytellers and teachers. They read and read and read. My father was very much into Russian literature. They are very industrious and giving. So, yes, the dialectics and dynamics of that milieu have had lasting impact on my cinema and my view of this world” (Tioseco, 2006).
His father’s love of “ … Russian literature and all things Russian …” led to Diaz’s own love affair with Russian artists who became his artistic heroes like the great writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the filmmaker he holds above all others, Andrei Tarkovsky. (Manrique, 2006). Once, while attending a film festival in Russia, some of his hosts, upon discovering his full first name was Lavrente, their eyes wide with shock, asked him if he knew what it really meant. He replied that he was well aware that his father had named him after Lavrentiya Beriya (the infamous head of the Soviet Union’s NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB) (www.wikipedia.org). Perhaps a touch of ironic humor from his father aside, from the beginning, in the world Diaz grew up in, art eventually could have been perceived in three ways: one, as completely irrelevant in the face of horror, two, as an escape from the difficulties and conflicts of life, and three, as a way to make sense of the madness of life and somehow initiate a process of healing. Fortunately, from the beginning, Diaz had chosen to act upon the third more essential and deeper purpose. Healer and psychic Bong De La Torre once profoundly declared that for the islands and islands groups that make up the Philippine archipelago, Luzon is the mind, Visayas is the heart, while Mindanao is the belly where the fire rages. The same might be said of Diaz’s works which attempt to and have succeeded in combining all representative organs and their energies into one functioning organism of art, one film at a time. For a long time though, it was the fire from the conflicts in Mindanao and his early years there that had left their burn scars on Diaz’s life.

“I was stricken with paralysis when I was about eight years old and I couldn’t walk for more than a year. I struggled to relearn how to walk and when I was finally able to walk, I had to deal with a very dysfunctional body motor system—the pain in the bones of the left side of my body, particularly the left foot, remains a recurring problem until today, especially in severe cold and humid conditions. The trauma and shock and stigma stayed with me for so long. It was hell, I tell you” (Tioseco, 2006).

As a young adult, the war and the violence and suffering being experienced by friends and family there continued to afflict his thoughts. In order to be near to the scene of the tragedy, he decided to transfer from the Jesuit-run Ateneo De Manila University to its sister school back in Mindanao, Ateneo De Davao. Unfortunately, fraternity troubles caused him to get expelled. He enrolled at Notre Dame University in Cotabato where he eventually finished a degree in Economics (Manrique, 2006). Based on a lot of filmmakers’ personal histories, it seems a rare occurrence that one decides at a young age to become a filmmaker as one might plan to pursue other professions like doctor, lawyer, teacher. As Tarkovsky once declared, you should not choose cinema, it is cinema that chooses you. Diaz was no different. He originally wanted to become a musician and he pursued his dream vigorously by playing guitar in a band during his university years.

“The nascent Cotabato music scene embraced folk, rock, and eventually punk and Diaz, who was already composing songs by then—in English, Pilipino, Ilonggo and Maguindanao—formed a group called Cotabato. The band played local gigs, for which each member was paid P25 a night, along with a free burger and beer. Their goal was to make it to the rough and tumble Mecca of Pinoy rock, Olongapo City. The game plan was to immerse themselves in the ’Gapo club scene, get good and become the next Juan de la Cruz Band” (Caruncho, 2008).

Like a lot of university students in the Philippines, Diaz took Economics not out of personal choice, but as a way of fulfilling his parents’ wishes. Upon completing his degree, the next step would have been returning to Manila to take up music at the University of the Philippines. All this changed when he got married during his third year in college (Manrique, 2006). Based on the discouraging socioeconomic conditions in the Philippines then and at present, and unless one comes from a higher socioeconomic class (usually the elite), if choosing to take the path of the artist is extremely difficult to begin with, choosing this path while trying to raise a family at the same time is rare and usually at a tremendous personal cost, if not impossible at times. In his article on Diaz for the Sunday Inquirer magazine, writer Eric S. Caruncho (2008) recounts an incident one evening where after coming home from a band gig with the usual P25 honorarium (USD 1.84 as of the latest exchange rate), Diaz ended up smashing his fake Gibson guitar to pieces after getting into a terrible fight with his wife.

“Of course I regretted it the next morning, but it was too late. I lost interest in the band. I had a child, got a job. I got interested in literature, and then cinema. But I never stopped writing songs and poems. I can’t stop writing songs and poems—they’re the easiest for me to write” (Caruncho, 2008).

While trying to eke out a living for his family in Mindanao, his detour into writing paid off somewhat when one of his literary works won the Philippine equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize, the Palanca Award. Temporarily abandoning his musician dreams, Diaz set out to find the difficult balance between his personal artistic dreams and his domestic responsibilities as a husband and father.

“Manila, Manila, I keep coming back to Manila …”

In the 1980s, the final side in his love triangle of art came calling for him across the islands and seas when he decided to move his family to Manila to pursue filmmaking (Caruncho, 2008). While attending scriptwriting workshops under legendary screenwriter Ricky Lee who wrote several of the classic films from the Second Golden Age of Philippine Cinema – the generation of Lino Brocka – Diaz took on several jobs to support his family. He became a journalist for two tabloids, People’s Journal and Taliba, and later wrote for two television programs: Balintataw, a drama program, and Batibot, a children’s show. Lee eventually recommended him and two other workshops classmates to take filmmaking workshops at the Mowelfund Film Institute (Manrique, 2006). Most of the universities at the time did not offer filmmaking as a degree course and apart from the long and arduous process of “working your way up” in the commercial film industry to become a director, government grants from the film fund of the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, the only other avenue was the Mowelfund Film Institute. Diaz began attending workshops at Mowelfund in 1983, the year that fierce Marcos critic and hero Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino was assassinated as he stepped down from his flight from the U.S.A. onto the tarmac of the Manila airport (Caruncho, 2008). This prompted the largest funeral in Philippine history as well as encouraged further protests against the Marcos regime. His workshop facilitators included filmmakers of repute such as Raymond Red, Nick Deocampo and Christoph Janetzko. In one of the workshop seminars for scriptwriting, Diaz encountered National Artist for Film Lamberto Avellana who earned his reputation during the First Golden Age of Philippine Cinema. This meeting led to a memorable stint with the legendary filmmaker where Diaz gained much knowledge and inspiration on film, art and life in his search for his own personal aesthetics. He completed two short films at Mowelfund. The first film Banlaw was shot on Super 8 in 1985. The three minute film focuses on an early ancestor of the prototypical Diaz character: a good but deeply flawed man suffering from the terrible burden of a world gone mad on his shoulders decides to commit an ultimate act of sacrifice. In this case, a young man inspired by a television broadcast of a young Buddhist burning himself decides to walk naked and kill himself on the streets of Metro Manila in protest of the injustices committed by the Marcos regime. The second film “Step No, Step Yes” was shot on video in 1988 (Tioseco, 2006). Diaz’s recounted the experience of the “Step No, Step Yes” shoot:

“We shot three weekends in the squatters’ area in Pasay City called Leveriza, a very dangerous place then. On the last day of our shoot, a man was killed over an argument of his supposed nonpayment of a two-peso turon 5he ate. Bloody and scary, but we finished the shoot” (Tioseco, 2006).

More than the narrative that revolved around a peeping tom and a prostitute, Diaz’s account of the shoot seems to indicate the beginnings of his attraction for using technically and physically dangerous conditions and locations as valid but risky means for creating his art. The evidence of this artistic embrace of real danger continues to be present in his later work like shooting in the dead of winter for Batang Westside where the 35mm film camera gears would freeze, the dynamite blasting gold hunt scenes in Ebolusyon, shooting in actual typhoons and thunderstorms for scenes in Heremias and Melancholia, and the physical aftermath of super typhoon devastation along the slopes of the active Mayon Volcano in Death in the Land of the Encantos. (This affinity for extreme creative conditions – albeit on a technically smaller and more natural scale – Diaz seems to share with German New Wave filmmaker Werner Herzog.) In 1986, the Marco Dictatorship fell after the EDSA People Power Revolution. The Marcos family and most of their cronies fled the country. They returned later in the 1990s and exploited the Filipino people’s collective amnesia to unfortunately re-establish a significant amount of their fallen power and influence. By the late 1980s, Diaz was at least partially living his filmmaking dreams, but even while attending eye opening film workshops, gaining knowledge and experience from working with his classmates and mentors, artistic, professional, financial and personal difficulties continued to tear at him.

“Those were different times,” he recalls. “We were living on Basilio St. in España. There was no digital video then. There were 40 of us in Mowelfund fighting over the one 16mm camera. There were seven 8mm cameras but no film. If you were rich you could buy film but a roll of 16mm film was 80 dollars. It was a dead end” (Caruncho, 2008).

“… and even super 8 rolls were kind of expensive, to thrive as a filmmaker meant to go mainstream, the so-called ‘industry.’ And you know, the industry is the status quo and the culture there is very feudal. They protect their turf, they are wary of newcomers especially if you’re ‘schooled’. To break in was hardcore. That’s an understatement; I mean, it is really, really hard. More often, it’s more of swallowing your pride and accepting compromise as a norm. And if you didn’t know anybody, the only route was to write scripts and show them to people or enter them in competitions” (Tioseco, 2006).

Diaz’s first frustrating encounters with mainstream commercial filmmaking came with an assistant director stint for a Gil Portes film shot in the U.S.A., being one of a duo of writers chosen to work for the “King of Philippine Movies” Fernando Poe, Jr., and a comedy for Regal films. After his project at Regal ended, he decided to stop working in the commercial filmmaking milieu (Tioseco, 2006). Apart from the lack of proper film resources and venues, Diaz’ health began failing due to a deteriorating lung condition discovered by chance during a medical examination for one of his job applications. His treatment of heavy medication took a great toll on him physically and mentally.

“… for six months there was this very strict daily injection and popping of so many pills and tablets and liquids. The doctor warned me that if my lungs weren’t ‘cleared’ after the sixth month, there was a possibility that it would slide into lung cancer. I was high everyday, seeming to float when walking; my skin felt thick, numbed and itchy; sounds in my ears were muffled and magnified; my thoughts would go high speed and slow motion and backward and forward and up and down and east-to-west-to-north-to-south. I could walk for hours, I could go motionless for hours, I could be staring at a cockroach for half a day, people would look weird, my writing bordered on dementia, it was a crazy period. And Mowelfund was located then at the basement of the creepy Manila Bay Film Center of Imelda Marcos. Heard of the stories of the hundreds of workers buried alive there so that the ‘Madame’ could dance with George Hamilton on time, listen to the Russian piano prodigy and sing “Dahil sa ‘Yo” on a yacht going to Corregidor? Imelda is the supreme magic realist being” (Tioseco, 2006).

At that point in his life, Diaz felt physically and emotionally burned out. On top of everything, there was also the constant difficulty of providing proper living conditions for his family. A bleak situation he graphically describes with mixed emotions:

“In Manila, I had reached a dead-end. I was practically killing myself working in newspapers, my last [job] being a deskman in a Tagalog tabloid, and [I was also] submitting scripts in television serials, writing unproduced screenplays, writing scripts for komiks6. I was a book salesman while studying law; I wrote serious stuff that won Palancas; I won screenwriting and essay writing contests. But for what, my family was starving. We lived in Krus na Ligas, a squatters’ area inside UP Diliman, cramped in a tiny, rented room; we had to sleep in one small bed, the five of us—my wife and my three kids—we had to put chairs on the edges to keep our feet from dangling and be bitten to smithereens by ghetto mosquitoes and rats. All I could do was curse in silence while looking at my friends from film school shooting while I was working as a full-time family man. I didn’t regret being a family man because I love my children very much but like I said, we were at a dead-end; there was no relief in sight. And there was no digital then. At some point, I thought I could never do my films. Abandoning music was already a very painful experience (I destroyed my guitar and burned all my songs) and if I were to abandon cinema, I didn’t know what I would do. I couldn’t afford to kill my soul twice” (Tioseco, 2006).

“… If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere …”

Diaz’s situation in the Philippines had deteriorated to the point of frustration and despair till one of his film works became the unplanned catalyst for a new direction and a new location in his life.

“I arrived in New York on the 21st of July 1992. Fate brought me there. It wasn’t planned at all. A commissioned video documentary I did on the street kids of Manila was invited to participate in a multimedia exhibit-tour of key areas of the US. When I got to New York, a Filipino newspaper invited me to be part of their staff. I stayed and worked as one of their editors. New York provided me some freedom, aesthetically and economically. My decision to live in New York has been all about pursuing greater heights for my art while liberating my family from the clutches of poverty” (Tioseco, 2006).

Aside from the video documentary on Manila street kids, Diaz later “confessed” that his first film from Mowelfund Banlaw also played an important part in helping him get some footing in the New York art scene – albeit in a more “unofficial” capacity than the documentary.

“Time to ask forgiveness from Mowelfund: I stole the only copy [of Banlaw] before I left for the US in 1992. My act wasn’t deliberate though. I visited Mowelfund and I saw our works scattered on this long table. I mean, the films were scattered there—16s, super 8s, video tapes—and you know Mowelfund then, the doors were open twenty-four hours, and people were coming in and out, stoned, drunk, gaudy, haughty, hungry, horny and totally fucked up, or fucking each other, and spaced out. I saw Banlaw lying on the edge. It was actually on the edge of the table in its utter blackness and smallness, and a slight push would push it to oblivion. I was scared; I might as well get hold of it; I reckoned I would return it in better times. I grabbed it and slipped it in my bag. When I got to New York, it helped me connect with the struggling independents in the East Village; I have this badge, [this] little crude film to show them. It even saved me from going hungry; we’d do underground showings of shorts, in basements literally, and ask for donations. I kept transferring. I lost it in the process, in one of the basements in Jersey City, I believe” (Tioseco, 2006).

His wife and children eventually joined him in New York in 1997.

“The interim five years in New York, before he was joined by his family, Diaz considers as “defining years.” “[Being in New York] was an accident, but it was also fortunate because, there, my perspective on cinema was solidified: that one should never compromise,” says Diaz. He stayed in East Village, a virtual commune of “struggling artists,” hobnobbing with such people as Jonathan Larson, the creator of the musical Rent. To complete his apprenticeship, he buried himself in film books and attended film retrospectives whenever he could, learning from such masters as Welles, Tarkovsky, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, and Bresson” (Manrique, 2006).

It was at film screenings at New York’s famous art house theaters like the Film Forum where the further reaches and possibilities of cinematic expression began opening themselves up to him. Apart from his deep and almost religious devotion to Andrei Tarkovksy – whose works he claims to memorize by heart even though at one time owning only un-subtitled VHS PAL copies of the films – he also shared with me a personal first encounter he had with one of the works of the patron saint of independent filmmaking, the filmmaker I hold above all others, John Cassavetes. Sometime in between the years of his arrival and his family’s arrival in U.S., loneliness overcame him and he went out for a walk. He eventually found himself inside the familiar space of a movie theater watching a film by a filmmaker that he had never heard of. The filmmaker was John Cassavetes and the title of the film was “A Woman Under the Influence”. The film’s harrowing and compassionate emotional scenes completely crushed Diaz and helped illuminate many of his personal problems regarding his family that he missed terribly at the time. Like his experiences viewing Lino Brocka’s Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Light) and Tarkovsky’s works, “A Woman Under the Influence” reinforced his belief in the affective and transformative powers of cinema. Later, he told me in half laughter and half seriousness that to this day, despite the questions and incredulous looks of his guests, he keeps his copy of “A Woman Under the Influence” under the horror section of his film collection in New York. He channeled his renewed passion for filmmaking by embarking on several film projects, one of which would eventually become Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino which he began shooting in 1994. At one point, apart from his main job at the newspaper, he supplemented his income by working as a waiter and gas station attendant to help fund his film productions. Although the situation seemed to be improving for him in the U.S., during his first year in New York, unbeknownst to Diaz, tragedy had befallen his family back in the Philippines. Olivia, his only sister, perished in a car crash at the age of 31. His eventual knowledge of the accident, and deep shock over his sister’s passing put his own life into grave perspective.

"I was sitting on a bench in New York, one snowy day, and had lived, until then, the bohemian life. I had just gotten the news that my sister died. They had buried her without telling me. There and then, I realized that life is short. Just do what you have to do. Just put everything into praxis” (Manrique, 2006).

His re-immersion into life translated not only in his art but also his lifestyle as he became a vegetarian and completely gave up vices like drugs, alcohol and smoking (Manrique, 2006). Beginning from Batang Westside onwards, his production company Sine Olivia is perhaps named in homage to his late sister. A deeper homage to her can also perhaps be found in the character of the Hilda Gallardo, the insane woman whose rape and murder her son Reynaldo avenges but continues to be haunted by in Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino. Loss, though still ultimately lacking in the end, can perhaps find no better tribute than in art. An insight that would eventually find itself pushed past even the extreme limits of memoriam in Diaz’s subsequent films.

Jan Philippe “JP” V. Carpio is a writer, filmmaker, performer and teacher living and creating in Metro Manila, Philippines.

Bibliography

Caruncho, E. S. (2008, October 12). To Hell and Back with Lav Diaz. Sunday Inquirer Magazine. Retrieved February 18, 2010 from http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/sim/sim/view/20081012-165978/To-Hell-and-Back-with-Lav-Diaz
Manrique, D. (2006, September 17). Lav Diaz: A Portrait of the Artist as a Filmmaker. from http://www.pinoyfilm.com/lav-diaz-a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-filmmaker

Tioseco, A. (2006, January 30). A Conversation with Lav Diaz: Indictment and Empowerment of the Individual: The Modern Cinema of Lav Diaz. Retrieved February 19, 2010 from http://criticine.co /interview_article.php?id=21
Zafra, J. (2009, December 22). Lav Diaz, filmmaker from Maguindanao, on Maguindanao. from http://www.jessicarulestheuniverse.com/2009/12/22/lav-diaz-filmmaker-from-maguindanao-on-maguindanao/

Wikipedia. (2009, December 2). from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lav_Diaz
Wikipedia. (2010, February 12). from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria

The article is from The Auteurs (http://www.theauteurs.com/topics/7900)

Heremias

2010-02-11T09:56:00.000-08:00

By Film Angel

The nine-hour epic is my pick as best Filipino film of the 2000s. It has a great start (probably the best initial two hours of a Lav Diaz epic), and a great cliffhanger of an ending. In between are amazing images and captivating stories. The tale of a Japanese straggler and the legend of the scary lizard deserve to be turned into separate films. Credit must also go to Ronnie Lazaro's excellent performance as Heremias.

I love this Malay time-inflected film! It is a joy to see such laid-back film with lots of extended takes. French film critic Andre Bazin remarked that a long take allows viewers to settle on the shot and gives more freedom as to where to look. The freedom given to viewers is exhilarating. There is a danger though of viewers tuning out or growing restless.

The first hour sets the pace of the film. It consists of several 10-minute or so long takes. The static shots focus on a handful of Brahman bull-drawn carts traversing a highway. The somber black and white cinematography enthralls the moviegoer to take a meditative look on the swaying grass blades and the zooming motor vehicles overtaking the carts. The lushness of the ambient sound enhances the contemplative experience.

The film slowly lures us into the unhurried world of roving handicrafts vendors. I enjoyed this segment of the movie. Director Lav Diaz reveals beauty in the routine activities of the joyful vendors and their families. The local adaptation of the children’s song ‘Where is Thumbkin?’ has never been sung with much gusto as in this film. Songs, stories, food, and liquor figure prominently in the world of close-knit villagers. Eating and drinking become main occasions of communal life. The drinking sessions in particular are not only entertaining but flesh out the characters.

The titular character, Heremias, seldom joins the men on extended drinking sessions. Thus, he ends up being the butt of stories. The elder of the group advises the men to just mind their own business and leave Heremias alone. During the course of the trip, Heremias chats with the elder. He wants to veer away from his companions. Despite friendly warnings about possible mugging and the prospect of running straight into a supertyphoon, he defiantly changes course and chooses the less-traveled road.

There is a shot of the white Brahman bull plodding through the bumpy, rough road as seen from the eyes of Heremias. From that point on, the film shifts gear and thrust the viewer into the point-of-view of Heremias. The willing viewer gets to see and hear what he is experiencing.

Contemplative moments abound in this film. There is a majestic, meditative scene showing a seated Heremias wading in the middle of a river. He is looking at a distant mountain. This scene prefigures a similar scene of a young Heremias looking at the Mayon Volcano in Book Two of Heremias. These meditative moments compel the viewer to ask what is exactly bugging the problematic merchant.

Slowly, the character of Heremias comes to light. A dark deed in the past continues to hound him. Random encounters with people inevitably remind him of his past. Their tales allude to his dark side. However, his bouts with contemplation and a strong typhoon wash away anger in his heart. He withholds at the last second his plan to kill a suspected thief.

Heremias seeks out the person/s responsible for the theft of his goods and his bull. Just as night falls, a group of young people holes up in his stakeout place. What Heremias (and the viewer) will see and hear for the next hour is disturbing enough to make people walk away. Try to imagine seeing drug crazed people doing despicable acts for almost an hour. Add to that shattering experience the cuss words and lewd stories rifling out of their foul mouths. These acts are light-years away from contemplative moments experienced by Heremias. He may have been itching to walk away but cannot because he might miss out on something important. He (and the viewer) patiently waits. The waiting took the whole of the penultimate hour but no earthshaking info came out of it.

Paradoxically refreshed from the draining segment, I later caught on with the important plot info. The last hour of the film saw me eagerly anticipating Heremias’ efforts to rescue a young girl. After exhausting major means of saving her, the prophet-like Heremias gets kicked out of town by the police chief and left unconscious in the forest. Upon waking up, he implores God to save her. He hikes off to the mountains and vows to fast for 40 days. Redemption comes at last to the troubled wandering merchant.

I’ve seen a two-hour preview of Book Two and it lives up to the high standards set by Heremias [Book One: The Legend of the Lizard Princess]. I hope Diaz can finish Book Two so that viewers can finally grasp the answers to lingering questions such as: What happens to the young girl? What are the dark secrets of reticent Heremias? Will Book Two equal the excellence of Book One?

From the blog, the persistence of vision, February, 2010

From one ordinary viewer to Lav Diaz – man of the digital people

2010-01-29T21:37:00.001-08:00

From Sonthaya Subyen/Filmvirus

August 2009

Goodness! You actually did it. You were crazy enough to take up our invitation to come to Thailand. Astonishing to think that a passing reference to you and Andrei Tarkovsky on my blog could deliver you to us like this.

Wasn’t it great though? The cinephiles in Bangkok surprised us all with their response to your films. Before the retrospective began I had to battle with the dreaded thought that us organizers would have to double up as your viewers. You’d turn up and get angry about how badly your retrospective was going – hardly any viewers, inadequate sound system and projector. I was already preparing myself in case we got raised eyebrows from our main venue, who made us rent our own equipment to use in their auditorium, and I resigned myself to getting an earful from you as well. Not so as it turned out. Our viewers were far more engaged than I’d anticipated – they were actually prepared to sit, or recline, for hours and hours watching your films. They even laughed along with the humorous moments in them. And you were far easier to talk to than I’d expected.

I guess I could blame my pal Filmsick for stressing me out before you turned up. He’d posted a terrifying image of you on his blog, the one of you leaning fiercely over a table taken at the Venice film festival. The posture was so alarming I had to imitate it for you the night we went to that bar by the river. Based on that photo, whenever people asked me whose retrospective it was that I was organizing, I would reply “Carabao”. I hope this doesn’t offend you. I’m not talking about the word for buffalo in Tagalog. I’m thinking of a Thai band famous for their ‘music for life’ style. In fact, I even joked to my friends that if you blew us out at the last minute I’d invite any of the Carabao band members to come and make an appearance instead. You guys look alike enough – long hair, jeans, goatee – we would have gotten away with it. The only catch being we would have had to pay these Carabao guys some several hundred thousand baht, whereas you and Alexis turned up out of your own pockets. Your coming to Bangkok was a sincere, friendly gesture, and we Filmvirus people loved you for that.

I can still vividly recall those amusing stories you told us, about how some student once accused you of not using hair conditioner, about how you accidentally featured a pop-up umbrella in a film you were working on, set in the Japanese occupation period. These memories are as deeply etched inside me as the afternoon we took you to see Khrua In Khong’s temple murals, hopping on a bus at Wat Arun, an afternoon which extended well into the night. That night ended memorably too with a ghostly encounter – all of us heard the same eerie, spectral moaning from one of the speakers attached to a public lamppost. And let’s not forget the consensus we stumbled on – all five of us around that table seemed to find Pen-ek’s films uniformly hollow. You really surprised me with your friendliness, and your entertaining conversations. You even bothered to ask me about my publishing projects, and the state of my health, about which you advised a daily dose of Wonderbra. Sorry! Wonderplant leaves. Of course I also discovered your intense cinephilia. You watch the classics – Mirror, Last Year at Marienbad – and the contemporary films – Abbas Kiarostami, Claire Denis. If I hadn’t happened to pop into a bookshop to buy Tarkovsky’s diary translated into Chinese, and the novel Picnic at Hanging Rock, I would never have found out about the extent of your knowledge of other people’s films. No wonder you got my joke about responding to Nicole Kidman the way Roberto Rossellini did to Ingrid Bergman – if Kidman ever wrote to you asking for a job.

There’s one thing I’m really curious about. Before you started turning your back on the market, on the majority audience, you used to make fully commercial films. I’m really curious about these films, made before Lav Diaz became Lav Diaz. Can’t begin to imagine what they’re like. Probably melodramatic, wildly emotional, am I right? Are they anything like those excessively dramatic radio soaps you show in Evolution of a Filipino Family? I’d really like to know too what you make of Filipino films in general, and what you think about those chaotically energetic entertainment films our hot humid region of Southeast Asia churns out. (If you ever want to know what would happen if you crossed the Famous Five stories with superstition, sci-fi, Seven Samurai and the TV series Six Million Dollar Man, don’t forget to check out a Thai film called Yod manut computer/Supercomputer Man. It’s a great example of the cultcult Thai movie.)

The Philippines probably has its fair share of over-the-top, cultish horrors. As far as I’m aware, Filipino filmmakers used to make B-movies for the Americans – mostly low budget gross-out horrors and women-in-prison shockers in the style of Roger Corman, or some such. Before you enrolled at that Goethe workshop with Christoph Janetzko (teacher of Raymond Red and our very own Paisit Punpreuksachat, also Pimpaka Towira), before you got into films, like Lino Brocka’s, that scraped the hard skin underneath the feet of politicians, was there ever a part of you that loved home-style entertainment movies? I get the impression there are many similarities between our national film cultures. So perhaps before you became the Lav Diaz who makes films at the very limit of our idea of cinema, before you became our digital hero, you may once have fallen under the spell of the 100% entertaining entertainment film too.

Since we both share a common ancestry, our dubious parallel heritage of nonsensical, instant noodle films, I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you about the Thai films of days long past. The films that were made before consciousness, morality, aesthetics, or plain old affectation took over, resulting in the robotic standard of propriety that imposes itself on Thai films today.

Back then Eden was filled with cheapie home-style movies, sincere in their transparency of purpose: to make a bit of dough by getting stars to do whatever they did most lovably in front of the camera. That was more than sufficient, economically speaking. The consciousness of the director as auteur was about a zillion kilometers removed, the demand for serious content was met, backhandedly. Miss Morality was always wheeled out, hurriedly, in the final closing minute – that was enough fodder for social decency. (Don’t get me wrong, the filmmakers meant well enough. It’s just that amusement went the opposite direction of aesthetics, and refused to exit the garden of infantile pleasures.) These were the days before the mass arrival of new waves figures such as Prince Chatrichalerm Yukol, Cherd Songsri, Khunnavutr, or Permpol Choei-arun, whose socially responsible films earned them the sacred halo of quality. Before they took over, we could boast of films once so ‘primitive’ that foreigners who get the chance to see them today would begin to understand that the stork didn’t deliver Apichatpong Weerasethakul to Thailand. We needed more help than that – perhaps some artificial insemination concocted by the gods of cinema.

Well, let’s face it, Thai films back then answered only to their own odd logic. Kids these days probably can’t begin to imagine what they were like, these films which were held captive to the monogamous coupling. Whoops! The monopolistic pairing of the leading man and lady. They’d also have to get used to the theatrical style of the voice performers, who gave our leading couples exaggeratedly crystalline intonation. This was the same period as the first generation of TV soaps, broadcast in black and white and performed live. Viewers bore witness to everything, the mistakes, the whispered prompting which sometimes had to be repeated several times before the actors could pick up where they left off. It’s true that, when compared to the TV soaps, the films of this period could at least edit out the mistakes. At least they used actual locations for background, rather than cheap wooden boards painted the texture of the sky or sea. But if we were to go further and speak of the 'lighting composition' of these films, we’d have to admit that the light did all the composing. All the human hand had to do was to shine as much light as was maximally possible onto the set. The heroines were over-the-top too, going to sleep in full makeup in a bedroom electric bright all the way from the foreground to the background. (This was the reason why this cinema’s biggest star, Petchara Chaowarat, went blind.) And what about the camera? With its love of the rapid zoom in and out, it made viewers travel through space faster than even the time machine itself.

The members of the cast: the mother and father, the minor royals, the major dignitaries, the servants, the baddies, the jealous mistress, the comedians positioned by the throne and the spittoon ready to massage and humor their masters, and don’t forget the sex bombs. All of these characters would line up in a single file in front of or behind the sofa, mouthing the longest dialogues – the lines that set sail and got lost, drifting further and further into distant water. The unfunny formula of getting the lines wrong then right then right then wrong again and again and again. (Just like what I wrote.) The lines that sometimes strayed below the belt (literally), playing for time while the couple inched their way back to their abode. That’s right, the taproot of likay folk opera runs deep in Thai cinema. This is a truth not recognized by the new wave army just mentioned, or the teen filmmakers of the Tai Entertainment era (mid-1980s to 1990s), intent as each of them were to scrub Thai films clean of their primitivism. This trajectory they call progress has since delivered us the company GTH (Gmm Tai Hub), whose films display not an iota of awareness that the more they try to create decorative, trendy mise-en-scenes, the further their films stray from the lives of ordinary people. This is why us oldies, who have fallen out of the trend, have had to flee into the embrace of TV, both as viewers and producers.

But once upon a time there was a pair of stars I followed passionately, called Sombat Methanee and Aranya Namwong. Their names resonate so strongly still among the folks of my generation. Every time I think of the first Thai film in my living memory their faces come to mind. Up to the 1980s, Thai cinema was a cinema of a handful of stars, coupled off in pseudo-romantic pairs. The last of these was the pairing of Jintara Sookkapat and Santisuk Promsiri. There wasn’t the kind of inflation of stardom you see now. Mit Chaibancha and Sombat each starred in god knows how many movies a month. They literally had no time to sleep. Every time a scene was shot of the hero climbing up to a helicopter, whoever financed that film would reach for the nearest prayer book. (Back then the stars did their own stunts. No sling, no stunt – we had that long before Ong Bak laid claim to it. In fact that was how Mit, the number one leading man before Sombat came along, met his death – plunging off a rope ladder dangling from a helicopter mid flight.)

At the height of his fame Sombat could probably be compared to Gérard Depardieu, the French ex-superstar. He could star in any genre – drama, action, but was in his element in smutty comedies. You could say of all the James Bonds he was most like Roger Moore. Even better was the fact that he had a fine voice, and had been a singer before he became a star. Compared to Sombat, Mit was a leading man in another style – polite, modest, a gentleman both on the screen and off. He was probably more like Sean Connery.

As for the content of films Sombat starred in, there wasn’t much to worry about. In those days if the filmmakers didn’t adapt, or mangle, a novel, they’d make up their own plot. In most cases they’d steer clear of realism or serious content. The stars were so busy working on so many films at the same time they didn’t have time to change their hairstyles to suit each role. And why bother? When their fans loved them as they were, wanted to see them in the kind of stories they were used to, and devoured the sight of their smiles and body language in a manner that they could identify with. Intellectual affectation really wasn’t an appropriate accessory to these films.

The first love is always the best love, right? Although I came to admire male stars like Pairoj Jaising, Pairoj Sungwoributr, Kanchit Kwanpracha, Yodchai Meksuwan, Sorapong Chatree, and Thoon Hiranyasap, each for different reasons, Sombat still remains the number one for me. The fact that he’s been in all sorts of atrocious films (including that one, Tears of the Black Tiger) doesn’t change the way I feel for him. Once I even went as far as to seek out his biography, called Pen phra-ek sa jon dai/A Star at Last. It claims he’s been entered in the Guinness Book of World Records as the man who’s starred in the greatest number of films, more than 617, and opposite at least 87 leading ladies.

So are you beginning to see now how much of this rubbish is in me, Lav? This wasn’t the side of me I revealed during our conversations. How I would like to have a go at making a film in this primitive style, the type of film that might end with a twist revealing the hero to be a police captain in disguise, sent on an undercover mission. I’d especially like to lay my hands on our very own kind of romcom. But there would be no point in doing this only to pay sentimental homage to the films of the past, or to express a yearning for the good old days. And of course there would be no point at all in satirizing them. Anyone who wants to cite these films in the present would have to do so with understanding and attachment. They can neither blindly elevate the films nor raise themselves above them. And let’s hope the result would differ from Tears of the Black Tiger and The Adventures of Iron Pussy (although I do like this film of Apichatpong’s).

Is my letter getting too long for you, Lav? I hope not, since you make 11-hour films. Like I said to you in person, sitting through your films made the tender skin on my buttocks so sore I had to rub Tiger balm on them (true story); to which you replied, “Sorry man”. So consider this my turn to claim your time.

The point of telling you my shaggy dog story is this: I wanted to let you know that Sombat Methanee has directed films too, 16 in total if I’m not mistaken. No, they’re not particularly good, but I expect many Thais remember them still. The most memorable one for me is Salakjit, with Sombat in the leading role opposite the young Jarunee Suksawad (think of Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in Charade). But let me tell you about his fourth films, Yae nuad sua or, in English, Operation Black Panther.

That’s right, black panther, though on the credit titles roams a pink panther in the style of a Blake Edwards’s Inspector Cluzot film. In Sombat’s film the Black Panther is the name of a terrorist organization up to no good as usual. In films like this one, if terrorist organizations are not bent on conquering the world then they’re busy killing this or that person. Think of Dr Fu Manchu or James Bond. Everyone in the Black Panther organization wears a mask. The punishment dealt to those lower down the line of command includes the 007 trick of throwing them into the panther’s cage.

What does our hero Sombat have to do with this sinister organization? Well, the nonsensical pretext is that our hero happens to be addicted to mystery novels of the Sherlock Holmes, Arsène Lupin or James Bond varieties. By a series of mishaps the Black Panther takes him for one of their assassins, so our unwitting hero has to carry out the tasks assigned to him.

The assassin from Harvard falls at the first hurdle. He turns up late for work forgetting to load the bullets in his gun. For this piece of stupidity our assassin becomes the man wanted by the organization.

It’s the moment Sombat appears in one particular scene that I would like to make you, Lav Diaz, party to history (this history which is so important to me). It’s the moment of his arrival in Siam Square.

Do you remember Siam Square, Lav? On it sits New Light restaurant where our 20 strong group ended up, on its third floor, after the opening night of your retrospective. Thirty odd years separate the New Light we ate in and the New Light in the film, but in terms of its architecture and atmosphere not a great deal has changed. The shops around it have though – god knows when the Hard Rock Café suddenly cropped up. Back then the clothes, the hairstyles and the taxis looked very naff, but Sombat’s car more than compensates for these lapses in taste. It’s a car that doesn’t look as pretty as Herbie, and at best it’s only a distant relative to the Mini Cooper. But what it has that the other cars lack is two front parts. That’s right, two front parts facing the opposite direction with one steering wheel in each part.

Better late than never as they say. The comical honking of a car horn announces the arrival of Sombat’s silly yet useful vehicle. He may be late for his assassin’s job, but the compact size of the car means our hero can squeeze into the meagre gap that passes for parking space in Siam Square’s crowded hive. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the square that never gets lonely, whatever the age.

Here we are in the parking space in front of New Light restaurant. The spot where Thailand’s leading politician, the arch enemy of the Black Panther, is about to get popped off. He will walk out of the restaurant after his meal and get into his car right here.

Meantime Sombat is waiting opposite the restaurant, the same side of the square as the Doungkamol Bookshop. In the frame you get a crystal clear view of the shop’s sign: D.K. Bookhouse, the original branch of the book company I used to work for, the company that used to publish good books for generations of readers. The company that gave a space for D.K. Filmhouse (Filmvirus), those good people who brought to you astonishing, unusual films (aren’t we modest!) – films like Lav Diaz’s (boundless loyalty).

Next up the chase scene, the universal part of cinematic language that’s been around right from the start, in the films of cinema’s forefathers the Lumières and especially in D.W. Griffith’s films. The scene we’re watching right now records the chase across Bangkok from Siam Square to the Golden Pagoda.

No matter how hard the villains chase him Sombat always eludes their grasp. His weapon is the pocket car’s time saving genius. Whenever he finds himself hounded into a tight corner, Sombat would jump across into the other seat with the steering wheel. In this way he could drive off the opposite direction without wasting time reversing the car. Little Red’s double fronted model is a marvel of motor design giving the car the agility of a town mouse.

This was Thai cinema’s answer to the James Bond or other spy thrillers of that period, its effort to match the genre’s formula featuring the talented, charming hero, the ladies’ man with his latest technological or motor gadgets. The gadget in Sombat’s film was novel enough for me at least. The kid that I was then was dumbfounded by the sight of it, which made me fantasize about getting my very own toy version to play with.

Fast forward to the end of the film, the hero and heroine now sit behind each steering wheel taking turns to drive Little Red through narrow lanes dodging the enemies hot on their heels. The end arrives for this trusty little car when action girl on the enemy’s side has a stroke of genius and shoots multiple bullets down the middle of the mini where the two front parts are joined. Oh what a shame, amidst the shower of bullets raining down on it, our little mini becomes almost crippled. The steering wheel still works all right, but the back part of the car now trails limply scraping the road surface. Our hero has no choice except to rely on brawn, and pure luck, to get him out of this final tight spot.

Of course no hero of this period could be a hero without martial arts skill. The other more interesting skill that heroes also needed to have, and Sombat had in spades, was sex appeal. In both the films that he starred in, and the films that he directed, Sombat didn’t shy away from bringing out this quality of his. Every now and then during a film’s running time, ladies adorned with only the bottom half of their two-piece would cling to him (in a manner that no grade-A Thai films these days would dare to do). He’d show off his toned muscles posing in small underpants, the color of bright canary yellow in some films. Sometimes he’d receive multiple blows from the villains, who’d end the lesson dealt to him by stripping him down to his red underpants. Even more astonishing still are the details in the biography I mentioned earlier. Sombat freely discloses in this book his tricks for the love scenes, his experiences in brothels (regarded as acceptable in those days), and even his tete-a-tetes with homosexual men – in the kind of saucy details that beggar belief that a leading man would dare to reveal this much of his life.

Oh yes, I could carry on for days and days telling you more nonsense of this kind, Lav. But I don’t know if you yourself have any fondness left in you for silly, obsolete movies like this. (Or is your foot now itching to thwack the tender spot on my buttock where Tiger Balm was applied?) Yes of course the good old days are only a myth. Knockabout films like Luk sao kamnan/The Henchman’s Daughter, Mue peun nom sod/Fresh Milk Gun Man, or Kai luk khoei/Son-in-Law Eggs may have been part of the sweet scent of my past, but I have long been carrying this immense anger against Thai cinema too. Maybe I shouldn’t expect so much from something that’s as close to me as this. Maybe I should accept what’s real, make peace with Thai cinema in all its limitations, and give up nursing the hope that one day this thing will change into what it isn’t. But then again I’m probably blind to the value of Thai films as a kind of social barometer. I could try harder to fall in love with lowbrow kitsch, to delight in writing about them as a kind of alchemic reinvention – the kind of film criticism that Filmsick does so brilliantly. But then again I lost my head so long ago to the films cultural institutes of the west used to show. I guess you could call my submission to their activities a form of ‘colonial’ inculcation.

As I write this sentence a strangely bitter laugh wells up inside me, yet brings with it a warm glow I experience so rarely in life – a sudden feeling of safety and belonging. Who knows what this is all about – perhaps it’s a sign of the last remaining thread that still binds me to this nation of mine. It’s only a strange thread, though, neither like Spiderman’s nor the web of the Black Widow.

What about you, Lav? Have you ever been in this position? Have you ever had to work through bittersweet attachment like this one? Please send some advice. Tell me how you manage to stay on your feet in the business of cinema that’s so far removed from the realities of Filipino society.

With respect,
and proud to have met you,

Sonthaya Subyen

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Sonthaya Subyen founded Doungkamol Filmhouse, or D.K. Filmhouse, in 1995. D.K Filmhouse continues to program screening tours around university campuses in Bangkok and other provinces. Sonthaya writes film and literary criticisms for several magazines and is the publisher of the Filmvirus and Bookvirus paperback series.

Translated by May Adadol Ingawanij

From criticine.com (Love Letters)
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Tiré à part

2009-12-01T03:40:00.000-08:00

Nicolas Giuliani

La terre s’est ouverte sous nos pieds. Le paysage s’est déchiré
de l’intérieur – un cyclone est passé, le monde a tremblé dans
cette fureur. La mer a avancé dans les terres, des villages ont
été arrachés, retournés, vomis dans des champs de pierres
et de cadavres. Le monde des hommes a cessé de tourner,
frappé au corps de son souvenir. Des hommes hagards, le
visage retourné, sortent de terre, descendent des arbres. Ils
reviennent d’un coin du monde qui les a protégés – une cachette,
un abri, un trou. Ce sont des survivants. Ce sont peut-être des
fantômes, le grand drap du cinéma est tombé.
Ça commence comme un balbutiement, après le drame, dans
un paysage apocalyptique. Lentement, les hommes reprennent
la tâche, et dans l’air recommencent le geste. La parole
remonte jusqu’à nous. Lav Diaz est là. Il enregistre, il filme ces
visages, ces hommes qui se tiennent debout et racontent. Il
faut réparer, avancer, compter les morts, faire d’un paysage
ce que l’on fait d’un visage familier soudainement secoué par
une émotion inconnue : le comparer avec le précédent, étudier
sa disparition, ce qui le renouvelle – le dépaysager. On retrouve
sa maison encastrée dans celle du voisin. Chacun a ses
confessions. « Ma mère est partie. Où sont mes enfants ? Mon
pauvre père. » Une blessure profonde tient le monde au ventre,
une béance – quelque chose est passé dans le réel, un gouffre
s’est ouvert dans la matière, sous nos pieds de spectateurs.
Mais un homme pleure. C’est Benjamin Agusan, un poète
philippin revenu de la Russie d’où il réside. Il est tombé à genoux,
il empoigne de la terre. Et comme si un mouvement plus sourd
provenant de sa volonté était aussi à l’oeuvre, il s’arrête. Tout
semble brusquement plus vide dans ce plan qui résonne. La
tristesse est immense. Lav Diaz a invité la fiction dans le réel.
Et alors qu’on tremblait en se demandant que faire de cette
beauté, de cette souffrance, Benjamin Agusan arrive à point et
prend en charge notre regard à la dérive. L’appréhension du
réel se fera par détournement, par le biais de la fiction. Mais ce
postulat romanesque est aussi une offrande érigée en principe
cinématographique : le documentariste a besoin de la fiction
comme d’une nécessité afin de saisir la complexité du réel, sa
fuite en avant, son bruit mat et sourd, sa profonde finitude et
digérer ainsi, modestement et avec sincérité, la fracture qui
se trouve entre le monde et nous, entre le réel et sa possible
représentation. Il y a une angoisse de la représentation,
une peur profonde de la forme qu’empruntera le réel pour
se mouvoir en elle – comment dire la mort, la blessure, la
mutilation ? Sans doute le documentaire, plus qu’aucune autre
expression artistique, se trouve-t-il à la frontière du visible et
de l’indicible. On montre le réel, on le révèle, ou on le cache.
On le soulève, on le déracine, on le surprend. De fait, il est
aujourd’hui entendu que Lav Diaz est comme tous les grands
cinéastes un documentariste, c’est-à-dire un filmeur qui élargit
les possibilités d’expression du réel par le biais de la fiction.
Benjamin Agusan pleure, il est le visage délaissé de ce
paysage de la désolation. A cet instant il est le caractère de
la compassion, et à cet égard le double du spectateur : il nous
relaie mais nous renvoie aussi une autre image. Nous voilà
calés sur le point de vue cinématographique de Lav Diaz : le
plus souvent la focalisation est externe et l’observation de la
situation prime sur son explication. La place du spectateur est
immense, et sa tâche doit être à la hauteur des espérances qui
sont fixées en nous : il faudra suivre le parcours de Benjamin,
affronter le deuil, la perte, l’errance, chanceler sous le poids
du souvenir et de la nostalgie, rêver d’amour, se heurter à la
mort et à la haine du pays natal. Le cinéma de Lav Diaz procède
par recouvrement et fixe son interrogation dans la question la
plus belle et la plus tragique de notre existence : celle de la
disparition. Etre au réel ou être au monde, c’est toujours faire
l’expérience de son inachèvement – un cinéma du réel nous
fait constater cette fracture, ce manque, cette absence. Cette
dimension du recouvrement s’inscrit dans le fer de la poétique
de Lav Diaz, car c’est un cinéma de la quête qui nous demande
à la fois de nous retourner et de nous avancer ; un cinéma de
la lutte qui nous confronte à la terreur du réel, et au souvenir
prochain de la pourriture qui nous guette – la mort est là, nous
demeurons en elle dans l’attente irrésolue de notre disparition.
L’homme chez Lav Diaz est soumis à une tension de l’existence
qui le déchire et le révolte. Il est hanté, dans sa farouche volonté
de vivre, par l’ombre du destin. L’apparition au monde se heurte
à son tragique effritement : c’est cette collision entre les deux
pôles de l’existence qui fournit au matériau dramatique de Lav
Diaz, son carburant et son feu.

Dans Death in the land of encantos (2007), c’était le parcours
de Benjamin qui incarnait cette quête. On le suivait, on prenait
ses pas, on s’ajustait à son mouvement. On le voyait dans
un contexte. On avançait dans cette grande fresque lyrique,
travaillée par le temps et ponctuée par les ellipses. On nous
donnait progressivement quelques indices qui comblaient
les lacunes et éclairaient les gestes des personnages à la
lumière d’un passé de l’ombre. On bâtissait des ponts entre les
personnages, entre les lieux et les actions : tout devenait limpide
malgré la virtuosité de la forme faite d’échos, de renvois, de
visions, de retours. Les lignes temporelles s’enchevêtraient. Le
passé revenait – la mère folle, la soeur tant aimée, des histoires
de famille, le corps d’une femme nue et endormie, sublimé par
des mots chuchotés. Le présent nous confondait en de longs
plans séquences. Le film interrogeait notre avenir et notre
Histoire ajustée dans un regard. Mais le recouvrement qui
était à l’oeuvre chez Benjamin, ce grand retour sur soi auquel
on assistait comme à une lutte secrète, perdue d’avance,
était métaphorisé par la catastrophe naturelle. De même que
le passé de Benjamin était enseveli sous les décombres du
temps, la terre natale aussi, après la catastrophe, avait perdu
la face. Dans les deux cas, il faut creuser pour retrouver ce qui
a été perdu, ce qui a disparu, ce qui est enfoncé. Car ce qui
a bougé dans une terre peut aussi bouger dans un homme :
l’analogie de la perte traverse les deux corps. Un grand souffle
est passé. La matière du monde s’infuse dans la personne de
Benjamin. Les palmiers, longs et aigus, tailladant le Ciel, la
mouvance gracieuse de leurs feuilles dans le vent. La pluie qui
ne cesse pas, la moiteur qui remonte et les ruisseaux gonflés.
Tout se tait, tout parle. Le bruissement du monde raconte notre
mélancolie. Dans la fiction, le réel est partout – séquences de
reportage et scènes romanesques s’entrecroisent, s’interrogent
mutuellement, se répondent, se creusent en de longs tunnels
dans les flancs du volcan, dans les vers du poète.

Le même principe de recouvrement est à l’oeuvre dans Evolution of
a Filipino Family (2004). Un enfant, Raynaldo, est retrouvé dans les
rues basses de Manille. Il est adopté par une mère folle, douce et
aimante, une femme qui flotte plus qu’elle ne marche, une présence
évanescente qui a tendu l’oreille au monde et aux coquillages de
la mer. Mais elle éveille la brutalité des hommes. Raynaldo reste
seul. Il grandit. La vie le trimballe, le secoue. Il connaîtra plusieurs
foyers : celui d’une grand-mère patriarcale et de ses trois petitesfilles
; celui des hommes, de Fernando et de ses fils. Le principe
de recouvrement dans ce film consiste à déplier ces seize années
d’existence tressées dans l’évidence du réel, pendant et après la
dictature de Marcos. La fiction documente, elle propose un point de
vue sur l’Histoire à partir d’événements intimes et familiaux. Elle se
hausse à la particularité de notre oeil. Car l’Histoire est saisie dans
les êtres, sous notre front, prise dans sa dimension individuelle – son
traitement est incarné, physique, jamais abstrait. L’Histoire habite le
monde et Lav Diaz soumet ce réel à des variations poétiques qui
déteignent dans les existences. Pas une des vies qui est en jeu dans
les films de Lav Diaz n’est pas soumise aux puissances de l’Histoire.
Les images d’archives et les entretiens nombreux qui scandent
l’évolution dramatique sont comme autant de pauses chantées
par des choeurs. Ce matériau documentaire donne des repères au
spectateur, fixe le réel, le jalonne, et par ce biais, pénètre la fiction et
la recharge. Car Lav Diaz orchestre un ingénieux va-et-vient entre
les événements politiques réels et leurs répercussions dans le récit :
Kadyo, l’oncle de Raynaldo, face au chef des guérilleros locaux :
« Marcos est au pouvoir depuis 24 ans » ; Kadyo dans une cachette,
écoutant l’interview du cinéaste Lino Brocka sur les relations entre
le cinéma philippin et le régime de Marcos ; Kadyo assistant à la
manifestation d’un mouvement politique de gauche. Mais dans le
cours du film, la circulation du fait politique se transmet aussi par
l’agencement de ses formes diverses. L’association entre les archives
et la fiction ouvre une brèche dans le récit. Le montage les conjugue
et les sépare, les combine et les disjoint. Les éléments sont liés les
uns aux autres dans l’évidence de la fiction, mais s’interrogent aussi
mutuellement et fracturent le réel. Cette intelligence du montage
est un chef d’oeuvre d’organisation du discours politique, car il ouvre
les points de vues. Lav Diaz n’impose pas une vision qui aplanirait
le réel dans une dimension unilatérale, mais rend plutôt compte
des contradictions dialectiques inhérentes à la réalité. Chez lui, le
politique est poétique, complexe, diffus. Il a pénétré les mailles du
réel et c’est au spectateur d’investir son champ de résonances.
Il faut écouter ce souffle épique qui ne tarit pas, ces grandes
vagues lyriques incrustées dans la surface du plan – faites de
noirs et de gris, d’écumes, de silences que charge l’existence
des hommes et qui se dilatent dans le quotidien romanesque
des personnages. Il faut faire corps avec ces films, il faut se
cogner aux flancs fumants de ces monstres – ces films sont des
bêtes rugissantes, le mufle chaud, rutilant. Il faut les frapper,
les enfourcher, les prendre contre soi, saignantes, pleines de
rages, de fureurs, de lances brisées dans le garrot. Il y a un
fantastique du réel, ou du moins une mystique, une force qui
le tient et le retourne en des visions surnaturelles. C’est dans
ce dépassement de la réalité, que Lav Diaz confère au réel
des visions déchirées qui le transmuent en une réalité plus
profonde, car plus intime, inscrite dans la trajectoire d’une quête
sensible pour la vérité. Ce cinéma éveille des vieux fantômes, il
les invite à sa table, sur le drap blanc parfaitement repassé de
nos songes. Il faut écouter ce bruissement mystérieux qui nous
égare, et par lequel pourtant, on nous offre de nous ressaisir et
de réévaluer l’intensité de notre rapport au monde.
Les grands cinéastes développent une mythologie de la
croyance à l’égard du spectateur. Ils ont confiance en nos
intuitions, en nos désirs. Et c’est ainsi, par la grâce d’un regard
soutenu, que l’on s’approprie ces grands films fleuves, dans la
limpidité de leur fait. Ce sont des films qui nous attendent, il
faut les habiter.

From Cinema du Reel, March 14, 2008

Smutek nad miską ryżu

2009-12-01T03:19:00.000-08:00

Anna Kilian

Z Lavem Diazem rozmawia Anna Kilian

Pana „Melancholię” ogląda się z rosnącą fascynacją. W miarę jak – warstwa po warstwie – odkrywa pan przed nami prawdę o bohaterach, zżywamy się z nimi do tego stopnia, że trudno nam się z nimi rozstać...

Lav Diaz: Wspaniale słyszeć taką opinię, chciałem, żeby widzowie tak film odbierali. To ważne dla mnie, bo to długi, ośmiogodzinny obraz. A skoro poruszamy kwestię jego długości, to muszę przyznać, że dziwi mnie, że tak mocno się ją zazwyczaj podkreśla. Film powinien być dziełem sztuki, ocenianym w kontekście swojej jakości, historii, jaką opowiada, i formy, za pomocą której to robi.

Przecież utworu muzycznego czy obrazu nie ocenia się pod względem ich rozmiarów. Przykro mi słyszeć, że nawet uniwersyteccy wykładowcy przedmiotów związanych ze sztuką filmową skupiają się przede wszystkim na długości moich projektów. Przy czym „Melancholia” nie jest najdłuższa – „Death in the Land of Encantos” trwa dziewięć godzin, tyle samo „Heremias (Book One: The Legend of the Lizard Princess)” czy „Evolution of a Filipino Family”.

Przedstawia pan troje bohaterów jako prostytutkę, alfonsa i zakonnicę. Zbici z tropu bardzo wiarygodną interpretacją aktorską zostajemy – widzowie – wyprowadzeni w pole, gdyż postaci przybierają nagle inne tożsamości. Czy zamierzał pan dać przekrój filipińskiego społeczeństwa?

Chciałem pokazać współczesne Filipiny i bohaterów żyjących tu i teraz, ale uwikłanych w tragiczną przeszłość naszego kraju. Alberta, Rina i Julian, a wraz z nimi tysiące Filipińczyków, nigdy nie otrząsnęli się po tym, co spotkało ich rodziny podczas okupacji japońskiej, a potem dyktatury Ferdinanda Marcosa, gdy polityczni przeciwnicy byli porywani i mordowani. Przy tym większość moich współmieszkańców ma bardzo krótką pamięć. Nasi oprawcy nigdy nie zostali osądzeni. Nikogo nie rozliczono z popełnionych zbrodni. Syn Marcosa, Ferdinand Jr., zasiada w Kongresie, a jego matkę Imeldę odznaczono za wkład w rozwój kultury na Filipinach. Filipińczycy są z natury – jak to Malajowie – bierni i apatyczni, nieprzyzwyczajeni do konsekwentnego i zorganizowanego działania.

W dodatku – mówię to a propos braku rozliczeń – to bardzo mili i łagodni ludzie, którzy prędzej oddadzą ostatnią miskę ryżu (od którego jestem, jako Filipińczyk, uzależniony) gościowi niż swojemu dziecku. I zawsze się uśmiechają, choć w ich sercach często gości smutek. Na ten filipiński smutek wskazuje tytuł filmu.

Alberta, Rina i Julian stanowią w filmie pomost między przeszłością a teraźniejszością. Czy temu właśnie miało też służyć pokazanie w jednym filmie tradycyjnych tańców i śpiewu w stylu Kundiman oraz punkowego koncertu, pogo i zespołu grającego noise?

Tak. Dzisiejsze Filipiny to bardzo bogata kultura, której tradycyjne aspekty współistnieją ze współczesnymi. Ale bardzo ważna jest dla każdego kraju jego historia, bez której naród byłby niczym. Dlatego w „Melancholii” znalazła się retrospekcja dotycząca Desaparecidos (nazwa nadawana ludziom porywanym przez siły rządowe różnych krajów, by usunąć ich z życia publicznego – przyp. red.), powiązana z postacią Alberty.

W pana kraju powstaje dużo bardzo dobrych filmów.

Rzeczywiście, wielu twórców realizuje filmy, najczęściej techniką cyfrową, bo to najtańszy sposób. Mamy bardzo długą tradycję filmową. Pierwsze obrazy powstawały na Filipinach w kilka lat po paryskiej projekcji braci Lumiere. Niestety, wszystkie zaginęły, bo nigdy nie powstało żadne archiwum zbierające i konserwujące taśmy filmowe.

A czy istnieje na Filipinach tradycja szkół filmowych? Pan żadnej nie skończył.

Nigdy nie było u nas takich instytucji edukacyjnych, pojawiły się stosunkowo niedawno. Ja przez wiele lat byłem dziennikarzem filmowym i reporterem, a kiedy dobiłem czterdziestki, w 1998 r. zacząłem kręcić filmy. Nie uczyłem się tego, po prostu wziąłem kamerę do ręki.

Ma pan dość niezwykłe imię. Nie jest chyba filipińskie?

Rzeczywiście. Mój ojciec jest zdeklarowanym socjalistą zafascynowanym kulturą, a zwłaszcza literaturą rosyjską. Dał mi na imię Ławrentij, ale na szczęście nie po Ławrentiju Berii. Tata z mamą, też socjalistką, poznali się na studiach, a potem pojechali w sam środek dżungli zakładać szkoły dla muzułmańskich dzieci, choć sami nie są religijni.

Od tego czasu „środek lasu” rozrósł się do sporych rozmiarów miasta.

From Ostatnia Aktualizacja, Warsaw, 30-11-2009

Mindanao: a work-in-progress

2009-12-01T03:02:00.000-08:00

Ni Lav Diaz

Rasyunal sa iksi at kawalan ng image

Sa simula, dilim at titulo lang ang bubulaga, at hindi pa man nakakahikab, tapos
na. Dilim at titulo lang—Mindanao: a work-in-progress. Bagamat magkakaroon
ng ebolusyon ang installation. Sa durasyon ng exhibit, magkakaroon ng images,
padagdag nang padagdag. At sa huling lingo, maaaring isa nang buong pelikula
ang mapapanuod. Organic ang proseso ng installation. Gaya nang pagiging
organic ng proseso sa paghahanap ng kapayapaan at sagot sa problema sa
Mindanao—ginamitan ng lakas military mula pa kay Marcos (1971), panunuhol
sa mga lider Muslim (ilang bilyon na ang natapon), nakipagkape at wine si
Imelda kay Khadaffi sa loob ng tent sa disyerto sa Tripoli, nagtayo ng
autonomous region at yumaman at nakulong si Misuari, pinasasawsaw pa sa
usapin ang Malaysia, Indonesia at mga Arabo sa usaping dapat ay panloob
lamang, ang sirkus ng MOA na nauwi na naman sa pagdanak ng dugo.

Wala na sa kumbensyon ng Hollywood ang cinema. Malayo na ang cinema bilang
isang sining. Hindi lang negosyo ang cinema. At hindi lang ito naratibong
beginning-middle-end. At kailangan bang maraming dekorasyon o maingay ang
isang installation para magmukhang magaling? Hindi ba mas mahalagang
tingnan ang diskursong inihahain ng isang obra?

Sa nag-iisip, maliwanag ang sinasaad ng Mindanao: a work-in-progress. At kung
nag-iisip nga ang titingin, napakahaba at tila walang katapusan—matagal nang
work-in-progress ang Mindanao, at hindi pa nakikita kung saan hahantong ang
lahat, kung saan matatapos ang mga diskurso at tunggalian. O, may katapusan
nga ba ang masalimuot na isyung Mindanao?
Sabi nga ng isang Muslim na datu sa amin sa Maguindanao kung tatanungin mo
kung hanggang saan ang kanyang lupain: “Taman sa mailay ningka.” (Hanggang
sa abot ng paningin mo.)

Pyudalismo

Ang pangungusap na ito ng datu ay isang katotohanan sa Mindanao. Isang
pundamental na isyu ang pyudalismo sa Mindanao, lalo na sa mga pook na
kinasasangkutan ng mga tinatawag nilang sigwa ng Muslim-Kristiyano, o sa mas
malawak na diskurso ng pulitika at ideyolohiya, ang rebolusyon ng Bangsa Moro.
Sa kakulangan ng cultural/sociological/historical perspective ng mga tinatawag
na nasasangkot sa usapin sa sigwa sa Mindanao, tila hindi lumilitaw ang isyu ng
pyudalismo. Mahirap ipaliwanag kung bakit hindi nagagalaw ang isyung ito.
Kulang nga ba sa kaalaman ang mga henyo ng gobyerno sa isyung ito?
Tinatalakay ba ng Moro National Liberation Front ang isyung ito? Pinag-uusapan
ba nila ang pagwasak sa pyudalismo bilang isa sa mga malalaking sagot para sa
kapayapaan sa Mindanao?

Sistemang Datu

Saglit tayong bumalik sa kasaysayan ng arkipelagong ito, na ngayo’y tinatawag
na bayang Pilipinas.

Mayroon tayong tinatawag na pre-Mohamedan at pre-Hispanic period. Ito’y
noong panahong purong Malay at aborigines pa ang mga isla.
Ang pre-Mohamedan period ay ang panahong hindi pa nagiging Muslim ang mga
tribung Maranao (Lanao), Maguindanao (sa dating Cotabato na ngayo’y nahahati
na sa mga probinsyang Maguindanao, North Cotabato, South Cotabato, Sultan
Kudarat at Sarangani) at Tausog (Sulo, Basilan, Tawi-tawi). Ang mga tribung
Maranao, Maguindanao, Tausog at ilang bahagi ng mga Badjao ang mga unang
tinatawag na ‘conquered tribes’ sa arkipelago sa isyu ng relihiyon. Sila ang mga
naging Muslim na mga tribung Malay sa arkipelago. At kung totoo nga, at hindi
pa naman napapatunayan, ang ilang Tagalog sa bahaging Tondo na sakop noon
ni Rajah Soliman, ay naging Muslim din. Isang Rajah din daw sa isang balangay
(barangay) sa bahaging Tarlac kasama ng kanyang nasasakupan ang naging
Muslim. Ang mga Muslim na nananahanan ngayon sa dulong timog ng Palawan
ay sinasabing mga migrasyon mula sa Sulu, Tawi-Tawi at Basilan.

Bago pa man dumating ang mga misyunerong Muslim sa Mindanao, kultura na
ng mga Malay ang sistemang Datu. Ang kultrang ito ay umaabot sa buong
kapuluan ng naging Pilipinas, hanggang sa mga Malay sa mga bayang tinatawag
ngayong Indonesia, Malaysia at Brunei. At ang sistemang ito ay napanatili
hanggang sa kasalukuyan sa mga tribung yumakap sa relihiyon at paniniwalang
Muslim o Islam. Nawala ang sistemang ito sa mga Malay sa arkipelago na naging
Kristiyano o Katoliko. Bagamat ang pyudalismo naman ay nananatili pa rin
(hindi nga ba’t may CARP o programang land reform ang gobyerno para ayusin
daw ito?).

Maguindanao

Isang particular na kaso ang probinsiya ng Maguindanao. Ang malawak at
mayamang probinsiyang ito ay nobenta porsiyentong Muslim ang papulasyon at
iilang datu lamang ang nagmamay-ari ng mga lupain. Ang mga tradisyunal na
mga datu dito ay ang mga pamilyang Sinsuat, Piang, Paglas, Ampatuan,
Dilangalen, Matalam, Pendatun. Napanatili ng mga pamilyang datu ang kanilang
kontrol sa malalawak na bahagi ng probinsiya hanggang sa kasalukuyan.
Malaking bahagi ng papulasyon ay mga nasasakupan pa rin ng mga datu.
Lumaki ako sa isang bayan ng Maguindanao na apat na pamilyang datu lamang
ang nagmamay-ari ng napakalalawak na mga lupain. Karamihan nang mga
Muslim ay tagasunod at tauhan lamang ng mga datu. May ilang Muslim naman na
may maliliit na lupain. Ang mga Kristiyanong nahalo, katulad namin, ay mga
settlers na bumili ng lupain mula sa mga datu. Sa kabundukan naroon ang mga
Bilaan. Noon pa man, nakikita ko na ang katotohanang sa mga pook na pyudal–
labis-labis ang kahirapan. Marami akong kababata at kaibigang Muslim. Sa
panahong nag-aaral kami sa elementarya, sa paaralang itinayo ng aking mga
magulang, marami sa aking mga kababatang Muslim ang pumapasok na wala
man lang tsinelas o sapatos. Kasama na ang kawalan ng maayos na pananamit. At
kawalan din ng makain o ng tamang pagkain. Marami rin akong kababatang
Kristiyanong ganito ang kalagayan. Bagamat napansin ko noon pa man ang
kaibahan ng mahirap na Muslim at mahirap na Kristiyano. Ang mahirap na
Kristiyano, ilang panahon lang ay umaayos ang buhay dahil nagkakaroon sila ng
pagkakataong baguhin ang kanilang kalagayan kapag nagkakaroon na sila ng
lupain. Samantalang ang mga mahihirap na Muslim ay tila nananatili sa kanilang
kalagayan. Nakita ko ang ugat ng suliraning ito—wala silang lupain o walang
pagkakataong magkaroon ng lupain. Migrasyon ang naging solusyon ng ilan.
Gaya ng maraming mamamayan, pagpunta sa mga kalunsuran at ibang bansa ang
kasagutan.

Dialektikal

Kung pag-aaralan ang mga isyung tinatalakay hinggil sa suliranin sa Mindanao,
mula pa noong panahon ni Marcos hanggang ngayong panahon ni Aroyo,
kapuna-punang hindi man lang natatalakay ang pyudal na sistemang ito.
Iniiwasan ba ito? O sadyang hindi nila napapansin. Kung iniiwasan ito, lalong
walang pupuntahan ang mga diskurso dahil isa itong katotohanan na dapat
harapin. At kung hindi napapansin, malaking katanungan ang katapatan ng mga
nasasangkot—mga tao ng gobyerno, komunidad at ng MILF.

Kung diskurso ng emansipasyon ng mga mamamayang Muslim sa Mindanao ang
usapin, marahil pinakamalaking isyu ang pyudalismo.
Ito ang malaking katanungan na dapat iharap sa mga nasasangkot, sa komunidad
ng mga Muslim, sa MILF at gobyerno:

Kaya bang buwagin o wasakin ang sistemang Datu?

Sa dialektikal na aplikasyon, narito ang sagot dito:

Buwagin at wasakin ang sistemang Datu.

Kung may pagbabagong dapat maganap sa pook ng mga Muslim sa Mindanao, ito
ang isa sa mga unang hakbang. Kung may rebolusyong dapat maganap sa pook
ng mga Muslim sa Mindanao, ito ang isa sa mga dapat gawin. Harapin na ang
katotohanang ito. Itigil na ang mga pseudo-intelektuwal at pseudo-political na
sirkus ng mga diskurso. Pseudo-intelektuwal ang karamihan ng diskurso dahil
masalimuot o wala namang katalinuhan ang inihahain nilang mga retorika at
resolusyon. Pseudo-political ang karamihan ng diskurso dahil hindi naman
nasasangkot ang kamalayan ng nakararami at lihis sa katotohanan ang mga
retorika at agenda ng mga partidong nasasangkot.

At kung iaangat natin sa antas ng macro-political ang isyu ng pyudalismo, ito rin
ang pundamental na suliranin ng kabuuan ng Pilipinas mula’t mula pa.
Ang totoong rebolusyon sa bayang ito ay ang emansipasyon ng mamamayan sa
kahirapan. At pagwasak ng pyudalismo ang isa sa mga pinakamalalaking
hakbang patungo rito.

Ang rebolusyong kultural naman ng sining ay dapat tumugon sa pagwasak sa
kamangmangan ng nakararami sa mga pundamental na isyung kinasasangkutan
ng kanilang kalagayan, at ng kalagayan ng bayan. Responsibilidad mula sa mga
alagad ng sining ang hinihingi ng pahanon para makapag-ambag sa pagpapalaya
sa kamalayan ng bayan. Dito nasasaad ang pananaw ng bagong cinema. Ito ang
aking tugon sa eksibisyung Designing Peace: The Role of Imagination in
Conflict Resolution.

Note: Palalawakin ang mga isyung ito sa susunod na pagtalakay natin ng konsepto ng ilang bahagi ng Mindanao bilang isang Bangsa Moro, ng konsepto ng Pilipinas bilang isang bayan ng mga Pilipino, ng konsepto ng demokrasya sa Pilipinas, ng konsepto ng Pilipino bilang isang nasyon. May Bangsa Moro nga ba? May bayang Pilipino nga ba? May tinatawag na bang nasyon ng Pilipino? May tamang pangunawa ba tayo sa tamang kahulugan ng pulitika, ng demokrasya? Bakit kulang sa dialektikal na pananaw ang mga diskurso?

Written by Lav Diaz as a rationale to his participation to the La Salle University installation, Designing Peace: The Role of Imagination in Conflict Resolution

When Lav Met Guy

2009-10-31T16:01:00.002-07:00

By Bayani San Diego Jr.

Talk of this film uniting two superstars of Philippine cinema, Nora Aunor and Lav Diaz, is making the rounds in blogs.

Diaz confirmed this with Inquirer Entertainment, saying the movie, “Reclusion Perpetua,” has been in the works for the past three years.

(Aunor is also set to shoot “Do Filipinos Cry in America?” next year, according to its director, Celso Ad. Castillo.)

Diaz finally met with Aunor recently in Santa Monica, California.

“I went to see Nora,” Diaz explained, “to see how committed she was to the project. We talked at length about it.”

Diaz liked what he saw and heard: “She’s committed.”

He calls it a “collective” effort: “Her fans are raising money. If we meet the target, we’ll be shooting soon.”

Meanwhile, Diaz is off to the Thessaloniki film fest in Greece, where he’s a jury member and where his latest short, “Butterflies Have No Memories,” will be featured in a retrospective on Pinoy indies.

Then, “Butterflies” and his Venice-winning feature, “Melancholia,” will be screened in Warsaw.

Diaz received the Indie Spirit award in the just-concluded Cinemanila fest.

What was the meeting with Nora like?

It was cool. She was in jeans and rubber shoes, no makeup. The sun was shining so bright that day, but a cool breeze, like Baguio’s, was hovering. We had a late lunch and a few beers. We realized we were in LA’s gay district because we kept seeing men holding hands while strolling, and women lustily kissing. Nora joked, “Alam ko na ngayon kung saan pupunta (Now, I know where to go).”

What is “Reclusion Perpetua” about?

Nora’s character is looking for her husband, who disappeared in the US.

Why is it important to you to make a film with Nora now?

It is a cultural issue for me. It is dialectical. Nora Aunor is a Filipino icon, arguably our greatest actress. So, on the level of cultural discourse, she is very much a part of our struggle. I am not a fan ... though my mother is a fanatic. As a cultural worker, I acknowledge her importance.

Why is it important for today’s audiences to see her act again?

Any respectable Nora Aunor film can be used to educate our people. This is my responsibility, to use the medium to create a greater aesthetic and socio-cultural discourse for our people. The most potent modern medium now is cinema. Why not use an incredibly potent icon in the process?

I am using the term “use,” or “paggamit” in Tagalog, in a very dialectical way. That answers the need for a Nora Aunor film. I am not doing a propaganda film, though, not a Nora rah-rah movie. The film’s core shall remain aesthetic. This is still free cinema. It can run 40 hours.

Why is it described as a collective effort?

Everybody is working almost pro bono. Her responsible fans are doing patak-patak (passing the hat). We will work on people’s donations. I am actually announcing it now: We need help! The objective is greater cinema, not profit. Should money come later, it would just be consequential.

How do you know Nora?

In Cotabato, as a kid, I experienced the phenomenon. It was crazy. My mom had some of her records at home.

The screenings of Nora Aunor movies were out of this world. You can actually see truckloads of people arriving in front of movie houses—people from the barrios. They’d be bringing kalderos and platos.

Every time Nora appeared onscreen, there would be screaming, wailing, shrieking. Some would faint. You couldn’t breathe or move. It wasn’t just standing room; it was bumper-to-bumper, sweat-to-sweat, laway-to-laway, bahala na kung mamatay (spit-to-spit, who cares if we die).

What are your favorite Nora Aunor movies?

I love Ishmael Bernal’s “Himala.” She’s also great in Mario O’Hara’s “Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos.”

What’s the latest on your other projects?

“Babae ng Hangin” is still evolving, yet again. I am following new threads to finish it. I submitted a more than three-hour rough cut to Venice but some problems ensued, so I pulled it out. But I’m really thankful that it happened, as I now have a clearer view of how to finish the film in the aesthetic realm.

The Gregoria de Jesus project remains a work in progress. I tried to do some test and pre-production, but I just couldn’t push it properly. The hardest part is finding the right Gregoria de Jesus.

I am also making this call to the brave ones: If you think you can be the great Oryang, please submit your résumé and tell us why. Marami pang karakter na puwede sa lahat (There are other characters for everyone else), if they know the story of the Philippine Revolution.

What’s your take on the retro on Filipino films in the Thessaloniki fest in Greece?

It’s good for RP cinema. They can’t just dismiss us now.

What should Filipino filmmakers do to sustain this international interest?

Just keep working hard, but not so much because of vanity. Everyone wants to be a rock star ... but there’s more to be done in the aesthetic domain. If we really want a revolution, we must work harder and dig deeper. The real revolution that can save our devastated culture is a battle to destroy ignorance and apathy. This issue is a cultural struggle. Let’s examine our history as a people. Why is our culture so dysfunctional? Let’s examine the past and present.

Just ask the obvious questions: How could we have allowed more than 300 years of Spanish rule ... almost 100 years of American imperialism ... 20 years of Marcos dictatorship ... nine years of Macapagal-Arroyo?

With the advent of digital technology, how has filmmaking changed for Filipinos in the last five years?

The last five years have been a watershed. It created greater dynamism on the part of practitioners. Emancipation of the process was delivered by the digital age. We’ve finally destroyed feudalism in cinema. That alone is a huge leap. Greater freedom could hopefully lead to more visionary works. But let us be careful and cautious, because with greater freedom comes greater responsibility.

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer, October 25, 2009

Melancholia

2009-10-31T15:43:00.000-07:00

By Francis Cruz

"Diaz's eight-hour meditation on the persistence and immobility of sadness is painful and, paradoxically, exhilarating to watch. Painful because we know of the military persecution of leftist and progressive groups in the Philippines, ongoing even unto this day; exhilarating because Diaz, above all Filipino film-makers still active, illuminates recent Philippine history with lighting bolt of his imagination."
-- Noel Vera

Lav Diaz's Melancholia is an eight-hour meditation of sorts on the maddening persistence of sadness in this world, can logically be divided into three parts and an epilogue. The first part details the experiences in Sagada of Julian (Perry Dizon), Alberta (Angeli Bayani) and Rina (Malaya Cruz) as they refashion themselves into different drastic identities as part of the radical process that Julian created in order for them to cope with the losses of their loved ones. The second part is set in Manila, with Julian and Alberta living their real lives and addressing the scenarios and situations that accompany their melancholic predicament. The third part is the prologue to Julian, Alberta and Rina's prolonged tale of sadness, where deep within the forests of Mindoro, a band of leftist fighters, which includes Alberta's husband Renato (Roeder Camanag), is struggling with the psychological and spiritual torture of both practical and existential defeat while being hunted down by military operatives.

Melancholia is most probably Diaz's most difficult film for the lone reason that Diaz affords little or no comfort to his viewers. There is very little humor to the film and the story, grounded by philosophies and ideas that might be too personal or hard to grasp, branches into different and sometimes convoluted directions. However, as with most of Diaz's films, the reward of completing one is not in the pleasure of sitting through eight hours of his trademark black and white aesthetics and seemingly endless ramblings and conversations, but in the lingering and often valid points that Diaz would have you digesting and exploring for a far longer period of time.

I. Transformations and Transgressions in Sagada

Alberta becomes Jenine, a prostitute who does massages for 300 pesos and other services for more. Julian turns into a pimp who for the right price can stage live sex shows within the privacy of a hotel room. Rina is a Catholic nun who wanders around town with her charity basket, begging for money for charity. They would bump into each other on occasions: with Jenine handily getting some change to put into the nun's charity basket before fleeting away to her destination, or the pimp taking photographs of the nun before mouthing slogans about the futility of living in a country and a world that is practically hell, or Jenine being courted by the pimp to do business for him. In Sagada, they do not know each other. Though in reality, they are all survivors who have subscribed to the extremist idea that in order to cope with the fact of having a loved one disappear and be presumed dead, they should shed their identities and see the world through the eyes of another.

The three would eventually meet at the same time as the three of them seek shelter from the rain inside an abandoned building in the middle of the town. The line that separates truth and fiction are blurred, as Jenine and the pimp recount their respective histories as if the personalities they inhabited are real. It may be argued that fictionalizing one's life story may be an easy feat. However, it is the disturbing direction of their conversation when the nun arrives in the abandoned building that gives the prolonged scene a harrowing distinction. The pimp starts cornering the nun, berating her of the futility of her efforts within the spectrum of evil that has consumed the world. In the background, Jenine is amused at the lopsided confrontation, wherein the nun coyly mutters meaningless quotes while the pimp expounds on the the world's state of hopelessness. Defeated, the nun escapes the scene as the two admitted sinners rejoice in their triumph.

The nun is the only one to surrender and give up. It seems that in a world that has been enveloped by sadness, it is the meek, and pure that fall first as victims. In Rina's transformation as a nun, she has seen the world from the vantage point of innocence, and the continuing acts of evildoing, apathy, and madness may have dealt upon her despair and hopelessness. Her transformation seems easiest as compared to being a whore or a pimp, since it seems less taxing to roam the streets begging for alms. However, the transgression in her existence, upon seeing the state of the world through the eyes of a person who was tasked to save it or at least ease its pain and being unable to do anything, is far more damaging. Her transformation deviates the most from the world. Her assumed identity is an aberration, especially in a landscape that has forgotten virtues.

Diaz posits an intriguing concept: that survival is earned by those who swear allegiance with truth, and truth is what we see in this world: melancholia, death, amorality, and atheism. There is truth in sex, the way the pimp's sex performers copulate in the total absence of love, hate, or any other emotion. There is truth in prostitution, the way our bodies have turned into mere commodities and stripped of any religion-labeled value. The nun, at one point of the segment, visits a widowed mother she had the opportunity to converse with while begging for alms. Inside the church, the mother sings a melody while the nun observes in the background before leaving. Outside, she walks away, answers her phone and tells her friend that she is okay. During that moment, upon being exposed the utter futility of faith, she finds a semblance of comfort, although temporary since later, she would take her own life in a final act of despair.

II. Patricia's Song

Diaz forwards the story further, detailing the lives of Julian and Alberta weeks after their stints as pimp and whore, respectively, in Sagada. Julian is a publisher in Manila who often dreams of her dead wife Patricia (Cooky Chua). Alberta, on the other hand, is a school principal who while coping with the disappearance of her husband, has to take care of her ward Hannah (Yanyan Taa), a teenager who was rendered parentless when both her parents were abducted and killed by government officials. Hannah, to address her situation, repels Alberta's acts of kindness by repeatedly escaping from her protection and prostituting herself.

Julian chats with an old friend (Bodjie Pascua), an author who pitches his manuscript for publication. In their conversation about the story of Julian's friend's book, Diaz expounds his passion for cinema, correlating his philosophies on truth with art. According to the friend (whose language is not dissimilar to Diaz's), our basic concept of Philippine cinema has been grounded on lies and escapism. The only way to dispel this harmful imposition against culture is through a drastic change, fueled by pain and passion as the main character of the book, a famed director who after losing his lover, reforms into a producer of independent films while acknowledging his homosexuality, has gone through.

In Julian's dream, Patricia sings of her endless search against the backdrop of coldness and pain in the world. The song sets the mood and tone of the film. In a sense, the song summarizes the characters' need to search: for their lost loved ones, for a reason behind the sadness and the madness of the world, an impossible happiness or contentment, for Hannah, for truth. Melancholia's landscape is familiar (city streets, humble abodes, riverside parks), but its characters are placed in a situation where they have turned into desperate searchers, fueled at first by grief and longing and then by some other force or motivation that is as elusive as their targets. The repercussions of their exercise in Sagada are faint (although Rina's suicide becomes the trigger of Julian's deep contemplation) if not damaging as opposed to being the cure to their collective sadness. Even the discovery of the remains of some victims of political killings failed to release them from their collective burdens. In the end, they are still looking for sense and direction and all at once, the familiar places start to look like alien landscapes, enunciated by the violence of the rain or the discomfort of the night. These places convert into limbo.

This persistent searching is true to the theme of Diaz's cinema, which would often allude to some kind of redemption or release in the conclusion, whether it be in the form of Juan Mijares' acceptance of his and his nation's past in Batang West Side (West Side Avenue, 2001), or the wayward oxcart-driver's deal with God in Heremias (2006), or Hamin's release from the world's madness through death in Kagadanan sa Banwaan Ning Mga Engkanto (Death in the Land of Encantos, 2007). However, in Melancholia, the characters are trapped in limbo (in fact, an offshoot of Melancholia which makes use of some footage made for the film is aptly entitled Purgatorio (2008), referring to the eternal state of being neither here or there of the family left behind by the victims of political killings) and are seemingly in a directionless search for something that can never be found.

III. No Redemption for the Poet-Warrior

Renato writes in his diary "Why is there so much sadness and too much sorrow in this world? Is happiness just a concept? Is living just a process to measure man's pain? Are we ever going to see each other again? I'm not afraid of death. I'm more afraid that I won't see you again.'" Renato, a leftist activist who left his wife to fight a war of principles, is now being chased into the forest by military operatives who want him and his comrades silenced.

Diaz painstakingly details the final few days of this band of men who are merely prolonging their assured demise under their enemies. Some of them start to falter, giving way to insanity and defeat, enveloped by the lurking senselessness of their struggle amidst a world drowned by indifference and apathy. He writes further "I now realized the lyrical madness to this struggle. It is all about sadness. It is about my sadness. It is about the sorrow of my people. I cannot romanticize the futility of it all. Even the majestic beauty of this island could not provide an answer to this hell. There is no cure to this sadness."

Renato writes words of despair. Strangled by his impending capture and death, he starts to rationalize the bitter truth that beneath the illusions and promises dealt by momentous beauty, emotions, and moments of fleeting happiness, is a world that is barren and replete of hope. His and his comrades' deaths come swiftly in a moment where one of them, in an act of desperation, expresses surrender. Their deaths did not release them from purgatory. Instead, as we have learned from the film's previous scenes in Sagada and Manila, their deaths are black holes that pull loved ones into a void, a metaphoric limbo where they undergo futile searches for logic and reason, goals that have been rendered implausible by the realities of pain and suffering in this world .

The sequence in the forest does not provide redemption for Alberta either. She still does not know where her husband's remains were left. She has not read the words Renato has written in his diary. All she knows is that her husband is gone and most probably dead. There is yet no closure for the victims, only closure in Diaz's circle of melancholia, where the man-made, or more accurately, governmental act of depravity and cowardice has caused the never-ending cycle of sadness and madness to begin.

IV. Epilogue

The riverside park at nighttime, dimly lit by streetlamps that scarcely dot the walkpath, serves as Diaz's stage for his confounding finale. Alberta searches for Julian among the men and women (performance artists who contort their bodies into unusual shapes and positions) that populate the park's spaces. Cryptic phrases, recited in hypnotic cadence, are thrown in reply to Alberta's fervent questioning. She finally locates Julian, alone and seated in the dark, dissheveled in appearance and obviously in the same trance-like state of the park's curious residents. From Alberta and Julian's conversation, we can glean that Julian has turned into a monster, consumed by his own search for the truth, eaten up by the pain and sadness that he has tried to cope with, and ironically, embraced it to create. Julian has become God, the personification of the melancholy and insanity of the world, the only things that can be labeled as definite truths in a world that deceives us with illusions of joy and beauty. He walks away, claiming that he is no longer Julian. Alberta is left alone.

Although the film can be seen as Diaz's definitive statement (and it probably is, Diaz being very vocal on politics) on the desaparecidos, the numbers of which have risen during Macapagal-Arroyo's term as president, and the families they have left in stasis, there is definitely something deeper: a philosophical or existential query that Diaz throws to his viewers on the basis of the world's current status. Melancholia aims to expound on truth by distorting it (where Julian, Alberta and Rina assume fake identities in Sagada as coping mechanism to battle their sadness), disrespecting it (where the trio start living and believing their assumed identities), mutating it (where the trio can no longer discern the line that divides reality and illusion), and finally, spiting it (where truth, as personified by Julian, shows itself as pitiful and pathetic).

From the blog Lessons From The School of Inattention

Agonistes (work-in-progress)

2009-10-31T15:22:00.001-07:00

By Northern Portrait

The ancient Greeks invented and defined the term apropos of our everyday fate. Agony. Ours is one born out of a myriad of cataclysms – both natural and auto-inflicted. Lav Diaz’s Agonistes, an admitted work-in-progress but already fully formed, meditates on the Filipino’s most pressing worldly struggle, his struggle to break out of material poverty and the non-material consequences of poverty. Hints, however, point to a more eschatological theme – the centrality or the simultaneity of the spiritual struggle.

Directing from his own script, Diaz transposes the ancient term agonistes to latter-day Philippines. He singles out the classic strugglers of contemporary times, the working-class men and the peasants, to shoulder grinding poverty. In truth, it can be said that the agonist has been a favorite fixture of Diaz’s other films: Heremias is both agonized and anguished, so is Hamin in Death in the Land of Encantos, tortured and demented at once. Epic but individual in scope, mythological and biblical in character, Diaz’s stories are veritable stories of struggles, sagas of agony.

Agonistes opens with a grandiose sequence of robust buildings under construction in Manila. This is the magnificence that, on a sudden, contrasts with the slumped figure of one construction worker, a young man named Juan. As he narrates what he has witnessed to Manoling, an older, brotherly fellow worker, he has been traumatized by the sight of one of his co-workers being buried alive in wet concrete at the construction site. But the occupational dangers are not the end of it – the rainy season soon floods the metropolis and makes it impossible for them to reach their workplace.

These two become so desperate that, over a drinking session, they latch on to a kind of Pascalian wager. Manoling has revealed a secret of treasure supposed to be buried in his family’s land somewhere in Bikol. If they find it, they are set for life. If not, it’s just a matter of a few days’ work and a matter of looking a little silly, perhaps. They aren’t even thinking of that: Manoling is just “tired” of the daily grind.

Quitting their jobs, they emerge in Bikol one day, purchase digging equipment and get to work. They meet Manoling’s brother who farms the land but whose wife Loleng is terminally ill with a lung disease. As the trenches deepen, Juan and Manoling only manage to turn up rusty metals and an old military boot. Manoling’s brother seems content to live a farmer’s life and jokes in the background about a share of the spoils. At dusk, all of them often – including the bed-ridden Loleng -- gather to watch the magnificent – otherworldly? – sunset.

Agonistes is a miserabilist ode to materialism – or an oblique one to spiritual “reorienting.” Or perhaps, their unresolved dialectic. As the almost Syssiphian diggings go on, the crash and crunch of shovels against sand and gravel alternate with the sound of Loleng’s deathly and fatal coughing. As Juan and Manoling pursue their treasurely dreams, they seem oblivious to the specter of death, the possibility of afterlife. Like a colossal god, Mayon Volcano towers in the background to shame their pointless efforts. The Pascalian wager of the search for treasure can thus be read as an allegory on misplaced faith itself, the pursuit of false gods.

Even in this rough cut, Agonistes holds up as an excellent film. The layers of meaning are already robust. The simplistic notion, for instance, of the materialistic agonist (represented by Juan and Manoling) is elevated by the presence of other kinds of agonists: Loleng, the terminally ill agonist whose struggle is physical illness and presumably coming to terms with her faith; and Manoling’s brother, outwardly content, but something else deep down.

It’s a world of lingering shadows, and Diaz complements his classic themes with black and white cinematography. It serves him well again – appropriately eerie and reminiscent, among others, of the work of Bela Tarr. Diaz’s compositions are painterly -- he must have studied classic portraiture in preparation for this -- which reinforces the timelessness and universality of his themes, whether it is a reckoning of the ills of the contemporary Filipino or not. Diaz’s work will transcend the borders of time and space and nationality, our agony aunt for all time.

From the blog the persistence of vision, October 26, 2009

Walang Alaala ang mga Paruparo

2009-10-31T15:15:00.000-07:00

By Film Angel

Tasked to create a short film for an omnibus project of the Jeonju International Film Festival (JIFF), Lav Diaz came up with the 59-minute film, Butterflies Have No Memories. He is always pushing his films to the limit. A minute more and it would no longer have been considered a short film. However, the JIFF organizers trimmed it down to 40 minutes in order to make it fit in with two other short films. The longer version is available in the DVD box set released by JIFF.

In the extremely loaded film Butterflies Have No Memories, a bearded man named Ferdinand ‘Pedring’ Belleza is yearning for the return of mining in his town. He worked as chief security officer of a multinational mining company for decades. When it closed down, he lost a well-paying job, as well as his family.

The long-legged beauty Martha is a scion of the mining owners. The family closed the mining company after toxins heavily polluted the river. Their hasty departure turned the former prosperous place into a ghost town.

The return of fair-skinned Martha fuels irritations among local residents. She is likened to the so-called snow from Canada (mine tailings) that triggers skin rashes among the residents. Her former playmates, Carol and Willy, no longer have time to accommodate the young Canadian lady. They are so busy doing household chores or eking out a living. It is ironic that Martha, named after the Biblical character known for her hospitality, is treated badly during her visit.

There is a tinge of envy for the rich, single, and carefree visitor. Some people are more hostile. Pedring hatches a plan to kidnap Martha. His love for money reigns supreme over memories of good times with the family of Martha.

The short film alludes to the destructive effects of mining in Marinduque. Mine tailings caused the biological death of Boac River in 1996. The mining company left the place after decades of operations. Subsequent proposals to re-open the mining site are repelled by the Church and environmentalists.

The hellish effects of mining/treasure hunting were earlier tackled by Diaz in his majestic epic story Ebolusyon Ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino. A female character from the film admonishes her husband to give up mining. 'It is hell,' said the sight-impaired woman. Indeed, the mining area became a burial ground for gold prospectors and treasure hunters. Diaz will return once more to the issue of treasure hunting in a film project titled Agonistes.

Butterflies Have No Memories contains elements one would expect from a Lav Diaz film. Shot in bleak monochrome, the abbreviated film includes a couple of long takes. The lush ambient sound is also here along with scenes featuring animals/insects. I always look forward to the last two elements, ambient sound and inclusion of animals. They play a big part in making Diaz’s films so natural and realistic.

What I didn’t expect is the peculiar, dream-like ending. It features three adult men donning Moriones masks. Their epiphanic encounter with a swarm of butterflies triggers a change of heart for one of them. The sublime last shot is that of a prostrated young man in the middle of the forest while a pair of Roman soldiers looks on.

Lav Diaz is truly a great filmmaker and storyteller, equally adept with short features and epic stories. Butterflies Have No Memories is his best short film so far and one of his most symbol-laden films. It is a wonderful amalgam of mundane and insane images.

From the blog the persistence of vision, October 30, 2009

"Pula, Puti at saka Blu at marami pang Korol"

2009-10-15T17:20:00.000-07:00

Ni Lav Diaz

Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature
Short Story

"Kahirapan ang pinakamasahol na uri ng karahasan."
-- Mahatma Gandhi

Nalulungkot lang siya kaya siya ganun, sabi ni Nenet, Dyong at Toto. Pero hindi siya umiiyak. Sanlinggo na. Hindi, siyam na araw na. Pansiyam ngayon.

Tapos na ang dusa. Tinapos niya. Pero naghihirap ang loob niya. Hindi siya matahimik.

Gusto niyang isiping tapos na, sa wakas, pilit pinaluluwag ang dibdib, pero hindi matapos. Matay man niyang gawin, naroroon pa rin, lumalambong, nangangamoy, nambubulahaw. Isang linggo na siyang lumilipad, hindi, siyam na araw na nga pala, pero kapit-tukong kinakalmot pa rin ang katinuan niya. Ayaw bumitiw, hindi kaya ng happenings.

'Yung amoy. Hindi niya makaya, hindi mabata. Sa kasusuka ay wala na siyang maisuka. Malapot na laway na lamang ang lumalabas. Yung amoy. Nakaangkla sa kasuluk-sulukan ng kanyang pangamoy, kahit patung-patong nang singhot ng solben. Parang tumitindi pa nga ang lansa.

Yung sigaw. Nakalulunos, nakapangingilabot. Kumintal na yata sa utak niya. Patuloy na umaalingawngaw. Sanlinggo na. Hindi, siyam na araw na. Ayaw siyang patulugin, kahit kunukulubot at tinutuyot na ng solben ang utak niya.

Magtatawanan sila. Bungi kasi, bulol, tanga, may luga pa.

Putsa.

Ano? Tutuhurin siya ni Dyong, babatukan ni Toto. Galit siya pero hindi siya lalaban. Paano, siya ang pinakamaliit, pinakabata. Si Dyong, dose na. Si Toto, sampu. Si Nenet, hindi sigurado pero kasinlaki niya. Maganda na. Lumalaki na ang suso. Mga susong gusto niyang hawakan at laruin tulad nang nasisilip niyang ginagawa ni Dyong kaya lang, kay Dyong talaga si Nenet, hawak na. Minsan nga, nakatulugan nina Dyong at Nenet na hubad sila. Nakita niya ang kabuuan ni Nenet. Gusto niyang gawin lahat ang ginagawa ni Dyong kay Nenet, halikan sa bunganga, laruin ang suso, papatong, kaya lang, magagalit si Dyong.

Noon, noong maliit pa siya, ganun din ang nakikita niyang ginagawa ng mga lalaking pumapasok sa kanilang tirahan sa iskwater, tulad ng ginagawa ni Dyong kay Nenet. Sa pagkakaalam niya'y parang gabi-gabi, iba-iba. Maghuhubad ang nanay niya tuwing may dumarating. Nakikita niya ang lahat. Bago 'yun magkasakit ang nanay niya.

Si Nanay mo, hindi nagmumulto?

Hindi.

Hala, ayan na'ng nanay mo! Takbuhan sila. Si Nenet, hindi makatakbo, nananakit ang katawan, pero magtatago rin. May kadiliman ang mga sinapupunan ng mga palapag kahit araw. Walang multo, kahit iwan n'yo ako, mabait si Nanay, mabait yun, sabi niya sa sarili.

Moooo! Hindi sa Nanay 'yun, boses ni Nenet. Awooo! Lalong hindi, nagboboses babae si Dyong. Plang! Klang! Nambato ng bakal si Toto. Dyug-dyug-dyug-dyug! Elarti. Dumungaw siya. Hayun, palampas na ang malaahas na sasakyan. Nasa ikalimang palapag siya, mataas ng dalawang palapag sa tapat ng riles ng elarti. Hahabulin niya ang tanaw ng elarti. Sayang, bumaba na ang tama ng solben. Maghapon kasi siyang nakabilad sa araw. Sayang, ang ganda sanang tingnan kung hay pa siya, kahit ganung wala pang ilaw.

Siya, sina Dyong, Nenet at Toto, ang siguro'y tanging nakaaalam na napakasarap pagtripan ang elarti lalo na kung gabing rumaragasa ito, puno ng ilaw at lumilipad sila sa solben. Minsan, akala niya ay uod itong kumikinang ng ilaw at puno ng mga nangungunyapit na linta na may sari-sariling korol. Mga lintang galing sa trabaho. Uuwi na sila. May mga buhay sila, e. Isip niya, ang sarap ng maging katulad nila, nakasakay sa kumikinang na uod na kapag ramaragasa ay nag-iiwan ng pula, puti, blu, orens at maraming, maraming bumibilog, tumutudla, bumubulusok, pumapailanlang, bumubulwak at kumikiwal na korol. Andaming korol! At yung sawns. Walang binesa ang disko sa Menudo. Pakiwari niya'y galing sa langit, mula sa kung saan-saan, dumadagundong, sumasayaw, nag-aanyaya, sumasabay, sumasaliw, umiiwas, lumalayo, lumalapit, sumisiksik, himihiyaw, lumalambing, parang duyan, parang oyayi na nais ihele at magupiling, parang agos na tumatangay, parang alapaap na kumakampay, kumakaway, naglalakbay, isang huning nanghahalina, nang-aakit, umaawit, parang... parang... wow!

Sinabi niya, ilang beses na nasabi na niya, na gusto niyang mamatay sa elarti. Anong sarap na makasama ang mga korol at sawns. Kesa basura, kesa kalsada, kesa tebi, kesa ketong, kesa sipilis, kesa apoy...!

Ginulat siya ng tatlo. Hahaha! Bungi! Tanga! Gago! Baliw! Putsa! Ano, kamo? Lalaban ka? Matapang ka? Ha? Tuhod. Tulak. Aray ko! Pero hindi siya lalaban. Maliit kasi siya.

Nagtitrip ka diyan e, bumaba na ang tama natin. Iiskor tayo mamaya. Iiskor ka pa.

Tinalunton ni Dodoy ang Abenida. Ayaw niya sa usok. Masakit sa ilong. Maingay, hindi niya gusto ng maingay, hindi sawns. Da bes yung elarti. Magulo, walang kuwentang panginorin. Hayun, yung mga neyong naglalaro at de korol, yun ang gusto niya rito tuwing kagampan ang dilim. Kaya lang, kulang sa galaw, kulang sa liksi, kulang sa hagibis. Gusto niya'y matulin, yung gusto mong habulin pero hindi mo makaya. Ganun ang elarti, ibang klase.

Pagtawid niya'y gahibla na siyang muntik na mahagip ng rumaragasang magarang kotse. Kagulo ang trapik. Putang-ina mong yagit ka! Magmura kayo. Wala na sa kanya yun. Yun ngang maghapong higa niya sa gitna o tabing kalsada, e balewala na. Tao, trak, dyip, greder, lahat umiiwas sa kanya, sa kanila. Kailanman ay hindi siya umiiwas sa mga sasakyan. Pag 'di ka umiwas, iiwasan ka. Pag umiwas ka, di sila iiwas. Pag walang umiwas, bahala na. Yun ang natutunan niya sa kalsada. Init at ulan, balewala na rin. Nababata na niyang lahat. Bahagi na yun ng kanyang trabaho, ng pakikibaka sa buhay. Magpupunas ng uling at alikabok, kung minsan putik, sa iba't ibang bahagi ng katawan, damit at syort na anyong basahan, hihiga sa kalsadang maraming nagdaraan katabi ang nakangangang lata. Hindi gaanong dusa kung kargado ng solben, magti-trip ka maghapon. Pag-asa ang bawat kalansing ng barya.

Pasok siya sa madilim at namumutik na iskinita. Doon sa pagawaan ni Kenet ng sapatos. Mas bukas ang puwesto niya pag gabi. Maraming umiiskor.

Uy, Dods, ano ba'ng atin? Kondolens uli. Ilan? Walong kutsara? Wow! Bigat n'yo ah, lumalakas kayo. Lasing si Kenet, may mga kainuman tulad ng dati.

Si Kenet, laging bundat ang tiyan, malaki na nga, hindi tama sa edad niya, trentahin pa lang siya, sobrang porma. Simple lang ang repersyap niya, maliit, pero nakakarating na siya sa Hongkong, Bagyo, at Dabaw. Marami siyang pera.

Hayan, may paamang binilot diyan. Okey ang iskor n'yo ngayon, e.

May balatong damo si Kenet. Mas gusto ni Dodoy ang damo kaya lang di pa nila kaya. Mas mabigat iskorin ang damo. Pero sabi ni Dyong, malapit na silang lumipat sa damo o maaaring shabu basta't palarin si Nenet, sila.

Yun. Kaya walong kutsara sila ngayon, nagsimula na yata ang suwerte ni Nenet kagabi. Pers taym na ipinarada siya ni Dyong sa Ermita, agad may nakanang Ostralyanong datan. Twenti dolars ang hatag. Nagpakabusog sa hamberger at kok sina Dyong, Nenet, at Toto. Si Dodoy, di kaya kahit anong sarap. Ayaw humiwalay nung amoy, nung sigaw. Bumili ng damit si Nenet sa Sentral Market, pati lipstick at pabangong emseben. Bumili rin si Dyong ng bayodyesek para sa lagnat ni Nenet. Hindi ito makagulapay paggising kaninang umaga. Sabi ni Dyong, pers taym kasi sa parener, kaya ganun.

Si Dyong, titigil na rin sa pagdapa sa kalsada. Paparada na rin sa parener ngayong gabi. Kung sakali, paparada na rin si Dodoy at Toto sa mga darating na gabi. Baka sakali, iiwan na nila ang kalsada tulad nina Bet, Warly, Kongkong, Perdi, Sali, Mimi…

Paparada na sila sa parener.

Habang papalapit si Dodoy sa inabandonang bilding, sumagi sa isip niya ang mga sinabi ni Dyong noon, noong buo pa ang gusali at nang masunog ito. Napakagandang bilding nito dati, labas-masok ang mga maayos na tao, yung magagara ang damit. Ni sa hinagap pa nga e, hindi niya inakalang isang araw e, magiging tirahan niya, nila ito, labindalawang palapag. Puro nga abo't uling pero ang laking panangga sa lamig at sakuna sa gabi. Minsan, noong buo pa ang bilding, ang lakas ng ulan, sumilong sila sa may pinto nito, doon na natulog, pero ipinagtabuyan sila ng guwardiya, tinutukan ng baril ang nguso ni Dyong nang umangal ito. Sinagasa nila ang ulan. Nilagnat si Nenet, ang taas, nagdiliryo ng ilang araw, akala nila mamamatay. Sabi ni Dyong, putang-ina, susunugin ko ang bilding! Isang araw nga, mga tatlong buwan na, nasunog ang gusali. Minsang langong-lango sila sa solben, sabi ni Dyong, siya ang sumunog. Pero walang naniwala sa kanilang tatlo. Ngayon, habang paakyat siya sa bilding, naitatanong niya, si Dyong nga kaya ang sumunog nito? Baka totoo. Siya nga e…

Ang tagal mo, a.

Kumakain sina Dyong, Nenet at Toto ng hamberger at kok na naman. May para kay Dodoy pero ayaw niya.

Talagang nagpapakamatay ka na, ano? Ang payat-payat mo na. Kalimutan mo na ang nanay mo. Patay na yun! O, kainin mo!

Ayaw. Buang na talaga! Yun ang sabi ni Nenet. Ang nabubuang daw, hindi kumakain nang matagal. Tapos, laging nakatungo, nakatanghod, tulala, nakanganga. Ganun si Dodoy. Naaawa si Nenet.

Pansiyam na ngayong araw, gabi, na halos di kumakain si Dodoy. Titikim lang ng konti, wala na. Sabi ni Dyong, pasiyam ngayon ng nanay mo. Basta pasiyam, nag-aalay ang mga namatayan ng pagkain, padasal, palaro. Nililimot ang kalungkutan ng pagkawala ng isang mahal sa buhay. Alam ni Dyong dahil istoawi siya galing sa probinsya. Ganun daw sa kanila kapag ika-siyam na araw ng patay. Kaya dapat huwag nang malungkot si Dodoy.

Walong kutsara ngayon ang solben natin. Magseselebreyt tayo sa pasiyam ng nanay ni Dodoy. Tulad sa probinsya namin. Tapos, tsibog tayo, ha, Doy? Ha?

Siyanga naman, Doy. Sige na. Selebreyt na!

Sige. Bahagyang ngingiti si Dodoy, unang guhit ng ngiti sa kanyang mukha sa loob ng siyam na araw, gabi. Pero sa loob-loob niya, kung alam n'yo lang na hindi sa lungkot kaya ako nagkakaganito… hindi!

Hating kapatid, ha, tigalawang kutsara tayo.

Ay, Dyong, di ba hihintayin tayo ni Mister Pol Hanikom sa Anito?

Alas diyes medya pa yun. Karga muna tayo. Maganda yung kargado ka para mawala yung sakit ng ulo mo at saka hindi hahapdi 'yang sugat. Alam n'yo bang sinabi ni Mister Pol Hanikom na kapag nakakita siya ng isang buong bahay na mauupahan, ititira niya dun si Nenet, kasama tayo, di ba sinabi niya, Net?

Oo, kaya lang… parang natatakot ako, e…

Ito ang langit para kay Dodoy. Mamumula ang kanyang mga mata, mangangapal at mamamanhid ang kanyang balat, maninindig ang kanyang mga balahibo, wari'y mamimimitig ang kanyang mga binti, nagiging maganda ang paligid, nagiging masaya, nagiging paraiso. Yung tambakan, nag-aanyong bundok ng ginto. Ang init ng araw, walang haplit, sumusuko. Ang lamig ng gabi, umaamo, nagiging kaulayaw. Lahat nang pagkain, maski panis, masarap, malinamnam. Nagiging maganda siyang lalaki, hindi sunog ang balat, hindi kinakalyo ang mga palad at apakan, hindi nagluluga ang kaliwang tenga, hindi nananakit ang mga bulok niyang ngipin, gumagara ang malabasahan niyang kasuotan, nagmimistulang anghel sa kagandahan si Nenet…

Si Nanay niya, masaya sa solben, matagal ding gumamit. Siya ang nagturo. Noon una, galit ito. Putang-yawa ka, Dodoy! Masama ang adik-adik. Pero nang dapuan ito ng tebi, pangangati ng katawan at nagsimulang mangayayat, sinubok ang solben, nasarapan ito, naiibsan ang dusa niya. Kaya tuwing uuwi siya, may pasalubong siyang solben at siopao sa nanay niya. Alam na nina Dyong ito.

Naikuwento na rin niya kay Nenet na wala siyang tatay. Galing ng Bohol si Nanay niya, yun ang sabi sa kanya. Hindi alam ni Nenet kung saan ang Bohol. Sabi niya, parte pa rin ng Pilipinas. Nakalakihan niyang may labas-masok na lalaki sa mga natirhan nila sa iskwater hanggang nang makabili ng munting dampa sa tambakan. Greyd wan lang siya. Wala nang lalaking lumapit sa nanay niya. Kailangan na niyang maghanap ng pambili ng pagkain at gamot ng nanay niya. Nang lumalala ang kanyang nanay, panahong nakilala niya sina Dyong. Sa kalsada na rin siya tumira. Ayaw na siyang patulugin ng nanay niya sa dampa. Baka raw mahawa siya. Maski ano'ng gawin niya, hindi niya kayang bilhin ang mga gamot.

Hindi na rin nanghingi ng gamot ang nanay niya. Solben na lang at siopao.

Kwento ka nga, Doy. Magaling kang magkwento, e. Sabi ni Nenet. Magkukuwento siya basta si Nenet.

Kwento yun ng nanay niya, sabi niya, paborito niyang kwento. Ngayon lang niya ikukuwento kay Nenet, kasama na rin sina Dyong at Toto dahil naroroon sila. Kwentong piritil daw, sinauna. Kwento ni Huse Lisar.

Anong Huse Lisar? Huse Risal!

Hagalpakan ng tawa sina Dyong at Toto. Utal, gago! Gusto niyang ma-bad trip pero magkukwento siya kay Nenet. At saka maliit siya, e, hindi niya kaya ang dalawa.

Yun daw kasing gamu-gamo, matigas ang ulo, yung anak, ha, hindi yung ina. Mag-ina, e. Sabi ng ina, mainit yang apoy ng ilaw na de gaas kaya huwag kang maglaro sa malapit na malapit dahil malapit ang aksidente dun. E, ito kasing anak, matigas ang ulo. Isang araw, naglikot siya, hindi sa ilaw kundi dun sa tenga ni Huse…

Risal, gago!

Tapos, sabi ni Nenet.

Di napaigtad si Huse…

Risal, gago!

Tapos…

Natabig ni kuwan yung ilawang de gaas at lumiyab yung mesa. E, sa ilalim ng mesa nakatira ang mag-inang gamu-gamo. Nasunog sila. A, hindi yung anak lang pala ang nasunog muna dahil naghahanap ng pagkain ang ina. Umiyak yung nanay nang malaman ang nangyari sa anak. Tapos, nagpakamatay siya.

Maiiyak si Nenet.

O, pinagtripan mo na naman iyong kuwento. Hindi naman nakakaiyak, e, kuwento ng katangahan iyon, e.

Ilang elarti na ang dumaan.

Wow, halos panabay nilang nauusal kapag may daraan. Natatahimik sila, ninanamnam ang sawns, ang korol.

Dyong, sumakay tayo ng elarti bukas, lambing ni Nenet.

Teka… sige.

Sama kami.

Oo. Pag may nakuha si Nenet mamaya kay Mister Pol Hanikom. Bibili tayo ng tig-isang teysert para hindi tayo nakakahiya.

Bukas na lang tayo pumunta kay Mister…

Ngayon na. Usapan, e.

Mahapdi, e…

Singhot ka nang todo para hay na hay ka, mawawala 'yan. Basta bukas, sasakay tayong lahat sa elarti.

Naalala ni Dodoy yung sinabi ni Dong, yung pagsunog ng bilding.

Oo, kasi ayaw n'yong maniwala. Akala ko kasi noon, mamamatay na si Nenet. Ang ginawa ko, humingi ako ng gas kay Nenet, di ba marami siyang gas na panlinis ng tumitigas na solbent? Yun, sabi ko para sa ilaw natin. Nakikita n'yo yung istasyon dun ng elarti? Dun, sumingit ako noong malapit nang magsara. Nagtago ako. Tapos, nung wala nang elarti, binaybay ko yung tabi ng riles. Pagtapat ko diya sa terd plor, binato ko yung salamin ng bintana. Dun ko ipinasok yung sinindihan kong basahan na babad sa gas. Huwag n'yong ikukuwento sa iba, ha?

Oo.

Dumalang ang elarti.

Magbihis na tayo, Net.

Atubili si Nenet, nakatingin kina Dodoy at Toto.

Halika na, magagalit si Mister Pol Hanikom, e.

Atubiling tatayo si Nenet, inaalalayan ni Dyong.

Kaya mo ba, Net, hindi na ba masakit ang ulo mo?

Kaya niya.

Doy, huwag ka nang malulungkot, ha? Bobolahin ko si Mister Pol Hanikom para may teysert tayo bukas, tapos sasakay tayo ng elarti at saka kakain tayo ng masasarap. Kumain ka na rin kasi…

Tatango si Dodoy. Umiika si Nenet. Parang gusto niyang pigilan kaya lang baka magalit si Dyong. At saka gusto niya sanang sabihin kay Nenet na hindi naman siya nalulungkot. Dapat nga, magluwag ang kalooban niya dahil lipas na ang paghihirap ng nanay niya. May gusto lang sana siyang ikuwento pa kay Nenet…

Hindi niya alam kung matatanggap ni Nenet. Baka magalit. A, kay Toto na lang muna. Kay Toto na lang…

Matapos bihisan ni Dyong si Nenet at magbihis din siya, lumakad na sila.

Pilit na inaaninag ni Dodoy si Nenet habanag paalis na sila ni Dyong hanggang sa nawala na ang mga ito sa may hagdan. Alam niyang ayaw ni Nenet na pumunta kay Mister… hindi niya mabigkas yung pangalan. Ayaw ni Nenet. Dati, gustung-gusto nito, pero matapos ang unang parada kagabi, narinig niyang nagreklamo si Nenet kay Dyong… hindi naman pala mabait ang parener.

Masasanay ka rin, sabi ni Dyong. Noong una nga, akala natin hindi natin kayang humiga sa kalsada na bilad maghapon, nauulanan pa nga tayo pero nakaya natin. Kaya.

Tuloy ang dyaming nina Dodoy at Toto.

Ikaw, To, asan ang nanay at tatay mo?

Ako… sabihin ko na sa 'yo ang totoo, Doy, wala rin akong tatay, puta rin ang nanay ko. Pero tumigil na.

Asan na siya?

Hindi ko alam. Iniwan niya ako, e. Sabi niya babalik siya. Hintay ako nang hintay dun sa tinitirhan namin dati sa Baclaran, pero hindi na siya bumalik. Putang-ina niya, galit ako sa kanya. Ikaw, Doy, hindi ka ba galit sa nanay mo?

Noon. Ayoko lang yung mga lalaking panay ang pasok sa bahay pag gabi. Ginagalaw nila si Nanay tapos sinisipa ako pag tumitingin ako sa ginagawa nila. Kunwari tulog akong lagi pag may lalaki sa bahay. Kawawa si Nanay…

Tutulo ang luha ni Dodoy. Ngayon lang siya umiyak, ngayong pasiyam. Maiiyak din si Toto.

Galit ako sa nanay ko… pero mahal ko din naman siya kahit na iniwan niya ako…

Madalang na madalang na ang elarti. Kargadong-kargado na sina Dodoy at Toto. Panay pa rin ang singhot nila ng solben. Banat hanggang sa kaya.

To, naniniwala ka ba kay Dyong na siya ang sumunog sa bilding na 'to?

Maniniwala ka rin ba na sinunog ko ang nanay ko?

Ano?

Sinunog ko si Nanay, To… sinunog ko siya…

Umiiling si Toto. Hindi mo yun magagawa sa nanay mo. Nanay mo yun, e. Hindi ako maniniwala!

Sinunog ko siya, To… sinunong ko yung bahay namin… dinurog ko muna siya ng solben, durog na durog… tapos, nung hay na hay na siya, binuhusan ko yung bahay ng gas… kay Nenet ko rin hiningi yung gas…

Putang-ina…

Kaya ako hindi makatulog, To… hindi ako makakain… hindi ko malimutan yung sigaw ni Nanay, saka yung amoy ng nasusunog niyang laman… ginawa ko yun kasi awang-awa na ako sa kanya… tuwing uubo siya, may dugo… yung katawan niya, puro nana at butas… nilalangaw siya… pag gabi, kinakain siya ng mga daga… putsa… putsa talaga…

Yuyugyog ang buong katawan ni Dodoy sa kanyang paghagulgol.

Mapapaatras si Toto. Magsusuka nang magsusuka, lalayo.

Samahan mo ako, To. Huwag mo akong iwan dito…

Ayoko na! Bad trip ka! Putang-ina! Tatakbo si Toto, lalamunin ng dilim.

Totodohin ni Dodoy ang pagsinghot sa solben, parang mauubusan, parang hinahabol, kailangan niyang mapuno, mawala para hindi mahabol ng amoy ng nasusunog na laman, ng nakalulunos na sigaw.

Kaginsa-ginsa'y may naulinigan siyang tunog, parang malayong sigaw? Hindi, sawns! Sawns nga! Hayun, tanaw niya ang papalapit na elarti. Andaming korol.

Tatayo si Dodoy, hahakbang sa hanggahan ng palapag. Sasakay ako sa elarti, mauuna ako sa kanila… hindi nila ako mahahabol. Guguhit ang ngiti sa kanyang mukha.

Bago tumapat sa gusali ang rumaragasang dambuhalang uod ay lumipad na si Dodoy… sa magpakailanman.

Wow.

Postcript:

Si Nenet, namatay sa impeksyon ng kanyang maselang parte.
Si Toto, nasa sentro ng rehabilitasyon para sa mga adik.
Si Dyong, inampon, sabi'y inasawa ni Mister Paul Honeycombe. Nasa Ostralya na sila.

Our Death, In Memoriam

2009-10-15T13:26:00.000-07:00

By Lav Diaz

In November 30, 2006, super typhoon Reming (international name: Durian) struck the Philippines killing hundreds of people and burying villages around the Mayon volcano area in the Bicol region. Nine hours of relentless heavy rain and wind caused harrowing deaths and destruction. Volcanic debris, boulders, sand and mudflows covered the once verdant and serene place. The sight of the aftermath was apocalyptic. The typhoon was the strongest to hit the Philippines in living memory.

Two weeks before the typhoon struck, I wrapped the four-month shoot of Heremias Book Two in the very same places that the typhoon destroyed. A good part of Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino was also shot there three years ago. I've become so attached to the place. I didn't realize the magnitude of the devastation till I had gained enough courage to visit the place a week later. The places where we shot scenes were all in ruins; the roads were gone, the houses were either buried or torn to pieces, structures collapsed. It was unbelievable; horrifying. Gloom and sorrow were all over the place. The smell of death was hovering in every corner, even in sleep and in dreams. You could hear hapless wails in the dead of the night, names being screamed and cried out. People were digging, or just walking aimlessly, looking for loved ones; people were burying loved ones; people were going insane; people were numbed by so much pain. And help was late in coming. The system is so neglectful and so corrupt. I got hold of my camera and with the help of two, three friends living in the area, I started shooting I don't know what yet then. A documentary? Maybe just a recording, a reportage (For whom? For myself? I just felt I had to do something.)? I just started interviewing and shooting. After a week of frenzied and relentless shoot, I watched the footage. And I decided to write a story. I decided to make a film, a memoriam, and share it to the world; share our grief. It's the only thing I can do and contribute to all the madness. I created three characters and just like in my last shoots (Ebolusyon and Heremias Book Two), I reckoned, the process would be very organic. I will write the story as we shoot; do improv method; we will discover things through the process. And so, for the next five weeks, we were shooting nonstop in the most devastated areas, specifically the village of Padang. Padang is Pompeii. In one sweep, water, sand and boulders rolled down the volcano and the village is gone. I wrote scripts/dialogue/instructions before a scene was shot. I invited three theater actors, a painter and local non-actors to play the parts. Three local friends became the crew and staff. A friend's house became our production house. The shoot was both harrowing and liberating for us. It was always raining. We wept, embraced whatever sorrow can give us, we can't help it; actors were breaking down; we had had discourses of what happened but most of the time, individually, we struggled in silence trying to reconcile everything. One actor, a medium, could actually see the suffering spirits. We were shooting over buried houses, over dead bodies. We were purging our own demons. It was a journey into the deepest melancholia of existence.

The film's discourse is on the death of beauty, death of aesthetics, how things can turn ugly. I borrow Rainer Maria Rilke's line from his Duino Elegy I: “Beauty is the beginning of terror.” How true and honest.

The great and beautiful Mayon Volcano is a metaphor for the argument. Mayon is the only volcano in the world with the most perfect cone. The resilient locals, called Bicolanos, refer to it as Daragang Magayon (beautiful maiden). On a sunny or clear day, the sight of Mayon is just majestic, perfect and heavenly in all angles. On a cloudy day, you would long and wait for her to peek from within the cumulus covers. But it is also one of the deadliest, if not the deadliest, volcanoes in the planet. In 1814, during the Spanish era in the Philippines, it unleashed its havoc and buried the surrounding towns with rocks and lava. The memory of that event still haunts the locals. They continue to tell stories, myths and legends about the event. Artists continue to be inspired and create works from the memory. They have a beautiful park, called Cagsawa, created from the ruins to remind them always. And in an ironic twist, Mayon just simply destroyed the park that is so faithfully dedicated to her beauty. Beauty rears its ugly head, so to speak, killing those who prepare the `makeup and production design'. Or, the pursuit of aesthetics can be very devastating and horrifying, e.g. Vincent Van Gogh, or think of Kurt Cobain and Mark Chapman, great metaphors on the irony of the pursuit for aesthetics.

The story that grew and evolved during the six-week-shoot revolves on the return of the great Filipino poet, Benjamin Agusan, to his birthplace, Padang, now buried. He was in Russia, in an old town called Kaluga, the past seven years, living there on a grant and a residency, taught and conducted workshops in a university. He kept writing poetry; published two books of sadness and longing in the process. He was shooting video collages, fell in love with a Slavic beauty, buried a son, and almost went mad. He came back to bury his dead—father, mother, sister and a lover. He came back to confront some issues, to face secrets, to heal wounds, or create more wounds. He came back to face Mayon, the raging beauty and muse of his youth. He came home to confront the country that he so loved and hated, the Philippines. He came back to die. In the backdrop are his friends, nemesis and a son. His return is an aesthetic journey.

From KINO Magazine, Slovenia. Notes written by Lav Diaz for his film Death in the Land of Encantos

Melancholia sa Melancholia

2009-10-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

Ni Rolando Tolentino

MANILA — Sa mga rebyu ng Melancholia, laging dinidiin ang kalungkutan na pumapaimbalot sa mga buhay ng tauhan, ng produksyon ng sining at katotohanan sa gitna ng matinding politikal na panunupil ng komersyal na cinema (negosyo) at ng gobyerno. Ang huling dalawa ang bumubuo ng estado ng bansa, ang black hole na humihigop sa lahat ng mga anak at mamamayan nito sa pagdalumat sa kolektibo at individual na buhay bilang kalungkutan.

Tatlo ang pangunahing seksyon ng Melancholia: ang una, sa Sagada, magtatagpo ang isang madre, bugaw at puta na pinag-ugnay ng nakaraan bilang naiwan ng politikal na pinaslang o inaasahang patay na; ang ikalawa, sa Maynila, ang bugaw ay naging publisher, ang puta naging prinsipal ng eskwelahan; at panghuli, sa gubat sa Mindoro, isang rebolusyonaryo, asawa ng puta sa una, ang mamamatay sa digmaan. May epilogo, ang paghahanap ng balo ng rebolusyonaryo sa kadiliman ng parke sa syudad.
Melancholia ang pakiwari sa panonood ng pelikula. Ang melancholia ay isang mental state, ng hindi lubos na pag-usad dahil nabalaho sa isang bagay (tao o pangyayari) na hindi makalimutan, ayaw ilibing ang patay. Kung gayon, melancholic ang Melancholia, mayroon itong hindi inililibing sa kolektibong kamalayan ng mga tauhan nito.

Paano maglibing ng isang desaparecidos? Walang bangkay pero hindi matuldukan ang pagkawala? Na ang bawat pangungulila ay paggunita sa kapasidad ng pag-alaala, na siyang binubura ng pagdanas ng politikal na pagpaslang o pandurukot ng estado sa mga aktibista at rebolusyonaryo nito? Ito ang kapasidad na makapaglikha ng alternatibong imahinaryo, kaya iniimpit ng estado ng nakaraan at kasalukuyan.

O ang mismong rebolusyonaryong proyektong nagbibigay ng radikal na lagusan sa lahat ng ito? Sinasaad ng pelikula, ang gitnang uring kalungkutan ng individual at kolektibo sa pakikibaka ang bumabalaho sa posibilidad ng pag-ungos ng rebolusyonaryong pakikibaka. Ito o ang sikliko ng panunupil ng mga nanunungkulan sa gobyerno at interes ng negosyong higit na nakakapagtiyak ng kolektibong kalungkutan para sa dinudustang nakararami.

Ang proyekto ng Melancholia ay hindi ilibing ang patay. Ibuyanyang ito sa pamamagitan ng pagdanas ng epekto sa mga naiwang buhay, kung paano ito ay sustenidong pamana ng dekada at siglo ng panunupil ng estado. Tulad ng mga naunang pelikula ni Lav Diaz, polemikal ang paglalahad ng naratibo bilang bahagi ng mas malaking diskurso at pagninilay-nilay sa sining at politika.

Hindi kayang palitan ng identidad at lunan ang batayang pagkatao na dumadanas ng kalungkutan ng estado. Ito ang malawakang panahon at malalimang kasaysayang nagbibigay-epekto sa kolektibong pagkatao. Dala-dala ng mga tauhan, sa kaibuturan ng kanilang pagkatao, ang kolektibong kalungkutan ng estado. At ito ang malawakang self-reflexivity na undertaking ng mga pelikula ni Diaz: ang ating pinapanood (ang pelikula) ay ang dating na may sumpang hindi kailanman mapagpag-pagpag (ang mismong melancholia).

Hindi pagtunghay sa kalungkutan ang proyekto ng Melancholia. Kung ito, di sana ay nalungkot tayo sa panonood ng pito at kalahating oras na pelikula. Ito ang kanyang polemiko. Ang tinutunghayan natin ay ang filmikong produksyon ng melancholia ng mga tauhan bilang bukal ng identifikasyon sa melancholia ng manonood at mamamayan—na ang sinisiwalat na “katotohanan” sa pelikula ay ang referensiya sa historikal na katotohanan ng mamamayan.

Nananatiling natatangi ang mga pelikula ni Diaz dahil ginagawang kasiya-siya ang politikal bilang lagusan ng kontra-politikang kasiyahan laban sa estado ng gobyerno at negosyo. Sa kulturang popular ng malling, Facebook, 24/7 na estabilisymento para sa libo-libong call center agents sa bansa, nilulusaw ng estado ang politikal sa individual. Sa ritwalisasyon at rehimentasyon ng buhay, tinatanggap na lamang ang kalungkutan bilang batayan ng konsumpsyon at kasiyahan.

Na ang ibinubuyanyang na hibla sa Melancholia ay nasa rebolusyon ang katotohanan: figuratibo at literal na pakikipagdigma. Kung wala itong paninidigan, walang katotohanan sa sining at politikal, na gaya ng formulasyon ng pelikula, walang katotohanan maliban sa karanasan sa kalungkutan. Naghahanap lang tayo ng multong hindi mailibing sa kadiliman at kalawakan ng parke, mall, Internet at iba pang sityo ng dustang buhay.

Melancholia: Philippine cinema as meditation and metaphysics

2009-10-14T10:32:00.000-07:00

By Lito B. Zulueta

Lav Diaz’s Melancholia provides a sweeping fillip and summing-up to the aesthetics he has stubbornly maintained and that has always baffled audiences. A mordant movie that is part pastorale, part meditation, and part social commentary, there is no other film like it, except for the previous movies he has done— sweeping narrative movies that seem determined to break the standard idea of a regular feature movie that’s all but told in just 90 minutes more or less.

But unlike in his previous movies where the narrative seems a recasting of the picaresque, Melancholia, Diaz dispenses with the narrative trajectory altogether, leaving the viewer on tenterhooks but still with a modicum of familiarity with its most basic story line revolving around three characters—a hooker, a pimp and a nun. All of them seem wounded by grief over the deaths of communist rebel friends who had been dashed and killed either by the insurgency conflict or by natural calamity. Everyone is held by the memory of death and destruction.

All of eight hours, Melancholia is an extended mining of memories and insights, the masochism of the exercise somehow alleviated by the contemplative mood and the sprawling bucolic romp that’s vintage Lav Diaz iconology. Some among the viewers may impatiently complain that Diaz should have shown rather than told, but the aesthetic he has mastered along this line shirks any postcard-pretty representation: if there’s any image-making here, it is more of an evocation, the tracing of an aura that hovers between reality and unreality.

After all, how does one really deal with pain and suffering? If violence and death are as perennial as the grass—as unerringly present in the evergreen forests as they are a regular in the headlines of metropolitan newspapers—how does one cope with them? In the world of Lav Diaz, death is no respecter of geographies or political causes: one meets it in both the urban jungle and the rural sprawl, one dies because of a calamity of nature or a calamity of conflict, and those left behind are left with the destiny of grasping and groping for meaning in the midst of the utter meaninglessness of it all. Melancholia is not a mood, it’s a movie of meaning and worth; it’s a cinema of powerful signification.

A Speech for the 8th Italian Film Festival

2009-10-14T10:11:00.000-07:00

By Lav Diaz

This piece will not be long. I timed it. It shall be just two minutes.

Okay, it will be a little bit longer. I am writing this piece in a very organic way, no apologies-stream of consciousness manner. This is free cinema.

I hate speeches to be very honest. Besides an incurable stage freight, I would rather much prefer to just play guitar with my back behind the crowd or be behind the camera than talk in front of people who would just be hearing another fool’s hyperbole and self-important chatter.

I received this request to deliver a speech here as a guest of honor.

What on earth is a guest of honor? Have you checked my background? The Board of Censors here in the Philippines banned my films, my two films that won at the Orizzonti of the Venice Film Festival. There’s nudity and sex, they said. Without proper critical viewing of my films by the honorable members of the Board of Censors, they deemed the films not appropriate for viewing here in their country of origin. They banned other works, too. And lately, they have been encroaching on the freedom of venues like the Adarna Theatre of the University of the Philippines. Benito Mussolini must be very proud.

I’ll say it again. Censorship is poison to cinema. Censorship is poison to the arts. Censorship is poison to culture. Censorship is a very feudal act. It is fascism.

The invitation also says that I should talk about my Venice experience. So, here’s a piece from a Filipino independent pornography filmmaker.

First, I would like to congratulate the 8th edition of the Italian Film Festival here in our beloved battered Philippines.

The Venice Film Festival or the Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica di Venezia is the Mother of film festivals. It is the oldest film festival in the world. This tradition of mounting film festivals had its beginning in Venice, Italy in 1932. In 1952, the first Filipino film to compete, Manuel Conde’s Genghis Khan, exhibited in Venice. In 1985, Mike de Leon’s Sister Stella L. was shown at the festival. And in 2007, my film Death in the Land of Encantos competed and won Special Mention at the Orizzonti section of the festival. The following year, in 2008, my film Melancholia, competed in the same section and won the Orizzonti Prize. This year, Briliante Mendoza’s Lola was a Philippine entry at the Main Competition and Pepe Diokno’s Engkwentro coveted two prizes, the Orizzonti Prize and the Luigi di Laurentii Lion of the Future Prize. Despite the dearth of our participation in the seventy six years existence of the Mostra, only six films to date, we have had a very triumphant and respectable run. Long live, Philippine cinema, indeed! And I would like to point out that despite the absence of state support in our cultural struggle, in the state’s sheer ignorance on the very important role of the arts in educating our people, cultural workers, especially artists and activists, persevere in pursuing greater discourse and praxis in this vast wasteland called the Philippines.

A Venice attendance is every filmmaker’s dream. If you are into aesthetic exercise, world cinema offers a load of great and incendiary works. And if you have celebrity skin, Hollywood’s killer vanity and fashion’s hallucinatory sheen is just everywhere. You can check the stately hotel where Thomas Mann wrote Death in Venice. A walk in Venice is a time machine ride with its old structures, art centers and canals. A boat ride is a rock ‘n roll experience.

More than the festivities and the city, Italy gave the world its great cinema culture. Roberto Rossellini, Michaelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Vittorio de Sica, Ermanno Olmi, Bernardo Bertolucci, Sergio Leone. That venerable list is continued by modern auteurs like Gianni Amelio, Giuseppe Tornatore, Marco Bellocchio, Paolo Sorrentino, Gabriele Salvatores and a lot more.

Italian cinema has given us many of the greatest models and paradigms--Open City, Paisan, Stromboli, L’Avventura, La Notte, L’eclisse, The Leopard, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, 8 ½, La Dolce Vita, Umberto D., Bicycle Thief, The Conformist, The Tree of Wooden Clogs, L’America. These works are incomparable masterpeices. These works set the standard by which the greater aesthetic discourse in cinema will continue to be measured upon till cinema is not dead. Yes, cinema will not die. We have Italian Cinema. Cinema will not die, we have Philippine cinema.

In one interview, Antonioni said: "I would not want to say. Or perhaps I do not know."

And I want to say this, allow me please: “Fuck profit motive in cinema!”

We just hope that this year’s edition will measure up to the greater tradition of cinema.

I will forever honor the memory of the great martyr, Alexis Tioseco… for the struggle toward a greater Philippine Cinema. Nika Bohinc will forever be in our hearts.

Again, mabuhay to the 8th year of the Italian Film Festival.

Salamat po.

(Read by Angeli Bayani, lead actress of Death in the Land of Encantos and Melancholia, during the Opening Ceremonies of the 8th Italian Film Festival in Manila, October 14, 2009)

A River Runs Through It

2009-09-05T09:26:00.000-07:00

By Alexis A. Tioseco

We walk a narrow dirt path lined randomly with fragmented rocks, working our way down to the point that runs parallel to a long river; a river that serves as a divide between the ground I walk on and the grassy terrain on side opposite. The landscape on this side rises up drastically: dirt, low-cost housing is being prepared on the main plain some twenty feet higher. Lav Diaz, sporting a worn back t-shirt, (which appears to have weathered many battles) and black jeans torn at the knees, his cinematographer (twenty-something Mara Benitez, daughter of a well-known underwater cinematographer) following suit, steps gingerly into the water. They cross to the midpoint in the narrow river, water reaching their ankles, their pants are rolled up just below the knees.

The soundman Bob Macabenta tests the levels of the DAT recording device (borrowed from cinematographer Neil Daza). There is loud noise coming from the construction going on in the main plain above us, and it dominates the audio. Rolly (the stout production manager), and Celso (the diligent AD and line producer), quiet the workers, asking that they halt their work briefly for the duration of the shot. They oblige, intrigued by what is going on, and watch intently the proceedings from their birds-eye position.

Bob sends Lav a thumb's up sign, signaling the sound is clear. Lav takes one more peek through the eyehole of the camera, a glance at the LCD display detailing the frame, then a final look at the river, whose water persists, tranquilly. He folds his arms in front of his chest, and in his typical crooked stance (he has muscle problems) yells out into the distance, “Action!”. The crew looks on, the construction workers are paused, watching, and I observe standing on the dirt road to the side of the river. We wait…

Since first watching the 5-hour “Batang West Side”, at its World Premiere during Cinemanila in 2001, I've been an ardent believer in the cinema of Lav Diaz. “Batang West Side” not only changed the way that I viewed cinema and the possibilities of Philippine cinema, but it was the film that made cinema matter to me, personally. It impact to me was like that of “Night and Fog” to Daney: a numbing revelation of the power this medium.

Diaz's long takes feel right. I've seen “Batang West Side” (edited by Ron Dale) three times now and the 11-hour “Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino” (edited by Diaz himself) four, and the rhythm of each shot seems timed to near-perfection. Diaz's shots linger long enough to let thoughts ferment and to let the eyes explore and wander; absorbing in equal measure the crevices of the frame, the ambient sounds of the world captured in it, and the audiences own personal reflections on the relation of what one is seeing now to what has been shown to him prior. They cut, in my viewing experience; at the moment when it feels ones attention may soon be diverted.

This, however, is the first time I am on the set of a Lav Diaz film…

As minutes pass, the frame remains stagnant, nothing changing, nothing moving, save for the natural ebb and flow of the river. Far in the distance on the dirt road in front of me there is movement. Heremias (played by Ronnie Lazaro) is walking forward towards me at a snails-pace, his cow trailing slightly to his side, guided by a rope he holds loosely. So beaten and worn is this character (by what we know not) that he has chosen to leave his band of traveling handicraft vendors and venture off on his own. His feet don't walk, they labor, and considering the incredible distances he must traverse (first with his cow, later alone), the toll it takes on the body and the mind must be incredible. This is solitude, this is loneliness, and it is the path he has chosen.

Heremias, feet dragging, head bowed humbly, has finally reached the point of entry into the river. He steps in first, legs weary, and dips his hand in the water as his cow trails him along the slippery path. He walks to the middle of the river, the center of Diaz's frame (which has remained stationary throughout), and places the shirt that has been resting on his shoulder on a rock, dipping his hands into the river to clean them. He turns again to his majestic cow, the soothing sounds of water flowing in the river in the background, and begins to wash him, gently dabbing water from the river on it's body, rubbing it over its torso and legs in an effort to cleanse it from the dirt it must have accumulated over the course of their journey.

Often when Diaz's characters enter a stagnant frame from a distance, the shot will be held until the character exits the frame; it is a pattern you become accustomed to and begin to expect when watching a Lav Diaz film. For the uninitiated it can be unbearable to endure, for those that have come to expect it, it is therapy.

Heremias pauses for a moment and looks out into the distance of the river…

Ronnie Lazaro has a magnificent body. It has nothing to do with muscle (which he has; his chest built like a gladiator) nor stature (he is not tall though neither is he short), but with the relation of his body, to the manner in which he carries it; the way he moves, sits, stands, pauses. Simple put— his way of being. He is representative of the every-Filipino: humble yet strong, quiet yet resilient. Sturdy, and able to endure.

Luc Dardenne, members of the Jury that awarded the short film he starred in, “Anino” (Shadows), the Palme D'or in Cannes in 2000, described Ronnie Lazaro as a beautiful, enigmatic image on the screen. I must agree with Dardenne, and I believe this enigma, this mystery, is borne out of the contradictions of Lazaro's body (imposing) and his nature (meek). But this meekness is not a manifestation of humility without conviction, but rather the opposite: it is the demeanor of one who has/is contemplating the world around him, and choosing if and when the proper time to act is. The body ensures survival while searching; the search leads to conviction in moments of action.

He turns back to his cow, placing hand on its shoulder, and looks diagonally to that which is beyond the scope of our frame (opposite from the side he entered). His head is barely taller than the back of the cow. The moment passes… and he returns to washing his companion, darting underneath him at one point to better wash his underside.

He then rests himself down on a rock near his cow. He seeks a moment to himself, once again, before his cow, equally noble in appearance and having hardly have moved at this point, nudges him slightly with his head, causing Heremias to turn and pat him lovingly on the nose. We are now 12 minutes into the shot at this point, and the crew all light up with smiles at this sight, as if the cow, reading their minds, was nudging Ronnie to say “get up, let's go!” knowing Diaz's modus operandi, that “cut” would only enter the vocabulary once they exited the frame.

Heremias sits undeterred by the prodding, and his cow then lowers his head resigned to wait and drinks from the river. After a beat Heremias walks to the rock where he placed his shirt, and puts it back on. Again, he takes a moment to sit, head-lowered, and let the water pass through legs…

Remember that the workers above have halted their grind and are watching, quizzically, as, in their eyes, nothing is happening.

I stand silent, alone in my thoughts, still in the same position I was in when the camera began its set-up. I am getting impatient at this spectacle, nervously glancing at the workers, bystanders, and various members of the crew. A devout cinephile and lover of long takes pregnant with meaning I am, not to mention a devout believer in the cinema of Diaz, but at this precise moment I am no better than any other person on the set. We all began the scene with intent concentration but at this point we've been broken. It is only Lav, Ronnie and the cow who remain in focus. Or maybe just Lav and Ronnnie…

Minutes pass and Heremias stands up, tugging the rope that is tied to his cow, leading him out of the river and back to the road in front of me; the road from which they came. They walk, slowly, continuing to preserve patient movement proper to the film. I didn't know this at the time, but the left side of the frame of the shot ends just before the dirt road begins; the view of the path that they walk is obstructed almost completely by shrubbery (as with many shots in his films, it is not a matter of seeing the characters that is important to Diaz, it is that we know they are there).

The crew waits with giddy anticipation, and as Heremias and cow wander far off into the distance, Diaz yells, “cut”. The crew applauds, the onlookers wonder why, and the construction workers resume their grind.

When I watch the finished film of Heremias for the first time I notice this shot. It was one of a small handful that I had the privilege to witness firsthand. In the film, the beginning and ending of the shot are abbreviated—we see Heremias and his cow, walking to us and away from us only briefly. I sink into the river while watching and listening to this scene, enraptured by the beauty of nature, entranced by the soothing sounds of the water flowing; feeling, understanding, what this moment means to Heremias. Diaz's air on set, his resiliency and belief in his art, in art period, represent the melding of what Ronnie Lazaro's body represents and his meekness seeks. There is humility in Diaz's patience, and a resiliency in his unwavering gaze, unwavering patience of his camera. It is a patience born from a conviction.

I did not concede to this on the set, but understood when watching the film. Standing on that dirt road, I was anxiously anticipating the word “cut”. Sitting in my cinema seat, I wish this shot could go on forever…

From KINO Magazine, Slovenia and Rogue Magazine (http://issuu.com/migmari/docs/rogue_v1.3_september-lowres?mode=embed&documentId=080405080601-0ceb76956ac242f7aa1742b770a79eda&layout=grey)

Batang West Side

2009-09-02T21:29:00.000-07:00

By Alexis Tioseco

Batang West Side is an unequivocal masterpiece.

Read that again.

I know that it is common practice to allow a film to stand the test of time (people often say 10-20 years) before making such a claim, but I am that confident that this film will not only hold up over time, but be held in an even higher regard.

Why will Batang West Side challenge Philippine cinema? The film is long. Very long. It's 5 hours. 2 ½ - 3 times the length of a conventional film. Many quip at the very thought of watching a five hour movie, and persevere in their argument that it is self-indulgent and arrogant to expect an audience to sit through it. But what they need to understand, Lav explains ever-so-eloquently in his director's statement for the Hong Kong International Film Festival:

'Batang West Side is five hours long. For many this is an issue. A huge issue, and a headache to many here in the Philippines. But not an issue if we remember that there are small and large canvasses; brief ditties and lengthy arias; short stories and multi-volume novels; the haiku and The Iliad. This should be the end of the argument.'

Batang West Side is the antithesis of a present-day Filipino film, not only challenging our natural sensibilities on what the length of a film should be, but, even more so, challenging our sensibilities about how a (Filipino) film should be made. There is violence, but it is brief and subtle. There is a young couple, but there are no hot love scenes. There are parent-child arguments, but there is no melodrama. There are serious questions, but no half-assed answers.

How will Batang West Side change Philippine cinema? Precisely through challenging it. It is a common and acceptable practice for filmmakers to make films for an audience. To play to an audience's sensibilities (there's that word again), and make films that they will like and easily accept. But once in a while, just once in a while, you have to challenge an audience and hope that they grow with you as a result. Progress was never made without first attempting to defy the norm.

By making a film of this length, by making it in such a manner, by refusing to cut it, by the recognition it has received both here and overseas, the makers of Batang West Side serve as a shining example of the fortitude needed to reverse our cinema's current stigma.

There are no weak links in the film. Its narrative flows smoothly. Its acting, from both veterans (Joel Torre, Gloria Diaz, among others) and young actors (Yul Servo, Priscilla Almeda) alike is uniformly solid. The film's cinematography, courtesy of Miguel Fabie III, Tony Ponti, and Ruben Lee, is superb: a feat that should be commended to the high heavens if we are to believe the words of Diaz, that eighty percent of the film was shot with available light. Its editing by Ron Dale, despite the numerous complaints about the film's length, is brilliant, each shot remaining on the screen long enough to provoke and let linger the film's various ideas.

Batang West Side is about a lot of things. It's about Fil-Ams, the American dream, family, infidelity, secrets, Martial Law, drugs, reflection, decisions, friendship, identity, patriotism, responsibility, and the collective murdering of the Filipino soul. It's about questions more than it is about answers, and it's about making us think, probe, examine, and ultimately reflect.

The bulk of Batang West Side is spent following a detective trying to answer the questions behind the death of Hanzel, but the case is never resolved. Who did kill Hanzel - gangsters? Drug addicts? His mother's lover? Himself? The film doesn't attempt to give any answers, and it's only fitting that it doesn't. On numerous occasions, our protagonist, Mijarez, is asked tough questions-- by his therapist, by Hanzel's mother, by the documentarian, among others. His answer each time speaks volumes, of him, of us, of our mentality:

`I don't know'.

What director Lav Diaz has done with Batang West Side is craft a film so thorough in its dissection of its subject, and so engaging in its handling, that to watch it, in its entirety, is nothing short of a cathartic experience. It may just as well be us in the place of Joel Torre in the film's last few frames, he alone in the middle of the cold New Jersey night, us alone with our thoughts in the middle of a cold movie theater, exhaling our repressed burdens and inhaling peace of mind.

This is the first film review written by Alexis Tioseco. He wrote it on April 23, 2003.

'Impiyerno' lyrics:

2009-06-03T23:19:00.000-07:00

Words and music by Lav Diaz

I. Paalam (Haiku)

Balot ang bundok
Ng puting alapaap
Malayong musa

Haplos ng ambon
Anino mong nagdaan
Naaaninag

Hampas ng ulan
Lihim na kalungkutan
Nananambitan

Taghoy ng gabi
Dahon kang naglalayag
Sa panaginip

Rosas sa pader
Gumagapang na lungsod
Nangungulila

Patlang sa buwan
Nakaguhit mong anyo
Sa kalawakan

Dalit ng hangin
Pangamba ng taglamig
Isang paglisan

Gintong panahon
Hiram na kapalaran
Pamamaalam

Paalam... paalam... paalam...

II. I'll Be Gone

He was telling a story
It was a Russian story
It was a film of Andre Tarkovsky
It was about the girl in a mirror
He said, I can't forget her
Now I only see her in the vastness, in the blankness, in the madness of my dreams.

She said she hates the city so much
And she wrote some poetry at night
And we talked about philosophy and ideology
She said, she cares so much about life and me
She'll never forget me, she'll never forgive me
But she still hopes to see me someday.

Then I'll be gone
When night is done
'Cause I'm on the run
In the early sun
And the rain has come
To hide all this tears for you.

He is writing a story
And the premise is on history
And when he shoots his movie
There'll be no use of Stanislavsky
All the actors must be free, free
And we'll be working hard all day.

And then she smiled at me at the counter
It wasn't the first time that I see her
She untied her hair and pressed the coffeemaker
She said, "Man, why are you always here?
Why are you always alone?
Are you waiting for somebody out there?"

Then I'll be gone
When night is done
'Cause I'm on the run
In the early sun
And the rain has come
To hide all this tears for you.

Now, it's cold and dry in Quezon City
She's so tired she couldn't cry, it's February
My gift for her is poster of a movie
It's all about West Side Avenue in Jersey City
She lives all alone now
She lives in a dark, dark room
She only comes out at night
She walks the dark streets
And hopes to meet somebody out there.

The day she left for New York City
The cold's a killer out there in the story
She said, 'Oh God, please help preserve my country
All the theaters are closed
There's nothing here for me
I'm leaving, I'm leaving, I’m leaving now
But I still love you, Baby'

Then I'll be gone
When night is done
'Cause I'm on the run
In the early sun
And the rain has come
To hide all this tears for you.

III. Cold

The streets are cold and you worry
Now you're walking with your story
You've been dreaming of home
You've been driving alone
You say you're lost and weary
You feel so dead and empty.

When I tried to talk to you
You didn't listen at all
You say the sky's falling down on you
There's darkness all around you.

Something's good in you
Something;s good in you
Something's good in you
Something's good in you.

What's the cause
What's your story
Some things seem lost
Some things look dirty
This world is old and cold
You hold your head and fold
Your eyes are dark and dreary
Your voice is sad and heavy

When your friends come to you
You didn't listen at all
The sky's falling down on you
There's darkness all around you.

Something's good in you
Something's good in you
Something's good in you
Something's good in you

The waves of dawn are still roaring
But in your head the world is burning
In your head every thing's turning
In your head somebody's screaming
Please, rest your feet and stay
Please, rest your soul and see

That something's great in you
Something's great in you
Something's great in you
Something's great in you.

IV. Awit ni Patricia

Malamig ang hangin
Malamig ang puso
Matamlay ang langit
Matamlay ang himig
Hinahanap-hanap kita
Hinahanap, hinahanap.

Sa pagdalaw ng gabi
At pagtighaw ng alinsangan
Nanakaw ng sandali
Nang di mawalay sa isipan.

At pagdating ng pighati
Na dulot ng pag-alinlangan
Lalagi sa aking tabi
Alaala ng iyong pagpisan.

Malamig ang hangin
Malamig ang puso
Matamlay ang langit
Matamlay ang himig
Hinihintay-hintay kita
Hinihintay, hinihintay.

Sa pagbalot ng dilim
At pagtahimik ng lansangan
Idadako ang paningin
Sa pinto ng panambitan.

At pagdating ng pighati
Na dulot ng kahinaan
Laging kong tatandaan
Ang dahilan ng 'yong paglisan.

Malamig ang hangin
Malamig ang puso
Matamlay ang langit
Matamlay ang himig
Hinahanap-hanap kita
Hinahanap, hinahanap.

V. Dead River

I see you in this vast wasteland
Of innocent dumpsite children
And gentle goats
Your stench pierces my eyes
It numbs my brain
It bleeds my soul.

Your tears flow on this dead river
Your tears flow on this dead river
Please, don't wake me
Please, don't wake me
Please don't wake me.

I see you in this vast wasteland
Of innocent dumpsite children
And gentle goats
Your stench pierces my eyes
It numbs my brain
It bleeds my soul.

My tears flow on this dead river
My tears flow on this dead river
Don't forsake me
Don't forsake me
Don't forsake me.

I see you in this vast wasteland
Of innocent dumpsite children
And gentle goats
Your stench pierces my eyes
It numbs my brain
It bleeds my soul.

Your tears flow on this dead river
Your tears flow on this dead river
Please, forgive me
Please, forgive me
Please, forgive me.

VI. Ang Pinagdaanang Buhay

Paggising mo sa isang umaga
Walang kasamang nakaabang
Walang kaibigang naghihintay
Nangungulila ka sa 'yong pag-iisa.

Naglalaro sa 'yong isipan
Ang dating daang binabagtas
Napabayaang mga bakas
Isang pangarap na di na natupad.

Paghakbang mo sa lansangan
Naroon sila, nakamasid
Mga aninong nakasunod
Mga multo ng 'yong kahapon.

Nakikibaka ka sa araw-araw
Gumagapang sa karimlan
Lumalaban na mapunan
Ang panghihina ng 'yong kamalayan.

Sa pagdating ng labis na kapaguran
Nilulunod ng panahon
Umaasa kang mawawala
Ang bigat ng 'yong mga dalahin.

Sana'y humupa rin ang unos
Maglunoy ka sa tag-ulan
Yakapin mo ang kawalan
Huwag kang matakot sa 'yong pag-iisa.

At sa huli, ang tangi mong maaalala
Isang mukhang nakatungo
Isang pangalang papalayo
Isang pag-ibig na walang katuparan.

At sa huli, ang tangi mong maaalala
Isang larawang naglalaho
Isang pangalang papalayo
Isang pag-ibig na walang katuparan.

At sa huli, ang tangi mong maaalala
Mga pangalang papalayo
Mga aninong naglalaho
Sa isang mundo na 'yong iiwanan.

VII. Ina ng Nawawala

Siya's isang ina
At tulad ng iba
Nakaupo sa bintana
Naghihintay sa anak niya

Si Porfirio ay binata na
Kailan lang ay college na
Tanging pangarap niya
Mapagtapos ng karera

Baka natrapik siya
Ang laging sambit niya
Tuwing ang anak niya
Sa hapunan ay wala pa

Mahal niyang asawa
Kaylaon nang wala
Mag-isang iginapang niya
Ang buhay nilang mag-ina

Aling Maria
Aling Maria
Ang isang katulad mo
Sa mundo ay dakila.

Anak, mag-ingat ka
Ang laging habol niya
Tuwing ang anak niya
Ay papasok na sa eskwela.

Di alam ni Aling Maria
Si Porfirio's kasama
Sa eskwela't sa kalsada
Humahanay sa martsa

Isang araw sa Mendiola
Si Porfirio'y kasama
Nagkagulong bigla
At may dumukot sa kanya

Si Aling Maria
Magdamag sa bintana
Huling balita niya
Si Porfirio ay nawawala

Aling Maria
Aling Maria
Tangi mong pag-asa
Ngayon ay wala na
Aling Maria
Aling Maria
Tangi mong pag-asa
Kabilang na sa nawawala.

Siya'y isang ina
At gaya ng iba
Nakaupo sa bintana
Naghihintay sa anak niya

Siya'y isang ina
At gaya ng iba
Wala nang nagawa
Sa kaapihang dinanas niya

Siya'y isang ina
At tulad ng iba
Katinuan ay nawala
Dahil sa hapis na di mabata

Siya'y isang ina
At tulad ng iba
Nakaupo sa bintana
Naghihintay sa nawawala

Aling Maria
Aling Maria
Huwag kang mag-alala
Siya'y aming idadambana
Aling Maria
Aling Maria
Mapalad kang ina
Anak mo'y dakila.

VIII. Pray

She curls on her pillow
She closes the window
The rooms so frozen and dry
And she hears a lullaby.

He hits the highway sign
It's the spirit of the wine
The road's so dusty and he's tired
He hears a friend just died.

Pray for someone
Pray for someone
This world's a hole now
There's no space and time.

He crosses the river
Lives with a sinner
He sails the seas and skies
He writes those long goodbyes

She lights a cigarette
Her face a silhouette
She waits and waits at the street corner
'Though she knows it's over.

Pray for someone
Pray for someone
This world's a hole now
There's no space and time.

The walks are longer
The talks are stronger
It was the best defense he's told
When silence couldn't hold.

She couldn't stand to look
When his words had made her shook
The distance tough between them now
They gave up on their vow.

Pray for someone
Pray for someone
This world's a hole now
There's no space and time.

His thoughts are wont to tell
That living here is hell
She says, that's not really the case, my friend
You know, it's easy to pretend.

Another glass of wine
Her life is on the line
He seeks forgiveness and redemption
That time has never shown.

And pray for someone
Pray for someone
This world's a hole now
There's no space and time.

IX. Post-apocalyptic Sky

She's rolling on the dice
Slipping on the ice
She's keeping it all inside her head
She's keeping the pain inside her heart
Don't keep it all inside
Find some peace of mind.

What's in it for me out there
What's in it for me if I go
What's in it for me down here
What's in it for me if I stay
Sometimes all I wanna do
Is wait and watch that post-apocalyptic sky.

She's taken on the stage
And keeping up her space
She says, this life is just another rehearsal
My life's the ultimate scene in this play
Don't swallow it all inside
Have some peace of mind.

What's in it for me out there
What's in it for me if I go
What's in it for me down here
What's in it for me if I stay
Sometimes all I wanna do
Is wait and watch that post-apocalyptic sky.

Shadows on the wall
Shadows on the hall
Your voice is hovering but you're not here
This room is empty, this room is full of ghosts
Don't turn your back, my love
Please, give me peace of mind.

What's in it for me out there
What's in it for me if I go
What's in it for me down here
What's in it for me if I stay
Sometimes all I wanna do
Is wait and watch that post-apocalyptic sky.

Debris on the ground
Wild dogs all around
It's all gray, it's all black and white
A soul is hungry, a soul is empty, a soul is lost
Don't go away, my love
Please give me peace of mind.

What's in it for me out there
What's in it for me if I go
What's in it for me down here
What's in it for me if I stay
Sometimes all I wanna do
Is wait and watch that post-apocalyptic sky.

X. Kumusta Ka

Kumusta ka
Nasaan ka na ngayon
Saan ka humahapon
Ano ang 'yong maghapon
Ano ang 'yong ginagawa
Binabaybay mo ba ang lawa
Gumagawa ka ba ng isang kanta.

Kumusta ka
Balitaan mo ako
Kung anong nakikita mo
Kung anong naiisip mo
Kung anong nangyayari sa 'yo
May bago ka na bang nobela
May bago ka na bang pelikula.

Kumusta ka
May sayawan sa ibayo
May inang nasisiphayo
Umiiyak ang ermitanyo
Silang lahat ay nagkakagulo
Wala na ang ating makata
Makahiga na siya sa bangketa.

Kumusta ka
Nanghaharana ang gabi
Nagsasayaw ang kalapati
Humihingi ng pagtatangi
Kayong lahat ay nakatingin lang sa tabi
Wala na ang ating mga saksi
Sila ngayo'y napipi't nabingi.

Kumusta ka
May parada sa ating baryo
Ang lahat ay kandidato
Walang puwang ang pag-ibig mo
Magwawakas na ang senakulo
Wala na ang ating payaso
Nakakulong na siya sa palasyo.

Kumusta ka
Huwag ka sanang magbabago
Huwag ka sanang magtatago
Kailangan ka namin dito
Kailangan pa ang tulong mo
Saka ka na magpahinga
Marami pa tayong magagawa.

Halika na
Samahan mo ako
Huwag tayong sumuko
Sumulong pa tayo
Lumaban pa tayo
Itaas ang iyong kamao
Isigaw ang boses mo
Lumaban tayo nang husto
Habang tayo ay narito
Habang buo ang ating mga puso.

“Impiyerno: Songs From & Inspired by the Cinema of Lav Diaz” (3rd .mov International Digital Film Festival)

2009-06-03T23:04:00.000-07:00

By Pocholo Concepcion

If people believe that life’s purpose is to find happiness, this CD may either comfort them or drive them nuts. The 10 songs in “Impiyerno” are relentless in their narratives of pain, so that in the end one feels fortunate just to be alive.

The story goes that Lavrente Diaz, aka Lav, kingpin of Pinoy alternative filmmaking, was persuaded to record songs he wrote (in his other life as a dabbling musician) by colleague Khavn De La Cruz in time for the 3rd .mov film fest.

The idea is that De La Cruz, festival director and the album's producer, wants to present Philippine independent cinema's links to music and literature, in which case Diaz, whose writer’s roots and passion are fueled by rock ‘n’ roll, is a worthy subject.

The recording session, in true punk DIY fashion, was done in four hours, with all the songs nailed in one take, even as Diaz was coming down with the flu. Such circumstances lend an eerie sense of authenticity to the album’s dreary mood: Diaz’s voice cracks in a few tracks and his overall performance projects a persona who knows desolation like the back of his hand.

In Diaz’s songs, a couple of which (“Paalam,” “Awit ni Patricia”) are heard in his films, recurring images of long, dark, rainy nights abound; various characters contemplate their agonies; some walk away with festering wounds in their hearts. The earliest tune he wrote, “Ina ng Nawawala,” was inspired by a bloody scene: Lean Alejandro’s assassination in 1987.

In one track, “Cold,” a rare positive line is heard: “Something’s good in you.” Though it sounds more like a plea to the dejected.

The album’s statement, Diaz writes in the liner notes, is: “There is no cure to sadness.” But the way Diaz interprets the experience, with a touch of Neil Young on acoustic guitar, and traces of Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen on vocals, should take away the frown.

From The Philippine Daily Inquirer

Beyond the Time Barrier

2009-01-06T02:59:00.000-08:00

by Christoph Huber

Hollywood may have taught us that It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, but Lav Diaz reminds us that the world is also sad sad sad sad. And if that repeptition sounds crushing to you (whereas the one in the title of Stanley Kramer's Hollywood film is just there to tickle), you are on the right track: Inaugurated by the epic masterpiece Evolution of a Filipino Family (Ebolusyon ng isang pamilyang pilipino, 2004), the Filipino's director recent cycle of black-and-white video works, with their seemingly unwieldy lengths - inbetween seven and eleven hours - represent a unique achievement and offer unique experiences in the history of cinema. Their length is not an affectation, but a necessity, in reaching for heights of expression that the conventional (and commercial) "rules" of moviemaking deny. They demand (but also: allow, for their durational strategy is ultimately liberating) uncommon dedication and concentration by the viewer, whose patience is rewarded with a physical experience of time and a stunning, singularly concrete feeling about their spaces, emotions and characters unlike almost anything else. The film's world starts to feel lived-in (and in that sense, Diaz' penchant for unbroken marathon screenings of his work is all the more understandable: bringing food and other stuff to the cinema, you have to make the screening room something like your living room: a lived-in place as well).

Which in a roundabout way, brings us to the ingeniously titled Melancholia, (after all, already Hippocrates characterized as the symptoms of melancholia "all fears and despondencies, if they last a long time" - a perfect match for the director's temporal strategies.) For Diaz' most recent film, the highlight of the Orrizonti section at the 2008 Venice film festival, whose main prize it deservedly won, is on the one hand a deeply moving seven-and-a- half-hour lament about resistance against all odds following through on the now somewhat familiar strategies of the filmmakers' recent work. On the other hand, its remarkable structure and subtle revelations of layers, adopting a (self-)critical stance (both in respect to its characters as well as to itself - and both political as well as aesthetic) mark it as maybe the boldest experiment yet in Diaz's daring reconception of cinema-as-we- know it.

In the beginng Melancholia may seem linear and following the logic of a conventional narrative - a tale of a prostitute, a pimp and a nun in a small town in the Philippines, described with Diaz' characteristic attention to details and rhythms of life, of perception and thought. But in the first of two decisive breaks -roughly after a third, respectively two thirds into the film - these carefully rendered lives prove to be chimeras made up to deal with the pain of existence and the throwbacks in the fight for freedom equality. From then on, sounds and motives (not just visual ones) begin to dominate the flow: A woman wailing unforgettably in the jungle, her sad ballad haunting the proceedings, as the losses and crushed hopes of the protagonists become ever clearer. Ever the commited filmmaker, Diaz not only insists on the political dimension - for all its depression, Melancholia is nothing less than a cri de coeur for continuing revolution -, but also incorporates fascinating detours into the situation of Filipino filmmaking (reminding one, for instance, of the crucial Brocka subplot in Ebolusyon).

"Why is there so much sadness and too much madness in this world? Is happiness just a concept? Is living just a process to measure man's pain?", asked Diaz in his director's note accompanying the film's description in the Venice Festival catalogue. The answers to the last to questions seemingly remain ambivalent: the wounded world of Melancholia may suggest desperation at times, but the effort of the characters to struggle on - and the efforts of Diaz himnself, who from what are nearly no-budget filmmaking circumstances, wrestles a richness, both philosophical and artistic, that all those pricier films daren't even dream of - also touches deeply, with a renewed sense of hope and commitment that remains incorruptible even under the most adverse of circumstances. Beyond the time barrier, Diaz' filmmaking manages to open reservoirs mostly untapped by cinematic (or "visual") art. There is a long sequence of guerillas in the jungle near the end, whose radical means and spiritual dimension begin to suggest what Steven Soderbergh recently persumably tried for, and miserably failed to achieve in his two-part epic about Che(Guevara). One of Diaz' fighters writes in his notebook: "I now realized the lyrical madness to this struggle. It is all about sadness. It is about my sadness. It is all about the sorrow of my people. I cannot romanticize the futility of it all. Even the majestic beauty of this island could not provide an answer to this hell. There is no cure to this sadness." By bearing witness to this sadness, without simply succumbing to it, by speaking out about to the woes of the world and our times, Diaz offers a poetic approach that may be somewhat disillusioned, yet is clearly driven by an unrelenting urge and a refusal to give in, whether to the (mostly unwritten) laws of the market, to the (obvious, but mostly circumscribed) failure of politics, or to the (downplayed) worldwide decline of ideology, solidarity and humanist values. As Robert Burton noted in "The Anatomy of Melancholy" back in 1621: "All poets are mad." Lav Diaz may be one of the maddest of them
all.

Christoph Huber, Vienna 2008

Sabayang Panahon, Produksyon ng Alaala At Proaktibong Cinema

2008-10-12T20:19:00.000-07:00

ni Roland Tolentino

Rebyu ng “Death In the Land of Encantos” (Kagadanan sa banwaan ning ga Engkanto, ) ni Lav Diaz

Hindi ang kahabaan ng oras ang isyu sa pelikula ni Lav Diaz. Sa Engkanto, siyam na oras ang palabas, tulad ng naunang Ebolusyon ng Pamilyang Pilipino at Heremias. Sino ang handang maglaan ng isang araw ng kanilang gising na buhay para sa pelikula ni Diaz?

Sa aking palagay, isinulat ni Nil Baskar sa “Poetic Post-mortem” ang pinakamataas na pagpuri sa mga pelikula ni Diaz:

[...] Death in the Land of Encantos proved to be a wholly enchanting experience, both a lesson in cinema’s capacity to profoundly shape time and space, as well as a rediscovery of its fundamental gestures, of conceiving an associating images with true artistic and political necessities. It confirmed that the work of Lav Diaz is not unique because of its epic length, but because of its original ideas and its confidence in telling a story with purely cinematic means as something that is becoming quite rate and even strange to observe in these times, when it seems that so much of contemporary cinema has elected a noncommittal and ironic detachment from everything and anything.

Tatlong antas ng panlipunang tunggalian ang tinatahi ng Engkanto. Una, ang debastasyon ng supertyphoon sa Bikol, bilang kahindik-hindik na topography ng mga aktwal na dokumentaryo ng mga biktima, at ng binabalikang lugar ng bida, si Benjamin Agusan. May tunay nga bang babalikan pa?

Ikalawa, ang personal na biyahe ng pag-alis at pagbabalik, ang “panunumbalik” ni Agusan. Existensyal na iniimbistigahan muli ang kanyang buhay bilang makata, kasamang artista, at kamamamayan, at sinusuma ang halaga ng mga salik na ito sa kanyang pagkatao. Paninimbang na parating kulang.

Ikatlo, ang fasistikong pambansang politika na nagsiwalat ng pagkawalang-bahala sa mga nabiktima ng bagyo, kabangkaratohen ng moral na uniberso ng lipunan, at karahasang minumulto at literal na tinotortyur si Agusan. Na tulad ng bagyo, malawakan ang saklaw at epekto. Pero di tulad ng bagyo, gawa ng naghaharing uri bilang pang-araw-araw na operasyon ng panlipunang buhay.

Familyar ang mga tunggalian ito sa iba pang pelikula ni Diaz. Sa Batang Westside, ang pulis na nag-iimbestiga ng pagpaslang sa isang Filipinong migrante sa US ay isang dating tortyurer sa diktaduryang Marcos. Sa Ebolusyon, ang pamilya ng maralitang tagabundok ay ipit pa rin sa pambansang politikang lalong nagpapahirap sa kanila.

Ang produkto ng mga pelikula ay isang pag-aresto sa panahon: sabayang pinagsisiksikan ang panahong nakalipas, kasalukuyan at hinaharap; na tila isinasaad na ang hinaharap ay nakalugmak sa isang kasalukuyang iniligmak din ng nakalipas. Kaya rin isinasaad ang kondisyon ng imposibilidad, ng di-tuwirang pagharap sa hinaharap.

Sa pamamagitan ng pagkahon sa tatlong panahon ni Agusan at ng bansa, lumilikha ng alaala ng lipunang patuloy na pinangingibabawan ng mapanupil na politika. Kaya literal at epistemikong naghihirap dahil hindi naputol ang panahon ng pambansang politikang nagbibigay-buhay at substansya sa kasaysayan.

Kung inaresto ang panahon, ito ay para likhain ang interkoneksyon ng mga sandali. At sa temporal—kahit pa siyam na oras ito ng pelikula—ipinapatunghay ang produksyon ng kontraryong alaala (counter-memory). Ito ang panahon ng dikdaturyang Marcos sa kagyat na nakaraan, o ang konkretisasyon ng fasismo ng estado sa anumang panahon.

Pero ito ay panahon din ng pakikipaglaban. Ang alaalang inilalatag din ay alaala ng pakikipagtunggali, na hindi lahat ay nangatulog sa hele ng latay ng fasismo, noon at ngayon. Na parang masangsang na babala para sa panahon sa hinaharap.

Ang natutunghayan sa kontraryong kolektibong pag-alaala ay ang proaktibong kalikasan ng cinema—na nakakapagmulat ito sa politikal na ugnayan ng filmic at historikal na realidad. Di tulad ng Hollywood at mainstream cinema, binubura ng suture at continuity ang magkatuwang na ugnay ng manonood na mamamayan din, para lumikha ng identifikasyon sa white, Anglo-Saxon, upper-middle class values.

Sa pamamagitan ng long take (umaabot ng kinse minutos ang walang sawang paglalalakad, halimbawa) at long shot (na nagapatampok sa devastasyon ng Bikol sa ironical na backdrop ng Mayon, ang “world’s most perfectly shaped cone” na bulkan), ibinubuyanyang ang kapasidad ng cinema para i-cite o i-quote ang historikal na realidad, ang pinaka-topography na nagbibigay-landscape sa pelikula at realidad nito.

Black-and-white ang pelikula na nagbibigay-diin sa dialektika ng katotohanan at kamangmangan, ng karahasan at kasiningan bilang kalakaran sa pang-araw-araw na pakikipagtunggali. Sa huli ng pelikula, ang eksena ng tortyur kay Agusan ay tila pagpapalaot sa animong irony sa pelikula: multo na lamang ba ang nagbibiyahe, na ang natunghayang pelikula ang kanyang paghahanap sa sariling iwinaksi ng estado? Paano magkukuwento ang winalang multo?

Idagdag pa rito ang diskursibong gamit sa cinema. Sa gitna ng devastasyon, ang argumentasyon sa sining, artista, intelektwal na kapital at halaga ng buhay ay tinatalakay ni Agusan, kasama ng kanyang mga kaibigang artista. Sa pamamagitan nila nagkakaroon ng muling kulay at substansya ang buhay na binabalikan at isinasabuhay ni Agusan.

At self-reflexive rin ang pelikula sa sarili nitong pagpipinta sa kantong sahig. Ano ang laban ng sining sa karahasan ng pambansang politika? Na sinasagot din naman nito sa kanyang artikulasyon ng cinematikong paradox sa lipunang Filipino.

Sa pamamagitan ng pakikipagtunggali lamang nagiging mayabong ang lupang pagtataniman ng sining. Walang ibang panahon ang fasistang politika, walang ibang panahon din ang pakikipagtunggali ng sining.

Roland Tolentino

XXV. Batang West Side

2008-09-25T20:52:00.000-07:00

By Francis Cruz

More than being a turning point in Diaz's career as artist, Batang West Side also represents one of the most important junctures in Philippine Cinema, directly or indirectly heralding a new wave of filmmakers who have have pierced and continue piercing the veil of mainstream commercial cinematographic entertainment by making films that are fueled by personal aches and visions.

Batang West Side (West Side Avenue) represents a turning point in Lav Diaz's career. Unrestricted by the demands of commercial filmmaking, Diaz was able to establish himself as an uncompromising and relentless filmmaker. He populates the film's visuals with frequent motionless and staggered shots of fractured souls framed against the desolate and artificial landscapes of New Jersey, and rare close-ups (and when Diaz does indulge in a close-up in the latter part of the film, particularly of Joel Torre as snowflakes settle and melt on his sorrowful face, the effect is utterly tremendous). Shot by cinematographer Miguel Fabie III utilizing whatever light is available over a period of eight months in New Jersey, Batang West Side looks absolutely mesmerizing. The film is elegant in its visual austerity, something that has since then defined Diaz's unique brand of aesthetics, which is always reflective of the crises that his characters seek salvation from. From the sleepy streetlamp-lit alleyways of Batang West Side's foreign cityscape that enunciate the internal turmoils of the troubled immigrants that populate them, Diaz will similarly afflict the endless roads of the Philippine countryside, the farmlands and mines, the typhoon-ravaged towns with the vast emotional weight of his embattled characters.

It's length of five hours is both famous and justified. Of course, compared to Diaz's later features like Ebolusyong ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino (Evolution of a Filipino Family, 2004), Heremias (2006), Kagadanan sa Banwaan Ning Mga Engkanto (Death in Land of Encantos, 2007) and Melancholia (2008) whose running times range from nine to eleven hours, Batang West Side is very short. Diaz's editing is pitch perfect with scenes that extend to several minutes precisely to immerse the audience into the film's disparate reality. The prolonged moments, mostly draped with ominous silence and staticity, invite arduous contemplation on the matters tackled head-on by Diaz. Joey Ayala's sparingly used score has a haunting effect. His melodies are subtle reminders of the country is totally invisible in the film but perpetually lingering.

Torre plays Juan Mijares, an investigator who is tasked to solve the murder of Hanzel Harana (Yul Servo) in West Side Avenue. The investigation serves as mere backdrop. As Mijares delves deeper into Harana's murder, the film further dissolves into a meditation of the ills that burdens the Filipino. Harana dies a defeated youth, plucked from the Philippines by his mother supposedly to rescue him from the motherland's contagious deterioration only to be lured into the shabu (or crystal meth, the drug of choice, cheap and readily available, of the impoverished Filipino youth) trade and the nightly and often violent escapades of the street gangs of New Jersey.

The participants in Harana's life and death in New Jersey are similarly situated. Lolita (Gloria Diaz), Harana's mother, in order to support her family in the Philippines, travels to the United States to marry a wealthy old man, who has been left physically incapacitated by age and disease. Her husband's mansion becomes stage to a Bergmanesque chamber drama, where Lolita is held captive both by her marital affiliation with her useless husband and her asphyxiating love affair with the Filipino helper (Arthur Acuña). As her reason for leaving the Philippines and entering into a loveless marriage was rendered moot by her son's eventual reversal of ideals and demise, her story warps into an existential void where her sacrifice and suffering become pointless. Fundamentally involved are Harana's grandfather, Abdon (Ruben Pizon), and girlfriend, Dolores (Priscilla Almeda), who offer faint glints of hope to Harana's misdirected youth. Their inevitable failure further emphasizes the painful futility of change in a culture that is headstrong with regards to its vices although stubbornly persistent in its struggle for salvation.

Diaz drifts further from the investigation, as Mijares' personal conflicts become more apparent. As the investigation of Harana's murder mutates into the indictment of the Filipino psyche, his initial recurring dreams of his mother (Angel Aquino) graduate into violent nightmares, torturing him to seek redemption from the sins repressed in his self-proclaimed exile to America. Redemption arrives by the exposition of truth through an act of cinema, represented by a documentary filmmaker recording Mijares' confessions. For Diaz, cinema is not and should not merely be a means for escapism, it is also redemptive in its search for truth.

Through the film, Diaz asks a pressing question, "what has become of the Filipino?" His answer is as bleak as the atmosphere he deftly paints. The Filipino, wherever he may be, whatever he has become, is still a Filipino. The Philippine diaspora, caused by the earnest search for greener pastures, is not the panacea that will cure what aches the Philippine psyche. It is merely a temporary displacement, since the blood, the vices, and the virtues, that bind the Filipino people as dictated by its culture and history is as inescapable as the sins that individually haunt them.

More than being a turning point in Diaz's career as artist, Batang West Side also represents one of the most important junctures in Philippine Cinema, directly or indirectly heralding a new wave of filmmakers (the list includes Raya Martin, John Torres, Khavn de la Cruz) who have have pierced and continue piercing the veil of mainstream commercial cinematographic entertainment by making films that are fueled by personal aches and visions. Although there have been filmmakers like Kidlat Tahimik (Mababangong Bangungot (Perfumed Nightmares, 1977), Turumba (1981)), Raymond Red (Bayani (Heroes, 1992), Anino (Shadows, 2000)), and animator Roxlee whose works have opened the floodgates long before Diaz's five-hour masterpiece, it is the epic scope, the undaunted ambition, and the artistic integrity of Batang West Side that beacons the brave and independent spirit that ignites this new generation of Filipino filmmakers.

from Lessons from the School of Inattention, Francis 'Oggs' Cruz, 2008

XXIV. Rotterdam Delights aka Asia Expanded, Russia Displayed and China Revisited

2008-08-31T06:37:00.000-07:00

The 37th International Film Festival Rotterdam
23 January – 3 February 2008

by Barbara Wurm

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Barbara Wurm is a Berlin- and Vienna-based film historian, critic and programmer (Dok Leipzig). She is currently writing her PhD on Early Soviet Non-Fiction Film and recently co-edited a book on Dziga Vertov.

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If one had the time, if one were able to perceive life and its screens on a multiple level, if one were gifted to grasp the many entirely rounded up festivals within this one festival, the (special, dear, exceptional) International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), one could have started with something extensional and experimental like this: Lav Diaz’s Kagadanan sa banwaan ning mga engkanto (Death in the Land of Encantos), the 540-minute docu-fictional account of a region on the Philippine islands struck by the incredibly strong hurricane Durian in December 2006, a story, loosely knit around the existentially and politically active poet Benjamin Agustan who returns to his devastated native soil after a long stay in Russia, written and directed by Lav Diaz, this wonderful charming contemplative lonely hero who again and again seems to return to his morally and economically shattered home country as if after several longer stop-overs on a completely different (cinematographic) planet. Or with this: Standing Up, Waise Azimi’s second trip (and voluntary embedment) into the heart of darkness of Afghanistan (still and involuntarily at war), a 120-minute (also) Philippine documentary shot in Camp Alamo, the training camp of the allied forces, a serious, harsh, yet unemphatic attempt in realising who they are, these men shaping this War Against Terror on both sides (soldiers here, refugees and unemployed recruits there), a sociologically clear cut picture of a life we usually have no access to, deliberately interrupted by very personal reflections. Or with this: one part of the “Exploding Cinema” section (the framework for the transgression of cinema and its black-box and one-screen-limits as a framework), an intersection of film and art, a series of videos and installations called New Dragon Inns, including works by the Thai master-dragon Apichatpong Weerasethakul (plus some more or less newly introduced names like Uruphong Raksasad, Jakrawal Nilthamrong, Nitipong Thintuphthai, Thunska Pansittivorakul and Thaweesak Srithongdee), some smaller Chinese-Taiwanese border- and gender-crossings as well as a large number of longer videos by Thai, Taiwanese and mainly Chinese artists – the most outstanding of which being Yang Fudong’s Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest Part 1-5 (229 min.) and Wang Bing’s two hallmarks in political filmmaking of respectable length, He Fengming (Fengming, a Chinese Memoir, 186 min.) and Cai you ri ji (Crude Oil, 840 min.).

In Rotterdam you start counting days, hours and minutes, you work out short cuts between the theatres, you want to be here and there and everywhere, you realise how precious the time of life and its screens are. You didn’t want to miss the sensational comeback – as a free man, as a filmmaker – of the former Japanese Red Army- and pro-Palestine terrorist Adachi Masao with his wild, fierce, angry, gross, nasty and sadly enough not entirely fictional, or rather not entirely phantasmagorical behind-the-bars physio-psycho torture-drama Yuheisha/Terorisuto (The Prisoner/Terrorist), which is Adachi’s own story in a way, but actually based on another real hero, Okamoto Kozo, also a member of the Red Army and still living underground in Lebanon; a film, recalling the times when avant-garde and extreme politics could go hand in hand, when trash and splatter met critical notions on a highly repressive system and lead to a kind of insanity, simply unimaginable elsewhere and elsewhen. You also didn’t want to miss the other exceptional and other extreme of Japanese psychoanalysis on film (in a way…), Kobayashi Masahiro, whose latest Locarno-winning film Ai no yukan (The Rebirth), a very special love story in more or less complete silence, therefore in an utterly (nearly hurting) precise body language (plus communication via culinary rituals), starring the master himself in the main role, stood miles out of the rest of his nevertheless quite interesting oeuvre which was shown in one of the Film Maker in Focus portraits.

You wanted to get familiar with some new names in documentary filmmaking like Mahmoud al Massad (Recycle), Anna Hoffmann (Welche Richtung geht’s nach Hause?/Where Is That Home Now?), or Takefuji Kayo (Hanshin hangi/Half Empty or Half Full) – and you didn’t regret either of the choices. Recycle is an investigative and powerful video painting of Abu Amar, an ex-mujahideen, and of Zarqa, the Jordan city where the former Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi was born and where, until today, many recruits to the jihadist cause come from. If al Massad, born in Jordan in 1969 and an emigrant since 1988 (living in the Netherlands since 1995), went back to a familiar yet politically and socially different hometown to shoot Recycle, Anna Hoffmann, a 28 year-old “German Russian” from Kazakhstan, had left her Central-Asian background at the age of ten (shortly after the break down of the Soviet Empire) in order to study film and theatre in Germany. This wonderful personal documentary road-movie of her “essay” to return back to one’s roots (her roots, her father’s roots, her uncle’s roots), Welche Richtung geht’s nach Hause?, is an astonishing honest examination of family and cultural bonds, intimate and sincere, yet never too private; it offers beautiful, sometimes metaphorical visuals of an estranged but beloved landscape. One striking aspect in Hoffmann’s film, the intensity with which conversations between generations can take place, may also be considered the generic element in Takefuji Kayo’s Half Empty or Half Full, the docu-fictional account of a young female filmmaker meeting an old paralysed man who turns out to be a former filmmaker, too. There is great filmic artistry and mastery in both, the way these two get acquainted with each other as well as in the film-in-film being produced during the shooting of the documentary. All three films are reflections on the connection of memory, oblivion and filmmaking, they convey a sense of loss, emigration, and change.

Paper Cannot Wrap Up EmbersGetting in the mood of watching documentaries – which in Rotterdam is always connected with a certain sportive competition in catalogue-reading (the festival intentionally does not divide the landscapes of film into feature and documentary) – you, of course, wanted to trace the latest turns and developments of experienced and experimental auteurs. Rithy Panh’s Le papier ne peut pas envelopper la braise (Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers), for instance, the shocking, warm, and deliberately half staged portrait of young prostitutes in Phnom-Penh. Michael Pilz’s A prima vista, a structurally surprisingly “narrative” and autobiographic poem in Super-8, the selective and randomly organised looking back of a man of growing age on his many lives and paths. Garin Nugroho’s Teak Leaves at the Temples, a film that sets out as a simple music documentary of a concert by the free-jazz trio, especially performed for the film, but turns into something completely different – the very special Nugrohian way of intermingling local history and culture of Java, its spiritual rituals and traditional music, ethnographical information, everyday life, etc. with the plot of a film – following up (and maintaining some stylistic features of) the Indonesian master’s grand Opera Jawa (2006). Ken Jacobs’ RAZZLE DAZZLE the Lost World, a prime example of his virtuosity and metamorphotic qualities, or James Benning’s Casting a Glance, another prime example of forming and shaping a certain auteur-cinema, this time the minimalist and steady study of Robert Smithson’s famous landscape artwork Spiral Jetty. Another famous experimentalist’s latest oeuvre, the much discussed Mogari no mori (The Mourning Forest) by Kawase Naomi, testing again the unstable borders between document and fiction, this time by alienating a forest in which two souls get lost. Maria Ramos’ Juizo (Behave), the impressive (and sometimes hardly bearable in terms of absurd punishing methods) follow up of Justice (2004), her prize-winning documentary on the Brazilian judicial system. Or Sergei Loznitsa’s Predstavlenie/The Revue, a sensational footage film based on archive newsreel and propaganda material, dealing with Soviet social and cultural politics of the ‘50s and ‘60s; Loznitsa’s extraordinary handling of the material and its sensual qualities as well as his montage skills make this film a highly informative source for the exploration of the ambiguous nature of official and everyday life in the USSR.

The promotion of Sergei Loznitsa, this major talented Russian filmmaker, might also be regarded as significant for a general tendency of Rotterdam’s programming policies, displaying not only the widely acknowledged and favoured (nearly “expected”) focus on Asian cinema, but also revealing a strong orientation and intense research activity in Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union. For those with a special interest in Eastern European Cinema, this course could be clearly observed during the last few years already, in 2008, however, it became a real chance and challenge for a broader audience. Besides Loznitsa’s little “Belorussian brother”, Viktor Asliuk, whose humble petit masterpiece Maria reflects the depressive (his- or rather her-)story of a former socialist “best worker”, or the Ukrainian artist’s Ihor Podolchak’s visually intense essay in artistically recreating a claustrophobic family atmosphere Las meninas, one could finally see three mature masterpieces of contemporary Russian cinema side by side, its experienced wing, so to speak, the outstanding triangle Balabanov-Sokurov-Muratova, not the much appraised – sometimes a bit prematurely, as it turns out – young wave (Popogrebsky, Khlebnikov, Zvyagintsev), favoured by those who had been waiting all too long for a simple, free, which ever – light or heavy, but definitely always average European type of arthouse cinema from the generation bearing no longer the stigma of the former USSR.

Cargo 200I think it shows of great insight that the IFFR (besides its unquestioned, daring and encouraging policy to advance talented newcomers mostly before they are acknowledged anywhere else) at the same time persistently, nearly stubbornly continues to focus on directors who, judging from certain representation strategies displayed by official Russian film institutions and politics, are by far not everybody’s darlings any more (if they ever were): at the Kinotavr, the Open Russian Film Festival in Sochi, for instance, three main prizes were given to Alexei Popogrebsky’s Prostye veshchi (Simple Things), whereas Aleksei Balabanov’s outstanding chef-d’oeuvre Gruz 200 (Cargo 200) got none (officials hate the film, it brings disgrace, disgrace, and again, disgrace on Russia). Thanks to this maybe even more daring Rotterdam attitude to not turn its back on formerly big names, these in a sense paradoxical outlaws were given their deserved public appearance and international contextualisation – and we were given the chance to finally see (or see again) Balabanov’s shocking and cynical comment on Russia’s near past Cargo 200, Aleksandr Sokurov’s sublime, enigmatic post-political comment on Russia’s presence Aleksandra, but also the grand old lady Kira Muratova’s latest manifesto in weirdness, Dva v odnom (Two in One), an ever-so-ecstatic diptych of great idiosyncrasy and style, a contemplation on death and love, generations and sexes, relation and confrontation, starring a handful of the country’s most excellent faces, Bogdan Stupka, Renata Litvinova, or Aleksandr Bashirov.

Last but not least, there was the personal retrospective of Svetlana Proskurina’s films, one of two absolute program section highlights of the festival (the other one being the fantastic and long awaited retrospective of the “Chinese 4th generation”, which I am going to turn to in a moment). In contrast to the focus on Kobayashi Masahiro, whose earlier works Closing Time (1996), Bootleg Film (1999), Aruku-hito (Man Walking on Snow, 2001), Kanzen-naru shiiku: Onna rihatsushi no koi (Amazing Story, 2003), Flic (2004) and Bashing (2005), displayed many of the (“Truffautian”) stylistic and idiosyncratic features also dominant in The Rebirth (tameless desire, wintry desolation, silent humans), but doesn’t yet possess the same inner flow, surreal psychological depth, and exorbitant temporal intuition of this new film, the screening of all six of Proskurina’s feature films and one TV-documentary – on her soul-mate Aleksandr Sokurov – unfolded a whole small universe of extraordinarily strong individual films, each dealing with the human psyche, its heavenly heights, its abysmal depths, but more than anything with its nuances so hard to describe and narrate, that the only possible way of rendering them on celluloid is by the mastery of sense and sensibility.

Already her first (short) feature, Roditelskii den (Parents’ Day, 1982), like in all other films of the first working period between the early ‘80s and the early ‘90s starring her then-husband Viktor Proskurin, proves of a tremendously confident cinematographic mise en scène and of an experienced handling of visual and sound techniques; the intensity of the story (a child of an earlier marriage, now a teenager, visits her father and threatens to destroy the fragile family settings) is mediated solely by the language(s) of cinema, the reduced dialogues functioning as just another device of generating atmospheres. Proskurina’s three major films of this first period thus represent a multifaceted elaboration of these genuine skills and intentions: Detskaya ploshchadka (Playground, 1986), a late socialist komunalka-love story between two teenagers who want to simply live their lives of a new generation among the strict behavioural settings and codices of the typical Soviet backyard society; Sluchainyi val’s (Accidental Waltz, 1989), the structurally loosely-knit camera flight right onto the faces and bodies and into the interior and surroundings of the life arrangements of the specific perestroika-generation, precisely displaying this chrono-topos in which a multitude of psychic states and social relations seemed possible (and unavoidable); and Otrazhenie v zerkale (Reflection in the Mirror, 1992), Proskurina’s only attempt in trusting (and exploring) the metaphysical nature of the world, an enigmatic dive into the world of theatre and masks, reflections and mirrors, crisis and depression.

The Best of TimesProskurina’s latest film Luchshee vremya goda (The Best of Times) is a bright version of a similarly dark (or at least intense) story and probably the most explicit in terms of complex construction, drawing the dense picture of a spiritual love story as almost ancient tragedy between a man and two women at the age of 20, 40 and 60. The highest form, however, of this masterly demonstration of the skilful interaction with actors and actresses, but also with the mature and subtle arrangement of psychological atmospheres by a balanced confrontation of sound, colours, set design, camera movements and minimalist narration, remains Svetlana Proskurina’s first (unfortunately ignored) Venice-appearance Udalionnyj dostup (Remote Access, 2004), the clear-cut depiction of a nouveau-russe-family on the edge of existence, tumbling between utter adaptive professionalism, cold hearted intelligence, and eruptive as well as constantly repressed electronically mediated emotions – a film about trauma, gender and generations, a melodrama against its genre-roots and settings, a deconstruction of usual narratives, an exercise in the possibilities and the depths of communication, a masterpiece of virtual encounters in a world which no longer offers (and actually never had offered) any form of home, any kind of identity with oneself or the other(s).

If Proskurina’s psychological films allowed an analytical and also a socially and politically important insight into the decade(s) of Soviet/Russian perestroika, the second special program highlight of this year’s IFFR, Cinema Regained: Rediscovering the 4th Generation, curated by Shelly Kraicer, delivered a widespread and reflexive glance at the cultural landscape(s) of China during and after the so called Cultural Revolution. “The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) extended into and disrupted every social and cultural aspect of Chinese society, including cinema, which was given special scrutiny from the beginning of the People’s Republic, as a medium with the greatest possible propaganda value. These ten years began with a total cessation of film production”, Kraicer explains in his introductory article for the festival catalogue. The Fourth Generation was named retrospectively at the moment when it became necessary to distinguish this therefore randomly connected group of filmmakers from the ones working in the post-Liberation period (1949-1966) and those who regained international fame as the Fifth Generation (Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige and Tian Zhuangzhuang among others). Generation Four appeared “in silence”, Dai Jinhua remembers in the second longer catalogue text, arguing “it is only in retrospective that they turn out to mark the historic break in recent Chinese history.” In terms of stylistics the twelve films shown in the retrospective thus bear only little resemblance to each other. What the represented directors share, however, is the weird and in most cases tragic fate of studying and intending professional careers (as fellow students of the first generation trained at the Film Academy in Beijing) during a time restricting every step outside the arbitrary, ridiculous framework of the Cultural Revolution. It may be paradoxical, but the films, mainly a Europe- (especially Bazin-) inspired cinema d’auteur produced between 1979 – Xiao hua (Little Flower by Huang Jianzhong and Zhang Zheng), Kunao ren de xiao (Troubled Laughter by Yang Yanjin) – and 1989 (Ben ming nian/Black Snow by Xie Fei), are truly revolutionary themselves in the sense that they reveal the anti-revolutionary character of the ten years of outspoken cultural and human catastrophes.

The methods of this revelation were multiple, the topics of the films manifold. The most pompous one – probably not only in this program section but the whole festival – Xiao hua, for instance, an aesthetic sledge hammer with the air of a soft lotus blossom, a radical fusion of melodrama, romance and war epic, seems more like a straight continuation of the patriotic war genre and ideological dogmas at first glance, and only smoothly, even covertly, turns into a subversive reflection of old ideas and clichés (before it ends in utter heavenly erosion – or maybe self-destroying apotheosis … of Socialist Realism). This too-good-to-be-true story about two girls called Little Flower – in Jia Zhang-ke’s latest film Er shi si cheng ji (24 City), by the way, the film becomes a major point of reference: a fabric worker is called Little Flower, too, because Joan Chen who plays the roll, looks just like the Little Flowers in the famous war-epic from 1979 – their growing up in poverty in the 1930s and their sacrifices as silent war heroines in the ‘40s, is a masterpiece of orchestration and verve, a veritable colour epiphany, aesthetically matched by no other film of the series.

My Memories of Old BeijingThere were other examples of extraordinarily great direction, however, like the two 1983-flag ships Mei you hangbiao de heliu (River Without Buoys) by Wu Tianming and Cheng nan jiu shi (My Memories of Old Beijing) by Wu Yigong. Three men sailing down a raft on the Xiao River during the Cultural Revolution – this simple framing generates Wu Tianming’s sensational narrative in which every going onshore turns into a new breeding ground for the little man’s outrageous fate at this time. Farmers and workers, men and women, every average citizen seems to have become a victim of Mao’s radical ravage. Along with the trip the crew members tell and live their individual stories, unfolding hereby a broad spectrum of classes and the recent history of China. Of similar pureness and simplicity in style, less dramatic, more lyrical, however, is the other historical panorama My Memories of Old Beijing, a masterpiece of Chinese cinema. The emotional but never sentimental attitude of this epic is created by the fact that the threefold chronicle is told through the eyes of a curious and serious little girl, pulling together the strings of a young madwoman’s, a young thief’s, and her own family’s story. Like in River Without Buoys we learn about different social classes and historical constellations by an elegant interweaving of timelines and hardly noticeable (but therefore even more significant) shifting details in narration.

The cinematographic maturity displayed in the two Wus films on spatially (rural) and temporarily distant Chinese livings was contrasted by the sharp irony and direct political critique of the Cultural Revolution’s corrupt and destructive force in Cong Lianwen’s Xiao xiang mingliu (A Narrow Lane Celebrity, 1985), the black-humorous depiction of the years during and after the fatal period in the urban micro-cosmos of a “narrow lane”, and Ben ming nian (Black Snow, 1989), a Berlin Silver Bear, Xie Fei’s realistic hand-camera portrait of a guy returning to Beijing after imprisonment, trying to gain ground as a private market entrepreneur. Naturally he fails to go straight and is drawn back into the world he was determined to leave forever. The film is shocking in the way it delivers a raw insight into the shabby biotopes of a bleak underworld, where no niche is accessible for life without despair. It really stood out in aesthetics, too, foreshadowing not only the many realistic urban documents by the Sixth Generation, but also casting a future glance at what was to become one of the deepest cuts in Chinese history (the suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square movement).

A different type of realism, maybe slightly more prone to story telling but nevertheless almost as documentary in style is the wonderful Yeshan (In the Wild Mountains, 1985) by Yan Hueshu. With its long takes, its peaceful framing, its stunning lighting, this husband-swapping drama about two families living their lives within the ancient settings of rural China (the Shaanxi province) – and yet breaking out of the system – became an absolutely striking film experience for many (and one of my personal festival favourites!). Told smoothly, almost as if avoiding to interfere in the harshness of the domestic order and the individual strength of the female characters (the men tend to be losers, generally), Yeshan never fails to keep hold of the small details of real-life-matters, including the physicality of eating, the togetherness of animal and man, or some astonishingly open references to eroticism. To me it seemed even stronger than Teng Wenji’s much appraised Haitan (At the Beach, 1984), the symbolically (over-)loaded other rural family melodrama, set in a fishermen’s village and boosted with really crazy occasional sci-fi tunes – an allusion to Godard, maybe even Tarkovsky, in a small world defended by a Fisherman King and his gang against the new satellite town arising on the horizons.

Strange modernist imagery and experimentalism also seem to be predominant aspects in Yang Yanjin’s works, Kunao ren de xiao (Troubled Laughter) from 1979 on the one hand, and Xiao jie (The Alley, 1981) on the other. Whereas the first, one of the earliest representatives of the Fourth Generation, is the hilarious deconstruction of the perversities and absurdity of the years of the Cultural Revolution, the filmic disruption (slow and stop motion, colour effects, rapid-fire montage) and a confrontation of the naïve and the corrupt, the latter is a playful, yet meditative gender-switching film-in-film-in-film allegory, the un-intentionally therapeutic re-telling of a love during the troublesome years in recent history.

Woman Demon HumanThe same estranging dream-passages, a similar merging of different layers of reality, and modernism at its best can be found in Huang Shuqin’s Ren gui qing (Woman Demon Human, 1987), by far the weirdest and visually most daring of all presented films, and together with the second female director’s chef-d’oeuvre, Zhang Nuanxin’s Qinchun ji (Sacrificed Youth, 1985), the absolute double topping of the amazing heights of Rediscovering the 4th Generation. Based on the life of the female Beijing opera star Pei Yanling the protagonist of the film, famous for portraying male roles on stage (Zhong Kui, for instance, the ghost-catching underworld god), soon identifies with her father and thus seems to start challenging traditional Chinese gender models all life long. It is not only the famed ecstatic scene, when she encounters her alter ego Zhong Kui in a dark abstract room full of mirrors and reflections, but also the elliptic narration, the subtle yet fierce story, and the several cross sections it allows through Chinese history that make Ren gui qing a masterpiece and meta-comment on the actual cultural revolutions taking place during the Cultural Revolution (figuring as a prominent blank here, the most radical rupture in the artist’s biography).

The touching sequence (taking place after 1976) in which the actress lives as a caring working mother, slowly withdrawing from the revolutionary model opera business – a direct allusion to the fact that almost all directors of this period had started out assisting the recording of this standard genre of Cultural Revolution Art – is the strongest connection (in style and in attitude) to the features elaborated and displayed so magically in Zhang’s Sacrificed Youth, one of the greatest films ever (if someone who likes superlatives anyway may say so without getting completely untrustworthy). What becomes visible here is not only the general alternative humanism proposed by the Fourth Generation, but also its thaw-inspired disposition, its passionate but at the same time careful handling of the idea that art should serve workers, peasants and soldiers exclusively, its love for but at the same time cautious retreat and alienation from the Chinese socialist system, its longing yet discreet desire for a another life, its silent and contemplative concern for the many tragic and destructive forces striking this generation of hope – the culturally and politically engaged intelligentsia of China. Qinchun ji is singular in the way it depicts a young woman being “sent-down”, that is, expelled from the city to the countryside in the idyllic Yunnan province, her life with the new and poor Dai minority family, her reluctant but ambitious and humble way of adjusting to the hard labour and the ancient folklore traditions of the community, her reflections upon this arbitrary act of dislocation and the new sensual experiences that came along with it. It is the inevitable (and ideologically probably even intended) reciprocity between rural minority – filmed with an astonishing, for the time shocking naturalism – and the sent-down urban intellectuals, their unavoidable communication and contact which makes the young woman’s experience and with her the whole fourth generation’s fate so special. They sacrificed their youths, their hands were bound when they had reached the height of enthusiasm and lust for life, they suffered from being restricted and thrown back; but somehow, later, being already in their thirties and forties mostly, they were able to discover and lay bare the natural beauty and the inevitable evil, the idealist truths and the constitutive conflicts, the enchanting personal desires and the vicious social constraint in this hilarious, ambivalent, contradictory, estranged world, a world bureaucratically established by a historically singular political intervention, a world they were doomed to live in. They lived in it, they worked in it, they suffered in and with it, they hated it, they loved it.

XXIII. Indie Cinema bilang Kultural na Kapital

2008-08-06T23:38:00.000-07:00

ni Roland Tolentino

Kung bilang ang pagbabatayan, indie films na ang namamayagpag sa Pilipinas. Sila na ang bumubuo ng bulto ng output taon-taon, nananalo ng awards sa loob at labas ng bansa. Sila ang tinaguriang “shot in the arm” ng naghihingalong industriya ng pelikula.

Kung pagbabatayan ang ikaapat na Cinemalaya ng Hulyo 2008, ang 27,000 nanood sa higit sa 200 indie films ay nagbabadya na mayroon nang deboto, kundi man komunidad, ang indie films. Ito ang tunay na box-office draw sa elitistang persepsyon at katangian ng Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP).

Ito lamang, maliban sa lingguhang pagtitipon ng El Shaddai, ang nakakapuno sa mga venue sa CCP. Indie films ang lumalabas na tunay na ideal market ng CCP—kabataan, culturati na may interes sa pag-unlad ng lokal na sining, willing tumangkilik, at higit sa lahat, magbayad. Ano pa ang hahanapin ng CCP?

Ang indie films ay nakalikha ng sarili nitong niche community. Niche pa lang ito dahil Metro Manila phenomenon, sa pangkalahatan, ang indie films. Bagamat mayroong pelikula mula sa rehiyon, mas ang itinatampok pa sa kompetisyon sa Cinemalaya ay ang sentrong nag-aaproba ng proyekto ng rehiyon o mga pelikulang may rehiyonal na flavor na pinondohan at nakakapasa sa panlasa ng sentro.

At dahil ang base ng komunidad—ang tumatangkilik—ay mga kabataang culturati na nakakapagbayad (kung gayon, gitnang uri na tulad din ng kasalukuyang audience ng lokal na sineng ang bayad ay P80 hanggang P140 kada tiket), hindi lamang sentrong phenomenon ang indie films, ito ay gitnang uring culturati na kaganapan.

Kumbaga sa pagsusuring pang-uri, ito ang pambansang burgesyang may interes sa pag-unlad ng lokal na industriya ng sining, kahit pa nga ito pinopondohan ng media na interes ni Tonyboy Conjuangco, ang patron ng Cinemalaya.

At kung ito ang katumbas ng pambansang burgesya, maliit ang bilang ng tumantangkilik ng indie films. Matapos ng apat na taon ng Cinemalaya, mabibilang ang indie films na nakapasok sa komersyal na venue, ang cinema complex sa malls. Tanging CCP, isang sinehan sa Robinson’s Galleria, at Cine Adarna ng University of the Philippines Film Institute ang may regular na programa ng screening ng indie films.

Ang empasis ng Cinemalaya sa naratibong pelikula ang nagpaunlad ng kasalukuyang “mainstream look” ng indie films. Kalakhan ng sampung pelikula sa kompetisyon ay mayroong diin sa narrative continuity at suture, tulad ng classical Hollywood narrative cinema.

Ang Boses (Ellen Ongkeko Marfil, direktor) ay epektibong nagpaagos ng luha sa manonood, kasama ako. Sino ang hindi maiiyak sa isang inabusong musmos na nakatuklas ng kapangyarihan ng musika ng biolin para makaagapay sa kanyang abang lagay? Na mula sa pagiging walang magawang biktima ng karahasan ng kanyang ama, siya naman ay naging willing na disipulo ng isang demanding na henyo, ngunit may mababang EQ (emotional quotient)?

Nawala na ang jittery movement na gamit ay mumurahing portable video camera. Napalitan na ng stilisadong off framing, panning at tilting movement para mag-simulate ng sinaunang dokumentaryo at new wave look. Sinadya na ang indie look, hindi nanggaling dahil sa indie mode of production.

Ang kinalabasan ay well-polished indie films, o indie films na may mainstream look. Ang tangi na lamang inaabanteng “indie spirit” ay ang paksa—batang inabuso at nakatuklas sa biolin, call center agents na inaanod (o nilulunod?) ng bagong buhay ng sunshine industry, sensualidad ng Ilonggo cuisine, at iba pa.

Wala na ang lingering camera movements ng poverty films at surrealist look na ang artist at manunulat ang pangunahing tauhan. Na-Hollywood-ized na ang indie films, o nagmistulang indie films sa U.S. na nag-aantay ma-pickup ng major studio. Na kaya na lamang indie films ang mga ito ay dahil hindi pa nga naipapalabas—bagamat kahit ngayon pa lang ay nangangarap na—sa komersyal na sinehan.

Sa awardings, nandoon si Mother Lily, ang anti-thesis ng indie films. Hindi nga ba’t si Raya Martin ay gumawa ng pelikulang misogynista at racista ukol sa pagkatupok sa “Mother Lily” character? Ano ang nangyari sa fantasy-ideal ng indie filmmakers na matupok ang Mother Lily-mainstream figure kung ang tunay na Mother Lily ay kabilang sa guest of honor ng pinakatampok na indie film festival sa bansa?

Ang mainstreaming ng indie cinema ay naghuhudyat ng reconciliatory position ng gatekeepers ng indie films—na may content na at kailangan na ng market. Sila na resulta ng pang-aapi ng mainstream cinema ay ngayon nag-aalok ng olive branch. Nakaka-touch, di ba? Pero dahil na rin hindi na nakakasapat ang CCP, Robinson’s at UP bilang venue. Kailangan nang makapasok ang indie films sa sinehan.

Kung gayon, ang kasalukuyang orkestrasyon ng indie films ay tungo sa mainstreaming nito. Naka-check na ang international awards. Muli nang nakapasok sa Cannes Film Festival Competition. Kailangan na lamang may manalo sa isa sa apat na first-tier festivals.

Naka-check na rin ang kabataang culturati—silang mga filmmakers ay ngayon ay audience. Kailangan na ng mas malakihang expansyon ng venue at market ng indie films. At hindi komunidad ng maralitang tagalunsod o unyon ang inaakalang venue nito. Ang oasis ng cinema complex sa tuktok na palapag ng malls.

May retransformasyon ng kultural na kapital ang kaakibat ng mainstreaming ng indie films. Ang dating indie filmmaker ay ngayon ay inaasahang maging astute marketers na rin ng kanyang pelikula. Kahit pa ang payo ng international programmers ay lumikha ng mga pelikulang orihinal, kakaiba at nanggagaling sa lokal na lipunan.

Sa 27,000 na nanood ng ikaapat na Cinemalaya, hindi iilan ang nangangarap maging filmmaker. Na hindi tulad ng writer na maaring gumawa ng akdang ibuburo niya sa pahina ng itinatagong journal, ang indie filmmaker, tulad ng blogger sa internet, ay may ini-imagine na publiko.

Siya na manonood ay umaasang maging manlilikha ng produktong mapapanood. Mayroong kultural na kapital ang indie filmmaker. Nakakapanghatak ito sa fantasisasyon ng nasa ibaba—ang kabataang culturati na makita ang sarili nilang ideal, at mahigitan ito sa matagalan.

Kahit pa ang indie filmmaker ay naglalayon maging mainstream. Na kung magpakaganito, siya na nag-iisip sa kanyang fantasya na nagsusunog kay Mother Lily ay siya palang nag-aalay ng bulaklak sa paanan nito, at nagpapakintab sa rebulto nito.

Kung magpakaganito, natupok na rin ang indie bilang kultural na kapital. Natransforma na ang kultural na kapital—anti-establisyimentong gamit sa pelikula, kontraryong bisyon sa sining, at pagtatanghal sa direktor bilang artist—at naging social capital na lamang ito.

Nakakaakyat na sa baitang ng mainstream at industriyang pampelikula ang indie filmmaker. Ang nagpakilos na rito ay hindi na dahil siya ay (ex-) indie filmmaker kundi kung sino na ang kanyang nakilala mula sa itaas na kaya ring maghaltak sa kanya sa higit pang panlipunan at pang-uring mobilidad.

Sa aking palagay, matapos ng ikaapat na taon, may krisis na ang indie films. Ang krisis ay sa pagbibigay-diin sa market—hindi pa audience na hindi naman nesesaryong nakakapagbayad—ng indie films. Ano ba yan?! Hindi ba nga nakakapaglakad ay nalulumpo na ang indie cinema.

Ang ginagawang pantawid para sa nilikhang kakulangan ng indie films ay ang pag-market ng pelikula. Kung ganito, pumaloob na ang indie films sa diskurso ng komersyalismo at industriya. Hindi iilang beses kong narinig sa mga nagsalita at filmmakers na “suportahan ninyo (manonood) ang indie films” na ibig sabihin ay bumili ng tiket at manood nito.

Imbis na isipin ang problema ay audience development, ang itinatampok na diskurso ay pag-penetrate sa palengke (market). Nagpapababa ito sa nakamit na kultural na kapital ng indie filmmakers—bilang propeta ng transformatibong sining. Kaya hindi rin kataka-taka na ang kalahating milyong grant mula sa Cinemalaya ay iniisip na kulang pa para makamit ang bisyon.

Nakadikit na rin ang estado sa Cinemalaya. Nandito ang karagdagang pondo at kredit sa Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) at National Commission for Culture and the Arts. Na ang bisyon ng filmmaker ay dumadaan na rin sa kapital, kundi man sa lente na rin, ng estado.

Kaya rin hindi ako nagtataka kung bakit wala na ang legacy ng social realism ni Lino Brocka at modernistang critique ng gitnang uri ni Ishmael Bernal. Nawala na ang politikal na filmmaking sa bokabularyo ng indie filmmakers. Ang piniling idioma ay halaw sa language ng mainsteam filmmaking.

Tanging ang indie filmmakers na piniling manatili sa laylayan ng laylayan (ang naunang posisyon ng Cinemalaya) ang may nalalabing bisang gamit ng kultural na kapital. Na tila nagsasaad ng sumpa: na kapag piniling maging (tunay na) indie filmmaker, kailangang magpakatotoo sa sarili, na ang sarili ay konektado, sa batayang antas, sa sining, at ang sining ay halaw sa lipunan.

Walang short cut dahil kina-cut short ng mainstreaming ng indie films ang pagpapanatili sa indipendiente at transformatibong sining. Kaya rin hindi kakatwa na CCP ang venue at host ng Cinemalaya dahil tunay na tagapagpadaloy ang institusyong kultural ng estado sa nesesaryong kondisyon ng pangangapital ng estado.

Parang harsh, di ba? Pero alin ang mas harsh: ang kooptasyon ng CCP sa indie films sa direksyong tinungo nito sa paanan ng kapital—may audience pero bawas na ang integridad; may puri pero dulot na ng pagka-pickup nito ng international film festival programmer (kahit pa kinuwestiyun din itong purposiveness ng indie films sa pagiging circuitable sa foreign art market)–o ang kawalan ng market pero may mas angkop sa mas maliitang niche audience na sabayang tumatangkilik at trinatrasforma ng sining?

Dalawang magkausap na representatibo ang boundary markers nitong huli. Sa isang banda, ang figura ni Lav Diaz na nagbukas at nagpanatiling bukas ng panibagong landas para sa indie filmmakers—ang pagtuon ng susing diin sa sining at politika ng pagsasaad nito para sa politikal na transformasyon, hindi man ng politika, kundi ng sining ng politika.

Sa kabilang banda, ang dokumentaryong politikal na film collectives na lumilikha ng indie films (hindi naratibo, hindi feature-length) para sa partikular na sektor ng kilusang masa. Politikal ang panuntunan ng sining at ang sining ay gamit sa politikal na transformasyon.

Ang ipinagkaiba ng nakapaloob sa dalawang markerｓ na ito sa Cinemalaya ay ang politikal na intent sa indie filmmaking. Pinananatili ang politika ng sining at ang gamit ng sining sa politikal na transformasyon sa panuntunan ng mga figura ni Diaz at political film collectives. Nilulusaw na ito sa Cinemalaya.

Kapag mainstream, wala nang gamit ang kultural na kapital. Mismong kapital na ang impetu ng sirkulasyon ng pelikula, filmmaker at indie cinema. Kung gayon, pangangapital na turing ang mainstreaming ng indie filmmaking.

Kaya sa huli, ang tunay na indie filmmaking ay wala na sa kamay ng estado, kahit may aspekto pa rin ng paggamit dito (FDCP, halimbawa, sa pagbibigay ng pondo sa mga natanggap na pelikula sa dayuhang festivals, at siempre, ang pag-claim nito sa produkto bilang kanya na rin). Ang vanguards nito ay ay pagtungo sa pinakamalayong sulok ng estado, kung saan ito mahina at walang lubos na galamay sa pagpapatagos ng pangangapital nito. Kung saan ang tao ay pinakadahop ang kondisyong panlipunan, at kung gayon, pinakahinog para sa pagbabalikwas.

Ang tunay na indie cinema ay ang pagpanig sa tao at bayang mas nakapanig sa interes ng indie filmmakers, at kasangga sa paglaban sa estadong puno’t dulo ng malawakan at malalimang kaapihan nilang lahat. Ang tunay na indie films ay ang lumalaban sa interes ng estado, at nakakiling sa interes ng mamamayan.

Kaninong kwento ang ikinuwento at ikukwento mo? Alin rin kwento ang papaniwalaan at papanigan ng mamamayan?

from Bulatlat
Volume VIII, Number 26, August 3-9, 2008

XXII. Lav Diaz: "Uso el cine para educar"

2008-07-24T05:50:00.000-07:00

Por Pamela Biénzobas Saffie

Lav Diaz es una de esas personalidades que la gente conoce más por reputación que por su trabajo. Una reputación a la vez basada en el carácter monumental de sus películas, de duraciones fuera de toda convención, y que por lo mismo muy pocos de los que conocen su nombre han visto.

El cineasta filipino estuvo en el festival Cinéma du Réel como jurado y también objeto de un homenaje en el contexto de la retrospectiva En Asia del Sudeste, que mostró sus películas Ebolusyon na Isang Pamilyang Pilipino (Evolution of a Filipino Family [2004]; 650 minutos; una saga que atraviesa casi dos décadas de historia filipina a través de la historia de una familia) y su trabajo más reciente, Kagadanan sa banwaan ning mga Engkanto (Death in the Land of Encantos [2007]; 540 minutos, también conocida como Encantos), que rodó en la región de Bicol, totalmente destruida el 2006 por un tifón, a donde volvió tras haber filmado en el pasado. Tras llegar a filmar sin un plan concreto, para registrar lo que había pasado, viró hacia la ficción sintiendo que le permitía transmitir un discurso de manera más honesta que el documental, del que de todos modos guardó la forma en varias partes.

Sobre esas películas conversó con Mabuse al terminar el festival, y sobre todo de sus preocupaciones permanentes en torno al rol del artista en su sociedad.

-¿Por qué eliges el blanco y negro, en particular como vehículo para la realidad en Encantos?

-En verdad no tengo una explicación teórica. Es sólo que me encanta; me encanta mirar una imagen en blanco y negro. Para mí dice mucho; tiene una atracción emocional. Es una elección muy personal.

-¿Te lo planteaste específicamente frente al tema de captar la realidad?

-Es una cuestión de discusión interna. Me encantan las películas en blanco y negro, Charlie Chaplin y todo eso. También en cierto punto me pregunto por qué estoy siempre usando el blanco y negro. Me pongo en la posición del... no me gusta la palabra público... del individuo que está interactuando con este trabajo. Para mí el blanco y negro te tira hacia dentro de este espacio. Se trata de lo directa que es la imagen.

-¿Para quién haces películas? Y, si la respuesta no fuera la misma, ¿a qué espectadores quisieras llegar?

-En Encantos estaba tratando de definir mi rol. En todo mi trabajo busco una responsabilidad básica. Si haces arte, en verdad eres muy egoísta al respecto: éste es el trabajo que quiero hacer, ésta es la película que quiero ver. Pero en nuestro caso, en las Filipinas, tienes que anteponer la responsabilidad, dadas las condiciones del país, y usar el arte como una herramienta para educar a nuestro pueblo. Es una parte importante. Es tan fácil ser llamativo, vanguardista, ser muy cool. Pero luego piensas que en las Filipinas tenemos que educar a nuestro pueblo, especialmente en cuestiones como confrontar el pasado, examinar nuestra historia, nuestra psiquis. Estas cosas realmente importan si eres un cineasta. Tienes que usar el medio para educar, para empujar la cultura hacia una perspectiva mayor.

-Entonces sí tienes al espectador en mente cuando filmas...

-Sí. Soy muy testarudo acerca de mi trabajo. La duración es testaruda. El tipo de planos... ya no es realmente parte de la convención del cine, sino más bien decirle a la gente que tienes que examinar las cosas. Usar la convención del medio y tu experiencia: reexaminar la ley marcial, reexaminar todo lo que está sucediendo aquí. Miremos nuestro entorno, nuestro pueblo, nuestra historia. Se trata de eso.

-En términos prácticos, ¿piensas que la forma de tus películas las hace menos accesibles?

-No tanto. Siempre me enfrento a esa pregunta: "quieres educar a nuestro pueblo pero tu trabajo es muy elitista, aislado".

-O al menos poco práctico para su circulación...

-Puedes pensar en tantos trabajos comerciales que la gente hace cola para ver, pero siguen siendo ignorantes. Un trabajo como Ebolusyon… se mostró siete veces en Filipinas, con un promedio de diez a treinta personas. Multiplica eso.

Tienes que pensar más en la calidad. Si cinco personas vieron la obra y fuiste capaz de cambiar su perspectiva, es mejor que los millones que vieron una película de acción o una comedia que no cambia nada en su perspectiva o en su psiquis. Es escapismo. Yo no soy un entertainer.

-Y tampoco te sitúas en la posición de "tengo que hacer una obra masiva para enseñar..."

-No, definitivamente no. Yo me veo a mí mismo como un trabajador cultural. Soy parte del esfuerzo por empujar la conciencia nacional de mi país hacia algo mejor. Hay tantos problemas, y para el cine todo se trata de la estética. Estoy trabajando en una estética mayor, no en el entretenimiento. Sé trazar la línea. Respeto demasiado el medio, por eso no quiero comprometer mi trabajo.

-En cuanto a Encantos, ¿cuál es el rol narrativo de la cámara? Hay tres cámaras distintas: la subjetiva, en movimiento; la tipo documental, con cierta proximidad a los personajes, y los planos de conjunto donde casi nunca te acercas a los personajes y que son quietos, con una cámara muy discreta.

-Es muy estricto en la parte claramente ficticia de la historia. Es el mismo encuadre que uso en todos mis trabajos: sólo soy el observador, el contador. Cada toma es una historia completa; ése es el principio. Hay un comienzo y un final. Cada encuadre es como una tela. Y luego los junto.

Con la parte de estilo documental, por supuesto que hay una interacción. Te mueves. Especialmente en Encantos, donde soy el camarógrafo, quiero acercarme o alejarme al interactuar con el sujeto, buscar la mejor posición. Es más fácil ahí, me puedo mover. Pero soy muy claro respecto a la ficción: el principio es observar, dejar que todo se mueva. La naturaleza es un actor principal en mis trabajos.

La cámara es muy instintiva. Por supuesto que estoy consciente de que es sólo tecnología. Soy un "grabador". No quiero usar la palabra "orgánico". Vuelvo al tema de que esto es lo que quiero ver en el encuadre. Entonces me pongo en el lugar del pintor: "esto es lo que quiero ver en la tela". De hecho es un principio muy simple. Por supuesto que en el curso de la realización de películas creas un llamado estilo. Es una elección que ves en todo tu trabajo. La gente dirá "ah, éste es un encuadre de Lav Diaz". Resultará simplemente de mirar la geografía, el paisaje. Es una cosa muy personal, como una pincelada, a menos que hagas un cambio radical en tu estilo. Pero cuando estás trabajando simplemente fluye, como una vérité. Como en tu caso tu propia forma de escribir, simplemente sale. En la creación viene naturalmente, no es necesario intelectualizarlo o crear un discurso crítico.

Cuando la gente pregunta "¿qué es para ti hacer cine?", respondo "es sólo la grabación de sonido e imagen". Puedes intelectualizarlo, pero sabes que es así de sencillo. Y también no es tan sencillo. Hay muchas cosas...

La pregunta por la función narrativa de la cámara en Encantos es también porque introduce a los medios en la historia, y por lo tanto estás haciendo un comentario al respecto. Y en Ebolusyon… están las radionovelas, que también son un comentario sobre los medios masivos.

-Nosotros los filipinos crecimos escuchando radionovelas. Es una suerte de subcultura. La gente realmente los adora. Y puedes identificarte con ellos. Los malayos tenemos una cultura de escuchar historias. Antes de que llegaran los españoles, la gente contaba cuentos las veinticuatro horas del día. Tenemos esa cultura del cuenta-cuentos, especialmente en Mindanao. Te sientas bajo un árbol y hay un sabio y la gente viene y la historia sigue eternamente, mientras te vas a tomar un café. Aún hay lugares así entre las tribus indígenas de las Filipinas y también de Malasia e Indonesia. Se sientan y cuentan cuentos. Y luego llegó la radio. La gente trabaja con la radio encendida ¡muy fuerte! Y puedes oír la historia por todos lados, porque todas las radios tienen puesta la misma estación. Las historias flotan en el aire. Puedes oírlas estando en la calle. ¡Es toda una experiencia!

-Este tipo de melodramas y de narración está también presente en tus historias, pero también se ve una mirada crítica hacia la masificación de las radionovelas.

-Sí. Así es la psiquis filipina. Estas cosas nos influencian, naturalmente, pero al mismo tiempo conoces su lado bueno y su lado malo. Sabemos que política y sociológicamente también crea problemas. Conoces el tipo de dialéctica. Escuchas la radionovela y es cool, pero es como el cine, por ejemplo: millones de personas lo ven, y estas cosas alimentan la psiquis de nuestro pueblo, nuestra cultura. ¿Cuáles son sus efectos? Miras hacia atrás en la historia del cine en Filipinas, y todos estos años ha sido una mala cultura. Hollywood, toda esta basura que se le ha alimentado al alma de la gente. El escapismo. Se puede rastrear toda la apatía, la pasividad, en esta cultura cinematográfica. La influencia occidental, los asuntos post-coloniales.

El cine, la radio, son una parte tan grande de una cultura. Así es que estas cosas nos afectan. Lo examinamos y criticamos, los medios masivos, la cultura popular. En algún punto es muy malo, especialmente Hollywood. Adoro Hollywood. Adoro a Chaplin, a Orson Welles. Adoro a los cowboys. Pero tienes que ser crítico en relación con la cultura de tu pueblo. Y tienes que corregirlo. He ahí la responsabilidad de mi cine. Haces el "anti". Destruyes todos esos muros.

Adoro Hollywood pero veo los problemas y tengo que destruirlos para mi pueblo, para mi público. Con la duración, destruyes todas esas estructuras limitantes que están hechas sólo para lo comercial y el marketing. El condicionamiento de que el cine debe ser sólo dos horas... ¡A la mierda con eso! No es cierto. Es una cuestión muy importante porque están aislando al cine como si fuese una especie de arte novedoso. Lo limitan, pero no limitan las novelas, la poesía, la danza, todos esos grandes medios. El cine es el arte más moderno y más poderoso. ¿Por qué lo tienen que tratar como una novedad? ¿Por qué tiene que durar dos horas? ¿Por qué se clasifica de manera distinta un corto o un largometraje? Es sólo cine, no un corto o largometraje. No hay que dividir. ¿Por qué digital o celuloide? Tu tela es así de grande (señala un cuadro pequeño) o como el Guernica. Da igual; es arte visual.

-Pero cuando estás planificando, rodando o montando una película, ¿piensas en el modo en que podría ser exhibida? En tu intención de llegar al público, ¿alguna vez consideraste la televisión, la mini-serie?

-Eso comprometería mi trabajo. Yo lo pienso como una cosa entera.

-¿Lo sentirías comprometido incluso después de realizado, sólo para su exhibición?

-Cuando los programadores me preguntan cómo mostrarlo, digo "sin pausas, o a lo más una al medio". Para mí no hay pausas. Pero ellos consideran al público también, y creo que a veces mi trabajo se ve comprometido por eso. Se debiera ver de una sola vez.

-Pero incluso en términos prácticos, si alguien quiere ir al baño o comer y se retiene, le va a costar concentrarse.

-Que vayan y vuelvan. Es una experiencia como los malayos y el sabio hablando, contando cuentos. Si quieres te vas a casa a dormir y vuelves después; el sabio sigue ahí hablando. Luego te pones al día; vuelves el lunes y tal vez te enterarás de la escena que te saltaste. Es lo mismo. La pintura siempre está ahí. Te vas a dormir y sigue ahí. Es una manera distinta de verla. Por eso no me gusta hablar de "espectadores", pues es una interacción. Y por eso me interesa que aunque sea a una persona le guste, y eso ya está bien. No busco un público masivo. Porque es cine. Siempre es bueno ponerlo en la oscuridad total en la sala grande, para la experiencia colectiva.

-Un tema fundamental es la posición del artista. En Encantos trabajas con distintos grados de separación: Benjamín Agusan, el protagonista, no sólo es artista, sino que además está llegando del extranjero. ¿En qué punto se transformó en el tema central, y la película pasó de ser acerca de la tragedia del tifón a ser sobre la conexión o desconexión del artista con la realidad?

-Desde el comienzo. Siempre estoy tratando de definir mi rol en la sociedad, y también el tema de la estética. En cierto punto es confuso, y no sabes lo que estás haciendo. ¿Realmente va a funcionar esto? En Encantos, soy muy claro acerca de mis motivos. Debo ponerme a mí mismo y mi perspectiva al medio. Debo luchar conmigo mismo. Es una discusión interna. ¿Cuál es mi rol ahora? Siempre me lo estoy cuestionando. Toda esta egomanía, el rock and roll.

Empecé a crear la historia de Encantos luego de haber rodado para hacer un documental. La imagen es muy clara: estás en medio de esta devastación. ¿Dónde pongo al artista ahí? ¿Qué voy a hacer con eso? Se transformó en un discurso, que iba escribiendo en el guión cada mañana. También hay mucha improvisación, pero soy muy claro al respecto: tiene que ser un discurso. Estuve unos seis meses haciendo eso, y por supuesto que estoy tratando de seguir una línea, pero en algún punto ya no hay una trama. Es sólo esta especie de discurso, y el artista tiene un rol que estoy cuestionando, incluso ahora. Cuando vas a estos festivales, te pierdes en las festividades, y ¿cuál es tu rol ahí? Te lo cuestionas. Y luego vuelves al país y ves los mismos problemas de nuevo: la pobreza, la apatía, y los artistas con sus cócteles. ¿Qué estamos haciendo? ¿Es realmente importante el arte? No tiene fin. ¡Voy a hacer más películas al respecto!

-¿Has encontrado algún tipo de respuesta para ti mismo?

-Sí, es una cuestión personal. En mis propios términos, voy a intentar seguir esto. Creo que es la única respuesta que se puede obtener. Sólo puedes ayudar realmente de manera muy, muy pequeña; hacer una pequeña contribución en tus propios términos. Así es que si sólo lo vieron 150 personas, ¿importa? Es difícil situarse ahí. Como (el cineasta filipino de referencia) Lino Brocka, cuando estaba luchando por nosotros, y yo podía ver que también estaba tratado de definirse, de ser político. Y repentinamente murió en un accidente de auto y eso fue todo. Y ahora estamos tratando de empezar de nuevo, de alzarlo como un gran modelo. Para mí mismo, la inspiración que él me dio, creo que es suficiente. Tratas de hacer un trabajo y simplemente esperas que le importará a alguna gente algún día. Es un asunto fuerte, en todos lados: Fassbinder en Alemania, Pasolini en Italia, Orson Welles en Hollywood… ¿cómo reconciliar las cosas?

-¿Esta cuestión marca tu estilo de manera técnica, estética? ¿Tratas de hacerlo más accesible? En Encantos hay una combinación llamativa de un estilo muy contemplativo y otro muy didáctico. ¿Es tu opción libre o una suerte de compromiso para conseguir ese fin?

-A veces tienes tu encuadre y la escena es muy emotiva y te preguntas "¿voy a hacer un close-up para enfatizar la tensión?". También se puede ver como un compromiso en términos del encuadre habitual, del tema de cómo se muestran las cosas en el cine. Ver es también ver para el público, mostrar esa interacción. ¿Estás comprometiendo la acción de la escena si lo haces de esa forma? Si lo ves desde otra perspectiva, sí. Alguna gente dirá "quiero ver cómo se mueve ese dedo, pero es un plano de conjunto. Quiero ver las lágrimas". Es el tema del pathos y el eros y todo eso; el tema del movimiento versus sólo la imagen. También es una gran discusión. A veces también quiero ver la lágrima o un poco de movimiento, pero me pongo testarudo y digo "sólo quiero mostrar esto".

-¿Pero es una decisión estética o ética?-Estética y ética. Si me pongo en el lugar del público, entonces quiero ver esas cosas. Pero detrás de la cámara tienes todos estos principios a los que tienes que aferrarte. Sólo quiero mostrar una gran tela y luego sentirla, tener la experiencia.

-La importancia de enfrentar el pasado y lidiar con éste es evidente, pero en estas películas pareciera que el pasado y su peso eliminan cualquier posibilidad de presente o futuro. No es sólo la necesidad de enfrentarlo: es algo ineludible; su peso aplasta a la gente.

-Sí, es la cuestión de ser crítico. Te sientas en un bar en las Filipinas y ves toda esta decadencia, toda la negligencia. Ves el tema de las clases: quién es pobre y quién es rico. Y todo tiene que ver con el pasado. Tienes que seguir el hilo hacia atrás. Tomas cualquier condición, imagen o situación –política, sociológica, espiritual... todo- y se trata del pasado. No puedes escapar a eso. Si no, no puedes avanzar.

-Los personajes no parecieran estar viviendo, sino ser sólo una consecuencia del pasado. Y eso no sólo tiene que ver con la historia, sino en cómo la organizas cronológicamente, por ejemplo.

-Son espíritus, almas.

-En Encantos es como si los sobrevivientes fuesen fantasmas.

-Sí, ésa es la palabra. Es mi tipo de estética, el tipo de historias y personajes. El pasado es un personaje principal. Piensas en el pathos, la melancolía, la desolación, el aislamiento, la soledad. El pasado es muy importante, un personaje tan grande de todas las historias. Hablas de temas como la devastación. ¡Es el pasado! El presente es todo devastación. Sólo ves fantasmas. Benjamin Agusan es sólo un fantasma. Sólo puedes oír sus poemas. Yo no puedo ver Encantos, porque conozco a la gente que murió ahí. Estuve rodando ahí durante cuatro años.

-Pero hacerlo debe haber sido una forma de decir "estoy haciendo algo en el presente", ¿no?-Es una purgación. Buscas soltar al crear la historia, día tras día durante seis meses de rodaje, todos estábamos llorando. Hacer la película fue una experiencia tan dolorosa, ¡terrible!

-Pero catártica…

-Sí, fue soltar. Pero fue muy doloroso. Todos los actores sintieron la experiencia de la muerte. Estaban devastados. Cuando llegaron a la zona no pensaban que fuese a ser así. Sólo los invité a ir a Bicol para hacer algo. Todo eso arrasó con ellos. Especialmente para Roeder (Camanag), el actor principal, que es un médium, así es que de hecho siente los espíritus, los puede ver. De pronto paraba una toma y empezaba a llorar. "Puedo verlos, nos están mirando". Estás hablando de miles de personas que murieron ahí. A veces decía "¿podemos parar por una hora? Me están tocando". Fue una experiencia devastadora para él. Y para el resto. Pero valió la pena. Se transformó en una gran experiencia emocional y espiritual.

Cada vez que parábamos de rodar en la noche nos poníamos a hablar y hablar sobre las condiciones del país. En paralelo al rodaje estábamos siempre discutiendo sobre qué podemos hacer como artistas. Y nos sentíamos tan pequeños. No podemos hacer nada, así es que tenemos que hacer esta historia para crear un memorial de lo que pasó, y recordarle a la gente el pasado. Quizás sólo sea eso: creamos una obra que le recordará a la gente que esto pasó, simplemente. Para comenzar a hablar de lo que está pasando hoy, dónde estamos ahora, dónde está nuestra cultura ahora. De algún modo definimos nuestro rol. Somos una unidad tan pequeña en todos estos macro-eventos. Ahora me estoy tratando de desapegar del trabajo. La película es libre. Tú viviste la experiencia de las películas, así es que ahora son tuyas. Es ese tipo de interacción: ahora las películas te pertenecen, y creas tus propias historias, tu propia perspectiva de esa experiencia. No es una experiencia sólo filipina, sino universal.

from Revista de Cine MABUSE

XXI. Hesus Rebolusyunaryo

2008-04-28T10:24:00.000-07:00

By Francis Cruz

"One of the ten best science fiction films ever made."
-- Noel Vera

Lav Diaz's near-future is something some Filipinos would be very familiar with: streets and alleys empty at night, checkpoints where erring citizens are lined up to sing the National Anthem (snatched by Diaz from memories of his childhood), literature and art flourishing in the midst of fascist asphyxiation. The nation has experienced similar circumstances under the Marcos regime, and faint but resounding reminders under the present regime. This is Diaz’s science fiction --- very Filipino; not a spark of progress in display (Manila in 2011 looks very much like Manila in 1990, made more melancholic by the uncomfortable stillness under the military junta), instead, an atmosphere of paranoia pervades the near-noxious air.

General Racellos (Lawrence Espinosa) controls the land through the television and the radio. Announcements and bits of propaganda are disseminated with mechanical certainty; the true artists are working underground or fighting for freedom. Hesus (a quietly intense Mark Anthony Fernandez) is the film’s hero --- he’s a poet, a gunfighter, a leader of the masses. His burden is an enveloping feeling of guilt, from killing his comrades as ordered by the mysterious Miguel Reynante (Ronnie Lazaro) --- their revolutionary unit’s methods seem as fascist as the government’s.

Hesus’ redemption is owed not to his movement, but to his nation. His poem, read by Col. Simon (perfectly interpreted by Joel Lamangan) while he’s in a coma, discusses the joyful simplicities of life as disrupted by that certain corruption that has killed the nation; it is sorrowful and powerful the way the poem weaves the nation with spoken images of the family. Throughout the film, Hesus travels, hunted by government troops, directionless. We witness his nightmare-like dreams --- memories from his childhood in Bicol, fantasies of Hilda (Donita Rose), miraculously cured of her blindness. That’s his utopia, bright and green as opposed to the grey and drab shadowy exteriors of Manila.

Diaz’s aesthetics is pitch-perfect. Slow to the point of stubbornness, yet it’s never dull. He knows when to cut at the right time; Diaz won’t cease to prolong a scene until he is satisfied that the emotions, the pain are succinctly conveyed. When Hesus kills all his comrades, Diaz doesn’t cut at the moment the last comrade is shot death. Instead, he lingers to show Hesus wallowing with self-doubt and guilt inflicted by the massacre.

Diaz also shows an adept sense of humor. Col. Simon waits for Hesus to wake up from his coma; Lamangan (brilliant, brilliant thespian) walks around, plays Hesus’ music, and prances to the rhythm of the music, before reading to him his poem. Overly extended, the dead pan humor breathes diversion (although, not at all distracting) to Diaz’s straightforward intentions.

The numerous action scenes (probably put to placate Lily Monteverde, the film’s producer) are coherently directed (there’s strategy in the action; none of the illogical and badly conceived shoot-outs that are typical to Filipino action films). There’s a meticulous concern for the mechanics of the action sequences --- the shadows of the dimly lit corridors, corners and wide spaces become invitations to danger. It’s refreshing to finally watch a smartly directed action film.

Hesus Rebolusyonaryo was made from a measly few millions and was expected to make profit. It failed miserably in the box office (notwithstanding the presence of Fernandez and Rose, all bankable actors) and closed after a couple of days from its opening (films usually would last a week before being replaced). That’s the sad fate of this nation; that when finally, an intelligent and homegrown science fiction is released, Filipinos opt to march in zombie-like fashion to the latest Hollywood extravaganza. Talk about fascism in cinema.

Ogg's Movie Thoughts, Lessons from the School of Inattention, July 29, 2007

XX. Poems for Benjamin Agusan

2008-04-23T22:48:00.000-07:00

By Lav Diaz

English translations by Paula Maria Diaz, with Bayani de Leon

Poems from Kagadanan sa Banwaan ning mga Engkanto (Death in the Land of Encantos)

Alimuom

Dagli ang pagbuhos at dagli ang pagtila
Dagli ang pagdating at dagli ang paglayo
Alimuom na sumibol sa pangako ng umaga
Nawala bago magtanghaling tapat sa labis na paninibugho
Sa mga anghel ng mundo at ng langit at ng purgatoryo at ng demonyo
Ginalugad mo ang kahabaan ng ilog ng mga tatsulok na di mabuo-buo
Sa kamalayang hindi mapakali sa mga agos at alon at likong nagbabago-bago
Sisa ka ng disyerto at Tasyo kang namimilosopo sa unibersong nagsisinto-sinto
Sa mga lima-singkong kaisipang pinamana at ibinuhos ng luma at kontemporaryong panahon.
Paslit ka pa nang narating nila ang buwan
Bata ka pa nang may tumubong bundok sa lawa ng bayan
Nakikita mo araw-araw ang langit at lupa, ang langit at impiyerno
Wala nang sulok ang mundo, wala nang masusulingan ang tao
Lulubog-lilitaw at sanlaksang alingawngaw
May dugo sa bintana ng dalagang nawala
Inaabot ang bituin sa tuktok ng mangga
Paslit ka pa nang mahulog ang bisita
Bata ka pa nang may pinagpapatay sila
May awit na mahiwaga, nagpipilit sa alaala
May naaaninag kang mukha, dating pag-aalala
Ang dating putikan ay ginawa nang kalsada
Minaso ang bundok at ginawang graba
Saka inilibing nila ang mahal mong kababata.
Tumutol ka man ay umuugod ka na
Nalagas na ang iyong lakas, nawala na ang sigla
Ang hawak mong panahon ay isa na lamang hawla
Lipas na ang sarsuela, wala nang natutuwa
Pilit mong pinalalaya ang itinatagong sumpa
Sa daungan ng mga isda, doon ka tumutula
Naroon ang metapora, naroon ang hiwaga
Sa himlayan ng mga sugapa, doon ka kumakanta
Kasayaw mo ang baylarena, hawak mo ang baywang niya
Sa laot ng gabi kapag papauuwi ka na
Bumubulong ang hangin, nakatingin ang mga bituin
Kumakaway ang kahoy, may kung anong panaghoy
Tumitigil ang daloy, daan ay hindi matukoy
Titigil ka sa tabi, iihi sandali
Init ay kakawala, salimuot mula sa lupa
Huhugot ka ng buntunghininga
Wala na talaga
Alam mong ika'y nagkasala
Alam mong nabibilang na ang araw mo sa lupa.
Walang dakila
Walang bayani
Walang kriminal
Walang santo
Walang kawawa
Walang himala
Walang timawa
Walang mariwasa
Walang kaluluwa
Walang alaala
Wala nang alaala
Wala
Walang kumakawala.

Gumagapang ka sa dagat ng mga alaala na ayaw lumaya sa piitan ng iyong pag-iisa.
Ibinabalik ka sa mga hiningang humulagpos sa sinapupunan pa man
Inihahatid ka sa hardin na naluoy bago pa man yumabong
Iniluluklok ka sa panahong nagtaglagas bago nagtagsibol
Inihihimlay ka sa mundo ng sigwa, unibersong hindi mapayapa
Wala
Wala nang papawi sa pait ng iyong bawat paglingon
Wala nang paparam sa lalim ng lungkot ng bawat imaheng dumadapo sa iyong balintataw.

Alimuom

Relenting as suddenly as it pours
Departing as suddenly as it arrives
Rancid air burgeoning from morning's promise
Dispersed before noon out of keen jealousy
At the angels of earth and heaven and purgatory and the devil
You roamed the far-reaching river of triangles unable to complete themselves
In a consciousness made restless by torrents and waves and ever shifting curves
You're Sisa of the desert and Tasyo spinning philosophy in a universe playing half-wit
To five-cent minds bequeathed and poured over by eras old and new
You were a tyke when they reached the moon
You were a kid when a mountain grew from the town lake
Daily you see land and sky, heaven and hell
No corner left in the world, no haven for everyone
A hundred thousand echoes will sink and rise
Behold the blood on the window of a vanished maiden
Angling for the star atop a mango tree
You were a tyke when the chapel fell
You were a kid when murders proliferated
A mysterious song persists in memory
A face from the past being glimpsed
A once muddy place turned into a street
The mountain pounded and crushed into gravel
Before burying your childhood friend
You protested in vain, but you're hobbled
Your strength sapped, your vigor lost
Time in your hands is merely a cage
Zarzuela out of vogue, amusing no one
You seek to release the hidden curse
You recite poetry down the shoals where the fishes are
Alas a metaphor, alas a mystery
You sing in the abode of addicts
You dance with a ballerina, grasping her by the waist
On your way home in the deep of night
The wind whispers, the stars look down
The branches shake, some wailing in the air
The currents cease, the road not discernible
You will stop by the wayside and piss momentarily
And heat will be released, swirl upward from the soil
You will heave a sigh
Nothing is left
You know you have sinned
You know your days on earth are numbered
No one's honorable
No one a hero
No one a criminal
No one a saint
No one miserable
No miracle
No one poor
No one rich
No soul
No memory
No more
No more memory
None
No escape

You grovel in the ocean of memories refusing to flee from the prison
of your solitude
Returning you to breaths that expire while in the womb
Ferrying you to a garden that withers before it blooms
Placing you in a season that becomes autumn before springtime
Laying you down in a world of tempests, a universe that cannot be pacified
None
None can assuage the bitterness of your every turn
None can take away the profound grief of every saintly image that falls on
the center of your eye.

--

Bahay ng Rosas

May haplit ng pagyuko ng mga puno ng taglagas
Sa tudla ng aking tingin sa kalawakan ng langit
Kumirot sa aking tadyang ang paghulagpos ng buto
Hudyat ng pagsisimula ng mga oyayi't dalit.

Aawit tayo sa gabing yakap ka ng niyebeng kristal
Kahimanawaring lambungan ng himig ang iyong hapis
Hahagkan ko ang pisngi mong sa kalauna'y lalamig
Naghahanda na ako sa panahon ng pananangis.

Magtatanim ako ng sanlaksang rosas, at parang ng rosas
Puro rosas at pawang mapupulang rosas lamang sa lahat nang sulok at dako
At namumulang rosas lamang sa lahat nang panahon ng ating panahon
Ng ating paghahanda, paghihintay, at pag-aasam
Sa pagdating ng mga paru-paro
Sa pag-ani ng mga bubuyog
Sa paghapon ng mga gagamba
Sa pagdalaw ng mga ibon
Sa pagsulyap ng mga nagdaraan
Sa pagdatal ng iyong kamatayan.

House of Roses

There is a muffled blow when the autumn trees bow
At my viewpoint of the vastness of heavens
My ribs felt the twinge of writhing bones
Forewarning to the start of lullabies and love songs.

We shall sing on the night when ice crystals embrace thee
Hoping that the melody may veil thy grief
I shall kiss the cheeks that at once turn icy
Already preparing for the season of lamenting.

I shall plant thousand of roses, and fields of roses
Pure roses and seemingly red roses solely on every corner and space
And reddening roses only for all seasons of our seasons
To our preparation, anticipation, and expectation
Of the arrival of butterflies,
the harvest of the bees
the nightly retirement of spiders,
the pilgrimage of birds,
a glimpse of passers-by
and the advent of thy death.

--

In memoriam

Magdamag sa kawalan
Binasa ko na lahat nang aklat at tula
Hinalukay ang mga litrato
Niyakap lahat nang unan
Kinantot ko ang nagkakalyo kong kamay
Isinuot lahat nang salamin—baka may makita ako
Hinipan ang silindro—baka may marinig ako
Tinipa ang gitara—baka may makapa ako
At waring narinig ko ang tinig mo
Mula sa pantiyon ng mga lumayo
Mula sa sementeryo ng mga naglaho
At kinukutya mo ako sa iyong pagtalikod
At tumawa ka at nakitawa sa mga katulad mong mahina
At walang mga paa
May ilog ng lason sa iniwan mong higaan natin
Naroon pa rin ang mga pating na lumapa sa aking kalanguan
Hinihigop ako ng kumunoy sa bawat dantay ng aking likod
Sa mga tinik ng iyong pakikipaglaro sa aking pagpipikitmata
At pagbubulag-bulagan
Sa sahig nakatihaya ang mga sinsilyo at barya
Ng iba't ibang bayang aking narating
Nagniniig tayo sa piling nila tuwing ako'y dumarating
Mainit at maalab ang pagitan ng iyong mga hita
Habang nakalublob ako sa pangungulila at pagwawalang-bahala
Lumulusong ako at paulit-ulit tayo
Winawasak ang bawat isa sa bawat hampas at paglabas
Minamahal ang bawat isa
Hindi mahal ang bawat isa
Bukas ang bintana at sarado ang pintuan
Patay ang ilaw at walang hanging pumapasok sa ating kapusukan
Masarap maglumunoy sa mundo ng kamunduhan
Habang ginigisa tayo sa pag-alpas ng aking tamod at ng iyong tubig
Papahiran kita ng mantika at ibebedyo na nakabukaka
Magmamakaawa ka sa pagbukas ng langit at lupa
Umiiyak ka sa pagsabog ng lahat-lahat mo
Magpapasalamat ka sa pagbuhos ng lahat-lahat mo
Babayo at babayo ako patungo sa kaibuturan mo
Aapuhap ang aking mga kamay sa kung saan-saan mo
May mga daliri ng alupihan at tanikala ng alimango
Sa bawat salungatan ng ating ungol at hiyawan at pagsusumamo
Binubuwal natin ang mga pader at bantayog ng uniberso
Ng panahon nating sa isang iglap ay magiging siphayo.
Pakakasal tayo sa bawat Marso Uno, Mayo Uno at Hunyo Uno
At sa harap ng malalayang puno at malayang mundo
Mag-iisang-dibdib tayo sa harap ng palayang naghihintay
(sa hunyangong ermitanyo)
Ng mga himig ng maya at pag-ibig
Hawak-kamay tayong haharap sa bundok at bulkan at hihingi
Ng tubig ng pag-ibig
Ng dalit ng pag-ibig
Tatahimik ang lungsod at lansangan sa ating mga tawag
Malulunod sa karagatan ang mga ilog ng ating dugo
Isang pangarap ang nawala sa buhos ng unos
Sa dagan at dagundong ng mga batong dumausdos
Umalimpuyo ang kalangitan sa katanghalian
At tumakas ang pag-asa sa ating mga palad
Umapaw ang baha sa luha ng binubuo nating aklat
Ni hindi ako nakapagpaalam sa isang pangako
Di ko na rin nakita ang nakatago mong anino
Napakalawak ng iniwan mong diskurso
Sa aking katinuan at katalinuhan ng mundo
Naging mangmang ang mga insekto at henyo
Ng tinatawag nilang sikolohiya ng pag-ibig at emosyon ng babae.
Nasaan si Sigmund Freud sa pag-apaw ng panaginip at kalibugan mo?
Gayung gumugol din ako ng panahon sa pilosopiya at siyensya?
Ayokong hawakang muli muna ang nasa pagitan ng aking mga hita
Habang natitiis ko pa ang sakunang inabot ng ating mundo
Habang nababata ko pa ang sakunang dinaranas ng bayan ko
Hindi ko na yata kailangan sina Socrates at HesuKristo
Sa panahon ng pagsasakripisyong ganito
Wala nang pretensyoso at gago sa panahong nagsasalpukan ang galit at lungkot
Wala nang loko-loko at tarantado sa panahong inililibing nang buhay ang mundo
Wala nang bobo at matalino sa panahong naglalaho na ang bayan ko
Wala nang santo at salamangkero sa pakikipagtalo ko kay Satanas
Putang-ina nilang lahat na nagkumpromiso ng sining ko!
Mga hayup silang lahat na nagkanulo sa sining ko!
Aahon si Tasyo sa anumang hampas ng bato sa kanyang bungo!
At sa wakas ay nabago ang anyo ng kuwarto
May mga bagong aklat at kuwaderno
May bagong gitara at bagong silindro
Punit-punit na ang mga litrato
At itinapon ko sa basura ng ating kahangalan
Siyam na metal ang itinali sa dibdib ng Adan
May inihahandang pelikula sa gitna ng sangandaan
May pagbabago, may mga bagong tao, may mga bagong tatao
May mga bagong mukha
May mga bagong likha
May bagong musa
May bagong pinto
May bagong kuwarto
May bagong lalaruin ang hintuturo
May bagong pagitan na papasukin ko
May bagong diskurso
May bagong alimpuyo
May bagong pag-ibig at panibugho.

Nagpadala ako ng sulat sa isang kaibigan
Sinabi kong hindi ako darating sa usapan
`Patawad' sabi ko
Hindi ko pa matanggap ang kalungkutan ko
Pinipilit ko pang tanggaping sa pagkawala niyang ito
Ay hindi ko na siya hahanaping muli.

In memoriam

All night long in emptiness
I've read all the books and poems
Dug up the pictures
Cuddled all the pillows
Screwed my own calloused hands
Worn all the spectacles that I might see something
Blown on my harmonica that I might hear something
Plucked my guitar that I might touch something
And it seemed I heard your voice
From the graveyard of those who have fled
From the burial ground of those who have vanished
And you were mocking me as you turned back
And you laughed and snickered with weaklings like you
And those without feet
There's a river of venom on our bed that you abandoned
Where the sharks that consumed my stupor still lie
Where a quicksand will suck me in every time my back rests
On the thorns of your wagering over the shutting of my eyes
And my playing blind
Change and coins are scattered all over the floor
Of many countries I've been to
We rendezvous with them every time I come
The insides of your thighs will be burning hot
While I'm steeped in loneliness and indifference
I will be treading downward and we will keep doing this
Destroying each other at every thrust and release
Loving each other
Not loving each other
The window is open and the door is locked
The light is off and no air drifts into our passion
How sweet to wade in the world of carnality
While we get stewed in the rush of my semen and your juice
I will rub oil on you and angle your legs apart
You will beg at the opening of heaven and earth
Weep over the explosion of all in you
You will wax grateful for the outflow of all in you
I will pound and pound going into your depths
Grope around in all of you
There will be centipede fingers and crab chains
In every clashing of our moans and screaming and pleading
We are tearing down the walls and monuments of the universe
Of our time that will melt abruptly into disillusion
We will wed on every first day of March, May, and June
And before the unbound trees and the liberated world
We will join in marriage before rice fields waiting
(for hermit chameleons)
For the songs of the sparrow and love
With clasped hands we will face toward the mountain and volcano and will ask
For the water of your love
For the psalm of your love
The city and its streets will fall silent at our behest
The rivers of our blood will plunge into the ocean
One dream lost in the torrential storm
And in the heaviness and rumbling of the sliding stones
At midday whirlwinds rage in the heavens
And hope loosens from our hold
A flood of tears overflows across the books that we are making
I have not even bidden farewell to a promise
Nor have I glimpsed your hidden shadow
You have left behind a vast discourse
On my sanity and the Earth's intelligence
Grown witless are insects and masters
Of what they call psychology of love and female emotion
Where's Sigmund Freud during the brimming of your dream and lust?
Although I've also spent time in philosophy and science
I'm not inclined to probe the hollows of my thighs
As long as I can endure the terrible fate that has befallen our world
As long as I can bear the misfortune that's burdening my country
It seems I don't need Socrates and Jesus Christ
In this time of sacrifice
No more pretenders and morons when anger and grief collide
No more lunatics and rascals when the world is being buried alive
No more half-wits and smartasses when my country is fading
No more saints and magi in my altercations with Satan
To hell with them all who have cheapened my art!
All of them animals who have betrayed my art!
Tasyo shall rise with every rock that raps his skull!
And at last the look of the room has changed
There are new books and notebooks
There are new guitars and harmonicas
Pictures torn into pieces
That I tossed into the bin of our insanity
Adam had nine metals stitched to his ribs
A movie is being filmed by the crossroads
There are changes, new people, new characters.
New faces
New creations
New muse
New door
New room
New hobby for index fingers
New alleys that I can enter
New discourse
New vortex
New love and jealousy

I sent a letter to a friend
Where I said I won't make it to our appointment
`Forgive me' I implored
I haven't come to grips with my sorrow
Still forcing myself to deal with her absence
And I've no desire to find her again.

--

Paalam (Haiku)

Balot ang lungsod
Ng puting alapaap
Malayong musa.

Haplos ng ambon
Anino mong nagdaan
Naaaninag.

Hampas ng ulan
Lihim na kalungkutan
Pananambitan.

Taghoy sa gabi
Dahon kang naglalayag
Sa panaginip.

Rosas sa pader
Gumagapang na lungsod
Nangungulila.

Patlang sa buwan
Nakaguhit mong anyo
Sa kalawakan.

Dalit ng hangin
Pangamba ng taglamig
Isang paglisan.

Gintong panahon
Hiram na kapalaran
Pamamaalam.

Paalam.

Farewell(Haiku)

The city wrapped
In immaculate clouds
Muse from afar.

Soothed by a drizzle
Your fleeting shadow
Now discerned.

Pelting of rain
Sorrow concealed
A plaint.

Lament in the night
You're a leaf cruising
On a dream.

Rose on a wall
City supine in its gait
Feeling alone.

A gap on the moon
Your semblance inscribed
On the vastness above.

Ushered by the wind
Fear of cold's grip
A turning away.

Golden season
Borrowed fate
Bidding farewell.

Farewell.

--

Sampung Istasyon Patungong Impiyerno

Ang marubdob niyang pag-iipon ng mga butil sa garapon noon
Upang mapunan lamang ang paglayo ng kanyang amang at inang
Gaya nang namumuong siphayo sa kanyang puso ngayon
Isang pagtatangka na maaari pa niyang baguhin ang kanyang anyo
Subalit ang buntot niya'y patuloy na tumutubo
At nagkakabalahibo ang sungay niya
At tumatalas sa bawat baghigpit ng pulupot ng ahas
Sa kanyang katinuang gago
Hindi na siya makakabalik sa batuhang dalampasigan
Malayo na ang mundo ng kanyang kamusmusan
Inuuod na ang uniberso ng mga ninunong nalimutan
Bilog na ang mga tao sa lahat nang bakuran
Wala nang ulo ang mga asong nauulol sa kanilang kalanguan
Lunod ang sementeryong paglilibingan ng buong bayan.

Ten Stations to Hell

The heartfelt gathering of grains in a jar back then
Solely to replace the departure of his father and mother
Like the gloom that is now forming in his heart
An attempt that he might still be able to change his form
However, his tail continues to grow
His fur emerges
His horns become sharper the tighter the snake squeezes its coil
On his deranged vision
He can never return to the rocky seaside
The land of his innocence is now far away
Maggots reign the universe of forefathers long forgotten
Every person has become round behind every fence
Mad dogs have lost theirs heads in their drunkenness
The cemetery where the whole country will be buried is already drowning.

Notes:

Tasyo is the philosopher character in Philippine hero Jose Rizal's novel Noli Me Tangere

Sisa is the mad woman/mother in Noli Me Tangere

Alimuom is the heat that comes off the ground after a rainfall.

From KINO! magazine, No. 2/3, Slovenia

http://www.e-kino.si/2008/no-2-3/blazinice/poems-for-benjamin-agusan

XIX. The Festival With No Limits: Rotterdam International Film Festival 2005

2008-03-19T18:13:00.000-07:00

By Paolo Bertolin

Critics, film journalists and cinephiles tend to describe the Rotterdam International Film Festival (IFFR) as a cutting-edge, adventurous festival, an event where the multiple shades of cinema, including those forgotten in the shadows by other major film events, shine in full colour. This habitual way of thinking about Rotterdam has almost reached a stage of comfortable stereotype, of assured trope, even this year, when the reins of festival direction fully passed to Sandra den Hamer, after she had been longtime co-director with Simon Field.

I sometimes wonder whether the IFFR is really such an adventurous or cutting-edge event, or instead if it is just eminently and laudably fulfilling the duties and attaining the goals an international film festival should. Even if it is operating at the latter level, this is an outstanding achievement. No other major film event – in Europe at least – devotes such commitment to following, documenting and updating year by year the state of things in the whole scope of worldwide filmmaking. Rotterdam's 360° programming view always encompasses a broad definition of cinema and continues to thematise and question the notion of “boundary”, as clearly stated in the aptly-titled ongoing series of annual panels, “What Is Cinema?”. Rotterdam enthusiastically casts its programming net wide to the broadest span of geographical provenances, each festival covering the six continents of filmmaking. Rarely could a major festival display such independence from criteria of national interest or political convenience to the point of totally omitting entries from the host country in its official competition, as Rotterdam did last year (not to mention the fact that American films are often missing from IFFR's competing arena).

But if it were just the simple matter of mapping the geography of film production, this would still not be a thorough endorsement of a notion of cinema without boundaries. What really makes Rotterdam a place with no limits is the festival's commitment to intersecting geography and culture with another dimension, that of cinematic language: of the experimentation with genre, format, length, and allowing for the “contamination” of the annexed spaces of other arts and media. Cinema at Rotterdam covers a wide spectrum and continually questions the solidity of the canonical definition of film as “feature length fiction”; an act that resounds of perhaps – or perhaps not at all – unconscious, political resistance, when one thinks that this narrowing, blinding notion is mass-inculcated by the only great absentee of Rotterdam, Hollywood.

It is therefore patent that, by any means, the grandest and most representative film of Rotterdam 2005 is Lav Diaz's 10 hour 30 minute Evolution of a Filipino Family (Ebolusyon ng isang pamilyang Pilipino) (2004). No other film could possibly stress to such extent the richness of cinematic language, while blatantly challenging the torpid insignificance of the so-called entertainment or spectacle general audiences are stuffed with in multiplexes. Firstly, because it is a film from the Philippines, it is fully representative of one of the key features of a festival that devotes one of its main sidebars to the surging new waves of South East Asian cinemas. Even more, as it hails from an overlooked national cinema as part of this region, one that nevertheless has produced the wholesome, imperishable talent of Lino Brocka, but that only recently seems to be re-surfacing from oblivion in international film events (only last year Mario O'Hara's Woman of Breakwater's selection at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs put an end to a 15 year absence of Filipino films in Cannes), this one-of-a-kind masterwork should reset our perception of film geography like a portentous seism. Secondly, by being well in excess of the allotted two hours that fits multiple daily theatrical screenings, TV schedules and most people's routines of viewing, Evolution of a Filipino Family frontally undermines our comfortable notions of cinema as leisure, demanding dedication and commitment, depriving us of a full day of multiple occupations – or, at a festival, of multiple viewings. This emphasis on experience and time has to be carefully highlighted because Diaz's film, as inherently asserted by its title, depicts, but at the same time stages, a process that takes place in and through time. The notion of time frame is therefore there on two planes: on the one hand, the diegetic 16 year span between the promulgation of martial law by Philippines President Fernando Marcos in 1972 and the 1987 Mendiola massacre of farmers that put to an abrupt end to the hopes for an epochal change in Corazon “Cory” Aquino; on the other hand, the 10 hour 30 minutes of film projection, of articulation of time through images and sound. These two temporal dimensions find a nexus in Diaz's brave attempt in bringing to cinematic consistency the perception and actual employment of time of his peasant protagonists. From its first sequences, Evolution of a Filipino Family requires a total immersion and abandonment to the slow-flowing, sometimes pleasant, sometimes dull, or even boring and painful, life in the rice paddies of South East Asia, absorbing the viewer into a space-time dimension that is no doubt other and demands adjustment and attunement. Once entered the rhythm of the film, one can easily go with its flow and comprehend the whole abstract architecture of Diaz's time employment strategy. The evolution and changes undergone by the protagonists thus appear as the flipside of the bigger historical canvas that, as in Hou Hsiao-hsien's City of Sadness (1989), are left on the margin of the actual cinematic illustration. As with Hou, Diaz chooses to tell the story of his country and of his people from below, as he resolutely indexes the peasant culture and the kinship system as the emblematic root of Filipino identity. His characters' struggles for a normal everyday life mirror the painful turmoil endured by an entire people, and cinematic length (of the whole film, but of the single sequences as well) becomes the abstraction of the long, never-ending and disillusioned journey of the Filipinos towards their self-assertion. Finally, the presence of Lino Brocka in the film's narration, through the re-enactment of actual interviews and the involvement of one of the main characters in a plot to murder him, represents not only a homage and tribute to the artist who raised his voice against Marcos and often put his feet into the dictator's dish, but also a virtual statement of affinity, if not in style, at least in the truthful commitment towards filmmaking made by and for the people of the Philippines.

Diaz's masterpiece left aside, one should dutifully turn towards a commentary on the official competition for the Tiger Awards. Rotterdam's competition is open only to filmmakers' first and second films; once, this was the main prerogative of Locarno, but as the Swiss festival moved towards a more ambitious and conformist emulation of Cannes, Venice and Berlin in the attempt to become the “fourth biggest festival”, Rotterdam aptly took its place in venturing into the active search for the “big names of tomorrow”. This constant projecting towards the future is perhaps the main consistency in Rotterdam's history, as shown by the multiple initiatives in sponsoring future projects through its own Hubert Bals Fund (for films from the Third, Fourth and former Second World…) and through the CineMart (a market for international co-production of arthouse films) (1). Nevertheless, one cannot escape the temptation to blame Rotterdam's official juries, as more and more elsewhere as well, for lacking perspicuity in some of their choices and being easy prey for short-lasting, inconsistent sensationalism. As for me, this was the case with this year's big sensation in Rotterdam and recipient of a Tiger Award: 4 by Ilya Khrzhanovsky (2004). As a deeply allegorical portrait of contemporary Russian societal malaise, 4 stops at nothing to provide audiences with images of moral decay and urban alienation, coupled with the sordid otherness and horror-like surrealist folklore of life in the countryside. In the end, the film is nothing more than a cunning exploitation of a “self-exoticised” image of Russia, conducted with calculated detachment, but not enough to avoid the pitfalls of overstatement and redundancy. Unfortunately, I cannot comment about the second of the three winners, Daniele Gaglianone's Changing Destiny (Nemmeno il Destino) (2004), because it was the only film in competition I didn't see, but as for the third, Spanish documentary The Sky Turns (El Cielo Gira) (2004) by newcomer Mercedes Alvarez, it seems to me a much wiser choice than 4.

Alvarez's film chronicles a year in the dying village where the director was born and through the passing of seasons composes a visually exquisite and sensitive poem on human impermanence. The film not only relies on the lyrical images and the conspicuous focus on the passing of time, but also benefits from the humorous esprit of the village dwellers, who don't refrain from political chitchat on topics spanning from war in Iraq to the years of the Civil War. The further presence of a painter who is going blind prompts comparison to Victor Erice's The Quince Tree Sun (1992), itself a deep reflection on art, the passing of time, and human transience, although The Sky Turns lacks the full-bodied conceptual containment of Erice's masterpiece (albeit the films are different in scope).

However, if the jury was to highlight what really was representative of landmark developments in recent filmmaking, then it should have not contented itself with just a special mention to the most outstanding film in competition, Ho Yuhang's Sanctuary (2004). A prominent exponent of the Malaysian digital new wave, which in most instances could be described as an emanation of the wider constellation of Chinese diasporic cinema, Ho has consistently improved in ambition and achievement since his already remarkable debut feature Min (2003). In Sanctuary Ho depicts the alienation and dissemination of Chinese Malaysians, focusing, through a neat and articulate formal scheme, on their marginalisation, by conveying a feeling of spatial compartmentalisation and a denial of verbal interaction. Ho refuses to let his three protagonists share with each other the spaces they inhabit, yet at the same time he delineates separate trajectories that refuse direct interplay. For these characters there's no escape from a sense of permanent floating and idleness, since possible redemption through a safe identitary anchor is denied by the loss, or rather hybridisation, of their Chineseness. Inevitably, the pillars of identity provided by family and house (which in Chinese culture, are equated) are here severely jeopardised. At the figurative level, Ho seals his protagonists outside a house that is impossible to share, (re)staging twice a sequence of denied access that is the ultimate key to enter the film; at the semantic level, by questioning the notion of jia (house=family) and the codification of human relationships, Ho ventures into territories close to those mapped by the most famous Malaysian Chinese, the Taiwan-adopted Tsai Ming-liang, however as he does not provide new possible combinations of bonding, and instead stresses the paralysing impasse, Ho's film is even bleaker and more discomforting than those of Tsai. A remarkable detail, nonetheless, asserts the “Chineseness” of this Malaysian film (2): the original title of the film is Wù, meaning fog or mist in Chinese; in the opening credit, the character, whose radical is “rain”, is just followed by an empty shot of falling rain.

Another remarkable competing title also came from South East Asia: Bride of Silence (Hat mua roi bao lau) (2005), made by Vietnamese sister and brother filmmakers Doan Minh Phuong and Doan Thanh Nghia. Described as the very first feminist film out of Vietnam, Bride of Silence is indeed a film that highlights the plight of the female subject, not so much through its apparent, obvious tale of a pre-colonial Vietnam peasant girl who chooses silence and refuses to reveal the name of the man who made her pregnant, and her consequent condemnation from the village community, but for its way of articulating its fabula with narrative devices that stress the notion of enunciation, in terms of subjectivity and gendering. As the whole story is put into images that rely upon concentric and imbricate narrations voiced by male characters, the Doan siblings emphasise the idealisations, manipulations and falsifications operated upon the story of a female character by male narrators. The search for his mother (the “bride” of the title), or rather the story of his mother, by the young male protagonist reveals itself to be a pretext, or better an interface, through which to illustrate and thematise the denial of voice to the woman character/s, who in the end linger/s as impenetrable, ineffable Sphinx/es. The Doans in fact clinch their portrait of feminine elusiveness through a second female character, doomed to premature, enigmatic volatilisation, a singer that fascinates the young protagonist searching for his mother, providing a meaningful décalage, intrinsically resounding of déjà vu, and localised at a different level of narration (and once again voiced or projected by the subjectivity of a male character). Ultimately, the film bravely questions the whole notion of (its) representation and illustration as stated through a haunting sequence in the first half of the film: when the young peasant tells the story of her illicit escape into wilderness (which might surreptitiously conceal the secret of her pregnancy), the camera moves away to the empty courtyard, refusing to apply to her tale the same canon of (male-originated) illustration that organises the structure of the whole film. Bride of Silence also received a special mention (to my personal recollection, it is the first time a Rotterdam jury has awarded special mentions other than the three usual, equal Tiger Awards).

Spying Cam (Frakchi) (2004), by independent Korean filmmaker Whang Cheol-mean (more conventionally transcribed as Hwang Cheol-min), was instead the deserved winner of the FIPRESCI prize. One could easily argue that Whang's film is the most enticing political pamphlet penned through cinema in years. Seemingly starting as an huis clos featuring two men barricaded in a sweltering motel room, playing puzzling games of defiance and domination that cannot fit the external world's attempt of tagging them as a gay couple, Spying Cam slowly descends into the hells of moral theorisation staging the rehearsals of a video-play of Crime and Punishment by the two men. The political scope is not yet revealed, but the different interactions with and fruition of the text and of its meaning provides an abstract, yet powerful factual allocation of the characters in the chessboard of human interaction, and also perceptively plays on a metonymical, though still undefined, level. When, eventually, light is fully shed on the historical and political context (which for Korean audiences is anticipated by the original title, referring to spies infiltrated by the military in youth organisations opposing the regime), the film reshapes itself as a tense thriller, doomed to an ill-fated ending. The intriguing narrative denouement of Whang's film, which seems to progressively track from the more undefined, general and universal to the more specific and circumscribed, zooming on basic details only at the very last minute, acts as a proficient tool to bewilder audiences but, at the same time, promptly allows them to interrogate themselves about the interplay between the macro level of contingent political situations and the micro level of human nature and individual behaviour. The questions Spying Cam raises are indeed gripping, and the way Whang rears them through the dual device of the video camera and Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment makes them resound as simultaneously timeless and inescapably contemporary.

In continuity with the best of Cannes last year, apart from Asian features, the picks of the Rotterdam competition were the Latin American entries. The Brazilian Dunor My Friend (O Amigo Dunor) (2005) by José Eduardo Alcazar is a magmatic concoction of disparate images and sounds coming from the editing process of a grotesque B-movie and tells the story of a blind man who wants to get rid of his pestiferous wheelchair-confined wife, and the aulic and exotic notes of travel of a French intellectual visiting Brazil, against the background of military dictatorship in the late '70s. Alcazar's film delves (not so) obliquely into the turmoil of Brazilian history, commenting sapidly on the cultural and social context of those days, but it also functionally fractures itself to question the idea of Brazil at large, in all its external and internal, political and historical and, of course, cinematic implications. From Argentina, Kept and Dreamless (Las Mantenidas sin sueños) (2005), the first feature directed by actress Vera Fogwill and Martin Desalvo was perhaps the most commercially viable and crowd-pleasing film competing for the Tiger Awards, and it is undeniably surprising that apparently it still has not attracted the interest it deserves from international buyers. Filled with witty and humorous lines that are never shallow, this bittersweet and often piercing story of a child who's much smarter than her ten years of age, of her drug-addicted mother, and the oddly eccentric characters that surround them gives an unexpected and insightful view of contemporary Argentina: not only does Kept and Dreamless play whimsically with the tropes of the devastating economical crisis, but it also understatedly examines the role of bourgeois conformism in shaping the country's past and present, thus presenting a memorable collective coming of age story that is telling in its socio-political frame and thoroughly mature in its approach to filmmaking. A real gem of a film.

As for the other titles in competition, as usual at IFFR, most presented reasons or aspects of thematic interest or aesthetic quality, nevertheless what made them pale in comparison with the aforementioned films was the lack of engagement into larger discourse enabling them to overcome the strict individuality or the feeling of “undistinguishedness”. Films like Thomas Durchschlag's Alone (Allein) (2004) – a sensitive portrait of a disturbed woman that features an impressive performance from actress Lavinia Wilson – or Waves (Onde) (2005) by Francesco Fei – a story of the strange love affair between a young woman with a big mark on her face and a blind musician that offers an interesting cogitation on vision and identity and makes good use of refined sound design and the unusual background of the city of Genoa – although they certainly achieved their specific goals, struggle with the palpable, incumbent risks of déjà vu, and seem to obliterate the common concerns about contemporary European (art) cinema as lost into conventional narratives of individual or relational solitude, incapable of mirroring wider socio-political context or engaging into radical formal or narrative challenges. The same syndrome somehow affects another film of the Chinese diaspora, the Dutch competition entry Paradise Girls (2004) by Fow Pyng Hu, whose three portraits of Asian women in different countries never quite escape the limits of a now-conventional conceptual scheme of articulation. The worst example of this lassitude was Norwegian Erik Poppe's Hawaii, Oslo (2004), an overly predictable and lenient urban fresco playing with the usual mechanics of intertwining destinies, or what Fredric Jameson suitably defined as “synchronous monadic simultaneity”, without any vigour or novelty. Russian independent cinema icon Renata Litvinova in her directorial debut Goddess (Boginya: kak ya polyubila) (2004) at least follows the unusual steps of her mentor Kira Muratova; unfortunately her film is ruined by a preposterous narcissism and an embarrassingly ridiculous ending that unabashedly overstates the ultimate “meaning” of the film.

Finally, The Soup, One Morning (2004) by Takahashi Izumi happened to be an interesting counterproof and refreshing answer to the redundancies of most European films in being another film dealing with alienation and relational impasse, mixed with a concern on the growing penetration of the sect phenomenon in Japanese society, but in giving this riskily hackneyed concept a visual treatment of uncompromised rigour that highlights the resourceful skills and invention of the filmmaker in using a limited set of resources (one apartment, two characters) to the maximum aesthetic and emotional profit.

Endnotes:

1. Recently inaugurated, similar initiatives of Berlin (Berlinale Co-Production Market) and now Cannes (l'Atelier du Festival) easily demonstrate the groundbreaking contribution of Rotterdam in re-defining the role of a festival.

2. One has here to remind that since the late '70s filmmaking in languages other than Malay was officially banned in Malaysia (the so-called bumiputra-ism of cinema, bumiputra meaning “son of the earth”). All Chinese filmmakers of the new wave of Malaysian cinema have thus been actually operating in illegality.

Senses of Cinema issue no. 35, apr-jun 2005

XVIII. The Political Matters. The Soul Does, Too. Wise Old Men Rule.

2008-03-18T10:37:00.000-07:00

The Venice Film Festival, 2007

By Barbara Wurm

Every big festival comprises a minimum of two festivals, no matter how you differ your own private cine-right from cine-wrong – high vs low, mainstream vs avant-garde, Hollywood vs small film cultures, industry vs auteur cinema. Venice offers a lot more than that. Not because its program divides into a multiplicity of subsections, segregating – like so many others do – the (suggested) commercial from the (suggested) cinephile, but because, quite on the contrary, it allows to be screened right in the heart of grandezza films which you would probably never get to see if you relied completely on your national distribution machinery. With a countless number of extraordinarily special films – films taking high aesthetical risks, films with a maximum of determined and yet idiosyncratic decisions in form and content – Venice is at the same time the most interesting of the three big A-list festivals as it is a real quarry for real cine-buffs. Whereas Cannes establishes a strict, hierarchical system intentionally creating atmospheres of stars vs wisdom, and Berlin owes much of its (seemingly vanishing) intellectual acceptance to the Forum section, in Venice the gesture of benevolence in programming seems to apply rather to big film industry products than it does to the multitude of (elsewhere) so-called “special” or even “nutty” cases. Marco Müller is a canny programmer with a broad spectrum of world cinema knowledge. The ’07 edition of the mostra demonstrated this on several levels, the most noticeable being the careful and accurate (pre-)selection within certain regional fields. In the broader context they were granted, a number of films from beyond the (US-)empire proved to be of eminent importance for an international, global cine-world – even if this message doesn’t seem to have got around to most anglo-saxon film journals and sales distributors. For them, not very surprisingly, Venice was the festival of Todd Haynes and Wes Anderson, Woody Allen and Ken Loach, maybe even Kenneth Branagh and Peter Greenaway, Tony Gilroy and Paul Haggis; or, to name those who really deserve it, of Abdellatif Kechiche’s La Graine et le mulet (The Secret of the Grain), Brian de Palma’s Redacted, Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, or the well-merited Golden Lion winner, Ang Lee’s Se, jie (Lust, Caution).

If one, however, looked just a bit closer (and maybe more broad-mindedly), what was advanced by this year’s festival was the crème de la crème of Catalan cinema (Pere Portabella, José Luis Guerin, Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza), the overwhelming sophistication in Chinese hybrid documentary filmmaking (Lü Yue, Jia Zhang-ke, Du Haibin), the fine distinctions within Russian contemporary political statements (Aleksey Balabanov, Nikita Mikhalkov, Aleksandr Mindadze), a creative newcomer couple from Mexico (Laura Amelia Guzmán & Israel Cárdenas), central marginal figures in German cinema (Hartmut Bitomsky, Alexander Kluge, Andreas Kleinert), two radicals in political narration (the Filipino Lav Diaz and the Italian Giulio Questi), two fixed stars of independent cinema (the Japanese Aoyama Shinji and the Italian Tonino De Bernardi), two agent provocateurs against rotten-to-the-core corrupt systems (Vincenzo Marra about Italy, Youssef Chahine about Egypt), two old pervert Frenchmen you can count on (Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol), one old pervert Brazilian you can also count on (Júlio Bressane), another old – 99! – and slightly differently pervert Portuguese you’d better not count on (Manoel de Oliveira), the master of the Korean pansori-genre (Im Kwon Taek), two-as-one master(s) of Hong Kong-genre-film (Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai), a meta-master of autobiographical comedy (Kitano Takeshi), the emancipation of an actor (Lee Kang-sheng) and the glorious, genre-gambling topping of this year’s big Spaghetti-western-retrospective (Miike Takashi).

Altogether Venice ’07 featured an utmost breadth in genre and style. This also holds true for the many but clearly structured side-programs: Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman, 2007’s two big losses of world cinema, were remembered in honour; two special Golden Lions were given to Tim Burton (“Career Achievement Award 2007”) and Bernardo Bertolucci, recipient of the 75th Anniversary Golden Lion. However, thanks to the visionary approach in programming, not the big name Bertolucci, but Alexander Kluge, German filmmaker, writer, producer, teacher and TV-revolutionary, who also turned 75 that year, was granted a personal retrospective, a special one indeed, an “interlude” within the festival, reflecting the very nature not only of his own working method but also of the profound logic of festival programming as such (and the mostra in particular). In an act of meta-editing-as-curating Kluge (nomen est omen – “klug” means “wise, clever” in German) – the “Lichtenberg of digital cinema” (Müller) – put together five extensive programs, consisting of extracts from 40 years of his film oeuvre (program 1: My Century, My Beast!) and some elaborate confrontation-montages of cinema with other forms of art (which he has been developing during his many years working in German television). Das Phänomen der Oper (The Opera Phenomenon), a commentary on the Gesamtkunstwerk-nature of both, opera and film, as well as a cinematic web of numerous Verdi-fragments, displaying the very essence of this traditional art genre: “They constitute A Single Great Score which has faithfully accompanied the errors and achievements of bourgeois society for 400 years,” writes Kluge in his catalogue essay. Kluge’s TV-cinema-d’auteur is full of wit and philosophy, of drive and poetry. But, more than that, every sequence bears the abysmal depth of his political criticism – anti-bourgeois etudes and anti-imperialist pinprick-punches from someone whose probably-greatest film title defines this strategy: In Gefahr und größter Not bringt der Mittelweg den Tod (In Danger and Deep Distress, the Middle Way Spells Certain Death, 1974).

The Kluge special was therefore not a vermicular appendix of the “main” program, but a smart meta-comment on the art of curating and the possibilities in defining innovative film policy. As if elaborated intentionally for Venice, the determined renouncement of the certain death spelling middle way became the secret motto of the festival. One other level of evidence for the importance of this motto was the big retrospective dedicated to Italian Western of the ‘60s and early ‘70s. Not only is this genre generally known for the rather rigorous rejection of middle-way-solutions by its heroes, the very decision to reveal it as “secret history of Italian Cinema” is yet another demonstration of the decisive turn towards a subtle, broad and open-minded interpretation of film history. It was, by the way, marvellous to see the film community shrink down to a great fistful of hard-boiled colt-freaks who – after a day starting at 8.30am with the first screening, that is to say, after having seen at least half a dozen of films – attended the phenomenal midnight double feature of Giorgio Ferroni’s Un dollaro bucato (1965) and Lucio Fulci’s I quattro dell’Apocalisse (1975), which, needless to say, this is Italy after all, was accompanied by very talkative experts and therefore went on until about 4.30am next morning. But no night session would prevent superstar Giuliano Gemma, alias Montgomery Wood, who in Ferroni’s post-civil war ambushes (but doesn’t kill) his brother out of a kind of commissioned oedipal blindness, from walking around the Lido, looking splendid and tanned, as if no horse had ever kicked him in his bottom. Besides terrific looks and an un-beatable (and bearable) coolness in appearance, the Spaghetti-genre is full of fantastic aliases, the meticulous decryption of which was the least contribution the retrospective made to the history of film. The revision of a hidden film canon, inspired profoundly by Quentin Tarantino, highlighted the big names like Sergio Corbucci, Sergio Sollima or Carlo Lizzani (Un fiume di dollari, 1966) as well as widely forgotten directors like Duccio Tessari or Cesare Canevari.

Apart from Quentin Tarantino’s real and (hilarious!) screen appearance (in Miike Takashi’s phantasmagorical – and unfortunately highly underestimated – genre “parody” Sukiyaki Western Django), one other director of the “western all’italiana” program conquered a “main” section, the giornate degli autori: Giulio Questi. His 21-minute video-d’auteur Visitors gives you the creeps (bad creeps indeed, but very apparently necessary in terms of political education on the one hand and trauma therapy on the other). Sixty years have passed since the end of WW II, and yet the ghosts of the Italian civil war fought between '43 and '45 keep coming back. In fact, they cannot die (or be taken away by space ship fleet admiral Crosius), until there are still people around who remember them. The uninvited visitors – dead souls of black fascists killed by Questi, the red partisan – literally rise from the book he is reading in his flat (the flat being the entire setting of this alternative and quite surreal historical re-enactment doc-fiction-essay, all parts of which are performed by the master himself). Questi’s single handed digital video keeps up the insanity and fierceness of his personal (and Italian national) experience in the Resistance struggle, which in 1967 he dealt with within the genre frames of the Italian western in his film Se sei vivo spara. In Visitors he adds several layers of explicit theories about the brutal fighting, maintaining a great deal and sense of revolutionary anarchism (so uncommon in contemporary essay-cinema).

Taking this short (and only seemingly “minor”) chef-d’oeuvre as a starting point for tracking down the central approaches of the innovative films presented in Venice, a number of threads can be traced. To name but three, let’s start with a certain craziness, the libertinage of the thinking human mind, or rather, the vigour of the surreal-in-the-pervert, which Júlio Bressane as such, and especially his superbly nutty masterpiece Cleópatra, stands for (the film is an orgiastic, lyrical and mad reverie culturelle, to use Bressane’s own definition, an essay in staging the power of myths and sexual pleasure). The spirit of freedom and experimentiation transgresses the screen and literally ropes you in. Apart from the dirty old man Bressane, it is, of course, Eric Rohmer’s Les Amours d’Astrée et de Céladon (The Romance of Astrée and Celadon), invaded by a bevy of nymphs, which needs to be mentioned here, and, in order to conclude this subsection of libertinage, Claude Chabrol’s La Fille coupée en deux (The Girl Cut in Two) with its very French style of subordination displayed here by Ludivine Sagnier, who in one scene crawls on the floor, vested but in a fabulous peacock tail lingerie.

The second feature that could be retrieved from Questi’s Visitors is the radical approach in political narration of history. As a complementary film within this second subdivision – and especially in length the perfect match – there seems to be only one volunteer: Lav Diaz’s new magnum opum Kagadanan sa banwaan ning mga engkanto (Death in the Land of Encantos), five-hundred-and-forty minutes of duration and endurance, cinematographic revelation, and the creation of pondering images on the edge of documentary and fiction. Uncompromising as usual, but maybe more explicit than in his recent film Heremias (2006), the Filipino independent-maitre intermingles at least three stories into one massive stream of dealing with the national and historical traumata: the consistent (hi)story of Philippine governmental repression (including fierce working prohibition and even torture), the actual event of the typhoon Reming (Durian) striking the Philippines in November 2006, killing hundreds of people and burying villages; and the story of the “artist as a no longer young man”, the great Filipino poet Benjamin Agusan to be precise, who – after seven years of living and leaving (in) Russia – seems to suffer even more from his unhasty, intense return to his native country. It proves Diaz’s quality as seismograph of the developments in his country, that right in the middle of shooting a different film, he took the terrible typhoon as an initial point for Death in the Land of Encantos, seeing in it a metaphor for the ruined state the Philippines are in. The most impressive moments – if one can call two and half hours of running time still a moment, well, in Diaz’s temporal setting one can, I guess – are the moments one realises the significance of each and every seemingly empty action (somebody wandering through a devastated landscape, touching plants, or just sitting around on the veranda of his little shack), of all the fragmentary conversations, that can be picked up throughout the film. What takes place here is the gentle, slow formation of a new form of “history of mentalities”, the detour to (Eastern) Europe and back to Asia being its link to global history. The post-colonial fight for liberation continues, it is now fought with a video camera. Independence starts here, on the marginal conjunctions of a film set in the tropics, and ends on the screen of a Venice festival theatre. It is just another sign of the global shifts and changes taking place, that Europe finally realises how much it means for the widely ignored political and aesthetical movements in South East Asia. To make a long story short: the timeless screening of Death in the Land of Encantos on the last day in Venice was the coronation of a strong week of cinematography, showing more than any other film, that the state of the political and the state of the human soul are inseparably linked together.

Turning to the third thread laid out by Questi and retrieved in the Venice program, Lav Diaz’s contemplative attitude in retelling a hidden political agenda (Aroya’s fierce fight against leftists) works as a fine counterpart for the core of Europe’s political problem child number one: Russia. Of a number of more or less harmless to useless films produced over the last year (talking about the general decay of genre cinema, Russia is probably its last palladium, unfortunately not in the best sense of the word/idea…), the mostra chose to show highly political issues in three of them. The least-noticed one, Aleksandr Mindadze’s Otryy (Soar), actually comes closest to the previously-mentioned linkage of politics and soul in a new cinema of mentalities. This Eastern European version of a Lynch-like Inland Empire treats an individual trauma (the post-catastrophic moment of absolute freedom of action and thought, the “soaring” of a man after a plane crash) as politicised matter, touching upon all symptoms of the catastrophic nature of Russia’s governmental collapse, and reflecting the national trauma as such, the dramatic and traumatic condition of a country, where only chaos seems to be steadily and intentionally organised. (1) The opposite in style and tone is delivered by the big boss of Russia’s film union, Nikita Mikhalkov, who in addition to thinking aloud (and continuously) about a presidential candidacy or the reconstruction of Moscow’s cine-theatrical structure (which looks more like an act of destruction, in fact), has managed to bring together a fine ensemble of great actors, in order to do a remake of Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men (1957) à la post-sovietique. The acting of his team is so perfect that the film was commonly regarded as the winner of the Golden Lion ’07, which in the end held only partly true, since Mikhalkov was given a special lion for his career – like Jean Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet last year (what an act of total injustice and fatal neutralisation as they really produced films way off mainstream, daring, stubborn, fierce, agonistic, and completely beyond the personal need of compliments). But not only the prize but already the naïve exaltation about Mikhalkov’s 12 obscures the fact that Saint Nikita, as we should finally call him, distributes a very dubious, if not dangerous political message: at the very end of the story, after having sat there for hours without interfering, recording (with slightly suppressed contempt) the other jury members’ statements or commenting on them with the nods of an apparently wise old man, this last angry man declares the end of democracy and the end of political systems as such, offering – in fluent Chechen, but who would actually be surprised about that – sanctuary and political asylum to the innocent accused young boy. The perfect asylum for the victim, however, on the other side equals the return of the sovereign, a strong wise leading figure, with a sympathy for orthodox religion, whose only remaining gesture of power is an act of grace. No wonder, Lav Diaz’s poet needed to escape this kind of refuge… The third film from Russia was the only really strong one, a chef-d’oeuvre in many concerns: Gruz 200 (Cargo 200) directed by the enfant terrible of the lost empire’s mainstream cinema, Aleksey Balabanov. The very fact that he produces mainstream work turns his political statements into highly provocative messages. Gruz 200 is a wild and harsh comment on the last years of the Soviet Union, set in an average industrial town (Leninsk) in late 1984, creating a very focused picture of moral decay, social erosion and political corruption. Around the story of an officer, raping an innocent girl and setting her up for her future husband (whose dead body, for this purpose, is delivered in a coffin from the Afghanistan war – the “cargo 200” referred to in the film’s title, and put next to her, into the bed, where she has just been raped again by an ex-inmate), Balabanov juggles genres with pleasure and skill (and nearly as perfect as Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai in their fantastic – yet underestimated – Shentan (Mad Detective), referring not only, but with enthusiasm, to George Romero, underlining his great impact on Russian subculture and its psycho-political struggle with authorities.

Speaking of political provocations, two other films need to be highlighted: Vincenzo Marra’s L’ora di punta and Youssef Chahine’s and Khaled Youssef’s Heya fawda (Chaos). The grandpa of Egyptian cinema, Chahine, like Balabanov, tells a straight story of a sinuous evil police officer, whose dreams of omnipotence, choleric fits and acts of repression find an end in the basement cell of his office, where he has arranged a fine cell for torture experiments on political opponents (or just average citizens, who happen to be protesting against the nation-wide system of corruption and bribery). Whereas in Chaos one scene hastily follows the next, rendering a colourful, pathetic atmosphere of social blackouts – Yasser Abdel Rahman’s music is terrific! – Vincenzo Marra, on the other hand, interweaves his extremely bad picture of today’s bad, bad Italy (an answer, of course, to the Italian wash-out numero uno of last year, Nanni Moretti’s Il caimano) with the dramatic and super-realistic psycho-social downfall of a young tax officer, who pushes his luck just a bit too far. Mafia attitudes have penetrated every sector of administration and business, above all the building industry. And the surface of appearances is kept clean and fresh, as clean and fresh and handsome as an average Italian neo-bourgeois can be. This struggle, the one about maintaining his good looks, Marra’s hero never loses, but – as offspring of poorer roots – he is doomed to lose the bigger fight concerning his career, his fate and his soul. For the mainly Italian audience, it must have pained them to see their own lovely private lives vanish in Marra’s dramatic (and only seemingly psychologically-motivated) mirror of a rotten society. Both films, Chaos and L’ora di punta, were crudely ignored and quite disrespectfully laughed at by the majority of the audience – at least at the press screening of the latter they booed out their guts – casting a rather damning light on the credibility of this very audience (since nobody, of course, would ever dare to cry out in pain and disgust during Mikhalkov’s annunciation of his holiness).

Split attitudes towards films with clear cut messages and decisive stylistic arrangements could also be sensed in the case of Cristovão Colombo – O Enigma (Christopher Columbus – The Enigma), Manoel de Oliveira’s trip retracing Columbus’ steps through Portugal and its once global empire, being, in fact, a veritably enigmatic doc-fictitious something with a quite proto-nationalist fixation. Obviously, the emphasised intermingling of genres, especially of fiction and documentary, finally seems to be established, taking into account, as described in length, Giulio Questi and Lav Diaz, but also looking at two favourites in competition, Brian de Palma’s Redacted – quite a few lost brains thought that his embedded-soldier-videos was direct footage (real stuff!) from Iraq – and Abdellatif Kechiche’s La Graine et le mulet, an apathetic yet human story of a day in the life of a shipyard worker, whose attempt to escape his immigrant misery and set up a fish restaurant is depicted within his natural habitat in Sète, South-West France. Another great feature about tormented souls, suffering from (but at the same time feeding on) the social conditions they live in, was the young couple’s Laura Amelia Guzmán’s & Israel Cárdenas’ Cochochi, a realistic, sensitive account of the life of two kids, indigenous brothers in northwest Mexico. After being sent off to deliver some medicine, their journey extends not only to the borders of the nature and geography surrounding them, but also the inner boundaries of character and the human nature. One can hardly forget even their slightest gestures, the way they hop on trucks, in order to travel huge distances, or the way they look at a horse (passion!), which they were supposed to look after, but seem to have lost out of sight.

Besides the documentary quality in fiction, there is a strong trend in documentaries to open up the genre. Widely “accepted as uncommon”, these films may still be identified as documentaries. Here, Venice ’07 displayed an absolutely vast spectre of innovative approaches, representing for me at the same time absolute highlights of the festival. Staub (Dust) – Hartmut Bitomsky’s latest monumental essay on the minimal particles constituting and destroying the essence of life – deliberately frames his exploration into a house-wife’s vacuum cleaned apartment, a woman’s artsy dust-collection, and deep into the tubes and tunnels of scientists’ realms (particle accelerators and such) – with a reference to John Ford’s Wagon Master (1950) and Victor Sjöström’s The Wind (1928) in the beginning and at the end of the movie.

But Staub is, of course, a hardcore intellectual investigation into one of man’s weirdest Sisyphus fights, an ironic hymn about cleanliness- or fluff-fetishists, an expansion of scientific and phenomenological knowledge, the avoidance of “the human factor” (so widely common in the average contemporary documentary) for the benefit of “the material factor”, and therefore rather the stabilisation of objective methods than an expansion of conventional genre boarders.

Concerning the transgression of modes – documentary and fiction, this is – the most exciting attempts nowadays definitely come from China. At the mostra, the most evident trace of this trend was Lü Yue’s breathtaking Xiaoshuo (The Obscure), a two-fold account of a (documentary) meeting of twelve members of China’s Writers’ Associations and the (fictitious) rendezvous of the young woman, responsible for the organisation of the workshop, and a young man. What is absolutely stunning about this film is the high skill with which these seemingly separated stories are brought together. With only a few cuts throughout the film, Lü Yue hardly interferes into the action, and yet produces a clear structure, giving the protagonists plenty of time to speak. And they have a fair bit to talk about, especially the members of the association. In 84 minutes we probably learn more about Chinese society and culture (philosophy and poetry in particular), than we’d learn during a five-year western study programme. There is a whole lot of emancipation in the speeches of Fang Fang, a glorious craziness in those of Mian Mian, and an eternal wisdom about tradition and modernity in those of Ah Cheng.

The second demonstration of the art of new documentary came from last year’s Golden Lion-winner, Jia Zhang-ke (who had already back then proved this skill with his semi-documentary Dong about the painter Liu Xiaodong). His magnificent Wuyong (Useless) features the highest form of combining sensitivity and research, exploring the meaning and working of textures not only on a material level – it is a portrait of clothing, of people who make them and people who wear them – but also on a syntactical, structural one, since it interweaves different types of life stories and regions, representing the multitude of Chinese culture. On the one hand there is the famous “anti-fashion” designer Ma Ke whose exhibitions and shows are celebrated in the great capitals of haute-couture like Paris, on the other there are the quite different economic conditions of a small tailor’s shop in the mining area of Fanyang and the sewing machine factories in Canton. In addition to the most beautiful press-kit ever (sic!), Useless delights by a rhythm unique in the realm of documentary – even if Du Haibin’s San / Umbrella is also a highly complex and spirited document of Chinese rural society as well as a meditation about modernisation (also in the sector of textile production), Jia Zhang-ke remains special.

Jia’s contemplative feeling of time and montage might be juxtaposed by a number of more or less narrative feature films only: Im Kwon Taek’s super-classical Chun-nyun-hack (Beyond the Years), a tragic and lifelong love story about adoptive siblings (singer and drummer) and at the same time a survey of Korean 20th century history; Sad Vacation, Aoyama Shinji’s outstanding cool and yet honest prime example of slow realism; Bangbang wo aishen (Help Me Eros) by Lee Kang Sheng, Tsai Ming-liang’s eternal muse, a pretty wacky sexual fantasy, consisting of idiosyncratic fetishes (like a fat woman sharing her bath tub with an eel) and surreal photography mainly (like several patterns of fashion brands projected on artistically interleaved copulating bodies); Tonino De Bernardi’s wonderful Médée Miracle, starring Isabelle Huppert as Medea alias Irène, a woman full of love, hate and despair, calm in her abysmal affection, lascivious in her longing voice, balancing along the fine line between destruction and devotion; and last, but not least, José Luis Guerin’s En la ciudad de Sylvia (In the City of Sylvia), the atmospherically dense but blissfully light metaphysical search for life, love and beauty, de-transcended, so to speak, onto the pages of a sketch-book, where a young man drafts the gestures of people and the signatures of the Manet type of city he strolls through (see also Dan Sallitt’s report on Toronto ’07, “The Responsibilities of Power”).

This determined yet open for whatever-might-come seismograph of emotions is proof of an enormously mature (but never saturated) mark, of pure perfection, and of a deliberate choice in forming the eccentric towards reality (and not the other way round). It looks as if Cataluña were the current cradle of decisiveness in style and exceptionality in topics. Together with Guerin, Catalan cinema’s grand old man, Pere Portabella, whose Die Stille vor Bach (The Silence before Bach) brought forth a fantastically minimal art film poster and a maximum of lucidity, established this kind of a leading role at the Venice film festival. This proto-European film tells the story of the life of Johann Sebastian Bach, re-enacted by people whose lives and jobs are driven by the master’s legacy – the organist and composer Christian Brembeck plays Bach, whereas others, like Leipzig’s Thomaskantor, a tourist guide, or a book seller play themselves. The result is a high-risk-taking experiment in intentional anachronism (the present in the past, not the past in the present), rendering yet an all the more precise and thoroughly researched picture of the grandness of Bach’s oeuvre and the impact it has today. There are three scenes in Die Stille vor Bach, as mighty and majestic, like no other image developed during some enormous days in Venice: the opening sequence, in which an automatic pianola moves through the white vaults of a huge room (an architectonic kind of resonating cavity), playing some of the Goldberg Variations; the performance of a group of pianists in a gigantic piano store; and another young musicians’ group tour through the underground, where they pervade the interior of the metro-wagon with a sound created by at least two dozen cellos. Salvation is near in moments like these.

Senses of Cinema, issue no. 46, 2008

XVII. Diaz, l’œil du cyclone

2008-03-12T18:38:00.001-07:00

par Olivier Séguret

Pas facile de faire un choix parmi les multiples programmations qui forment l’éventail riche et moiré du Festival du réel : Americana, Prisons, Tourisme, etc. Il n’empêche : attirer l’attention sur le cinéaste philippin Lav Diaz relève du devoir critique incontournable. Présenté dans la section En Asie du Sud-Est, où il côtoie notamment le bizarroïde et fiévreux Raya Martin, son compatriote, Diaz est un documentariste d’une cinquantaine d’années, que la planète cinéphile a récemment découvert au gré de quelques festivals (Venise, Rotterdam…) où il a produit un même effet de souffle.

Le souffle est d’ailleurs la caractéristique première de son travail : il ne faut pas en manquer pour affronter, comme il le fait, le réel dans sa profondeur et dans sa durée, sur des longueurs à faire déguerpir les lâches. Son dernier grand œuvre, Evolution of a Filipino family, s’étendait sur douze chapitres et six cent quarante-cinq minutes ; son dernier ouvrage, Death in the Land of Encantos, s’embrasse en dix épisodes qui totalisent neuf heures de film.

L’argument de Death in the Land of Encantos est le retour du poète philippin Benjamin Agusan sur les lieux de son enfance, région depuis longtemps très défavorisée de l’Archipel et sur laquelle s’est de surcroît abattu le ravageur typhon Reming. Agusan multiplie les rencontres avec de vieilles relations ou de parfaits inconnus, dont il recueille les confessions parfois endeuillées, parfois amères, parfois explosives d’humour et de vitalité. La dérive de ce guide particulier dans les décombres boueux d’une post-Apocalypse dont rôde encore partout la menace sombre, alterne avec des entretiens menés par le cinéaste auprès des rescapés. Souvent, un étrange décalage se produit entre, d’une part, l’image, son décor et son contexte, qui enregistrent déréliction et indigence, et, d’autre part, les dialogues, très souvent relevés, qui brassent amour, philosophie et politique. L’effet est typique de ceux produits par le cinéma de Diaz, qui prend à revers nos réflexes les plus bêtement conditionnés. Les pépites brillent dans la boue, comme les conversations de putains et d’ouvriers tutoient infiniment les étoiles.

Formellement, le monde restitué par Lav Diaz rappelle souvent celui photographié par Sebastião Salgado. La nature, tristement belle, terriblement inquiétante, a ici quelque chose d’argileux, humide et organique. L’humanité qui s’y déplace est saisie dans les décors qu’elle dévaste et qui continuent pourtant de la dépasser. Le titre, que l’on peut approximativement traduire par « la Mort au pays enchanté » (ou « en ce jardin », pour citer Buñuel) exprime parfaitement cette ambivalence, relativement fréquente dans le cinéma d’Asie, dont on retrouve aussi un certain tempo, cette pulsation languide qui donne leur rythme cardiaque exemplaire aux films d’un Tsai Ming-liang ou d’un Apitchatpong Weerasethakul.

Au terme de cette ivresse contemplative dont Diaz offre une tournée générale, c’est une phrase de Balzac qui nous est revenue à la mémoire : « Le type noble ne s’y trouve plus que dans le peuple, comme, après l’incendie des villes, les médailles se cachent sous les cendres. » Après le passage des cyclones, c’est pareil.

Liberation Mars 2008 Paris