Lav Diaz - Philippine Noir (NLR July 2021)
" [..] Although he is a well-known figure there, Diaz’s films have been screened only sporadically in the Philippines itself, the product not only of political constraints—a number have been banned—but also of working beyond the bounds of an entrenched national film industry. [..] His oeuvre, though, remains little understood. On the global circuit, he is regularly acclaimed as a master of ‘slow cinema’. In interviews, Diaz rarely fails to correct the record: ‘it’s not slow cinema; it’s cinema.’ [..]A critical framework of this kind [Slow Cinema], encompassing such a heterogeneous set of directors of disparate geographies and lineages, has the potential to obscure as much as it elucidates. In Diaz’s case, there is an evident disconnection between the discourse of slow cinema and the concerns that animate his films. The historical, social and political character of the Philippines is his primary subject—‘the struggle is there. I cannot turn my back on it’—and his achievement is only fully visible within this setting. Though duration is an element of his repertoire, it is mobilized for much more particular ends. [..]"
Philippine Noir - The Cinema of Lav Diaz (by May Adadol Ingawanij; New Left Review, july 2021)
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