Thursday, June 18, 2009
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Average Shot Length in CCC
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6/13/2009 11:18:00 PM
By
HarryTuttle
This is only a selection of a few films surveyed in the database of Average Shot Length compiled at Cinemetrics (strict model in red, and other broad contemplative films in blue). So these data don't give a conclusive picture of the whole trend yet. Though with 50 entries, it begins to give interesting results.One film was off the chart : Five (Kiarostami) with an ASL of 14 minutes 45 seconds!
15 seconds is considered a slow movie within the mainstream commercial editing. The usual ASL tends to be around 2 or 4 seconds these days. Some very contemplative films can go below this mark, at 7 or 8 seconds, while maintaining throughout a narrative deprived of wordy scenes. Though most of them are easily 10 times slower than the typical mainstream narrative editing rhythm.
Chronologically, from Jeanne Dielman (almost the start of this CCC trend as I define it) till 2009. There is no pattern emerging at this point (from this limited sample), no clear evolution to be noted that would show a tendency towards longer ASL or on the contrary towards faster ASL.
There is no common tempo that would naturally emerge from the practice of similar plotless/meandering/contemplative plan sequences. But there is a group of 18 films within the range of 50-80 seconds. On the next graph below, you can see that most of the films corresponding to this ASL range come from Asia (and Latin America), while the same range is blank in Europe (which has however a dense cluster below 30 seconds and over 100 seconds).
And then beyond that, really experimental extend of shot duration, with ASL going over 90 seconds, which the realm of 2 filmmakers : Angelopoulos and Tarr, not surprisingly (with isolated shots by Kiarostami and Encina).
At the extreme end, The Man From London reaches an Average Shot Length of 4 minutes 24 seconds, with the conventional plot of a heist story. The shots last 66 times longer, on average, than the commercial standard at 4 sec per shot. Quite a margin to tell similar stories!
I also note that the broad CCC (blue) don't necessarily have a shorter ASL than the the strict models (red)... So using more dialogue and more of a narrative plot doesn't induce more cuts in the editing style. But they (films in blue) don't go in the very top of the ASL spectrum (the extreme long takes) either.
And this one is the scattered plot of the distribution of all ASL, with a repartition by geographical area. Each dot represents a film's ASL.Here we have a more decisive picture emerging. Asia (with 19 films) and Europe (with 14) are the most represented, so the others need more films in the database to be conclusive. I left Kiarostami's Five in this one, so you can see the scale difference with the rest of the films surveyed.
But already we can see that the range in Asia is dense and remains below 1 minutes and a half. While in Europe the ASL range extends much wider.
Monday, June 08, 2009
LINKS :: Raya MARTIN
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6/08/2009 09:00:00 PM
By
HarryTuttle
Raya MARTIN (born 1984, The Philippines) = 25 yold in 2009
Independencia (2009) IMDb Un Certain Regard - Cannes 2009
Please complete, correct when needed. This is an ongoing resource page to be updated.
9 films / 6 screenplays (1st film: 2005/latest film: 2009)
INSPIRED BY : Lav Diaz?
C.C.C. films (strict model in red) : Coming Soon (?); Independencia (2009)v; Possible Lovers (2008)v; Next Attraction (2008)v; Now Showing (2008)v; Manila (2008)v; Autohystoria (2007)v; A Short Film About the Indio Nacional (2005)v; No pongso do tedted no mondo: Ang isla sa dulo ng mundo (2005)v
INFLUENCE ON : ?
Quick scroll : BIBLIOGRAPHY | BOOK | ONLINE ARTICLES | INTERVIEW | WEBSITES | DOCUMENTARY
Independencia (2009) IMDb Un Certain Regard - Cannes 2009
- "Independencia Shooting Day 8 (A Film By Raya Martin)" By: Alexis Tioseco (Concentrated Nonsense, 18 Dec 2008)
- Cannes Festival info (Photos)
- Independencia By: Howard Feinstein (Screen Daily, 18 May 2009)
- Links By: David Hudson (IFC The Daily, 19 May 2009)
- The Saga of a Guerilla in The Philippines By: Daniel Kasman (The Auteurs, 20 May 2009)
- "Des Philippins prêt à mourir 'pour le cinéma'" By: Jacques Mandelbaum (Le Monde, 21 May 2009) [FRENCH]
- Film Review : Independencia By: Deborah Young (The Hollywood Reporter, 23 May 2009)
- "Independence" By: Todd McCarthy (Variety, May 2009)
- "3 questions à Raya Martin" By: A.D. (Les Inrockuptibles, 26 May 2009) [FRENCH]
- "Independencia" By: Oggs Cruz (Lessons from the school of Inattention, 12 June 2009)
- "Independencia (Raya Martin, 2009)" By: Northern Portrait (Persistence of Vision, 18 June 2009)
- "Independencia (Raya Martin, 2009)" By: Richard Bolisay (Lilok Pelikula, 19 June 2009)
- "Independencia (2009, Raya Martin)" By: Film Angel (Persistence of Vision, 21 June 2009)
- "Raya Martin" By: Alexis A. Tioseco (Cinemas Scope, #39, July 2009)
- Independencia (Independencia, 2009)
- "_renseñas Independencia" By: Gonzalo de Pedro (Blogs&Docs, July 2009) [SPANISH]
- "Independencia" By: Leo Goldsmith (Notcoming; 5 Oct 2009)
- "At the New York Film Festival: Independencia" By: Andrew Schenker (The L Magazine; 5 Oct 2009)
- "Into The Woods" By: Michael Joshua Rowin (Reverse Shot; # 25; 5 Oct 2009)
- Links By: David Hudson (The Auteurs Daily; 6 Oct 2009)
- "Independencia, 2009" By: acquarello (Strictly Film School, 6 Oct 2009)
- "Apuntes sobre una desaparición" By: Violeta Kovacsics (Lumière, #2, May 2009) [SPANISH]
- (add link here)
- "Possible lovers" By: Francis Cruz (Lessons from the school of inattention, 3 Aug 2010)
- (add link here)
- Video trailer (5 June 2008)
- Next Attraction By: Northern Portrait (Persistence of Vision, 28 June 2009)
- (add link here)
- Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, May 2008 (official website)
- "Raya Martin participates in 40th Director's Fortnight" By: Jocelyn Dimaculangan (Philippine Entertainment Portal, 13 May 2008)
- "Now Showing" By: Oggs Cruz (Lessons From the School of Inattention, 16 May 2008)
- "Now Showing By Raya Martin" By: Alexis Tioseco (Concentrated Nonsense, 21 May 2008)
- "La Muraille de Cannes (François, Che et Rita)" By: Antoine Thirion & Eugenio Renzi (Cahiers du cinéma, #635, 23 May 2008)
- "Sans etiquette" By: Cyril Neyrat (Cahiers du cinéma, #635, June 2008) [FRENCH]
- "Now Showing" By: Scott Foundas (Variety, 2 June 2008)
- "Raya Martin in Cannes 08" By: HarryTuttle (Unspoken Cinema, 6 June 2008) part 1 - 2 - 3
- "El tiempo de la vida" By: Francisco Algarín Navarro (Lumière, #2, Nov 2009) PDF [SPANISH]
- (add link here)
- Cannes Festival info (PDF, photos) video teaser
- Manila By: Jonathan Romney (Screen Daily, 18 May 2009)
- Manila By: Alissa Simon (Variety, 18 May 2009)
- Links By: David Hudson (IFC The Daily, 19 May 2009)
- (add link here)
- "BAFICI, Day11" By: Robert Koehler (Film Journey, 13 April 2007)
- "Autohystoria (2007)" By: Oggs Cruz (Lessons From the School of Inattention, 17 Sept 2007)
- (add link here)
- "Maicling Pelicula Nañg Ysañg Indio Nacional (O Ang Mahabang Kalungkutan ng Katagalugan) (2005)" By: Francis Cruz (Lessons from the school of inattention, 26 July 2006)
- "A Short Film About Being Filipino" By: Noel Vera (Critic After Dark, 24 July 2007)
- (Les Inrockuptibles, 08 July 2008) [FRENCH]
- (Libération, 09 July 2008) [FRENCH]
- "Philippines 1890 : histoire d'une répression sanglante" By: Jacques Mandelbaum (Le Monde, 09 July 2008) [FRENCH]
- (Télérama, 09 July 2008) [FRENCH]
- (add link here)
- "BAFICI, Day 4" by: Robert Koehler (Film Journey, 6 April 2007)
- (add link here)
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
- (add reference here)
BOOK on Raya MARTIN
- (add reference here)
- "Conscious and Cool" By: Alexis Tioseco (Berlinale Talent Campus, 2005)
- "Philippine cinema on the verge of redemption" By: Francis Cruz (Lessons From the School of Inattention, 8 Aug 2007)
- "Pusan journal : The Filipino Angle" By: Emmanuel Burdeau (Cahiers du cinéma, 7 Oct 2007) [FRENCH]
- "The First Annual Philippine Cinema Portfolio" (Rogue, March 2008, p.75)
- "A Short Article about the Films of the Indio Nacional" By: Francis Joseph A. Cruz (Lessons from the School of Inattention, 11 June 2010) / [PORTUGUESE]
- (add link here)
- "Parlez-vous français?" (Cinefondation, Cannes 2004) By: Alexis Tioseco (SEA-images, 2004)
- "Interview with Raya Martin" By: Roger Garcia (Digital Media & Content review on-line, 27 Dec 2005)
- "Why and whom do you film for?" By: Raya Martin (Criticine, 23 Aug 2007)
- "L'obsession de l'histoire" By: Alexis Tioseco (Cinéma du Réel 2008, Mar 2008) [FRENCH]
- Rencontre avec Raya Martin By: Laurent Laborie, Eugenio Renzi, Antoine Thirion (Cahiers du cinéma, May 2008) video in 2 parts
- "A Short Interview With Raya Martin" By: Mark Peranson (Cinema scope, #27, 2008)
- Press kit interview for Independencia Translated by Eugenio Renzi & Antoine Thirion (Independencia, May 2009) [FRENCH]
- "Raya Martin, a very short interview" IX Festival Internacional de Cine de Las Palmas (video) [SPANISH] [ENGLISH]
- "Conversation avec Raya Martin" By: Eugenio Renzi & Antoine Thirion (Independencia, 2009) Cannes
- "_entrevistas Raya Martin" video interview By: M. Martí Freixas (Blogs&Docs, July 2009) on Independencia; Manila [SPANISH] [ENGLISH]
- (add link here)
TEXT BY Raya MARTIN
- "Journal Entry No.1 : Anticipations of Light" By: Raya Martin (Criticine, 14 Oct 2005)
- "Journal Entry No.2 : Wherever You Prosper" By: Raya Martin (Criticine, 30 Jan 2006)
- "Journal Entry No.3 : End Credits" By: Raya Martin (Criticine, 11 May 2006)
- (add reference here)
- IMDb | WikiPilipinas
- (add link here)
- (add reference here)
Please complete, correct when needed. This is an ongoing resource page to be updated.
Sunday, June 07, 2009
CCC timeline 2008
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6/07/2009 11:30:00 PM
By
HarryTuttle

A few helpful word definitions :
UNSPOKEN (French = non-dit)
- un- (prefix, contrary to) + spoken (concerning speech, especially opposed to written)
- expressed without speech; especially because words would be inappropriate or inadequate; not made explicit; not formally articulated or stated; implicit or understood; tacit.
- understood or implied without being stated; indicated by necessary connotation though not expressed directly; expressed or carried on without words or speech; implied or indicated (as by an act or by silence) but not actually expressed; done or made in silence; implied, but not expressed; silent.
- Not derived from formal principles of reasoning; based on induction rather than deduction.
- From French or from Latin implicitus, past participle of implico (“to infold, involve, entangle”)
- Implied indirectly, without being directly expressed. Capable of being understood from something else though unexpressed.
- Contained in the essential nature of something but not openly shown. Involved in the nature or essence of something though not revealed, expressed, or developed.
- Volonté implicite: celle qui se manifeste moins par des paroles que par certains actes ou faits habituels. Qui, sans être exprimé en termes formels, résulte naturellement, par déduction et conséquence, de ce qui est formellement exprimé.
CONTEMPLATIVE (French = contemplatif)
This blog is obviously biased. There is no intent to cover the entirety of filmic forms, or historical timeline. Whether this limitation, temporal and formal, is arbitrary or pertinent, it is meant regardless as a defining characteristic of this blog. Please understand and respect this clear self-imposed constraint.
The films and auteurs included in this trend are underexposed and understudied, so this blog will not waste time and space covering other subjects and outside films, which have been, or still are, amply discussed and studied elsewhere.
This is not the only prism through which these films can be looked at (these films may eventually belong to other trends/aesthetic movements for other aspects of their content/mise en scène), and maybe it is not the most enlightening perspective to study them, but this is what has been defined for this blog for the time being, and this is the specific aspect of these films that will be considered on this blog.
- an act of considering with attention : study
- persistently or morbidly thoughtful
- c. 1225, from Old French; from Latin : contemplationem = "act of looking at," from contemplari "to gaze attentively, observe," origin : "to mark out a space for observation" (as an augur does).
- a long and thoughtful observation; a calm lengthy intent consideration
- The act of the mind in considering with attention; continued attention of the mind to a particular subject; meditation; musing; study; the act of regarding steadily.
- This is not a proper label, it's a "working title", a simple descriptor of the object studied.
- Contemporary : means concerning filmmakers still working in this field today.
- Contemplative : see above
- Cinema : the particular field of cinema intentionally self-limited by the 2 preceding adjectives.
This blog is obviously biased. There is no intent to cover the entirety of filmic forms, or historical timeline. Whether this limitation, temporal and formal, is arbitrary or pertinent, it is meant regardless as a defining characteristic of this blog. Please understand and respect this clear self-imposed constraint.
The films and auteurs included in this trend are underexposed and understudied, so this blog will not waste time and space covering other subjects and outside films, which have been, or still are, amply discussed and studied elsewhere.
This is not the only prism through which these films can be looked at (these films may eventually belong to other trends/aesthetic movements for other aspects of their content/mise en scène), and maybe it is not the most enlightening perspective to study them, but this is what has been defined for this blog for the time being, and this is the specific aspect of these films that will be considered on this blog.
Friday, June 05, 2009
Evolution of a Filipino Filmmaker
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6/05/2009 07:50:00 PM
By
Matthew Flanagan
A follow-up to this post.
Gleanings from print material on Lav Diaz:
Gleanings from print material on Lav Diaz:
As with Filipino society itself, the gap between rich (big films) and poor (small films) is noticeable and growing. In 1998, “Mother” Lily Monteverde, matriarch of Regal Films, set up the ultra-low-budget division Good Harvest to produce films on pito-pito (“quickie”) 10-day schedules and shoestring budgets of around P2.5 million (around $65,000) each, compared with the average Filipino feature cost of P12 million. Ostensibly genre pictures, but embracing a peculiarly Filipino mix of the lurid, political and religious, this initiative has produced some of the most promising mainstream films since the Seventies.Garcia, Roger. “The Art of Pito-Pito”, Film Comment 36.4, July/August 2000, p.53-55.
Good Harvest has launched the careers of young filmmakers like Jeffrey Jeturian, whose hit, Fetch a Pail of Water (Pila Balde) has Brocka’s social conscience and a touch of humour, and Rico Illarde, with his American-style horror action in El Kapitan, and made a star out of the well-endowed “bold” actress Klaudia Koronel. But it is with Lavrente (Lav) Diaz, with three Good Harvest features and a string of international festival credits, who has emerged as the major writer-director talent of this group.
Forty-year-old Diaz is a celebrated writer. His script for The Criminal of Barrio Concepcion (Kriminal Ng Barrio Concepcion, 98) and collections of short stories have won the prestigious Palanca award. Originally a guitarist, he toured with his band Kutabao for a couple of years in the south. His writing career began with music magazines, komiks and fantasy adventures such as Pinoy Ninja. Diaz began writing scripts in the mid-Eighties for TV drama, Regal Films and for the Philippines’ biggest star, Fernando Poe Jr.
In the early Nineties, Diaz lived in New York. He watched movies and crewed on independent productions. In 1994 he started his own film, the still-unfinished 16mm black-and-white Evolution (Ang Ebolusyon Ni Ray Gallardo), an experimental, personal epic about identity. It is one of several projects set in New York, including an English-language metaphysical thriller with a Filipino protagonist, The Villagers.
Diaz returned to Manila to make his first film for Good Harvest in 1997. Burger Boys (98) is about three boys and a girl who decide to rob a bank – until we discover they are actually writing a script about themselves robbing a bank. Crazily audacious, it applies a literary conceit to the teen bubble gum movie and then loads it with angst. It careens between drama, fantasy and the supernatural with the screwball abandon of a Hong Kong gangster comedy. In a sense it reflects how intellectuals and independents have used the pito-pito to enter the realm of populist cinema, and how they have broken many of its conventions.
Burger Boys’ chaotic comedy is uncharacteristic of Diaz’s subsequent dramatic films. However, its motif of a (fake) angel appearing to a boy when he worries about what he’s done introduces a key theme of Diaz’s work – the burden of conscience that haunts his later protagonists. The film also points to two important bearings of Diaz’s stylistic compass – he is a sly genre-flipper, and his scripts have an intelligence and ambition that go way beyond the pito-pito budget.
Inspired by Dostoyevsky, The Criminal of Barrio Concepcion began filming towards the end of the Burger Boys shoot. A peasant (Raymond Bagatsing) needs money for his sick wife and gets involved in a kidnapping that goes vividly and violently wrong. Unable to shake nightmares about this crime, he tells all to a journalist who is herself investigating political corruption.
The juxtaposition of poor people who are forced into crime and a selfish and criminal political establishment places the film squarely in the ambiguous moral space of film noir. Some images are surprising (Bagatsing’s worsening tooth abscess in the course of the movie is a metaphor for government neglect and decay), and the montage, slipping seamlessly from nightmare to reality to flashback, suggests both Bagatsing facing his guilt, and society confronting itself. In the context of the complacency and escapism of much current Filipino cinema, Criminal is something of a milestone – angry, intelligent, and critical.
There is a quietude about Criminal’s characters that suggests dark secrets. This sense forms the core of Diaz’s third Good Harvest film and most accomplished work to date. Naked Under the Moon (Hubad Sa Illalim Ng Buwan, 99) opens with a stunning wordless sequence as a family drives through a barren desert landscape, immediately signifying dysfunction and perturbation. They have left the city for the simpler and cheaper living of their rural home. One daughter, played by Klaudia Koronel, was abused as a child and is a nude somnambulist. The father (Joel Torre) has failed at being a priest and a businessman, and is impotent. The mother, who has had an affair with the village rake, kills herself. The other daughter is the product of this union. Diaz skilfully transcends the genre of this lurid sex melodrama to produce a Bergmanesque discourse on faith and a critique of Filipino macho.
Diaz tells the story from the points of view of daughter and father. The daughter played by Koronel has an affair with a local fisherman and in a vision imagines passionate lovemaking with him that turns into rape. It is an image of violent poetry, alluding not only to the relationships between macho men and “their” women, but also to the government and “its” people. At the end, Koronel walks through the town, cured of her affliction but still wondering about her abuser, whom she sees “in the face of all the men that I meet.” It is a politically and spiritually charged notion that practically defines Diaz’s cinema – why did this happen? Who is responsible?
As a failed priest, Torre grapples with his faith – he questions the existence of God and punishes himself for this crise de conscience, slashing himself in the local church. Spiritually empty, sexually impotent, and financially destroyed, Torre is living out the last, tragic stages of his life – an anti-macho portrait rarely seen in Filipino cinema. Again, Diaz’s imagery is startling and religiously charged – Torre dies while fishing by a pond. He has caught no fish. He leaves this life unfulfilled, as empty as the desert in the opening scene.
A country that has been abused and raped, a nation with a hollow centre, the search for moral sustenance – Diaz’s cinema resonates with these themes, a rich poetics in the poverty production values of the pito-pito.
Together with the work of independent filmmaker Raymond Red, the first Filipino ever to win at Cannes (he received the Palme d’Or this year [2000] for the short film Anino), Lav Diaz’s films show that the legacy of Brocka and the great Filipino cinema of the Seventies has not been lost. It’s just been waiting for some worthy successors. (p.54-55)
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Contemporary questionsTioseco, Alexis. "Shifting agendas: the decay of the mainstream and rise of the independents in the context of Philippine cinema", Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 8.2, 2007, p.298-303.
The Filipino filmmaker today exists in a filmmaking world whose reality is much different from that of his forefathers. The affordability of modern cinematic technology, from DV and HD cameras to home editing suites, has made working independently a realistic and viable economic option. Today’s filmmaker, no longer working under the pretenses of a controlling martial law regime and graced with the tools that make working entirely outside the system a genuine possibility, need only to battle themselves, confronting personal ethical questions with regard to purpose, compromise, and their desired role in the status quo, in order to make the films they want to make. Many younger filmmakers, witnessing the difficulty their fellow directors have endured when attempting to work in the star-driven studio system have chosen to go the independent route, sacrificing financial security in the name of artistic integrity.
Commercial versus independent filmmaking
The current leading light and father figure of the independent filmmaking scene in the Philippines is writer-director, Lav Diaz. Although widely considered as the prime example of an independent filmmaker, Diaz actually made three commercial films – Criminal of Barrio Concepcion (Kriminal ng Baryo Concepcion) (1998), Burger Boys (1999a), Naked Under the Moon (Hubad sa Ilalim ng Buwan) (1999b) – before embarking on his first full-length independent feature, West Side Kid (Batang West Side) (2002a). Ambitious for the time and conditions in which they were made, these works were well received critically, despite having been made on small budgets and extremely tight shooting schedules. Praises aside, Diaz himself admits that they left something to be desired and, often, a lot still to be shot and a lot left on the cutting room floor. In extreme instances, he has even expressed his love for the script and desire to shoot them again, as they were written to be longer films.
In 2000, Diaz linked up with wealthy accountant Tony Veloria, who was shopping for scripts that would be suitable to launch the career of young actor, Yul Servo. Diaz gave Veloria a copy of the Carlos Palanca Award-winning script West Side Avenue, JC (Diaz 1997), and not more than a week later, Veloria gave Diaz a check for the script. The script, West Side Avenue, JC, was an early incarnation of what would eventually become the Cinemanila, Singapore, and Brussels Best Picture winning Batang West Side – a thorough and engaging examination of the Filipino diaspora in the United States that, to quote film critic Noel Vera, addresses ‘the ultimate direction the Filipino people have taken’, engaging questions about the family, migration, and the future for Filipino youth (Vera 2004).
Batang West Side arrived at a decisive point in Philippine Cinema. The film industry had lulled cinema artistically into such a deplorable state that it had become nothing short of a miraculous event when any above average works were made. It is from this era that was born what filmmaker Peque Gallaga referred to in FLIP Magazine as the ‘Cinema of Intent’ – a cinema where works are lauded and deemed noble on the basis of their intentions – what they purport to have wanted to accomplish – and not for the actual merit of the finished work. Thus, all the more reason that Lav Diaz’s opus stood out. Clocking in at five hours, and the longest Filipino film ever made, Batang West Side was an anomaly in Philippine Cinema, not simply for its duration and aesthetic (as deliberately paced as the works of Taiwanese filmmakers Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Edward Yang) but also, and more significantly, for its ambition in subject and scope, and the relentless defense of its length by its maker: "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" (Diaz 2002). With West Side, Diaz laid down the gauntlet for all filmmakers, independent or otherwise, challenging them to make serious, relevant works, and proving what recent years led us to believe impossible: that it could be done in the Philippines. In its quiet way the film resounded, serving as a wake up call to a sleeping cinema.
After completing one last studio feature for Regal Films, the ambitious science-fiction film Hesus the Revolutionary (Hesus Rebolusyonaryo) (Diaz 2002b), Diaz then proceeded to iron out his point about large canvasses by embarking on the completion of a work that first began production nine years earlier in Jersey City, New York, Evolution of a Filipino Family (Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino) (Diaz 2005). Set in the years 1971–1987, and shot entirely in black and white, in a mix of 16 mm film and digital video, the film has the feel of an intimate epic; examining the effects of the macro – martial law, on the micro – two rural families, documenting the turbulent turns each individual member’s life takes. The incredible length of time that it took to make Ebolusyon adds a realistic, almost documentary-like, feel to the work, as audiences bear witness to certain actors ageing along with the characters they portray. This quality is most evident in the young Reynaldo, who matures before our very eyes from a child into a young man. Financed entirely independently by Diaz and friend, photographer and first-time producer Paul Tañedo, a nine-hour rough cut of Ebolusyon was exhibited in the Asian American Film Festival in New York in July of 2004, with a finer cut of the film shown in the Toronto International Film Festival in September, and the final cut premiering locally in the University of the Philippines in December, and internationally at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in January 2005. By March of 2005, the film had already been selected for exhibition in festivals in Goteborg, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Torino, and is expected to travel to many more. (p.298-300)
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This year's Turin Film Festival has just devoted a special section to Filipino writer-director Lav Diaz - whose 11-hour Evolution of a Filipino Family is billed as the longest-ever feature from Asia.It also took 11 years to make. When production started in 1994, Diaz did not anticipate the marathon that lay ahead. "All I wanted was to look at the struggle of the Filipino people when the country was under martial law from 1972 until the downfall of the Marcos family in 1986," he says. "That was a time of poverty and political choas, an important era which defined the problems of the present day Philippines, such as corruption and apathy."Unlike previous features dealing with that era, which focus on Ferdinand Marcos or his extravagant wife Imelda, Diaz's Evolution examines one poor family, the Gallardos, who are caught up in a political whirlwind over the course of 16 years.The picture was filmed in black and white, initially in 16mm and later in DV and mostly with natural sound. It took so long to complete because of funding problems. "I filmed it the guerilla way, with scarcely any money," says Diaz. "I shot when there was money and stopped when it ran out. It's easier to raise money for commercial films in the Philippines, but not for serious work like Evolution. People call me stubborn because I refuse to yield."During the making of Evolution, he completed five other films which were released commercially in the Philippines, except Batang West Side due to its long running time - although the five-hour thriller was named best film at the Singapore International Film Festival in 2002.While Evolution has toured film festivals from Toronto, Gothenburg and Rotterdam to Singapore, Barcelona and Hong Kong, only three screenings have been held in the Philippines."I can't afford to screen it in theatres. It costs $1,800 (100,000 pesos) for just one screening due to its long running time. A cinema ticket only costs $1.30 - $4.50 (70-250 pesos). Where do I get the money from?" asks Diaz.Now he is working on a new project called Heremias, the final part of the trilogy which started with Batang West Side and Evolution. Filming began in June but was stopped three months later when he again ran out of funds. He received $10,500 from Rotterdam's Hubert Bals Fund, as well as $12,000 from the Gothenburg Film Fund at the inaugural Cinemanila independent feature film co-production meeting last year.He has just received a further boost in post-production funding from Hubert Bals, which will enable him to resume shooting towards the end of the year. About 40% of Heremias was completed during the three-month shoot and a work-in-progress was screened at Turin. Diaz is determined to plough on - through the trilogy he wants the Filipino people to look at their recent past. "Filipinos are apathetic people," says the director. "The young and the old seem to have forgotten about the past. Marcos has done many evil things to people. But no justice has been done to the people who suffered so much."
Wong, Silvia. "Evolution of an Epic", Screen International 1525, November 2005, p.11.
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A l’ogre Brocka, quelle relève possible ? A la fin des années 1990, un nom est apparu : Lav Diaz, six films diversement remarquables et un chef-d’œuvre: Ebolusyon ng isang pamilyang pilipino (« Evolution d’une famille philippine », 2004). Chronique courant sur seize ans de la vie d’une famille de paysans et de chercheurs d’or, épopée à forte teneur biblique, Evolution est un film impressionnant à plusieurs titres : sa durée (10 h 43), ses conditions de fabrication (Diaz a mis dix ans à l’autoproduire). Il n’a jamais cache que c’est en voyant les films de Brocka qu’est né son désir de devenir à son tour la conscience cinématographique de son pays. Capitale, cette volonté passe pour chacun par des formes très éloignées: concision, densité, volonté de se rabattre sur des formes populaires chez le premier, recherche de la plus grande radicalité pour le second, qu’obsède la passion du temps réel : Evolution est un long ruban de plans séquences étirés jusqu’à leur point limite, cousus grossièrement, parfois piqués de stock-shots contrebandiers (une manifestation, des militaires entrant dans un avion et tuant en passager). On y parle peu : dans cette société en lambeaux, le plus proche est devenu le plus lointain. Le plus dangereux ? Chez Diaz, l’amok ne guette plus seulement aux angles du plan, il loge au plus profond du cœur des personnages. (p.56)
Lequeret, Elisabeth. “Amok cinéma”, Cahiers du cinéma 609, Février 2006, p.55-56.
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There remains but one film left to celebrate, among the greatest in Venice, and certainly the longest at nine-plus hours: Lav Diaz’s monumental memoir to suffering, Death in the Land of Encantos, a modernist mosaic cobbled together from the most modest of means. In 2006, a typhoon devastated the region of the Philippines where Diaz shot much of his last two works – so the filmmaker went back and began filming, although with no clear game plan. Eventually he developed a narrative about a generation broken by their country’s seemingly inescapable corruption: an assortment of the living dead wandering a landscape filled with the grief-stricken. Diaz’s protagonist is yet another of the festival’s schizophrenics, and manic-depressive in the bargain.Möller, Olaf. "Dust to Dust", Film Comment 43.6, November 2007, p.56-61.
As in his 2005 Evolution of a Filipino Family, the filmmaker creates a massive tapestry, here incorporating documentary footage of typhoon survivors speaking out about the government’s neglect of their plight, as well as fragments from an unfinished short horror film shot in Zagreb in 2003. The latter concerns a lost tribe of Aswangs – ghouls of popular Philippine folklore – who have found a home in southeastern Europe. Little if anything at the Lido was as emotionally exhausting and exhaustive, as rich an experience and as crushing as Diaz’s film. (p.61)
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A comparable feeling of displacement [to Mamoru Oshii’s The Sky Crawlers] permeates the first two hours of Philippine filmmaker Lav Diaz’s Horizons prizewinner Melancholia. We’re presented with a prostitute, a pimp, and a nun, none of whom seem to be who they appear to be. And indeed, they’re not: Alberta, Julian, and Rina are bourgeois professionals who get together annually to participate in a role-playing game devised by Julian as a kind of group therapy. Driven by the need to distance themselves from their own feelings of pain and loss, they temporarily take on the roles of others in the hope that, when they resume their regular lives, they can find themselves. The final three hours show Alberta and Julian drifting through their mundane existences, with the focus shifting from Julian – the author of a novel called Melancholia – to Alberta, whose husband has gone underground to join a group dedicated to overthrowing the government. The last two hours show what this struggle is like: underequipped men in torrential rain being hunted until they’re dead. But even in madness, at least they know who they are when the bullets hit. (p.61)Möller, Olaf. "Minority Report", Film Comment 44.6, November 2008, p.58-61.
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