The Hong Kong International Film Festival Society (Hkiffs) has added 15 work-in-progress projects to the 22nd Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum (Haf), rounding up a bumper line-up of the new Hkiff Project Market.
This year, Haf joins the inaugural Hkiff Industry-caa China Genre Initiative (Hcg) to create the new Hkiff Industry Project Market, which will showcase 47 projects, including 26 previously announced in-development Haf projects and six Hcg projects.
The Wip section will introduce the latest works by notable filmmakers such as Chang Tso-Chi, Lav Diaz, Mark Gill, Midi Z, Tan Chui Mui, and Yang Chao as well as by prominent and emerging actors,...
This year, Haf joins the inaugural Hkiff Industry-caa China Genre Initiative (Hcg) to create the new Hkiff Industry Project Market, which will showcase 47 projects, including 26 previously announced in-development Haf projects and six Hcg projects.
The Wip section will introduce the latest works by notable filmmakers such as Chang Tso-Chi, Lav Diaz, Mark Gill, Midi Z, Tan Chui Mui, and Yang Chao as well as by prominent and emerging actors,...
- 2/1/2024
- ScreenDaily
by Tobiasz Dunin
“Elegy to the Visitor from the Revolution” is a drama written and directed by Lav Diaz. At first, it was supposed to be a one-minute segment of a video compilation honoring the late film critics Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc. However, Diaz's creation grew beyond its initial intent, and became a full-length feature. The title alludes to the 1896 Philippine Revolution, a conflict where Filipino revolutionaries fought against Spanish colonial authorities, aiming to gain independence.
The plot is quite vague and tells a story about a woman (Hazel Orencio) from the late 19th century that travels to contemporary Philippines and witnesses intertwined narratives – about a sex worker, a musician, and a gang of lawbreakers. These segments are further divided into disparate plot lines – a sex worker (Sigrid Bernardo) awaits a client, a musician (Diaz) plays guitar by himself, and three criminals are figuring out a way to make some money.
“Elegy to the Visitor from the Revolution” is a drama written and directed by Lav Diaz. At first, it was supposed to be a one-minute segment of a video compilation honoring the late film critics Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc. However, Diaz's creation grew beyond its initial intent, and became a full-length feature. The title alludes to the 1896 Philippine Revolution, a conflict where Filipino revolutionaries fought against Spanish colonial authorities, aiming to gain independence.
The plot is quite vague and tells a story about a woman (Hazel Orencio) from the late 19th century that travels to contemporary Philippines and witnesses intertwined narratives – about a sex worker, a musician, and a gang of lawbreakers. These segments are further divided into disparate plot lines – a sex worker (Sigrid Bernardo) awaits a client, a musician (Diaz) plays guitar by himself, and three criminals are figuring out a way to make some money.
- 12/23/2023
- by Guest Writer
- AsianMoviePulse
“Essential Truths of the Lake” is the last thing most people would expect from Lav Diaz: a direct follow-up to his previous film, “When the Waves Are Gone.” It’s not a sequel, per se (this one actually comes earlier), but they are connected, with a third movie featuring the same disillusioned police detective in the works.
The Filipino filmmaker, whose pokey social critiques run anywhere from three to 11 hours, established the character of Lt. Hermes Papauran (John Lloyd Cruz) in “Waves.” Described there as “arguably the greatest Filipino investigator ever,” he’s Diaz’s version of “The Singing Detective”: a tortured enforcer afflicted with a skin condition that reflects on the surface the conflict and cynicism roiling within him. He’s a good cop in a corrupt country, furious with how Rodrigo Duterte mishandled the war on drugs.
It’s a basic rule of dramaturgy that it...
The Filipino filmmaker, whose pokey social critiques run anywhere from three to 11 hours, established the character of Lt. Hermes Papauran (John Lloyd Cruz) in “Waves.” Described there as “arguably the greatest Filipino investigator ever,” he’s Diaz’s version of “The Singing Detective”: a tortured enforcer afflicted with a skin condition that reflects on the surface the conflict and cynicism roiling within him. He’s a good cop in a corrupt country, furious with how Rodrigo Duterte mishandled the war on drugs.
It’s a basic rule of dramaturgy that it...
- 8/12/2023
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
Lav Diaz is “concerned” about the situation in his native Philippines. But it doesn’t mean he will stop making films.
“If you do any kind of cultural work, you can be branded as a ‘communist’ and it’s a reason for them to kill you,” he says.
“There aren’t many venues to show my films, so we basically give them away for free. Listen, I am aware of the danger. But you have to accept the reality, confront these issues and continue to make things. And be careful, because we know what happened to Salman Rushdie.”
Diaz, speaking to Variety at Armenia’s Golden Apricot festival, where he headed the jury, also opened up about his upcoming Locarno world premiere “Essential Truths of the Lake.”
The film, which contends in main competition for the Golden Leopard, sees him returning to investigator Hermes Papauran from “When the Waves Are Gone,...
“If you do any kind of cultural work, you can be branded as a ‘communist’ and it’s a reason for them to kill you,” he says.
“There aren’t many venues to show my films, so we basically give them away for free. Listen, I am aware of the danger. But you have to accept the reality, confront these issues and continue to make things. And be careful, because we know what happened to Salman Rushdie.”
Diaz, speaking to Variety at Armenia’s Golden Apricot festival, where he headed the jury, also opened up about his upcoming Locarno world premiere “Essential Truths of the Lake.”
The film, which contends in main competition for the Golden Leopard, sees him returning to investigator Hermes Papauran from “When the Waves Are Gone,...
- 7/19/2023
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
Films Boutique will handle international sales on Filipino master Lav Díaz’s “Essential Truths of The Lake,” one of the highest-profile titles in the just announced main International Competition at this year’s Locarno Festival.
The Berlin and Lyon-based production-sales company’s fifth collaboration with Diaz following, among others, Venice Golden Bear Winner “The Woman Who Left” and Berlin Silver Bear Winner “Lullaby To A Sorrowful Mystery,” “Essential Truths of The Lake” marks a prequel to Diaz’s ‘When The Waves Are Gone’ that premiered out of competition at Venice last year.
It reprises the character of the ethically conflicted police lieutenant Hermes Papauran, one of the best investigators of the Philippines. When asked what drives a man to search for the truth, Papauran says dejectedly that maybe he just wants to keep inflicting pain on himself.
Faced with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody murders and brazen lies, he...
The Berlin and Lyon-based production-sales company’s fifth collaboration with Diaz following, among others, Venice Golden Bear Winner “The Woman Who Left” and Berlin Silver Bear Winner “Lullaby To A Sorrowful Mystery,” “Essential Truths of The Lake” marks a prequel to Diaz’s ‘When The Waves Are Gone’ that premiered out of competition at Venice last year.
It reprises the character of the ethically conflicted police lieutenant Hermes Papauran, one of the best investigators of the Philippines. When asked what drives a man to search for the truth, Papauran says dejectedly that maybe he just wants to keep inflicting pain on himself.
Faced with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody murders and brazen lies, he...
- 7/5/2023
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
The Filipino auteur’s latest opus lampoons a Duterte-esque president struggling with a rebel enclave while a deadly flu epidemic rages
At four and three-quarter hours, the latest butt-numbing opus by Filipino auteur Lav Diaz is a veritable TikTok video by his standards. A needling and occasionally deranged assault on the Philippines’ most recent turn into authoritarianism, this monochrome sci-fi dystopia takes place in 2034 after a series of volcanic explosions has permanently darkened the skies, and the “Dark Killer” flu epidemic is tearing through the population (it was shot pre-Covid). President Nirvano Navarra (Joel Lamangan) – whose stocky physique and wild pronouncements make a fairly obvious match for real-life incumbent Rodrigo Duterte – decides to use the crisis to put a heavy lid on a simmering crockpot of dissidents.
Meted out mostly in long and often patience-stretching static takes, and in humdrum locations despite sci-fi inflections such as omnipresent flying drones, Diaz...
At four and three-quarter hours, the latest butt-numbing opus by Filipino auteur Lav Diaz is a veritable TikTok video by his standards. A needling and occasionally deranged assault on the Philippines’ most recent turn into authoritarianism, this monochrome sci-fi dystopia takes place in 2034 after a series of volcanic explosions has permanently darkened the skies, and the “Dark Killer” flu epidemic is tearing through the population (it was shot pre-Covid). President Nirvano Navarra (Joel Lamangan) – whose stocky physique and wild pronouncements make a fairly obvious match for real-life incumbent Rodrigo Duterte – decides to use the crisis to put a heavy lid on a simmering crockpot of dissidents.
Meted out mostly in long and often patience-stretching static takes, and in humdrum locations despite sci-fi inflections such as omnipresent flying drones, Diaz...
- 7/5/2021
- by Phil Hoad
- The Guardian - Film News
Viewers about to journey into the latest feature of Filipino auteur Lav Diaz should get “hold of some acid” because it “would serve you really well”. Among other pieces of advice and explanation about his latest film, a text written by Diaz was read to the waiting audience at the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes Film Festival where the film was screened later this year. Whether or not this was an ironic way to gain the audience’s attention remains to be seen, but given the film’s rather serious nature, it also foreshadows the darkness of the visions represented in “The Halt”.
“The Halt” is screening at Filmfest Hamburg 2019
In 2034, after catastrophic volcanic eruptions, large parts of South-East Asia live in constant darkness since the sun is blocked. Additionally, many people have died due to a flu pandemic called “the Dark Killer” which the government has attempted to contain.
“The Halt” is screening at Filmfest Hamburg 2019
In 2034, after catastrophic volcanic eruptions, large parts of South-East Asia live in constant darkness since the sun is blocked. Additionally, many people have died due to a flu pandemic called “the Dark Killer” which the government has attempted to contain.
- 9/27/2019
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
“These are my friends. And this is a tribute and a memoriam to them.”
The cinema of Filipino director Lav Diaz has always been about time, its essence as well as its way to define people and their surroundings. Considering the average length of one of his films varying between four to ten hours, Diaz has repeatedly abandoned what is commonly known as mainstream cinema and popular conceptions of what cinema is. For authors such as Sascha Westphal, for example, Diaz is a director in the same tradition as Andrei Tarkovsky or Béla Tarr, but then again, even the attempt of categorizing films like “Norte – The End of History” (2013) or “The Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery” (2016) with the label “slow cinema” does not really fit with the kind of work Diaz has delivered throughout his career.
“Season of the Devil ” is screening at the 27th Art Film Fest Kosice
In a nutshell,...
The cinema of Filipino director Lav Diaz has always been about time, its essence as well as its way to define people and their surroundings. Considering the average length of one of his films varying between four to ten hours, Diaz has repeatedly abandoned what is commonly known as mainstream cinema and popular conceptions of what cinema is. For authors such as Sascha Westphal, for example, Diaz is a director in the same tradition as Andrei Tarkovsky or Béla Tarr, but then again, even the attempt of categorizing films like “Norte – The End of History” (2013) or “The Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery” (2016) with the label “slow cinema” does not really fit with the kind of work Diaz has delivered throughout his career.
“Season of the Devil ” is screening at the 27th Art Film Fest Kosice
In a nutshell,...
- 6/16/2019
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
“These are my friends. And this is a tribute and a memoriam to them.”
The cinema of Filipino director Lav Diaz has always been about time, its essence as well as its way to define people and their surroundings. Considering the average length of one of his films varying between four to ten hours, Diaz has repeatedly abandoned what is commonly known as mainstream cinema and popular conceptions of what cinema is. For authors such as Sascha Westphal, for example, Diaz is a director in the same tradition as Andrei Tarkovsky or Béla Tarr, but then again, even the attempt of categorizing films like “Norte – The End of History” (2013) or “The Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery” (2016) with the label “slow cinema” does not really fit with the kind of work Diaz has delivered throughout his career.
In a nutshell, “slow cinema” is most likely associated with a film’s running time,...
The cinema of Filipino director Lav Diaz has always been about time, its essence as well as its way to define people and their surroundings. Considering the average length of one of his films varying between four to ten hours, Diaz has repeatedly abandoned what is commonly known as mainstream cinema and popular conceptions of what cinema is. For authors such as Sascha Westphal, for example, Diaz is a director in the same tradition as Andrei Tarkovsky or Béla Tarr, but then again, even the attempt of categorizing films like “Norte – The End of History” (2013) or “The Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery” (2016) with the label “slow cinema” does not really fit with the kind of work Diaz has delivered throughout his career.
In a nutshell, “slow cinema” is most likely associated with a film’s running time,...
- 11/25/2018
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
“These are my friends. And this is a tribute and a memoriam to them.”
The cinema of Filipino director Lav Diaz has always been about time, its essence as well as its way to define people and their surroundings. Considering the average length of one of his films varying between four to ten hours, Diaz has repeatedly abandoned what is commonly known as mainstream cinema and popular conceptions of what cinema is. For authors such as Sascha Westphal, for example, Diaz is a director in the same tradition as Andrei Tarkovsky or Béla Tarr, but then again, even the attempt of categorizing films like “Norte – The End of History” (2013) or “The Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery” (2016) with the label “slow cinema” does not really fit with the kind of work Diaz has delivered throughout his career.
In a nutshell, “slow cinema” is most likely associated with a film’s running time,...
The cinema of Filipino director Lav Diaz has always been about time, its essence as well as its way to define people and their surroundings. Considering the average length of one of his films varying between four to ten hours, Diaz has repeatedly abandoned what is commonly known as mainstream cinema and popular conceptions of what cinema is. For authors such as Sascha Westphal, for example, Diaz is a director in the same tradition as Andrei Tarkovsky or Béla Tarr, but then again, even the attempt of categorizing films like “Norte – The End of History” (2013) or “The Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery” (2016) with the label “slow cinema” does not really fit with the kind of work Diaz has delivered throughout his career.
In a nutshell, “slow cinema” is most likely associated with a film’s running time,...
- 5/24/2018
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
Following up his Golden Lion-winning drama The Woman Who Left, Lav Diaz is returning to Berlinale 2018 with his latest film, Ang Panahon ng Halimaw aka Season of the Devil. Described as an “anti-musical musical, a rock opera, that delves into mythology,” the first trailer has now arrived ahead of the premiere in competition later this month.
According to The National, the film features 33 songs composed by the Filipino director himself and the story, which takes place during former president Ferdinand Marcos’s military dictatorship, follows “a man whose wife has been abducted in their remote village.”
Starring Piolo Pascual, Shaina Magdayao, Pinky Amador, Bituin Escalante, Hazel Orencio, Joel Saracho, Bart Guingona, Angel Aquino, Lilit Reyes, and Don Melvin Boongaling, see the trailer below via CineMaldito.
Season of the Devil will premiere at Berlinale 2018.
According to The National, the film features 33 songs composed by the Filipino director himself and the story, which takes place during former president Ferdinand Marcos’s military dictatorship, follows “a man whose wife has been abducted in their remote village.”
Starring Piolo Pascual, Shaina Magdayao, Pinky Amador, Bituin Escalante, Hazel Orencio, Joel Saracho, Bart Guingona, Angel Aquino, Lilit Reyes, and Don Melvin Boongaling, see the trailer below via CineMaldito.
Season of the Devil will premiere at Berlinale 2018.
- 2/3/2018
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Rupert Everett’s The Happy Prince and Pernille Fischer Christensen’s Unga Astrid picked for Berlinale Special.
Source: Wiki Commons
Steven Soderbergh, José Padilha
Five more films have joined the main lieups of the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 15 - 25). A further six films have been selected for the programme of the Berlinale Special.
Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane will get an out of competition world premiere. It stars Claire Foy, Joshua Leonard, Jay Pharoah and Juno Temple and was reportedly shot on iPhone.
Also premiering out of competition is José Padilha’s true story thriller 7 Days In Entebbe, starring Rosamund Pike, Daniel Brühl and Eddie Marsan.
New films from Lav Diaz and Alonso Ruizpalacios will play in competition.
Rupert Everett’s Oscar Wilde biopic The Happy Prince and Becoming Astrid by Pernille Fischer Christensen have been added to the Berlinale Special Gala section.
Read more: Robert Pattinson, Christian Petzold movies join Berlin Film Festival Competition
23 of the 24 titles...
Source: Wiki Commons
Steven Soderbergh, José Padilha
Five more films have joined the main lieups of the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 15 - 25). A further six films have been selected for the programme of the Berlinale Special.
Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane will get an out of competition world premiere. It stars Claire Foy, Joshua Leonard, Jay Pharoah and Juno Temple and was reportedly shot on iPhone.
Also premiering out of competition is José Padilha’s true story thriller 7 Days In Entebbe, starring Rosamund Pike, Daniel Brühl and Eddie Marsan.
New films from Lav Diaz and Alonso Ruizpalacios will play in competition.
Rupert Everett’s Oscar Wilde biopic The Happy Prince and Becoming Astrid by Pernille Fischer Christensen have been added to the Berlinale Special Gala section.
Read more: Robert Pattinson, Christian Petzold movies join Berlin Film Festival Competition
23 of the 24 titles...
- 1/22/2018
- by Orlando Parfitt
- ScreenDaily
Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Lav Diaz's Elegy to the Visitor from the Revolution (2011) is playing January 12 - February 10, 2017. Lav Diaz’s Elegy to the Visitor from the Revolution is a unique example of how texts inform each other. In the film, elements of the past inform and comprise those of the present, while exposition ultimately informs images of the present. As a viewer, one can reasonably make a case that this was Diaz’s intention given the film’s story and structure: While its premise is relatively simple—a mysterious woman appears in various places in a 20th century city—Diaz tells it primarily with wordless storytelling, mostly images and extended takes. While the viewer gathers that the woman is the titular ‘visitor from the revolution,’ implying that she is from the late 1890s (the Philippine Revolution), it is only late...
- 1/15/2017
- MUBI
Conventional limitations on cinematic runtimes, often driven by basic practical and commercial concerns, are at once arbitrary and enduring. Under 90 minutes is short; over 150 minutes is long. Short films lie on one end of the spectrum and Andy Warhol on the other. But even limiting discussion to non-experimental feature films reveals a wide variation in the use of massive duration, discussions of which tend to be obscured by the hyperbole (in both directions) that such films often elicit. (This hyperbolic tendency also extends to trilogies, multi-part films, or even novels and literature in general. Just ask anyone who’s seen Sátántangó or read Infinite Jest.) Nonetheless, such films tend to be fascinating opportunities for exploration, both in their justification for and use of such length. And on the occasion of Mubi’s retrospective of Lav Diaz’s filmography (the body of work that most consistently makes use of duration), three vastly different 2016 films,...
- 11/29/2016
- MUBI
Starting with the Spanish conquest of the Philippines in the mid-16th century, the country was under the colonial rule of four different foreign powers for nearly 400 years. Independence gave way to two decades of vicious dictatorship and a democracy severely compromised by corruption and extensive external influence. As a nation that encompasses a staggering number of ethnicities and languages, the Philippines’ centuries-long experience of oppression has engendered an enduring identity crisis. It’s this crisis that has brought forth the films of Lav Diaz. They are dedicated to an excavation of his country’s turbulent past in search of its identity; the simultaneously chimeric and vital nature of this endeavor constitutes the emancipatory dialectic that drives his cinema. Having addressed Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship from a variety of angles in several earlier features, Diaz turns his attention to the Philippine Revolution of 1896-97 with A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery,...
- 2/22/2016
- by Giovanni Marchini Camia
- The Film Stage
It doesn’t rank up there with his longest feature, but Filipino director Lav Diaz‘s latest film, A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery, is likely the most epic experience one can have at the 2016 Berlin Film Festival this year. Clocking in at 485 minutes (just over 8 hours), if all goes according to plan, we’ll have a review later next week, and today brings our first look.
For his latest feature, which is competing for the Golden Bear at the festival, Diaz examines the history of his native land through the story of the father of the Philippine Revolution, Andrés Bonifacio y de Castro. Starring Piolo Pascual, John Lloyd Cruz, Hazel Orencio, Alessandra De Rossi, and Joel Saracho, check out the synopsis, poser, stills, and poster below, and check back for our review.
Andrés Bonifacio y de Castro is considered to be one of the most influential proponents in the...
For his latest feature, which is competing for the Golden Bear at the festival, Diaz examines the history of his native land through the story of the father of the Philippine Revolution, Andrés Bonifacio y de Castro. Starring Piolo Pascual, John Lloyd Cruz, Hazel Orencio, Alessandra De Rossi, and Joel Saracho, check out the synopsis, poser, stills, and poster below, and check back for our review.
Andrés Bonifacio y de Castro is considered to be one of the most influential proponents in the...
- 2/14/2016
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
As if new films from the Coens and Jeff Nichols weren’t enough, the 2016 Berlin Film Festival has further expanded their line-up, adding some of our most-anticipated films of the year. Mia Hansen-Løve, following up her incredible, sadly overlooked drama Eden, will premiere the Isabelle Huppert-led Things to Come, while Thomas Vinterberg, Lav Diaz, André Téchiné, and many more will stop by with their new features. Check out the new additions below, followed by some previously announced films, notably John Michael McDonagh‘s War on Everyone.
Competition
Cartas da guerra (Letters from War)
Portugal
By Ivo M. Ferreira (Na Escama do Dragão)
With Miguel Nunes, Margarida Vila-Nova
World premiere
Ejhdeha Vared Mishavad! (A Dragon Arrives!)
Iran
By Mani Haghighi (Modest Reception, Men at Work)
With Amir Jadidi, Homayoun Ghanizadeh, Ehsan Goudarzi, Kiana Tajammol
International premiere
Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea) – documentary
Italy / France
By Gianfranco Rosi (Sacro Gra, El Sicario...
Competition
Cartas da guerra (Letters from War)
Portugal
By Ivo M. Ferreira (Na Escama do Dragão)
With Miguel Nunes, Margarida Vila-Nova
World premiere
Ejhdeha Vared Mishavad! (A Dragon Arrives!)
Iran
By Mani Haghighi (Modest Reception, Men at Work)
With Amir Jadidi, Homayoun Ghanizadeh, Ehsan Goudarzi, Kiana Tajammol
International premiere
Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea) – documentary
Italy / France
By Gianfranco Rosi (Sacro Gra, El Sicario...
- 1/11/2016
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
New titles from Thomas Vinterberg, Mia Hansen-Løve, Danis Tanovic, Lav Diaz and Gianfranco Rosi among line-up.Scroll down for full list
Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 11-21) has added nine titles to its Competition line-up, bringing the current total to 14 (the full Competition programme will be announced soon, according to the fest).
The new additions include The Commune, marking the first time Danish director Thomas Vinterberg (The Hunt, Far From The Madding Crowd) has been in Competition at Berlin since Submarino in 2010. The film centres on a Danish commune in the 1970s and will be released in Denmark this weekend (Jan 14).
French director Mia Hansen-Løve (Eden) has been selected with her drama Things to Come, starring Isabelle Huppert as a woman embarking on a new life after her husband leaves her for another woman. The film will world premiere at Berlin.
Another world premiere will be documentary Fire at Sea, capturing life on...
Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 11-21) has added nine titles to its Competition line-up, bringing the current total to 14 (the full Competition programme will be announced soon, according to the fest).
The new additions include The Commune, marking the first time Danish director Thomas Vinterberg (The Hunt, Far From The Madding Crowd) has been in Competition at Berlin since Submarino in 2010. The film centres on a Danish commune in the 1970s and will be released in Denmark this weekend (Jan 14).
French director Mia Hansen-Løve (Eden) has been selected with her drama Things to Come, starring Isabelle Huppert as a woman embarking on a new life after her husband leaves her for another woman. The film will world premiere at Berlin.
Another world premiere will be documentary Fire at Sea, capturing life on...
- 1/11/2016
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis
Director: Lav Diaz // Writer: Lav Diaz
The most notable auteur out of the Philippines in the last decade is Lav Diaz, whose beautiful films often test audience stamina (his 2008 film Melancholia is seven and a half hours, while 2011’s Century of Birthing is six). Recently, he’s enjoyed a higher profile thanks to 2013’s Norte, or the End of History premiering in Un Certain Regard at Cannes (and snagging Us distribution), and then winning Locarno’s Golden Leopard a year later with From What is Before. He’s recently completed his latest, Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis, a film simply described as concerning the search for the body of Andres Bonifacio (a man known as the Father of the Philippine Revoluton).
Cast: John Lloyd Cruz, Piolo Pascual, Hazel Orencio, Alessandra de Rossi
Production Co./Producers: Bianca Balbuena, Epicmedia, TEN17P, Sine Olivia
U.S. Distributor: Rights Available.
Director: Lav Diaz // Writer: Lav Diaz
The most notable auteur out of the Philippines in the last decade is Lav Diaz, whose beautiful films often test audience stamina (his 2008 film Melancholia is seven and a half hours, while 2011’s Century of Birthing is six). Recently, he’s enjoyed a higher profile thanks to 2013’s Norte, or the End of History premiering in Un Certain Regard at Cannes (and snagging Us distribution), and then winning Locarno’s Golden Leopard a year later with From What is Before. He’s recently completed his latest, Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis, a film simply described as concerning the search for the body of Andres Bonifacio (a man known as the Father of the Philippine Revoluton).
Cast: John Lloyd Cruz, Piolo Pascual, Hazel Orencio, Alessandra de Rossi
Production Co./Producers: Bianca Balbuena, Epicmedia, TEN17P, Sine Olivia
U.S. Distributor: Rights Available.
- 1/10/2016
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Neil Armfield.s Holding the Man, Simon Stone.s The Daughter, Jeremy Sims. Last Cab to Darwin and Jen Peedom.s feature doc Sherpa will have their world premieres at the Sydney Film Festival.
The festival program unveiled today includes 33 world premieres (including 22 shorts) and 135 Australian premieres (with 18 shorts) among 251 titles from 68 countries.
Among the other premieres will be Daina Reid.s The Secret River, Ruby Entertainment's. ABC-tv miniseries starring Oliver Jackson Cohen and Sarah Snook, and three Oz docs, Marc Eberle.s The Cambodian Space Project — Not Easy Rock .n. Roll, Steve Thomas. Freedom Stories and Lisa Nicol.s Wide Open Sky.
Festival director Nashen Moodley boasted. this year.s event will be far larger than 2014's when 183 films from 47 countries were screened, including 15 world premieres. The expansion is possible in part due to the addition of two new screening venues in Newtown and Liverpool.
As previously announced, Brendan Cowell...
The festival program unveiled today includes 33 world premieres (including 22 shorts) and 135 Australian premieres (with 18 shorts) among 251 titles from 68 countries.
Among the other premieres will be Daina Reid.s The Secret River, Ruby Entertainment's. ABC-tv miniseries starring Oliver Jackson Cohen and Sarah Snook, and three Oz docs, Marc Eberle.s The Cambodian Space Project — Not Easy Rock .n. Roll, Steve Thomas. Freedom Stories and Lisa Nicol.s Wide Open Sky.
Festival director Nashen Moodley boasted. this year.s event will be far larger than 2014's when 183 films from 47 countries were screened, including 15 world premieres. The expansion is possible in part due to the addition of two new screening venues in Newtown and Liverpool.
As previously announced, Brendan Cowell...
- 5/6/2015
- by Don Groves
- IF.com.au
From What is Before
Written and directed by Lav Diaz
Philippines, 2014
From What is Before, the latest epic from Filipino slow-cinema auteur Lav Diaz, examines a major fault line in his country’s history. Chronicling the terminal decline of a remote coastal barrio, which has been unknowingly embroiled in the ensuing apocalypse sweeping across the Philippines, it culminates in Ferdinand Marcos’s 1972 declaration of martial law and the beginning of his brutal kleptocracy. A voiceover in the film’s closing lines describes the preceding five-and-a-half hours as “the memory of a cataclysm”, marking out these events as creating a significant break with even the most recent past. From What is Before might not have the sheer force of Diaz’s last outing, the Crime and Punishment-inspired Norte: The End of History, but it is a more accomplished film overall, utilising every inch of its formidable length to build a haunting elegy for times past.
Written and directed by Lav Diaz
Philippines, 2014
From What is Before, the latest epic from Filipino slow-cinema auteur Lav Diaz, examines a major fault line in his country’s history. Chronicling the terminal decline of a remote coastal barrio, which has been unknowingly embroiled in the ensuing apocalypse sweeping across the Philippines, it culminates in Ferdinand Marcos’s 1972 declaration of martial law and the beginning of his brutal kleptocracy. A voiceover in the film’s closing lines describes the preceding five-and-a-half hours as “the memory of a cataclysm”, marking out these events as creating a significant break with even the most recent past. From What is Before might not have the sheer force of Diaz’s last outing, the Crime and Punishment-inspired Norte: The End of History, but it is a more accomplished film overall, utilising every inch of its formidable length to build a haunting elegy for times past.
- 2/28/2015
- by Rob Dickie
- SoundOnSight
This November, over 100 films will be screening at AFI Fest 2014 in Los Angeles and more than a few of those flicks will be of the horror variety. Attendees hungry for vampire humor, coming-of-age terror, and frights that hit close to home should be happy to hear that What We Do in the Shadows, It Follows, and Goodnight Mommy are a few of the horror movies screening at the festival.
AFI Fest 2014 runs from November 6th – 13th in Los Angeles. To learn more, visit:
http://www.afi.com/afifest/default.aspx
These are a handful of the horror films playing at the festival:
“Goodnight Mommy (Ich Seh Ich Seh) – Twin boys fear that their mother, whose face is masked with bandages after plastic surgery, has been subsumed by an evil being. Written and directed by aunt-nephew filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. Cast: Susanne Wuest, Elias Schwarz, Lucas Schwarz. Austria.
From...
AFI Fest 2014 runs from November 6th – 13th in Los Angeles. To learn more, visit:
http://www.afi.com/afifest/default.aspx
These are a handful of the horror films playing at the festival:
“Goodnight Mommy (Ich Seh Ich Seh) – Twin boys fear that their mother, whose face is masked with bandages after plastic surgery, has been subsumed by an evil being. Written and directed by aunt-nephew filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. Cast: Susanne Wuest, Elias Schwarz, Lucas Schwarz. Austria.
From...
- 10/30/2014
- by Derek Anderson
- DailyDead
Crime & Punishment: Diaz’s Latest Epic Examines the Banality of Evil
For those accustomed to the cinema of Lav Diaz, the four hour running time of his latest opus, Norte, the End of History, seems conservatively trim by comparison. But for those uninitiated, this is an excellent place to start. Basically, Diaz’s narrative displaces Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment to the Philippines, further examining the moral suffering of his Raskolnikov figure by denying societal sanctioned consequences, exacerbated by the fact that another man takes the fall for his actions. Truth and meaning, the sacred and profane, society and the family—all are philosophical notions discussed figuratively and literally in the frameworks of Diaz’s latest, but not to the radical effect that this may imply. Instead, the banality of life and the dreadful, sometimes excruciating passage of time devours all.
Fabian (Sid Lucero), is an increasingly angry young man who...
For those accustomed to the cinema of Lav Diaz, the four hour running time of his latest opus, Norte, the End of History, seems conservatively trim by comparison. But for those uninitiated, this is an excellent place to start. Basically, Diaz’s narrative displaces Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment to the Philippines, further examining the moral suffering of his Raskolnikov figure by denying societal sanctioned consequences, exacerbated by the fact that another man takes the fall for his actions. Truth and meaning, the sacred and profane, society and the family—all are philosophical notions discussed figuratively and literally in the frameworks of Diaz’s latest, but not to the radical effect that this may imply. Instead, the banality of life and the dreadful, sometimes excruciating passage of time devours all.
Fabian (Sid Lucero), is an increasingly angry young man who...
- 6/25/2014
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
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