More Lav Diaz films will be shown at the Harvard Film Archive in the United States. Last March, “Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan,” “Florentina Hubaldo, CTE,” “Death in the Land of Encantos” and “Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino” were shown.
On April 4, “Batang West Side” was screened.
Dubbed “Life in Real Time: The Cinema of Lav Diaz,” the retrospective continues with “Mula sa Kung Ano ang Noon” (April 12), “Heremias (Book One: The Legend of the Lizard Princess)” (May 3), “Storm Children, Book One” (May 15), “Butterflies Have No Memories” and “Prologue to the Great Desaparecido” (May 16), “Melancholia” (May 24), “Hesus, Rebolusyonaryo” (May 29), and “Century of Birthing” (May 31).
The Harvard Film Archive website described Diaz as “a filmmaker with a mission: against the oppression of the Filipino people and the inanities of commercial cinema.”
The site compared Diaz, “with his twinned desires to bear witness to Filipino lives and to demand a better future,” to the late National Artist Lino Brocka, whose works were “eloquent about the joys and indignant about the sorrows of life in the Philippines.”
Bayani San Diego Jr.