Lav Diaz retro in London

Yul Servo in “Batang West Side”

Six films by Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz will be showcased in a retrospective set at the London West Gallery in the United Kingdom, starting today until March 12.

The London West Gallery is a contemporary space located at “the heart of the University of Westminster’s Harrow Campus.” For the special event, the gallery space will be turned into a theater to screen Diaz’s “marathon” movies.

Among the films in the lineup are “Mula sa Kung Ano ang Noon” (Jan. 27-Feb. 2), “Heremias” (Feb. 3-9), “Batang West Side” (Feb. 10-16), “Death in the Land of Encantos” (Feb. 17-23), “Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis” (Feb. 24-March 2) and “Ang Babaeng Humayo” (March 3-12).

A series of talks with artists, academicians, curators and exhibitors will be held after the screenings.

A Golden Lion winner in last year’s Venice fest for “Humayo,” Diaz is described in the event’s site as “one of the greatest radical artists of contemporary cinema.”

According to the site, Diaz’s films often depict “the struggles of his people.”

“His films tell quiet tales of everyday sorrow and resilience and of the existential quest of a people betrayed by the postcolonial nation-state,” the site remarks.

“Heremias”

The site also points out that Diaz’s films “demonstrate a radical reworking of the melodrama that extends the possibilities of cinema by combining realism with poetry, modernist literature, painterly landscape, musical improvisation, theatrical performance, ritual intensity and duration.”

According to the site, Diaz “makes notoriously long films with the economy of means afforded by digital.”

His process is summed up as “organic…merging fictional storytelling with the material density and tempo of the locality of shooting.”

As part of the program, Diaz, who is currently a Radcliffe-Harvard Film Study Center fellow, will attend an international symposium on his films, to be hosted by the Center for Research and Education in Arts and Media, in collaboration with the website Mubi, on March 5.

Previous retrospectives of Diaz’s works were held at the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris, the Courtisane Film Festival in Ghent (Belgium), and the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York.

The London Gallery West showcases “media, art and design work of current students and alumni and plays host to renowned local, national and international artists.”

It endeavors to “play a key role within the art community and beyond.”

“Mula sa Kung Ano ang Noon”