Image ofLav Diaz

Lav Diaz

Director

Filipino film director known for long, contemplative films that explore Philippine history, social marginality and collective suffering.

From What Is Before won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival (2014). Diaz's work is widely associated with very long runtimes, long panoramic shots, black-and-white cinematography and themes of history, memory and social injustice.

DeBaser's reviews highlight Lav Diaz's contemplative, often monolithic cinema tied to Philippine history and social suffering. From What Is Before is praised as a major work (Golden Leopard, Locarno 2014) with long panoramic shots and black-and-white imagery. Naked Under the Moon is noted as an earlier, shorter, more commercial-feeling film that nonetheless prefigures Diaz's later themes. Both reviews stress themes of violence, nature, memory and social margins.

For:cinephiles, students of world cinema, fans of slow and contemplative films

 The cinema of Lav Diaz, a monolith with which the cinephile eventually tries to engage, is inextricably tied to the history of his country, the Philippines: a melting pot of cultures, scarred by colonialism, corruption, and natural disasters.

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 It is not the "classic Diaz film," it is not dominated by static long shots, silence, black and white, nor is it any of that.

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