Book celebrating filmmaker Lav Diaz launches during Cinemalaya 2021
A book detailing the life and works of Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz, one of the key members of the slow cinema movement, was launched as part of the 2021 Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival.
SINE ni Lav Diaz: A Long Take on the Filipino Auteur was launched in a virtual event Monday (August 16) via the Cultural Center of the Philippines and Cinemalaya Facebook pages.
Watch the #Cinemalaya17 online book launch of Sine ni Lav Diaz: A Long Take on the Filipino Auteur on August 16, 4PM via FB Live. Don’t miss it!
More info here: https://t.co/N11ZWdmZV1#Cinemalaya2021 pic.twitter.com/xK7FCcnA5b— Cinemalaya (@cinemalayaoffcl) August 10, 2021
The book published by Intellect Books (UK), De La Salle University, the Cinemalaya Foundation, Inc. and the CCP offers the first book-length study on Lav Diaz, taking “a critical look at his career and corpus from various perspectives, with contributions from cinema studies researchers, film critics, festival programmers, and artists.”
According to publishers, the book offers “a nuanced overview of the filmmaker and the cinematic traditions he belongs to for film enthusiasts, researchers, and general readers alike.”
Though Diaz’s contributions to slow and durational cinema are well known and his importance in contemporary world cinema is beyond doubt, the director remains largely unexplored in cinema studies.
Among Diaz's notable works are the 10 hour-long Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004), From What Is Before (2014) which won The Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival and The Woman Who Left (2016), which won a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
The book was edited by Parichay Patra and Michael Kho Lim. Patra is an assistant professor of Film Studies at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur, India. He is currently working on his monograph on the Indian New Wave of the 1970s.
Lim, meanwhile, is a lecturer of Media and Cultural Policy, and acting course director of the Master’s program in Cultural and Creative Industries at Cardiff University, UK. He currently sits as Assistant Secretary on the National Committee on Cinema under the Sub-commission on the Arts of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.
The book cover features a photo of the director on the set of Ang Hupa (The Halt), taken by Cielo Bagabaldo, a Filipino filmmaker who produces, directs and edits short films, music videos and online content.
SINE ni Lav Diaz: A Long Take on the Filipino Auteur is currently available for pre-order at Intellectbooks and Artbooks.ph and is currently priced at ₱1,350.00.
(Images via CCP)