Diaz brings 8-hour epic to Berlin – Filipino maestro’s ‘Lullaby’ tests human patience, endurance

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This movie still released to AFP by Filipino director Lav Diaz in Manila shows a scene from his film ‘A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery’. (AFP)
This movie still released to AFP by Filipino director Lav Diaz in Manila shows a scene from his film ‘A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery’. (AFP)

MANILA, Feb 18, (Agencies): Daring Filipino director Lav Diaz brings his movie house of pain to Berlin this week, shooting for the top prize with an eight-hour epic that tests human patience and endurance.

Diaz weaves the rich revolutionary history and mythology of his impoverished homeland in “A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery”, the longest film ever to compete at the Berlinale, but still three hours shorter than his longest work.

“My principle is, the filmmaker shouldn’t struggle by himself … The viewer must struggle with me. Let’s experience this thing together and be immersed in this universe,” the 57-year-old Diaz told AFP in Manila before he left for Berlin.

Festival organisers have inserted one interval into the epic, but Diaz is relaxed about how audiences will cope.

“I understand the demands on the body, you need to defecate and urinate,” he says.

“You’re free. You can go home and relax, you come back the film is still rolling. It’s about life. Ultimately, cinema is about life itself.”

“Lullaby” chronicles the futile search by Gregoria de Jesus — one of the few women leaders of the Philippine resistance against Spain — for the body of her husband, Andres Bonifacio, who was executed on a mountain by a rival faction of the rebellion.

Crashing

Diaz weaves into the narrative the legend of the Filipino Hercules, who is perpetually holding the edges of two mountains to keep them from crashing into each other, and also the “Tikbalang”, a cigar-puffing monster with the head of a horse and the body of a man.

Another strand in the black and white movie is a retelling of “El Filibusterismo” a politically charged novel written during the Spanish period by the country’s national hero, Jose Rizal, to rouse nationalist spirit.

“I combined all these threads, and when you view the film, it is about the search for the Filipino soul,” Diaz said.

Diaz has won numerous international and local awards. One of his most recent works, the four-hour-long “Norte, the End of History”, was screened at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.

Identity

This year, a seven-member jury headed by three-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep will select the winner of the Golden Bear, Berlinale’s top honour.

But Diaz said he was not doing films to win awards or make money, but rather to help his countrymen find their national identity after centuries of colonisation by Spain and the United States, and more recently, a brutal dictatorship.

“Until now, we’re searching for that soul. I don’t want to make films for the market, I want to contribute to my country,” Diaz said.

Four metallic best picture trophies from the Filipino Critics’ Guild gather dust on his apartment shelf, beside a worn suitcase that has accompanied him on his many travels.

Diaz, admitted his movies were “so long nobody would buy them” but added: “I am freeing cinema. My films are not long, they are free. I am not part of convention anymore.”

He recalled a one-hour long scene in his 2006 film “Heremias”, where the entire shot followed three men getting high while they plot the rape of a woman.

Diaz said his filmmaking perspective was greatly influenced by his tumultuous childhood, growing up in the conflict-wracked southern town of Datu Paglas.

His parents, both public school teachers, uprooted themselves from the peaceful north to teach children in war zones how to read and write. He fondly calls them “socialists”.

As a child in the 1960s, Diaz said he and his father would take a bus to the city to spend the entire weekend watching films by Fernando Poe Jnr, considered the Philippines’ John Wayne.

However, when their house was razed to the ground during crossfire between Muslim rebels and Christian militia groups, the family moved to a safe enclave while Diaz moved to Manila to study economics.

Diaz worked as a waiter, a book salesman and a petrol pump attendant after college to support his wife and three children, but eventually pursued cinema, his first love.

He started with low-budget skin flicks, including one about a woman who sleepwalks, before garnering critical acclaim.

“I am a film addict. I love all kinds of cinema,” he said.

While history and social injustice are running themes in his films, Diaz said the inspiration to start a project could strike anywhere.

A trip to the national library in 1997 spawned “Lullaby”, after he stumbled upon a decaying handwritten note from Gregoria de Jesus, describing her 30-day search in the mountains.

“I had an epiphany. I told myself: I have to make this film,” he said.

And the inspiration for his next opus could literally be just outside his window.

“You see that girl?” he said pointing to a beggar walking in front of a gleaming shopping mall.

“Why is she poor? Why does society allow her to be poor?”

Also:

LOS ANGELES: Keira Knightley starrer “Colette”, based on the life of the French author who wrote “Gigi” and “Cheri”, has enjoyed robust sales in Berlin this year, with sales agent Hanway Films selling out the project.

Pic, which is produced by Number 9 Films and Killer Films (both shingles behind “Carol”) as well as Bold Films, has inked deals in France (Mars), Germany and Austria (DCM), Italy (Good Films), Spain (DeAPlaneta), Scandinavia (Scanbox), Japan (Tohokushinsha), Australia/New Zealand (Transmission), Latin America (Sun Distribution), South Korea (Rollong & First Run), Poland (Monolith), Czech/Slovak Republics (AQS), Former Yugoslavia (Discovery), Greece and Cyprus (Odeon), Portugal (Lusomundo), Baltics (Acme), Middle East (Front Row), South Africa (Ster Kinekor), Hong Kong (Suncream), Taiwan (Filmware) and Airlines (Jaguar).

Hanway m.d. Thorsten Schumacher told Variety: “With the strong creative package and combination of Number 9 Films, Killer Films and our new friends at Bold, the HanWay team was able to partner with the classiest distributors in their territories on this great project.”

Wash Westmoreland will direct “Colette,” based on a script he co-penned with the late Richard Glatzer, who both co-wrote and co-directed “Still Alice”. Lensing will begin in May in Budapest, Hungary.

Pam Coffer and Christine Vachon (“Carol”, “Still Alice”) produce for Killer Films and Elizabeth Karlsen and Stephen Woolley (“Carol”, “Made in Dagenham”) will produce for Number 9 Films. Bold Films will finance and co-produce the pic through chairman Michel Litvak. Bold Films CEO Gary Michael Walters exec produces.

“Colette” has been one of the most sought-after titles in Berlinale this year. Based on the true story of one of Gaul’s leading female novelists, the pic will examine Colette’s complex life and marriage to Parisian critic Willy Gautheir-Villars and their pivotal status in the salons of Paris at the turn of the century.

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