Exit Art's Digimovies is pleased to present "Corporal Histories: Lav Diaz's Epic Philippine Cinema", the first series of screenings in the U.S. devoted to the work of this highly acclaimed maverick filmmaker. This survey is comprised of four of Diaz's recent features, three of which will receive their NYC premieres. Diaz will be in attendance to speak at three of the screenings and partake in a conversation with Telegraph (UK) film critic Sukhdev Sandhu about his work and filmmaking philosophy.

A pioneer of the current independent filmmaking scene in the Philippines, Diaz makes films that daringly confront the suffering of his fellow countrymen, who have struggled through an arduous national history of colonialism, political corruption, natural disasters and poverty. His moving and methodically told sagas typically interweave tales of Philippine artists, criminals, cult members and the impoverished, offering an intimate view of life on society's margins. In their commitment to the particulars of Philippine history and culture, Diaz's films achieve an authentic universality, tackling such classic themes as faith, redemption and the value of art.

More than any other filmmaker working today, Diaz pushes the durational possibilities of digital filmmaking to a hypnotic level, shooting scenes in extreme deep focus and single takes that, in some instances, last up to 20 minutes. These formal choices combined with the films' lengthy running times make his films uniquely transfixing experiences, deeply immersing the audience in landscape and atmosphere, bringing them closer to the lived experience of the characters and, in certain cases, comingling the past and present within single shots. As Robert Koehler describes in his review of Death in the Land of Encantos for Cinema Scope magazine, the net effect of Diaz's aesthetic and formal choices "plunges the viewer into an alternate time zone where distinctions between documentary and fiction, stasis and action slowly dissolve."

Though Diaz's films have won awards at prestigious international film festivals, such as the International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Venice International Film Festival, and he has been honored with a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship Award, screenings of his films in the U.S. have been few and far between. This series brings together four recent films by Diaz, making it the first major U.S. survey of his work.

Featured Works:

Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004); Death in the Land of Encantos (2007); Century of Birthing (2011, pictured); Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012)

Program information:

Digimovies presents "Corporal Histories: Lav Diaz's Epic Philippine Cinema"