Parichay Patra

Michael Kho Lim

A holistic consideration of the works of celebrated Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz. This original collection considers Lav Diaz and his works without being confined to a specific approach or research method. On the contrary, it touches on nearly every major contemporary academic approach to cinema. 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. The book addresses this research gap, situating Diaz at the crucial juncture of new auteurism, Filipino New Wave, and transnational cinema, but it does not neglect the industrial-exhibitional coordinates of his cinema. The first book-length study on the groundbreaking auteur, the collection takes a critical look at his career and corpus from various perspectives, with contributions from cinema studies researchers, film critics, festival programmers, and artists. It offers a nuanced overview of the filmmaker and the cinematic traditions he belongs to for film enthusiasts, researchers, and general readers alike.

A Long Take on the Filipino Auteur

Sine Ni Lav Diaz

Justin O'Connor

Xin Gu

This book responds to the lack of Asian representation in creative cities literature. It aims to use the creative cities paradigm as part of a wider process involving first, a rapid de-industrialisation in Asia that has left a void for new development models, resulting in a popular uptake of cultural economies in Asian cities; and second, the congruence and conflicts of traditional and modern cultural values leading to a necessary re-interpretation and re-imagination of cities as places for cultural production and cultural consumption. Focusing on the ‘Asian century’, it seeks to recognise and highlight the rapid rise of these cities and how they have stepped up to the challenge of transforming and regenerating themselves. The book aims to re-define what it means to be an Asian creative city and generate more dialogue and new debate around different urban issues.

Re-Imagining Creative Cities in Twenty-First Century Asia

This book explores the complex interplay of culture and economics in the context of Philippine cinema. It delves into the tension, interaction, and shifting movements between mainstream and independent filmmaking, examines the film distribution and exhibition systems, and investigates how existing business practices affect the sustainability of the independent sector. This book addresses the lack or absence of Asian representation in film distribution literature by supplying the much-needed Asian context and case study. It also advances the discourse of film distribution economy by expounding on the formal and semi-formal film distribution practices in a developing Asian country like the Philippines, where the thriving piracy culture is considered as ‘normal,’ and which is commonly depicted and discussed in existing literature. As such, this will be the first book that looks into the specifics of the Philippine film distribution and exhibition system and provides a historical grounding of its practices.

Philippine Cinema and the Cultural Economy of Distribution

This original collection fills a gap in the literature on Lav Diaz, and more broadly, on slow and durational cinema. The importance of the director in contemporary world cinema is beyond doubt. This collection considers Lav Diaz and his works holistically without being confined to a specific approach or research method. On the contrary, it involves almost all the major contemporary academic approaches to cinema. It focuses on an auteur who has been celebrated immensely in recent times and yet has remained largely unexplored in cinema studies. The book will address this research gap. As such, this book aims to situate Diaz at the crucial juncture of ‘new’ auteurism, Filipino New Wave and transnational cinema, but it does not neglect the industrial–exhibitional coordinates of his cinema. The rationale behind this project is to raise questions on the oeuvre of a significant auteur, to situate him in and outside of his immediate national context(s), to present a repository of critical approaches on him, to reconsider the existing critical positions on him, to find newer avenues to enter (and exit) his canon that will consciously avoid the time-worn rhetoric of long take and slowness of the proverbial ‘slow cinema’ camp and to find corridors in him that will lead to informed ways of reaching other movements/auteurs in other times, other places. It explores various other aspects of Diaz and his cinema whose notoriety, the editors believe, should not rely solely on its incredible running time. The collection looks at Diaz from the perspectives of a national and a transnational critic – one of the two editors is from the Philippines, the other from another Asian location. It concentrates both on the spatial and the temporal, to place him within the intricacies of the culture and creative industries and the distribution practices and politics in his native place, to allow space for his ‘detractors’ who (perhaps rightly) focus on and object to his ‘artlessness’, and also to read him in the context of his fascination for the epic novel and novelistic cinema, his engagement with Dostoevsky and Jose Rizal, among others. This is the first book-length study on the Filipino auteur Lav Diaz. It looks critically at his career and corpus from various perspectives, with contributions from cinema studies researchers, film critics, festival programmers and artists. It offers a nuanced overview of the filmmaker and the cinematic traditions he belongs to for film enthusiasts, researchers and general readers alike. Primary readership will be researchers, scholars, educators and students in film studies. Also academics and researchers interested and working in cultural studies and Philippine studies.

Michael Kho Lim

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