Internationally acclaimed film director Lav Diaz is at it again.
After Lav had a shorter running time for less than four hours of the film “Ang Babaing Humayo” which starred Charo Santos, he is back in doing longer TRT in his latest movie, “Servando Magdamag.”
This was announced by Lav’s confidante Hazel Orencio during the virtual launch of the book “Sine ni Lav: A Long Take on the Filipino Auteur” edited by Parichay Patra and Michael Kho Lim for Intellect Books of the United Kingdom.
”Ewan ko kung (I don’t know) if I am allowed to say this, Lav’s latest movie, ‘yong ‘Servando Magdamag’ is eight hours long,” said Hazel.
“Servando Magdamag” is a short story by award-winning screenwriter and literary writer Ricardo Lee, also known as Ricky Lee about the violent fate of a family of hacienderos when their patriarch died.
The movie stars John Lloyd Cruz and it’s his comeback project after almost four years of absence from the entertainment scene.
It was shot in Sorsogon in the Bicol Region where John Lloyd and the rest of the cast were locked in during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Diaz was given a tribute of sort by the Intellect Books of the United Kingdom, De La Salle University Publishing House and the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) by printing a book on him.
Titled “Sine ni Lav Diaz: A Long Take on the Filipino Auteur” which was recently virtually launched, the project is 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.
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.