Cinekatipunan screens Lav Diaz's Batang West Side

CINEKATIPUNAN TO SCREEN LAV DIAZ EPIC - BATANG WEST
SIDE
Wednesday, 27 December, 2006
2:00 -7:00 PM
Mag:net Café (fronting Miriam and Ateneo)
www.magnet.com.ph

THE AESTHETIC CHALLENGE OF BATANG WEST SIDE*
Lav Diaz

Batang West Side is five hours long.

For many this is an issue. A huge issue, and a
headache for many here in the Philippines. But not an
issue if we remember that there are small and large
canvasses; brief ditties and lengthy arias; short
stories and multi-volume novels; the haiku and The
Iliad. This should be the end of the argument.

It’s too long, people can’t take it; it’s too heavy,
people can’t handle it; distributors won’t pick it up,
theaters won’t screen it. Wrong. There are theaters
that will accept this film. People will watch long
films. I believe the masses have the ability to
transcend the standards they normally use in
apprehending the arts. Allow works of proportion and
beauty to exist, and we will develop an audience with
philosophies lofty and profound enough to properly
appreciate the art of cinema. People will watch an
enjoy Batang West Side. Theaters will open with this
film.

This I firmly believe.

I never intended to make Batang West Side five hours
long. I simply followed the cutting and joining
together of various scenes according to the script I
shot. The original script entitled “West Side Avenue,
JC” (Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature winner,
1997) was 135 pages long, with 126 scenes. A revised
copy (year 2000) that I shot reached a hundred pages
and 208 scenes.

I thought the film would run three hours, but during
editing I saw that it would run longer and I didn’t
try to alter this condition; I allowed it to flow
naturally. I allowed it to become organic, to acquire
a life of its own; this is my philosophy when cutting,
when finishing a film. I don’t bend to the conventions
of editing, or of length; I refused to follow the
dictates of industry. There has been no manipulation
to force me to conform to tradition, to what has been
done before. I’ve studied the length many times in
order to change it. But the five-hour version remains
solid – according to the dictates of aesthetics, story
flow, and wholeness of vision. I refuse to compromise
the integrity of the work to please limiting,
emasculating “tradition”.

I explained my position to the producers. After many
discussions, discourses, and debates that at times led
to raised voices and heated arguments, they finally
relented, finally believed. They understood that they
must not give short shrift to our vision, to abandon
our responsibility; that after everything we’ve gone
through and struggled against to finish the film, it
would be a great wrong to compromise now. It would be
a betrayal to those who sacrificed so much, so long,
to compromise – a betrayal of the film, which has
acquired a life of its own.

Ever since the introduction of the film as the newest,
most popular medium of expression, Hollywood has been
a tremendous influence on Philippine cinema. Cinema
was one of the imperialist tools the Americans brought
with them when they bought the Philippines from the
Spaniards (or, conversely, when the Spaniards sold the
Philippines to them) back in 1898; it quickly became
an element of everyday Filipino life. Due to the
length of their stay here (they finally left, along
with their military bases in 1992), it may safely be
assumed that the Filipino sensibility has been
thoroughly colonnized by America.

And because of this, Filipinos lost the chance to rise
by their own bootstraps; colonization wrecked the
Filipinos’ dream of establishing a nation molded
according to the details in their own unique vision.
From the perspectives of politics and history, the
Filipinos lost the struggle for freedom – freedom of
nationhood, freedom of livelihood and sensibility,
freedom of the arts, psychological freedom and freedom
of any and every kind – when they were colonized,
bought and sold. Add to this the experience of
hegemony and war (Japan), dictatorship and terrorism
(Marcos) – after all has been said and done, the
Filipinos have developed a “loser’s culture,” the end
result of surviving their long and sadly complex
history.

It’s clear that what is needed is a profound cultural
movement to restore this injury.

Cinema can do a great deal towards accomplishing this.

In Hollywood culture, entertainment and profit are the
larger purpose of cinema. Entertainment for the
audience; profit for the many producers, directors,
actors, film workers and movie theater owners. The
same holds true in the Philippines. That is why the
Filipino’s appreciation of cinema is shallow and base.
In their eyes, cinema is no different from a carnival.
It will take a long and involved process to change
this perception, especially with Hollywood films still
dominating Filipino theaters.

(Once in a while in Hollywood though, there will
emerge someone different, an Orson Welles or John
Cassavetes that without fear or hesitation will move
against the flow of things. If ever there was a vivid
or incendiary flash of integrity in the art of
filmmaking in Hollywood from then until now, it was
Welles and Cassavetes.)

Most Hollywood films are ninety minutes or a hundred
minutes long, rarely more than two hours. We have
become used to this convention, this belief, that
cinema should be so long, and no more. This had become
the standard measurement of theater owners and
producers, so that more people can come and watch per
day, and the grosses can consequently be higher.

The Blockbuster Culture/
The Garbage Culture

Hollywood developed the blockbuster culture, the
profit culture.

It’s only right to admire a profitable film because
the cost of filmmaking is so high. It’s only right
that there are businessmen in film – they are an
important part of the industry.

No Illusions

The film has no illussions of heroism. We have no
intention of bragging that we are special. We simply
wish to contribute to the development and growth of
the long awaited new direction of Philippine Cinema.
We wish to help (even a little) in its overthrow, and
ultimate change.

At the same time, we are also unafraid to create a
different impression among people, it’s all part of
the process. The Philippines has been left too far
behind in world cinema (meaning not Hollywood but
WORLD CINEMA, where there can be found the startling
new works of Iranian and Taiwanese filmmakers). It is
the new age, and we need courage to innovate and
create. We need to begin developing a National Cinema,
a cinema that will create a responsible Filipino
people.

That is the vision that inspired Batang West Side.

It’s not just the length. Some will express surprise
(or express more fitting if less printable sentiments)
at various elements of this film, especially the use
of digital video reshot on a TV monitor to ‘dirty’ the
footage – to create lines, crudity, a roughened
apprearance. The damaged texture is a metaphor for
damaged illusions, a rebuke of long-held belief by the
Philippine movie industry that a film has to be clean
and polished to be fit for public screening. Not only
is this movie not clean or polished, eighty percent of
the film was shot with available light only.

Radical

A film this long is radical for Filipino
sensibilities, even down to the “damaged” texture and
story structure, “radical” because this is something
totally new to them. Only a radical sensibility can
provoke the longed-for change in Philippine Cinema.
Only through such a sensibility can Philippine Cinema
acquire a proper vision, be made whole. Only thus can
Philippine Cinema, long-pronounced “dead,” be
resurrected once more.

Culture

Batang West Side is hard to take at first glance, if
our basis for watching is the culture and rhetoric of
Philippine Cinema.

The habit or convention of watching films constitutes
a culture of its own, meaning there is an experience,
a whole tradition, a perspective of an entire
community or society, a sensibility created that has
become characteristic of individuals in that society.

This is the objective of Batang West Side – the
examination of the Filipino consciousness. Why are the
Philippines the way they are now? The Filipino people?
Philippine cinema? This aesthetic goal can be achieved
through analysis of the comprehensive form
(length/structure/ appearance) and context
(word/flesh/ vision) of this film, and of other films
to come. Let’s not be contained and limited to
convention and formula; we need to probe and probe, to
explode the wall of corruption. The perspective is
ever historical, and ever advancing.

Change

Ultimately, the objective of Batang West Side is
simple – change. Whoever wishes to hinder this film is
an enemy of change. Whoever is an enemy of change is
an enemy of Philippine Cinema.

Manila, December 2002
Translated from Tagalog to English by Noel Vera

* Reprinted from EKRAN revija film in televizijo (vol.
30, letnik XLII, 5-6 2005, 700 SIT)