BATANG WEST SIDE (US, Philippines, 2001, Lav Diaz)

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The following conversation with Lav Diaz, moderated by Christoph Huber and Jurij Meden, was recorded after a screening of BATANG WEST SIDE (2001) at Kino Tuškanac in Zagreb during the local Human Rights Festival in December 2004. (Video courtesy of the Austrian Film Museum).

 
 

The first major epic in the oeuvre of Lav Diaz (b. 1958) is a powerful contemporary portrait of the Filipino diaspora in New York and New Jersey.

A Filipino-born detective investigates the murder of Hanzel Harana, a Filipino teenager, and must plod along with tenacity to break through the wall of silence surrounding the boy’s death. The trail of the designer drug “shabu” runs through the film like a bloody trickle, but Diaz delegates the accounts of crime, domestic violence, and the discontent in the souls of his characters to the background for the most part, instead relying on the hypnotic portrait of a decaying life as a symbol of alienation from home. The more we learn about the protagonists, the more complex, intangible, and contradictory our image of them becomes.


BATANG WEST SIDE is notable for its length, as is much of Diaz’s work. In the booklet accompanying this DVD release, Diaz notes: “BATANG WEST SIDE is five hours long. For many this is an issue… [but] 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… I never intended to make BATANG WEST SIDE five hours long. I simply followed the cutting and joining together of various scenes… I allowed it to flow naturally… I refuse to follow the dictates of industry… I refuse to compromise the integrity of the work to please limiting, emasculating ‘tradition’.”

Diaz goes on to say: “The objective of BATANG WEST SIDE [is] 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 and context 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. 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.”

The Edition-Filmmuseum release of BATANG WEST SIDE is available through GME as both a DVD and a DVD/DSL bundle. It also features Lav Diaz’s 2018 short THE BOY WHO CHOSE THE EARTH and a 20-page booklet consisting of an interview with Diaz himself, as well as a conversation about BATANG WEST SIDE between curator Christoph Huber and film writer Jurij Meden, and an essay by Viennale artistic director Eva Sangiorgi about THE BOY WHO CHOSE EARTH.

BATANG WEST SIDE
(US, Philippines, 2001)

Director: Lav Diaz

  • 289 minutes
  • Digital
  • Color
  • Sound
Distribution Format/s: DVD & DSL/Downloadable 1080p .mp4 file on server

Published By: Edition-Filmmuseum

Institutional Price: DVD: $300, DVD/DSL Bundle: $600

To order call: 212.280.8654 or click here for information on ordering by fax, e-mail or post.