This is the first part of hopefully many that will accompany my journey through the organisation of a major retrospective of Lav Diaz’s works in his native country. While museums and galleries outside the Philippines commit to retrospectives – the next one to take place is that in Paris in November this year – his own country is still a bit behind with those things. Given his growing popularity, if you can use this word, time is more than rife for a retrospective in Manila.

When I met Diaz last August in Locarno, we played with the idea and I had been keen for a while to organise an event of such a scale, primarily for the home audience, in order to get a picture of the whole oeuvre of a director they now start to celebrate after the success of both Norte (2013) and From What Is Before (2014). It will also be a good end point for my work. I will submit my thesis in the next couple of months. Then I will turn the material into a book, which I plan to publish myself. The idea is to launch the book at the very latest at the start of the retrospective, which I am currently planning for August 2017.

If financially possible, I would like to invite one or two people who are as familiar with Lav’s work, which would allow me to step back without having to introduce every single of his films 🙂 I also work on the idea of a panel discussion, but not with scholars alone. I’m more keen on getting the viewers involved, possibly with no background in film. It is those viewers that often have the most insightful reading of films.

I have started to contact venues in Manila in the hope that there will be at least one which is willing to host the retrospective. Fingers crossed! In the meantime, I do some fine tuning on the programme and let you know once I have been successful to secure a location for this very long and slow endeavour. In worst case, I’ll bring a projector and we do pop-up screenings. In any case, this retrospective will happen!

Please share widely and rally for support 🙂