Introduction
To introduce Lav Diaz and his cinema, the simplest approach is to emphasize his distinctive use of long cinematic duration, which is not merely an aesthetic choice but a result of complex historical, material, and political transformations. For Diaz, it is his praxis—a foundational aspect of his cinematic philosophy and practice. Since the release of Batang West Side in 2001, his dedication to the craft of long cinematic duration has underscored various contradictions both within and around his films, reflecting the complexities of globalized temporal distribution.
In this essay, I revisit the praxis of long cinematic duration and reassess it as a form of memory work. I want to reassess if filmic duration can be a form of liberatory memory work, given Diaz’s politicized view of long cinematic duration as a counter-praxis to the dominant trends in filmmaking of his time.
On Liberatory Memory Work: Some Principles from the Global South
Memory work is a form of work associated with the processing and activation of ‘recorded information, particularly when accompanied by a focus on supporting justice and equity and protecting others from harm’ (SAA). It is not about just working in the archives. It requires a more purposive task, one that activates collective memory through interaction with materials of the past. Liberatory memory work, on the other hand, serves an ever greater and more direct purpose for ‘fundamentally calling for justice,’ according to Chandre Gould and Verne Harris.
Gould and Harris codified the principles of Liberatory Memory Work in their writing titled ‘Memory For Justice’, a Nelson Mandela Foundation provocation. For them, to be liberatory, memory work must ‘support the full range of processes designed to create spaces for healing and the prevention of ‘re-occurrence.’ The re-occurrence here refers to events in history committed without regard for justice. One of the key principles of liberatory memory work is that ‘it acknowledges that it can never be neutral, impartial or non-partisan and discloses its biases, presuppositions, and assumptions.’ It is and must be partisan and must take sides at all times and is transparent of such a partisanship. This includes ‘resist[ing] any attempt to impose metanarratives. Instead… opens space for subnarratives and counter-narratives,’ meaning to resist dominant arcs of storytelling. More so, it does not ‘simply replicate prevailing relations of power,’ as it strives towards exploring other forms of organization, particularly, the organization from below. Significant focus is placed on the dynamics of power involved in the role of ‘victim.’ This includes the risk of re-victimizing individuals who are either self-identified or labeled as such and the potential danger of forming a group of ‘righteous victims’ who might feel justified in perpetuating past harms without accountability.
Liberatory memory work is a processing of historical traumas, hence, one of its principles is it ‘honors lives lost or damaged,’ a memorialization of heroes not recognized by the State. Therefore, it is crucial for such work to create safe spaces where the unsayable can be expressed, and where those who are unwilling to engage with each other can start listening to each other’s stories. Essentially, it aims to establish an environment of hospitality towards what is considered ‘other.’ Verne and Gould emphasize that effective memory work demands a diverse range of disciplines and skills, involving people from various sectors of society. It should not be monopolized by ‘heroes’ and ‘victims’ or ‘survivors.’ In other words, the entire society must engage with and process the outcomes of memory work.
Verne and Gould also highlight the importance of cross-generational justice, that liberatory memory work must ensure ‘a shared future for the descendants of ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’, and that it must ‘names ‘perpetrators’ and ‘victims’ while resisting the temptation to use these labels without problematization.’
Liberatory Memory Work as a Work Against Dominant Time
While Verne and Gould have established foundational principles rooted in the struggle for reparative justice in South Africa, it is Michelle Caswell’s intervention that redefines liberatory memory work as a temporal endeavor—a work on time. This perspective aligns closely with the realm of cinema, which, upon reflection, is a temporal medium requiring active engagement from both its viewers and its creators.
In Michelle Caswell’s book Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work, she puts forward a new concept of liberatory memory work “that dismantle archival systems based on chronoviolence, symbolic annihilation, and maldistribution of resources, even as we build archival systems based on chronoautonomy, self-recognition, and material redistribution.” What Caswell refers to here as archival systems of “chronoviolence, symbolic annihilation, and maldistribution of resources,” she refers to the dominant systems of organizations, which she associates with whiteness. According to her, ‘white time’ has become entrenched in systems of epistemology and ontology, where non-dominant realities are deprioritized in the curation of information. In other words, ‘white time’ derives its power from semi-feudal and semi-colonial legacies, enforcing a fixed and prioritized ideological agenda.
Liberatory memory work demands a break from the cyclical apparatus of semi-feudal and semi-colonial control, necessitating a new form of temporal processing. For Caswell, this work does not rely on speed. Instead, it counteracts speed by positioning itself within the oppositional contradictions of ‘slowness’ and ‘urgency,’ as well as ‘messiness’ and ‘strategized action.’ It does not strive for perfection but embraces the nature of being ‘imperfect and uncomfortable.’
Long Cinematic Duration as a Memory Work
It’s easy to assume that the long cinematic duration of Díaz’s films, characterized by a particular slowness, inherently constitutes a form of liberatory memory work. However, slowness alone does not automatically equate to liberatory memory work. The concept of slowness must be reevaluated in the context of the economy of time itself, not as an abstract concept but as a materiality of relations.
In today’s neoliberal order, human time is commodified down to its most minute form: attention. Scroll time and contact time on mobile devices are converted into data, which is then ingested by new capitalist systems of valuation to determine how humans interact with commodities at an atomic scale. This contemporary attention time represents the ‘white temporality’ that Caswell critiques as anti-liberatory. This critique aligns with Diaz’s perspective on the fast-paced temporality of commercial cinema, which predominantly orchestrates the audience’s experience. Diaz’s cinema responds to the whiteness of Hollywood and local commercial cinema of the 1990s by developing his form of ‘liberatory’ temporality – a digital liberation theology in his own words.
Diaz’s long cinematic durations function as memory work on a case-by-case basis, depending primarily on the subject matter of each film. The effectiveness of memory work in cinema hinges on how film, by tapping into its durative nature, activates the collective memory of a nation. Throughout Diaz’s career, nearly all his films aim to evoke specific aspects of the nation’s history. The distinction lies in Diaz’s narrative treatment, often seen as counter-narrative to dominant historical films.
For instance, some of Diaz’s works reinterpret historical figures, such as presenting the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. as an afterthought in Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan (2013), or highlighting the unsung heroes of the 1898 Philippine Revolution in Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis (2016). Other films, like Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004) and Mula sa Kung Ano ang Noon (2014), explore the trauma experienced by the Filipino populace during the Martial Law of 1972-1986.
Diaz’s films serve as history lessons and memory work, reacquainting the public with the past and complicating their relationship with time itself.
The Cinematic Format as Liberatory Memory Work
One notable example is Lav Diaz’s Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004), which chronicles the life of a fictional Filipino family during the Martial Law years from 1972 to 1986. Officially recognized as the longest Filipino film ever made, it has a running time of approximately 11 hours. This film also has one of the longest development periods in Diaz’s career, taking over a decade to complete. Production began in 1994, and the film was finally finished in early 2004, premiering in the festival circuit within the same year.
In Evolution of a Filipino Family, Diaz effectively crystallizes the use of long cinematic duration. His commitment to such long durations is driven by several factors. Firstly, the digital transformation in film practice enabled Diaz to stretch time economically without incurring substantial production costs. Secondly, Diaz navigated the evolving technology of film within the neoliberal framework. Initially working with film celluloid, he transitioned to digital as celluloid became increasingly obsolete, ultimately converting all his celluloid footage to digital.
Evolution of a Filipino Family is not entirely a born-digital film but rather a hybrid of digitized materials, constituting a mixed-media approach assembled through digital editing. The film’s production relies heavily on imported camera technology and follows an indie model: self-produced with a small crew, minimal capital, low wages, and no guaranteed return on investment. This approach underscores a commitment to artistic expression and a stance against commercial interests. While the neoliberal order facilitates such endeavors by prioritizing new expressions through emerging technologies, Diaz’s market positioning at the time was notably radical. The long durational format of his film was largely incommensurable with the prevailing market forces of local and independent cinema.
In this contradictory approach, Díaz subtly advances memory work by presenting a format that resists integration with dominant temporality. His determination to showcase an 11-hour cultural commodity in both local and international festival circuits challenges the prevailing trend in early digital cinema, which focused on capturing viewer attention with rapid cuts. Díaz’s ‘formative disruption’ questions the supremacy of Hollywood Time, which we can equate with ‘white time.’ Alongside the platform temporality of today’s social media, Hollywoodized attention time has shaped contemporary filmic narratives. This standard remains dominant in popular cinema, influencing how attention is captured and maintained.
Diaz’s use of long cinematic duration as a format positions his work at the intersection of embracing and rejecting dominant temporalities. He accepts the neoliberal shift from analog to digital to economize production while rejecting the temporal conventions of Hollywood’s format. Thus, Diaz’s memory work operates within the realm of transcoded digital duration, which is not a mechanical duration but a meta-duration—one that depends on the transformation of information but references back to the physical movement of old filmic technology.
The Cinematic Form as Liberatory Memory Work
Beyond the format, Diaz organizes Evolution of a Filipino Family’s content as a contradictory amalgamation of different threads of fictional and documentary narrative. There are portions in the film that directly reference the Martial Law era through the usage of archival footage as a depiction of that historical era. Diaz’s usage of archival footage to strategically stage moments of disruption constitutes the film’s most urgent appeal to rethink again the period. Footages from the First Quarter Storm and Declaration of Martial Law of 1972 to the late 1980s Mendiola Massacre post-Martial Law construct a heterogeneous temporality that refuses to subscribe to its form and format. The archival insertions ‘remix’ attention and ‘subject’ the viewers to do the memory work themselves.
For example, in the scene where the family aids wounded rebel soldiers, Díaz includes an archival insert of the First Quarter Storm and Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s declaration of Martial Law in 1972. This archival footage serves as a critical historical juncture for the entire narrative, abruptly grounding the film’s long cinematic duration in historical reality. It shifts the film from a realm of imagined events to one aligned with the collective memory of the people. Following Marcos’s declaration, “I place the country under Martial Law,” the subsequent scene is enveloped in darkness, visually representing the nation’s descent into turmoil and obscurity after the declaration.
Archival insertions: Footages from the First Quarter Storm protests and Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s declaration of Martial Law in 1972
In a seemingly ironic twist, Diaz incorporates footage of the Mendiola Massacre towards the end of the film, after depicting numerous transformations within the Filipino family and society. These archival insertions, placed at the ninth hour, fragment the image of a nation that remains unable to heal. By doing so, Diaz constructs a collective memory that remains deeply contradictory, reflecting the persistent struggles and unresolved tensions within the nation.
Archival insertions: Mendiola Massacre 1987
Archival insertions are Diaz’s method of provenance work, utilizing footage from IBON Foundation’s audiovisual collections, including Lito Tiongson’s documentary Mendiola Massacre (1987), produced by AsiaVisions Media Production. Diaz’s liberatory memory work is enacted through his deliberate use of these archival materials, not merely for narrative purposes, but with a deep respect for their provenance and source, which is the actual experiences of the people in the footages. Audiovisual archiving advocate Rose Roque emphasizes that without provenance work and the ethical acknowledgment of these events as historical facts, liberatory memory work would be impossible. She asserts that the foundation of liberatory memory work is the principle of provenance. Diaz adheres to this principle by crediting the IBON Foundation, the rightful custodians of the AsiaVisions AV collections, thus ensuring the ethical integrity of his film.
In addition to employing direct cinema strategies through archival insertions, Diaz activates memory work in the film through more subtle means. He weaves the Martial Law era into the narrative as a pervasive historical subtext surrounding the fictional Filipino family and their struggles. Diaz utilizes a style of social realism to render key scenes with maximum authenticity, combining tableau compositions with long takes and detailed dialogue. This approach highlights the fictional family’s experiences as a lens through which historical transformation is depicted.
For instance, around the sixth hour of the film, a scene set inside a prison cell illustrates how the community’s condemnation of Kadyo as a thief reflects the nation’s demoralized psyche. Diaz explicitly attributes Kadyo’s imprisonment to ‘Marcos and the military,’ underscoring their role in fostering this societal breakdown. Throughout the film, Diaz consistently employs this technique of referencing Martial Law to contextualize the pervasive social psychosis. Through his memory work, Diaz argues that the poor family’s plight is intrinsically linked to the oppressive conditions of this dark period in the nation’s history.
Kadyo’s speculation of Marcos and the military being responsible for his incarceration
Díaz’s use of long cinematic duration in his films is a deliberate strategy to encapsulate the historical contradictions of Martial Law within the narrative framework. His choice to lengthen shots and sequences is not merely an aesthetic pursuit but a means to liberate viewers from prevailing temporal norms. The long cinematic duration functions as a critical tool for exploring the complexities of collective memory from the Martial Law Era. By presenting historical time as a sustained experience, Diaz seeks to counteract the chronoviolence imposed by digital media, offering a more immersive and politically conscious portrayal of Martial Law. This approach represents his most deliberate effort to convey the profound and imaginative dimensions of this historical period through film.
This is where the film’s form—through its narration and cinematographic techniques—serves as a means to access memories that have been obscured or neglected. Contextually, Evolution of a Filipino Family emerged in the early 2000s, nearly 19 years after the Marcos family fled the Malacañang Palace. During this time, the country had experienced a relapse of collective amnesia. The Marcoses returned from exile just five years after their departure, and by 1995, Imelda Marcos had become a congresswoman of a district in the Visayas. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2004, and by 2007, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of the late dictator, was elected as a congressman, later becoming a senator in 2010. In 2022, he ascended to the presidency. This historical trajectory prompts a critical examination of how liberatory memory work must transcend the artwork’s format and formal aspects in order to address the complexities of historical and political memory.
The Economic Cancellation of Liberatory Memory Work
As shown in the previous section, long cinematic duration as a form of liberatory memory work is most vividly captured by the format and the form of the film. Beyond these formal elements, these expressions—through their objective formalization as a system of signs—are subject to the dynamics of cultural exchange within a market of commodities and temporalities. Echoing Gould and Harris, liberatory memory work must encompass processes that create spaces for healing and prevent recurrence. This implies that liberatory memory work extends beyond cinematographic techniques alone and involves engaging with the broader society.
Evolution of a Filipino Family embodies a radical art form that challenges conventional notions of time and resists the imposition of metanarratives by demanding deep intellectual engagement from its audience. Similarly, Gould and Harris highlight storytelling as a crucial form of ethical processing: “Storytelling acknowledges the power of narrative – a power to work with pain, to acknowledge harm done, to generate energy for healing, to embrace complexity, to hear the voices.” The film engages in this process by memorializing unrecognized heroes and working through historical traumas by telling stories about Martial Law, contributing to the broader task of processing and understanding the historical wound of Martial Law.
But like all art forms, it is always already secondary to the politics of the masses in which it is deployed. We learn about this from Mao’s Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art. While Evolution of a Filipino Family is triumphant in inscribing liberatory memory work within its formal structures, much work must be done in the field of organizing the politics surrounding the collective memory of Martial Law. At the level of economy, whether Diaz liked it or not, what he envisioned as his own liberatory memory work of the Martial Law era, is subject to economic cancellation, due to the ripple effect of the neoliberal market which controls the very organization of time in society. There is no escape from the controlled organization of free time, especially in semi-feudal, semi-colonial Philippines and Southeast Asia. The film’s 11-hour running time has proven to be the film’s ultimate undoing at the level of economic rationalization, a form that is restrictive to the 24/7 labor-intensive economy of the country.
The digital economy has further disenfranchised Diaz’s film from becoming-liberatory. With the unfolding era of binge-watching, the return of serial form in streaming form i.e. TV Series, and excessive screen time via smart mobile phones, the competition for attention and free time have rendered Diaz’s long durational form to be annexed as a specialized cultural experience, one that can be only seen by those who have the educational means to access the film, including the extent of cultural education, and the financial means to access the film, including the capacity to lessen the labor time to allot for its running time.
In the Philippines, where the class structure is deeply rooted in the alienation of the working class, access to films, especially those addressing politicized topics like Martial Law, is significantly limited. This economic reality affects not only Diaz’s film but also other works with similar political messages that challenge disinformation and historical revisionism. While Diaz’s film is successful in its formal approach to liberatory memory work, it does not alter the country’s economic conditions. As a result, such political messaging and liberatory efforts will likely remain marginalized and overshadowed by the economic priorities of neoliberalism.
The liberatory memory work that Díaz achieves in his film is undermined by neoliberal economic forces. Today, discussions of historical trauma are overshadowed by historically distorted stories and sensationalist narratives, driven largely by neoliberal interests that commodify intrigue for profit. This shift in focus reflects a broader trend where economic motivations prioritize sensationalism over genuine historical understanding.
Liberatory Memory Work Must Be Beyond Cinema
Liberatory memory work in cinema must be extended beyond the duration of the film itself. It must transcend into a broader memory work that combats dominant economic forces. True liberation is achieved by changing the systems of inequality and violence that perpetuate disinformation, historical distortion, and collective amnesia. This process begins with re-amplifying the politics of collective organization, which unites the intergenerational memories of politicized artistic producers and the communities they serve.
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This essay was completed under the ArtsEquator Fellowship.
