The Philippines is visited by an average of 20~28 strong typhoons and storms every year. It is the most storm-battered country in the world. Last year, Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan), considered the strongest storm in history, struck the Philipines, leaving in its path apocalyptic devastation.
Storm Children, Book One, Storm Children: Book One, 风暴中的孩子
South Korea
Philippines
Philippines
South Korea
Storm Children is a cinematic documentation that needs to be seen. It proves that Diaz is a filmmaker who takes his responsibility as an artist serious and who proves that he is concerned about his people.
It is a two-hour-and-23-minute documentary following the everyday lives of some Visayan kids in the aftermath of one of the strongest typhoons ever recorded in the history of meteorology.
It’s a mesmerising, beautiful film that wordlessly transmits its vision while also playing with Diaz’s continual fascination with time and duration.
Most of Storm Children – Book One has no dialogue. For almost two hours, the black and white cinematography does all the speaking; the abstract minimalism and ponderous stasis of Diaz’s camerawork, coupled with…
It was hard to tell if Lav Diaz was playing with fiction or reality, as things felt too real to be reality in a sense. We are given a look at the despair suffered by children whose sole purpose is to find meaning on the wreckage.
Another try with Lav Diaz.
His first movie I like!
This documentary shows very well how people deal very pragmatic with the aftermath of a Taifun. They just go on with their lives.
The recordings are impressing in their simplicity. The atmosphere is really special.
The sound fit to my experiences from the Philippines: The neverending traffic noise in Manila. Nerve wrecking! Then, outside the city the neverending crowing of the roosters.
The most fascinating scenes are the ones with the big stranded ships and around the huts of the people doing their daily chores.
All in all, the sight of the children looking for something usefull in the garbage aren´t so much different from the recordings of the Slum-children of "Khavn"s "Squatterpunk" who normally live on mountains of garbage. I would recommend both movies in a double feature.
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As monumentally, bombastically moving as any of Diaz's masterpieces... his compositions find humans within spaces built by but not for us, the places we don't usually have the patience to go, the places that people often are, quite plainly, too scared to go. The camera finds children here because the storm still hasn't washed away their pasts yet, and so their presents are locales to be lived in. The best sea-based landscape film since Peter Hutton's Time & Tide.
Heartbreaking but also mesmerising. An unforgettable account of a great devastation and also a portrait of how in spite of everything, life just goes on. Diaz through kids captures a sublime picture of human resiliency with kids being kids and going on with their daily lives in the wake of a massive natural disaster. Mostly wordless, Diaz just lets the images do all the heavy lifting and the photography is stunning — also Diaz's patience fits perfectly for something like this and he manages to capture some pure moments. Though not my favorite of his works, this documentary is still beautiful and also quite powerful.
just when you think you know what to expect from a lav diaz film, a bunch of children start singing 'let it go' from the frozen soundtrack.
what a time to be alive
March Around The World 2022
Country: Philippines (27/30)
In the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, Lav Diaz shot in and around Tacloban City. One would think that this started as an attempt to document the damage, and there is plenty of that. But what he best managed to capture was a spirit of resiliency and, above all, adaptability.
I believe this was the worst storm in recorded history. The initial 40-ish minutes are inside the city, as children fish for anything usable out of the running water and storm drains. As the water levels subsides, cars can drive down the streets, but you can see the damage and rubble everywhere. People are trying their best to clean up little by little,…
This is probably the closest to Wang Bings style I've ever seen Diaz come. Despite that however the film possesses a rank sense of repetition and a glaring sense of incompletion. Diaz can compose shots like nobodies business, but here it never becomes clear to what end. He has a lot of pieces but is unable to bring everything to a fruitful culmination.
On a side note I've now got my first drinking game for a Lav Diaz film.
Anytime a boat comes on screen or Diaz inexplicably switches to handheld cinematography, take a drink.
5/30: Philippines (High Score: 16th)
Among Lav Diaz's quietest despite being remarkably shorter than his best-known work. "Screensaver" cinema in structure, closer maybe to landscape-oriented experimental filmmakers (Benning, Hutton, etc.) with the soft morbidity and adaptability Diaz's characters usually have with their environment. To the extent that the scenes are "staged" or planned is a strange question to consider; Diaz's documentary filmmaking is about as loose and minimal as some of his scripted digressions. This use of genre just keeps him in this unique state of restraint that allows an elegant yet harrowing vision in the shaping of worlds, one that he provides in a concise way despite his inherent patience and whispered purpose.
