Death in the Land of Encantos

Shooting this film started as a spontaneous reaction by the film maker to the incredible natural disaster caused by the hurricane Durian in December 2006 in the Philippines. The Bicol area was especially hard hit. It is an area that Lav Diaz knew well, he shot his film Heremias there. The impulsive origins of the film explain why Diaz works differently from his previous projects. In Death in the Land of Encantos, there is plenty of space for documentary shots of the devastated landscape and the fictional parts are more improvised than usual.
The film has three fictional characters. The poet Benjamin Agustan (Roeder Camanag) has just returned to the Philippines after a long stay in Russia. Just like his friends, a female artist (Angeli Bayani) and a poet who has become a farmer (Perry Dizon), he has lost loved ones. For this reason, the three stay together. They hang around in the village of Padang, compared by Diaz with Pompeii. Whole villages in the vicinity disappeared under landslides.
Diaz has meanwhile made other films that are at least a working day long. He has developed his very own way of working to this, that is actually more a way of life. His cutting room looks a lot like a bed-sitting room. His narrative style demands the invention of his own visual style, in which the concept of cinematographic time enters into a new relationship with real time. (GjZ)