Towards the Open Image: A Dialectical Materialist Critique of the Long Cinematic Duration in the Cinema of Lav Diaz
Abstract
Mendizabal, A. D. (2023). Towards the Open Image: A Dialectical Materialist Critique of the Long Cinematic Duration in the Cinema of Lav Diaz, Unpublished Master’s Thesis, University of the Philippines Diliman.
This study launched a dialectical materialist critique of the long cinematic duration of Lav Diaz’s cinema. His films after Batang West Side (2001) took on the long durational style with running lengths ranging from four (4) hours to eleven (11) hours each film. In the existing literature, no study had thoroughly engaged with Diaz’s long cinematic duration, one that could relate the smallest element of his cinema i.e., his shot length to the biggest organizational structure of time existing today i.e. neoliberalism. This study used the dialectical materialist framework developed by Marx, Lenin, and Mao to comprehensively analyze and unpack the internal contradictions of long cinematic duration in three levels: consciousness, self-consciousness, and reason. The first level, consciousness, engaged with the form and style of long cinematic duration. The second level, self-consciousness, overcoming the aesthetic limit of the first level, problematized the critical reception and the politics of contending recognitions of long cinematic duration. The third level elevated the inquiry to economic reason, by rationalizing long cinematic duration within the general economic sphere. In conclusion, the study presented the open image as a sublated and revolutionary reformulation of long cinematic duration constituting a guide to action and future practices in cinema.