Norte is the historical epic of our time
Read Cinema of Consequence by Andrew Maerkle at ART-iT.
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Mention “historical epic” and the mind’s eye conjures up actors in period costume, putting on quaint manners, and wielding antique weapons. Add “Filipino” to “historical epic” and we imagine fair-skinned people with tall noses wearing ruffled shirts, overacting, and making threats in stilted Spanish to people who look like us.
Lav Diaz’s Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan, which landed in the British Film Institute/Sight and Sound (the people who put out the list of the greatest films in history) list of the top ten films in the world in 2013, is not a work we would immediately describe as a historical epic. And yet Norte engages with Philippine history in a way few films ever have. It is set in present-day Ilocos Norte, peopled with characters so familiar to us that they might be living next door, and animated with situations many of us have grappled with. How is that “historical”?
Read our column at InterAksyon.com.
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The Tuesday night screenings of Norte at Ayala Cinemas have been packed. Wonders never cease. So that’s the way to sell a four-hour artfilm: Show it just once a week at a popular venue. (You can still get tickets for the March 31 screening at Glorietta 4, but book them Now.) Weekends would be nice, but cinemas are booked solid on Saturday and Sunday nights. At this point a regular theatrical run would not be sustainable (See the box-office history of independent movies), but we are developing a mass audience for indie cinema. Soon. Next: a Cinematheque.
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