Lav Diaz, Revolution and Messianic Time

Krzysztof Loska

krzysztof.loska@uj.edu.pl
Jagiellonian University (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4078-798X

Abstract

Assuming that the revolution is an apocalyptic event, a secular variant of religious messianism (Leszek Kołakowski), the author of the article looks at the image of anti-colonial rebellion in Lav Diaz’s Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery (Hele Sa Hiwagang Hapis, 2016). The starting point is the hypothesis of the links between messianism and radical social movements in subaltern countries (Vittorio Lanternari, Eric J. Hobsbawm) and the concept of history as presented by Reynald C. Ileto, who, in his book Pasyon and Revolution, emphasized the need for considering materials omitted in the official narrative, such as poems, songs, novels, letters, and folk tales because they allow us to gain a better comprehension of political events. The central operational concept in the analysis of Diaz’s film is the category of ‘messianic’ or split time, which breaks linearity and causality by assuming the coexistence of pasts that are not necessarily true (Gilles Deleuze) and making it impossible to distinguish what is real from what is imagined.


Keywords:

revolution, messianic time, colonialism, fabulation, Philippines

Arendt, H. (1991). O rewolucji (tłum. M. Godyń). Kraków: Wydawnictwo X – Dom Wydawniczy Totus.
  Google Scholar

Bergson, H. (2007). Dwa źródła moralności i religii (tłum. P. Kostyło, K. Skorulski). Kraków: Wydawnictwo Homini.
  Google Scholar

Deleuze, G. (2008). Kino 1: Obraz-ruch. 2. Obraz-czas (tłum. J. Margański). Gdańsk: słowo/obraz terytoria.
  Google Scholar

Desroche, H. (1969). Dieux d’hommes: Dictionnaire des messianismes et mïllenarismes de l’ère chrétienne. Paris: Mouton.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111553559   Google Scholar

Finnane, G. (2016). Wayfaring in the Megacity: Tsai Ming-liang’s „Walker” and Lav Diaz’s „Melancholia”. W: K. Benesch, F. Specq (red.), Walking and the Aesthetics of Modernity: Pedestrian Mobility in Literature and the Arts (ss. 115-117). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60364-7_8   Google Scholar

Grosoli, M. (2021). Never, Always and Already Saved: A Soteriological Reading of „Norte” and „Florentina Hubaldo, CTE”. W: P. Patra, M. Kho Lim (red.), Sine ni Lav Diaz: A Long Take on the Filipino Auteur (ss. 51-62). Bristol: Intellect.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv36xvxtc.11   Google Scholar

Guarneri, M. (b. d.). Action! Conversations with Lav Diaz (2010-2020). Bologna: Massimiliano Piretti Editore.
  Google Scholar

Guarneri, M. (2017). Lav Diaz (2017): No Forgiveness Without Justice. Débordements.fr. https://www.debordements.fr/Lav-Diaz-2017
  Google Scholar

Hanson, S. E. (1997). Time and Revolution: Marxism and the Design of Soviet Institutions. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
  Google Scholar

Hobsbawm, E. J. (1971). Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Manchester: University of Manchester Press.
  Google Scholar

Ileto, R. C. (1979). Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
  Google Scholar

Kołakowski, L. (1979). Rewolucja jako piękna choroba. Aneks, (22), ss. 3-15.
  Google Scholar

Lanternari, V. (1962). Messianism: Its Historical Origin and Morphology. History of Religions, 2 (1), ss. 52-72.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/462456   Google Scholar

Lanternari, V. (1963). The Religions of the Oppressed: A Study of Modern Messianic Cults. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
  Google Scholar

Marks, K. (1949). Osiemnasty brumaire’a Ludwika Bonaparte. Warszawa: Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza „Książka”.
  Google Scholar

Perkinson, J., Mendoza, S. L. L. (2004). Indigenous Filipino „Pasyon” Defying Colonial Euro-Reason. Journal of Third World Studies, 21 (1), ss. 117-137.
  Google Scholar

Ratcliff, L. K. (1949). Filipino Folklore. The Journal of American Folklore, 62 (245), ss. 259-289.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/537202   Google Scholar

Rizal, J. (2007). El Filibusterismo: Subversion (tłum. S. Lacson-Locsin). Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
  Google Scholar

Rodowick, D. N. (1997). Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine. Durham: Duke University Press.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822396871   Google Scholar

Struzik, A. (2013). Trickster – definicje, stan badań, rekonesans. Roczniki Humanistyczne, 61 (4), ss. 241-251.
  Google Scholar

Walicki, A. (1971). Millenaryzm i mesjanizm religijny a romantyczny mesjanizm polski. Zarys problematyki. Pamiętnik Literacki, 62 (4), ss. 23-46.
  Google Scholar

Weber, M. (2002). Gospodarka i społeczeństwo: zarys socjologii rozumiejącej (tłum. D. Lachowska). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
  Google Scholar


Published
2023-09-27

Cited by

Loska, K. (2023) “Lav Diaz, Revolution and Messianic Time ”, Kwartalnik Filmowy, (123), pp. 6–24. doi: 10.36744/kf.1662.

Authors

Krzysztof Loska 
krzysztof.loska@uj.edu.pl
Jagiellonian University Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4078-798X

Professor of Humanities in the Institute of Audiovisual Arts, Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He is the vice-president of the Polish Society for Film and Media Studies and member of Editorial Advisory Board of the bi-monthly Ekrany. He has authored 150 papers and dissertations on media, popular culture, film history and Japanese cinema, published in various journals (Kwartalnik Filmowy, Studia Filmoznawcze, Przegląd Kulturoznawczy, Ekrany, Kultura Współczesna, Ethos) and edited volumes. He has published twelve books (in Polish), e.g. Dziedzictwo McLuhana – między nowoczesnością a ponowoczesnością [McLuhan’s Legacy: Between Modernity and Postmodernity] (2001), Poetyka filmu japońskiego [Poetics of Japanese Cinema] (2009), Kenji Mizoguchi i wyobraźnia melodramatyczna [Kenji Mizoguchi and the Melodramatic Imagination] (2012), Nowy film japoński [New Japanese Cinema] (2013), Mistrzowie kina japońskiego [Masters of Japanese Film] (2015) and Postkolonialna Europa. Etnoobrazy współczesnego kina [Postcolonial Europe: Ethnoscapes of Contemporary Cinema] (2016), W cieniu Imperium Wschodzącego Słońca. Japoński projekt kolonialny i kultura filmowa w Azji Wschodniej [In the Shadow of the Empire of the Rising Sun: Japanese Colonial Project and Film Culture in East Asia] (2022).



Statistics

Abstract views: 193
PDF downloads: 154


License

Copyright (c) 2023 Krzysztof Loska

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The author grants the publisher a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY 4.0) to use the article in Kwartalnik Filmowy, retains full copyright, and agrees to identify the work as first having been published in Kwartalnik Filmowy should it be published or used again (download licence agreement). The journal is published under the CC BY 4.0 licence. By submitting an article, the author agrees to make it available under this licence.

In issues from 105-106 (2019) to 119 (2022) all articles were published under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. During this period the authors granted a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in „Kwartalnik Filmowy”, retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.


Most read articles by the same author(s)

1 2 3 > >>