Country: Yugoslavia
Year: 2002
Duration: 315ââ
A Filipino teenager is shot to death on the sidewalk of New Jersey. Along the way, we find out not only more about him but about the community of Filipinos in America in general.
"Batang West Side sounds like a cruel joke: it's a 5 hours murder mystery which ends before you find out the killer. But the murder plot it's just the excuse for an extended investigation into the Filipino diaspora of the American East Coast. I didnt't want to cut a single part of it because if you take out one frame from the film, it's gone. I studied the film, watched it so many times before I decided on the five hours. The producers wanted to kill me. Batang West Side is an aesthetic stand. It is an examination of our past, our future, a collective canvass of what we are as a people, as a nation. We have to question things like 'Why are there 400,000 Filipinos in Italy working, man? Why are there 4 millions Filipinos in America working their butts off, man?' We have to examine these things so that we can understand what's happening to our nation." (L. Diaz)
Biography
film director
Lav Diaz
(Cotabato, Philippines, 1958) studied at the Mowelfund Film Institute in Quezon City and debuted in 1997 with The Criminal of Barrio Concepcion, making a name for himself as one of the most innovative directors of Filipino cinema. Lasting legitimation arrived with Batang West Side (2002), which received awards at Brussels and Singapore, and with Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004), presented at Rotterdam and Turin, as also the documentary Storm Children (2014) and his masterpieces A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery (2016). His films have been presented in Cannes (Norte - The End of History, 2013), Locarno (From What Is Before, 2014, Golden Leopard), Berlin (A Lullaby for the Sorrowful Mystery, 2016, Alfred Bauer Award) and Venice (The Woman Who Left, 2016, Golden Lion).
FILMOGRAFIA
Serafin Geronimo, kriminal ng baryo concepcion (The Criminal of Barrio Concepcion, 1998), Burger Boys (1999), Batang West Side (2002), Hesus rebolusyonaryo (Hesus the Revolutionary, 2002), Ebolusyon ng isang pamilayang Pilipino (Evolution of a Filipino Family, 2004), Heremias: Unang aklat - Ang alamat ng prinsesang bayawak (2005), Melancholia (2008), Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012), Norte, hangganan ng kasaysayan (Norte - The End of History, 2013), Mula sa kung ano ang noon (From What Is Before, 2014),Hele sa hiwagang hapis (A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery, 2016), Ang babayeng humayo (The Woman Who Left, 2016), Ang panahon ng halimaw (Season of the Devil, 2018), Ang hupa (The Halt, 2019), Lahi, hayop (Genus Pan, 2020), Historya ni Ha (History of Ha, 2021), Isang salaysay ng karahasang Pilipino (A Tale of Filipino Violence, 2022), Kapag wala nang mga alon (When the Waves Are Gone, 2022), Essential Truths of the Lake (2023).