9:15–9:30
Corinne Maury, Marcos Uzal, Olivier Zuchuat 
Introduction

Session 3
The Extreme Violence of History
Moderator: Bertrand Bacqué (Associate professor, HEAD – Genève) 

9:00 – 9:45
Jennifer Verraes (Associate professor, University of Paris 8, France)
Starting (over): The Historical Dramaturgy of Lav Diaz 
In Lav Diaz’s latest film, the Halt (2019), the sun does not rise anymore. Situated in 2034, this is Lav Diaz’s second sci-fi film after Hesus rebolusyonaryo (2002). Norte, the End of History (2013) already picked up on issues mentioned in his first film The Criminal of Barrio Concepcion (1998), borrowed from Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, as was his second one. The character of Lerma, a young sleepwalking woman in Naked Under the Moon (1999) returns in the guise of the eponymous Florentina Hubaldo (2012). Although the similarities between the films of Lav Diaz’s formative years in the Filipino film industry and his latest works are real, the repetition is nothing but illusion. For good reason too, it is his inhibited nature that is at work. The aim here is to consider the way in which the filmmaker’s first period directly bears witness to this specific form of historical dramaturgy that is the act of starting (over). 

9:45 – 10:30
Sylvie Rollet (Emeritus Professor, University of Poitiers, France) 
The temporal texture of history according to Lav Diaz
A priority runs through Lav Diaz’s work: unveiling the (officially organis-ed) amnesia that enshrouds the trauma of the Philippines’ collective history, because its repression favoured and still favours its repetition. Transmitting this “history-memory” (Lagny) implies giving it a form, i.e. turning the complexity of its temporal texture into something sensitive. This is why Lav Diaz’s cinema offers us an experience first and foremost: namely the rhythmical conflicts that rip apart historical time. Each of his films (both in terms of story and shot) thus provides a unique combination where determinist law (which underpins the before and after) clashes with the principle of uncertainty that regulates the appearance of the past in the present as well as the sudden emergence of novelty. Three figures emerge—consequence, the revenant and openness—which outline an extremely original vision of history.

10:30 – 11:00   Coffee break 

11:00 – 11:45
Gabriel Bortzmeyer (Researcher, University of Paris 8, France) 
Lav Diaz, an opportunity for the people? 
At least two figures run through the work of Lav Diaz and both refer to disaster in inverted yet complementary accounts. They are, the academic who talks about destruction and the destitute person who suffers destruction. Next to them lie a few ghosts: colonists who haunt the spoken language, and an often-evoked yet always absent State (except for the violence). Their cohabitation outlines both the desire of the people and obstacles to that desire, through the unfinished state of the national unconscious and the scattering of people lost in the ruins. Lav Diaz might be seen as someone that both keeps away and maintains this horizon, turning people into raw possibilities.

11:45 – 12:30 
Olivier Zuchuat (Filmmaker, Associate professor, HEAD – Genève, Switzerland & University of Paris 8)
Laying ou the shot
What does time do to space? In Lav Diaz’s films, the duration of both the shots and the film lays out spaces, reveals them and often pits them against each other. “We Filipinos are not governed by the concept of time. We are governed by the concept of space. We don’t believe in time. If we were governed by time, we would be very progressive and productive.” An excerpt from an interview with Lav Diaz from 2012, the observation serves as a basis for this reflection. By studying the spatial structure of the lengthy shots as well as the power of the editing, by addressing the multiple ways characters inhabit the shots (who walk, talk, or assault), we seek to analyse the continuous pressure of time, taking the notion of slow cinema backwards. That pressure digs within the spaces, works to release the forces of differentiation and conflict between places, and helps to address—like archaeologists—buried memories in the landscape. 

Session 4
What men can do to other men 
Moderator: Fabienne Costa (Professor, Univerity of Grenoble, France) 

14:30 – 15:15
Corinne Maury (Associate professor, University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France) 
The trial of cruelty. A protest against denial. 
In Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012) and The Woman who Left (2016), cruelty is relentless and unending. It seeps through the entire story, taking the form of the unspeakable and at times, of the unbearable. In these two tragic frescoes, the female body is a form of alterity subjected to the influence of human, patriarchal, and political tyranny. The radical confrontation of the cinematic shots, their fixedness and  constantly renewed duration turn these exhibitions of violence and cruelty into a protest against the negation of human beings, a manifest outcry against the denial of mankind’s inhumanity.

15:15 – 16:00
Jean-Christophe Ferrari (Film critic, Paris, France) 
The care of the world 
Lav Diaz’s films are rife with nurses and healers as well as sick and wounded people, whether their pain is physical or mental. Sequences where one human being takes care of another are long and moving. Hence, his cinema (like that of Apitchapong Weerasethakul) emphasises the representation of caring, since the act of caring is not reduced to a medical action but also involves an ethical relationship with the other and with the world. Caring does not only mean tending to wounds. Caring can also mean listening, singing, recounting in order to sooth the nightmares and torments of others as well as of a land that is so often hit by natural and political disasters. Lav Diaz’s representation of caring is thus not only a local fact, it informs his cinematic aesthetics. Two questions will guide our lecture: 1) How does one stage the ethics of caring? 2) Can one still take care of the world at a time and in a country where our connection with the world is falling apart (politically, ecologically, etc.)?

16:00 – 16:30   Coffee break

16:30 – 18:00
Final discussion

Lav Diaz (Filmmaker, Editor & Producer) and Hazel Orencio (Actress and Assistant Director, Philippines)
Moderators: Corinne Maury, Marcos Uzal and Olivier Zuchuat