The Athens Avant Garde Film Festival, the favoured annual event, of the Greek Film Archive, returns, online and for free, for the first time, given the unprecedented conditions arising from the pandemic.
The 11th AAGFF ONLINE EDITION will be held on 16-26 October 2020 through Festival Scope, at online.tainiothiki.gr, aspiring to highlight, contemporary cinema’s freshest and most groundbreaking creative voices.
You can find everything concerning our event on our website, www.tainiothiki.gr
Today, the artistic director of the Festival Maria Komninos, will give you a first taste of this years, exceptionally rich programme, which you will have the opportunity to watch from the safety of your home.
The 11th AAGFF will present in its first national, Greek premiere the new film by Lav Diaz Genus Pan (Lahi, Hayop). The film won the director’s award in the “Orrizzonti (Horizons)” section at the Venice Film Festival. The great creator, from the Philippines, will participate in this years International Competition section, of the Film Archive Festival’s, 11th edition, which will include nine films, by directors experimenting in new forms of narrative storytelling.
Genus Pan (fiction, 157’, 2020, Philippines), is filmed in black and white and the Tagalog language. Protagonists of the film are three illegal coalminers, who are travelling back to their native island, after months of hard-toil and labour, under harsh conditions. With the money they earned with their ceaseless and persistent working, they cross the sea, mountains and forest, until they reach their desired destination. The questions remains, though, did they really reach their accursed island after all?
Starring: Bart Guingona, Don Melvin Boongaling, Nanding Josef, Hazel Orencio, Joel Saracho, Noel Sto. Domingo.
The 62 year old Lav Diaz (Philippines, 1958), director, screenwriter, producer, editor, director of photography, composer, actor and poet, received international acclaim, through his trilogy on the Philippines: “West Side Kid” (2001), “Evolution Of A Filipino Family” (2004) and “Heremias” (2006). With independent means of production, the films of Diaz—usually of a very long duration—reflect the lives of the Filipinos, and suggest that salvation is reachable—through social struggles. Lav Diaz is an iconic figure in world cinema. His films have won the most important awards, in the worlds largest festivals. Indicatively, in 2008 alone, “Melancholia”, of duration 8 hours, won the Horizons award at Venice, whilst in 2014, his film “From What is Before”, received the Golden Leopard at Locarno. In 2016, alone, the film-director won the Alfred Bauer Award at the Berlinale, with the 8-hour film “A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery”, and the Golden Lion in Venice with “A Woman who Left”.
The Athens Avant Garde Film Festival presented the Greek premieres of the nearly 6-hour film “From What Is Before” in 2014 and the 4-hour film “Season of the Devil”, in 2018.
It is worth mentioning, that his new work, Genus Pan, which we will see at the 11th Athens Avant Garde Film Festival, has a duration of 2,5 hours.
We remind you that the common name of “(Genus) Pan” is “Chimpanzee”. As Lav Diaz, himself reflected, on occasion of the screening of his film at La Biennale di Venezia: “It has always been my desire to make a film about animals; but, man as animals, man honestly acting like one, an animal, as he as been acting like an animal all his life anyway… Despite us being the better developed species, most of us still retain the demeanour and comportment of the chimpanzee”.
Although Diaz’s films are based on socio-political conditions and the extreme social stratification of his homeland, they ultimately transcend them—and the result is a deeply ecumenical cinema, which speaks to the mind and heart, and has justly ranked him as one of the greatest creators of our time.
The 11th Athens Avant Garde Film Festival is carried out in the context of “Cinephilia in the New Age II” which is funded by the European Union — European Regional Development Fund (Operational Programme ROP ATTIKI of NSRF 2014-2020). All actions are carried out under the auspices of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports.
