Walang alaala ang mga paru-paro / Butterflies Have No Memories

Butterflies Have No Memories was originally commissioned as a 60-minute contribution to the renowned episodic film series at the Jeonju Festival in Korea. Lav Diaz edited a longer version at the same time as an independent work: a hypnotic one-hour film that bundles together the concerns that the filmmaker usually expands upon in epic works lasting many hours. Surprisingly, he succeeds in this condensation without the result losing any of its novelistic density: Diaz packs the traumas of his nation into the narrative about a conflict that is characterized by exile, class struggle and revenge - motif layers that the Filipino cinema superfather Lino Brocka also varied again and again. After the closure of the local mine, the unemployed inhabitants have sunk into alcoholism and depression. When the daughter of a mine owner returns home from Canada, an act of desperation looms. A critical portrait of society as a mythologically charged film poem. (Christoph Huber)

Photo: Austrian Film Museum