Batang West Side

Colour, 35mm
Philippines, 2001, 300 min
Section: Another View

Synopsis

Hanzel Harana, who had recently moved to the United States from the Philippines, is found dead on a New Jersey sidewalk. The case is taken up by detective Juan Mijarez, a Philippino himself, who attempts to infiltrate the local immigrant community to find out what really happened. He has several suspects, involved in drug-trafficking and gang warfare, and he also encounters a tense relationship between a son and a mother who tried to free herself from the clutches of prejudice and her large family by starting a new life in America. Each of them hides a secret, each has his own worries, each is playing out his own drama. All these epic stories come together and go their separate ways once more, spreading out to become a multi-stratified testimony of the Philippine diaspora in America, the Philippine soul and way of thinking…

About the director

Lav Diaz is a screenwriter and director with several films behind him, including Kriminal ng Baryo Conception (1998), Burger Boys (1998) and Hubad sa ilalim ng buwan (1999). Of his film Batang West Side, the longest film in the history of Philippine cinema (lasting 300 mins.), the director states: “In Hollywood culture, entertainment and profit have the greatest weight. Entertainment for the audiences, profit for the producers, directors, actors and cinema owners. The film itself isn’t so important. The situation in the Philippines is similar and we accepted the length of American films as some kind of yardstick. But we need our national cinema industry to finally get itself moving, films which reflect Philippine emotion, culture, rhetoric and aesthetics. This is the vision which inspired my film”. This yeard Batang West Side won the prestigious Gaward Urian, the Philippine criticś prize.