For anyone for whom thirteen hours is too long, here is a real Lav Diaz lasting less than an hour. Filled with nostalgia and hopelessness and a worried woman with long legs.

Longer version of a short film originally made for the Jeonju Festival in Korea. The story is set in a remote spot in the Philippines. The economic crisis has taken over and a group of men doesn’t do much apart from drink. Until an enchanting Canadian woman arrives.
PROGRAMMER NOTES

The version that Lav Diaz made for Jeonju (the Korean film Festival that commissioned the work) was 40 minutes long. And this 59 minute version is the director’s cut. For Lav Diaz (the man who counts his films in hours and not in minutes) these 19 minutes strike me as insignificant, but you could also say that it is 50% longer than the official version. That would be more than enough for many film makers to make a special limited DVD edition (which I do not really see Diaz doing).

The film was first presented in the form in Manila during a special event: ‘The Tioseco-Bohinc Film Series Premiere’. This series aims to pursue the activities of the murdered Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc. Fully Booked is what Alexis called his film series about independent cinema and in his case you could know the description was not intended ironically (because he would want to carry on until the seminar was really full). Nothing shocked film makers in the Philippines as the bloody end of these two film lovers. Almost every Filippino film being screened in Rotterdam this year is dedicated to them.