MUBI Announces Exclusive One Year Online Retrospective For Venice Film Festival Top Prize Winner LAV DIAZ

Curated film streaming service MUBI has announced that it will play host to an exclusive one year retrospective of the films of acclaimed Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz starting on Saturday 8th October 2016, entitled IT’S ABOUT TIME.

Lav Diaz, who recently won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival 2016 for his film The Woman Who Left, is renowned for making some of the most epic narrative films on record, sprawling, beautifully shot sagas which explore the political and social conditions of the Philippines with a bold, uncompromising vision.

The retrospective, IT’S ABOUT TIME will be globally presented on the service, showing a new film from the director’s filmography each month chronologically. A series of upcoming special events will also take place to mark the retrospective. The films will be:

EVOLUTION OF A FILIPINO FAMILY (2005)
HEREMIAS (2006)
MELANCHOLIA (2008)
ELEGY TO THE VISITOR FROM THE REVOLUTION (2011)
CENTURY OF BIRTHING (2011)
FLORENTINA HUBALDO, CTE (2012)
AN INVESTIGATION ON THE NIGHT THAT WON'T FORGET (2012)
FROM WHAT IS BEFORE (2014)
STORM CHILDREN (2014)
THE DAY BEFORE THE END (Short, 2016)

In addition, the film NORTE THE END OF HISTORY (2013) will be showing on MUBI UK.

MUBI founder Efe Cakarel has said "We're tremendously excited to host a retrospective dedicated to Lav Diaz’s career featuring films that are nearly impossible to see outside of film festivals. With Lav winning an astounding three festival prizes this year, we feel it is more important than ever to provide access for audiences around the world to these extraordinary films and a unique and utterly vital voice in today's cinema."

Lav Diaz said "MUBI’s forum for cinema is really commendable. I see it as a movement that pushes cinema to greater boundaries. And for a filmmaker like me, that really provides an impetus, an encouragement that’s genuinely needed. I feel that I am part of that greater discourse. Salamat for the Retrospective."

LAV DIAZ was born in 1958 and has been making films since the late 1990s. His 2013 film Norte, the End of History, received acclaim when it was entered into Un Certain Regard section of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. His three subsequent films have also received much critical attention and awards with 2014’s From What Is Before earning him the Golden Leopard at the 2014 Locarno International Film Festival as well as a nomination for the Asian Film Award for Best Director. His film A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery competed for the Golden Bear at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival and won the Alfred Bauer Prize. The Woman Who Left competing at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival and won the Golden Lion. He is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010 and the Prince Claus Award of The Netherlands in 2014.

MUBI is a subscription video on demand service that took film curation to the next level by offering just 30 handpicked gems online. Every day one is added to the list, and one drops off the bottom. The quality of the choices means its members can watch a masterpiece or take a confident chance on a film they may not have heard of.

MUBI is centred around a philosophy of curated quality, rather than excessive choice. It believes everyone should be watching great cinema and not just be searching for it. MUBI is a global service, streaming everyday cult, classic and award winning films to members in over 200 territories.

MUBI recently scored a series of all-rights acquisitions directly from this year’s Berlin and Cannes Film Festivals. These include Berlinale Panorama opener I, Olga Hepnarova, Rachel Lang’s Baden Baden or Eugene Green’s The Son Of Joseph. As well as Bruno Dumont’s Cannes Palme d’Or contender Slack Bay and Un Certain Regard winner and Finnish Oscar entry The Happiest Day In The Life of Olli Mäki, by Juho Kuosmanen.

Having signed deals with Sony Pictures, Paramount Studios and Miramax, MUBI made Arabian Nights its first theatrical acquisition following its presentation at the Cannes Film Festival and in 2015 launched Paul Thomas Anderson’s Junun as part of a global exclusive.

Recent global exclusives include: Albert Serra's Locarno Golden Leopard Winner Story of My Death, the 45 year virtually unseen documentary The American Dreamer by L.M. Kit Carson & Lawrence Schiller or The Exquisite Corpus by Peter Tscherkassky.

The MUBI subscription plans are £5.99 / $5.99 / €5.99 a month, or £47.88 / $47.88 / €47.88 for 12 months and available on the web, iPad, iPhone, Android, PlayStation, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, EE TV, Samsung Smart TVs and other internet-connected devices.

MUBI has offices in London, San Francisco and New York.