We started with Beatriz the wife.
That was my initial foray into the project eight years ago.
When you do research on the life of Magellan, theres only three lines about the wife.
Lav Diaz gives Qumra MasterclassJohn Phillips, Getty Images for Doha Film Institute
You see how they marginalized women were during that era.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, women dont exist.
Everything is male and macho, said Diaz.
We have to rewrite history on Magellan.
I got very sick after the shoot.
I didnt know that I was sick already but I had pneumonia which eventually became tuberculosis.
I was vomiting blood.
I thought Im going to die.
It became a personal journey as well to understanding immortality, he revealed.
I grew up in poverty.
I didnt see electricity in our place until college.
The place I called paradise became a nightmare.
The biggest influence on me was Lino Brocka.
It was the first socially conscious Filipino cinema that I saw.
It changed my whole system, my whole perspective…
It really changed my whole life.
I was shaped by what happened in my youth so its always like that.
You cannot escape the past… My parents, theyre socialists, they struggled, they saw things differently.
It was all about progressive thinking, trying to help people.
I couldnt escape that kind of attribute, aesthetic that my parents showed me.
We have to pause a bit and start thinking whats happening to America?
Whats happening to Israel?
Whats happening to Russia?
These populist leaders that we have, Trump, Duterte in the Philippines, theyre all over the world.
So we cannot fight them.
If we fast track everything, we can never never win.
