Visions/Panawin Film Series: Genus, Pan / Lahi, Hayop

Genus Pan developed from the 40-minute short, Hugaw (Dirt), that Diaz made for the 2018 anthology film Lakbayan (Journeys).  Also contributing to the portmanteau, with its broad theme of Fiipino journeys, were two other internationally acclaimed directors Kidlat Tahimik and Brillante Mendoza.  Diaz’s contribution tells the story of three gold miners on a homeward trek through the island of Hugaw that ends in tragic crime.  As Diaz was shooting the short film on the island of Culion, threads were developing in his mind for a full-length film.  Using the same actors, he went back to Culion to shoot further footage.  The crime story of Hugaw becomes in Genus Pan a vision of the human being in his primal nature as not much better than those of the genus Pan, the sub-family that includes chimpanzees and bonobos.  In its uncompromising depiction of the beast inside the human being, Genus Pan recalls another black-and-white film, from the earliest years of cinema, that depicts man’s basest nature with an unblinking gaze, Erich von Stroheim’s Greed.