The history of the cinema of the Philippines is marred by neglect, foremost by the country’s own institutions – lost films, prints left to degrade. LWLies recently managed to catch a bootleg copy of Lino Brocka’s influential Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag, the quality of which left a lot to be desired.
Even in this age of admirable cultural excavation and reissuing, there is surely an oversight with regard to the films of the Philippines; as a result, the knowledge of these films outside of their country of production is lacking. Almost as if to counter this, an energetic group of filmmakers based in the Philippines, using predominantly digital equipment, have been creating diverse, powerful and personal films at a dizzying rate, in recent years.
Brocka’s film is perhaps the most referenced among the contemporary filmmakers who are interviewed in the key text of contemporary filmmaking in the Philippines, ‘Philippine New Wave’. Shortly after reading this book, we watched 2008′s Maynila sa Mga Pangil ng Dilim.
This is just one of a slew of films (feature films and shorts) made in the past decade by Khavn De La Cruz – also an award-winning poet, musician and the editor of the aforementioned book. Khavn has racked up a breathtaking amount of work, both self-funded – sometimes shot in a single day – and produced with the help of festival prizes and grants and is the director of the first digital film festival in the Philippines, the .MOV festival.
The past repeats itself in Manila in the Fangs of Darkness. Bembol Roco takes the lead role in each and within Khavn’s film there are references to and even clips from Brocka’s film. As a result the film can be looked at not only as Khavn’s vibrant vision of one man confronting Manila’s urban threats and tensions (again), but also as a comment upon how Philippine filmmaking has suffered, and the attempt to recover it. The films seen together seem like a good place to start with Khavn’s work and Philippine cinema as a whole. (For an authoritative rundown of 100 key films of the Philippines, see Noel Vera’s list at his website Critic After Dark).
Khavn is not alone among Filipino filmmakers in actively involving himself in many creative mediums and of drawing upon their country’s history, its sociopolitical travails and its cultural mix. The same is true of other incontestable talents such as Lav Diaz, Raya Martin and John Torres. Khavn has described his own Kommander Kulas in a way that neatly encapsulates this multidisciplinary interest: “influenced by paintings of Jose Legaspi, it’s an experimental take on the Don Quixote story with Sgt Pepper in the lead.”
Khavn’s prolific output gives us a more detailed view of the director’s developing formal and thematic interests – there is a noticeable overlap between several consecutive films. For instance, watching The Family That Eats Soil, there is a beguiling scene towards the end, lasting several minutes, comprising extreme close-ups of digital blur and glare, that refers back to Corazon (2004). This relaying of images across Khavn’s films is reflective of the way in which he integrates filmmaking, and all of his other art practices, into his daily life; in a continual exploration, forging distinct images; not forgetting a recurring playfulness and prankster glee.
Khavn was recently awarded support for a new film from the Hubert Bals fund, as part of the Rotterdam International Film Festival, which previously assisted with The Family That Eats Soil, and the musical Mondomanila premiered at this year’s festival.
Newcomers to Khavn’s work will quickly grow accustomed to his unusual crediting: ‘This is not a film by Khavn’. This is obviously a reference to Magritte’s ‘The Treachery of Images’. An avowed fan of the surreal, Khavn has noted in particular his fondness for the films of Roy Andersson. This declaration of non-authorship signals the intuitive creative process Khavn follows.
Viewed another way, it could be seen as an excuse to avoid questions regarding the content of the films, which is often explicit and taboo-shattering, in form and content. Khavn is demonstrably unconcerned about packing punches and their social realism is as politically charged as their sensationalism is crude and likely to offend many viewers.
Khavn’s films are neither adopting mainstream filmmaking tactics, nor the cultural baggage of ‘experimental’, or ‘arthouse’, film gestures. 2007′s Squatterpunk is in one respect simply a long music video, liable to challenge hardcore punk fans and those well-versed in cinéma vérité. As with a number of Khavn’s films it is intended to be part of a live music happening. The Family That Eats Soil is a multimedia onslaught, one that is equally hilarious and tough to watch. The film tears apart the normative familial ritual of mealtime as the symbol of stability, as well as the tropes of filmmaking.
At every opportunity, the film adopts a new tactic, whether claymation, animation, hijacked subtitling, near-pornography, or speeding up the film, as if riffing off the onslaught of images fed to us via the internet and television, while mocking their banality. There seems to be a nod to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in there too, with the grandpa at the head of the table, seemingly immobile. The energy is palpable and the poetic vehemence at the forefront – a fierce social awareness and artistic revelry.
In the book ‘Philippine New Wave’ Khavn expresses his uncertainty about the interest in filmmaking in the Philippines continuing for much longer. Access to his work is crucial, particularly outside of film festivals, and many of Khavn’s films are available on DVD from khavndelacruz.org, while several are available to stream at asiapacificfilms.tv
Wide Angle – Khavn De La Cruz (text) by Yusef Sayed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
