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In the interview with Screen Anarchy, Khavn de la Cruz—a boundary-pushing Filipino filmmaker known for his avant-garde approach—opens up about his latest cinematic venture, Makamisa: Phantasm of Revenge. Screened at the Lausanne Underground Film Festival, whre the film won the prize for the Best Feature Film (read the news), the film offers a unique, surrealist interpretation of Makamisa, an unfinished novel by the Filipino national hero José Rizal. Melding surrealist cinema with historical roots, Khavn describes the film as a provocative blend of early 20th-century cinematic techniques and experimental storytelling that challenges conventional genre boundaries. Throughout the conversation, Khavn reveals his creative journey from the film’s inception in the '90s to its rebirth decades later, inspired by both historical events and his own artistic evolution....

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Khavn De La Cruz, is a prolific Filipino filmmaker, writer, pianist, songwriter and composer. Since 1994 he has directed over 300 films including Squatterpunk (2006), Manila in the Fangs of Darkness (2008) and has collaborated with Alexander Kluge on films such as Orphea (2020) and Happy Lamento (2018), making him one of the most productive filmmakers in the Philippines and beyond. From 2002 to 2011, he was the festival director and programmer for Mov International Film, Music and Literature Festival. He has been a jury member at multiple festivals including the Berlinale and Leipzig Film Festival.

He has exhibited at the MoMA, Maxxi, Guggenheim Museum, Tate Modern, Museo Reina Sofia, National Museum of Singapore, and Venice Architecture Biennale; lectured at the Berlinale Talent Campus, Bela Tarr's Film Factory, Goethe Institute, the Danish Film Institute, and his alma mater, the Ateneo; and curated programmes for the Viennale, the Edinburgh International Film Festival and the Sharjah Biennial. Selected retrospectives of...

Beim französischen Filmfestival FIDMarseille, das am 25. Juni seine 35. Ausgabe startet, feiern auch zwei deutsche Koproduktionen Weltpremiere. Aus Österreich ist die Panama-Film-Produktion „Bluish“ von Lilith Kraxner und Milena Czernovsky dabei.

„Bluish” (Credit: FIDMarseille/Panama Film)

Im Internationalen Wettbewerb des Filmfestivals FIDMarseille feierte der österreichische Beitrag „Bluish“ von Lilith Kraxner und Milena Czernovsky Weltpremiere. Produziert wurde der Film von Lixi Frank und David Bohun (Panama Film), die bereits Sandra Wollners „The Trouble With Being Born“ und Timm Krögers „Die Theorie von Allem“ mitproduzierten. In „Bluish“ stehen Errol und Sasha im Mittelpunkt, zwei etwas orientierungslose Figuren in ihren Zwanzigern, treiben ziellos durch die trüben Wintertage einer Stadt. Während sie einen sanften Blick auf Fragmente ihres Alltagslebens werfen, beginnen sich Menschen, Geschichten, Orte und Realitäten zu überlagern und zu verflechten. „Bluish“ beschreibt laut Produktionsfirma einen fragilen Seinszustand, einen Zustand oder vielmehr eine Atmosphäre der Mehrdeutigkeit und Sehnsucht.

Ebenfalls aus Österreich eingeladen wurde Constanze Ruhms...

Films by Pierre Creton, Ghassan Salhab and Mariano Llinás are among the line-up of the FIDMarseille international film festival in France (June 25-30).

The international competition features 13 world premieres and one international premiere, including Night Is Day from Lebanese filmmaker Salhab which chronicles the uprising in Lebanon.

French filmmaker Creton, who won the Sacd prize for best French-language feature at last year’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, co-directs with Vincent Barré on 7 Walks With Mark Brown, described as an essay on attention and friendship.

Also in competition is Kunst De Farbe from Argentina, 1985 screenwriter Llinás exploring themes of music, painting and cinema.

A journey through the iconic and enchanting musical compositions that have graced the silver screens of Asia. From the lively streets of Bollywood to the poetic landscapes of Japanese cinema, from the poignant stories of South Korean movies to the tales of Hong Kong and Chinese films, and with a pinch from the Philippines and Thailand here 35 great songs found in Asian movies.

1. Remioromen by Konayuki 2. A Petal by Woong San 3. Chavoret's Theme by Joe Cummings & Scott Hess 4. Ruined Heart by Khavn, featuring Bing Austria & The Flippin' Soul Stompers 5. Chitchana Toki Kara by Maki Asakawa 6. これさえあれば by Tjiros 7. Nounai Shoukyo Game by Brats 8. Romanticist by The Stalin 9. High Upon High by Jackie Chan 10. Jason Bill by Texaco Leatherman The article continues on the next page...

The Asian representation in Vienna Shorts this year was quite restricted with just 8 movies in the program. However, among those, there are definitely a couple of gems, while the diversity is impressive, since experimental, animation, comedy, horror, drama are just some of the elements that appear in the film. Without further ado, here is a list of all the Asian entries, in random order.

Click on the titles for the full articles. The roundup will be updated.

Hito (2023) by Stephen Lopez

Stephen Lopez can easily be described as one of Khavn's “students”, since his chaotic style of filmmaking with the many, absurd vignettes, the constant mocking of a number of concepts including the title and his filmmaking itself, the music video aesthetics and the sociopolitical commentary are all elements found in Khavn's cinema. At the same time though, Lopez is somewhat more grounded in terms of his script,...

Stephen Lopez was born in Quezon City in 1991, he graduated from the University of Santo Tomas in 2012 with a BA in nursing before deciding to take up a career in filmmaking. Since then, he has lived and worked in Manila as a freelance production sound recordist (his credits include Khavn's “Balangiga: Howling Wilderness”), sound designer and screenwriter for films and commercials. “Hito” was the only Filipino entry at this year's Berlinale, where it had its world premiere, and now finds its way to Vienna Shorts.

“Hito” is screening at Vienna Shorts

The film begins with two schoolgirls fighting in the dirt, in the foreground of a setting that is dominated by the presence of nuclear factories in the background. It turns out the fight is over a Walkman, with the winner being Jani, although she finds herself beaten and with a broken apparition in her hands. Another fight, this time with her mother,...

Probably the only country whose cinema can rival the Japanese freedom of expression is the Philippines, where art, however, seems to come from completely different sources than the Japanese one; from financial and political instability, from the different stages of colonialism, from the intense impact of Catholicism, all of which create a rather chaotic setting that always benefitted art of any kind. It is due to this concept, as much as the richness of its cinematic past and present, that we have decided to focus so intently on the country’s cinema this year. Granted, our knowledge of the past is not so intent, since Amp took a turn of covering a more wider part of Asia after 2019, which is why the particular list is the biggest among the ones focusing on the various decades of Filipino cinema.

Without further ado, here are 35 great Filipino films of the 00s, with...

Continuing an effort to archive films in a way that constitutes art, Khavn’s second feature screening in Rotterdam this year, focuses on the films of Lino Brocka, through an experimental approach that seems to follow, this time, a kind of form.

National Anarchist: Lino Brocka is screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam

Lino Brocka is probably the most famous filmmaker of the Philippines internationally, with the inclusion of “Manila in the Claws of Light ” in Martin Scorcese’s World Cinema Project helping the most in that regard. Brocka directed over sixty fiction features between 1970 and 1991, the year he died in a car accident. Khavn’s “tribute” actually begins with his death, with the intertitles hinting that, considering his continuous criticism of the various governments of the country, this might as well not be an accident. Khavn, who has frequently dealt in various ways with Brocka in his films, took...

Initially a half an hour movie, which used nine existing films from 1952 to 1980 to reimagine, reconstruct, simulate, commemorate, and commiserate with the seventy-five lost Philippine silent films from 1912 to 1933, “Nitrate: To the Ghosts of the 75 Lost Philippine Silent Films (1912-1933)” now finds its final form in this 1-hour edition, which just premiered in Rotterdam.

Nitrate: To the Ghosts of the 75 Lost Philippine Silent Films (1912-1933) is screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam

While Philippine cinema has existed for decades, a lack of care and importance to the preservation of their film culture has unfortunately caused numerous titles from that period to be lost beyond recovery. Originally commissioned by Cannes-winning filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Khavn assembled the main omnibus “Nitrate” to highlight the importance of preserving their culture and heritage with a collection of clippings of surviving genre films from that period.

In that fashion, the movie unfolds as a series of different footage from different movies,...

Interfilm International Short Film Festival Berlin is back with its 38th edition, running from the 15th to the 20th of November 2022. This year the regional focus will be on the cinematography of the Philippines, while the thematic focus Ghosts of Europe looks towards the EU. Interfilm dedicates also a spotlight program to Belarusian filmmaking, which courageously takes on the current regime.

To use the organisers’ words: “The competitions present themselves as usual politically, combative and at the same time empathetic and full of confidence. Great stories meet abstract animation, essayistic forms meet concrete narration. (…) Interforum is the place to discuss and learn, and various special programs and events round off the week dedicated to short film.“

You can find the full programme on the official website here.

Here are all the Asian titles:

International Competition

Anxious Body by Yoriko Mizushiri // France – Japan 2021

A Guitar in the Bucket by Boyoung Kim...

Expanding on the concepts and scenes of “Overdosed Nightmare”, “Mondomanila” deals with life in the slums of Manila, through the stories of a number of hardcore misfits. The protagonist is Tony D, a teenager who has a very a concise opinion about the government, and is not afraid to express it in the most cross way, at least when he is not drunk or under the influence of drugs. The rest of the protagonists include his sex-addict mother, Mariya, Lovely Loanshark, a gambling addict, Sgt Pepper, a policeman who was discharged from the force and has now placed his hopes for a contribution to society on his son, who happens to be a homosexual. Steve Banners, an old American who happens to be a raging racist and a pederast, Ogo X, a malformed rapper, and many more comprise this extreme collage of characters.

Through an approach that includes documentary, exploitation and musical/music video elements,...

Roque Federizon Lee, known professionally as Roxlee is a Filipino animator, filmmaker, cartoonist, and painter. Considered by many to be the godfather of young Filipino filmmakers, Roxlee is best known for creating Cesar Asar with his brother, Monlee. In the 1980s, his works were done in super-8 film, divided between hand-drawn works like The Great Smoke and pixelated live action pieces like Juan Gapang. “Abcd” belongs to the first category.

“Abcd” is streaming on Metrograph, as part of the Kalampag Tracking Agency Shorts Program

Rox Lee directs an experimental animation short, which uses each of the 26 letter of the English to present a different theme, in just over 5 minutes. The animation style differs significantly, although a sense of a child’s drawing and some comic book aesthetics remain throughout the film. At the same time, the sound of a harmonica and Rox Lee’s low voice provide the soundtrack of the short.

If there was ever a region that included themes, characters and motifs that occasionally surpassed even the borders of the surreal, that would be Asia, with the titles that can be easily described as absurd coming out in scores. Maybe it has to do with a particular type of idiosyncrasy, maybe that in a number of countries, particularly in Japan and India, filmmakers feel the freedom to express themselves in any way they want, away from any kind of political correctness or even cinematic “rules”. A number of these movies have already garnered the title of cult, but as we are about to see in this particular list, titles from the whole spectrum of cinema can be found here. Without further ado, here are 40 movies that definitely deserve the title of weird, in alphabetical order.

Ps. The focus on Japanese films was inevitable…

1. A Man Vanishes

This is the closing...

While Philippine cinema has existed for decades, a lack of care and importance to the preservation of their film culture has unfortunately caused numerous films from that period to be lost beyond recovery. Originally commissioned by Cannes-winning filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, director Khavn assembled the main omnibus “Nitrate” to highlight the importance of preserving their culture and heritage with a collection of clippings of surviving genre films from that period.

Essentially working as a clip show, we are presented with a silent, colorized mashup of existing obscure, old Filipino horror films from the 1950s to the 1970s. Inspired by the real-life horror of Filipinos forgetting their cinematic past, the clips presented here are shown without sound in a rapid-fire manner.

Being that this is edited from various sources, the rapid-fire style and switch to different movies is a nice shock to watch taking place on-screen. The first few films, featuring an...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSChameleon StreetThe New York Film Festival has announced an excellent selection for its Revivals section. The roster includes restorations of Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala, John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13, Sarah Maldoror's Sambizanga, Wendell B. Harris Jr.'s Chameleon Street, and Michael Powell's Bluebeard's Castle. The 2021 Locarno Film Festival has come to an end, with Indonesian filmmaker Edwin's Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash winning the Golden Leopard. For a full list of this year's award winners, read here. Recommended VIEWINGAhead of premiere, a trailer for the latest Spike Lee joint: the four-part documentary series NYC Epicenters: 9/11 → 2021 ½. The series, which captures twenty years of New York City history from the perspective of its citizens, will premiere on HBO Max August 22. Cinema Guild has released a trailer for Matías Piñeiro's Isabella.

Having watched a number of Manatad’s works as an editor (particularly his collaborations with Khavn) and a number of his short films, it had become clear to me that he really has what it takes to become a great filmmaker. “Whether the Weather is Fine” proves the fact in the best fashion.

“Whether the Weather is Fine” is screening in Locarno Film Festival

On November 8th, 2013, the strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded, Typhoon Haiyan, made landfall in Eastern Philippines, destroying most of the director’s hometown, Tacloban. Taking the aftermath of the destruction as his foundation, Manatad revolves his story around Miguel, a desperate young man who has been suffering all his life by his inner demons that usually manifest in the form of dreams, who tries to find his girlfriend Andrea and his mother, Norma. As soon as he finds them both, he tries to convince them to leave the rundown city,...

Above: Poster for Bamboo Dogs. Art by Soika Vomiter.Unless you’ve been going to film festivals around the world for the past 15 years you may not have heard of Khavn dela Cruz. I had not myself until a poster caught my eye recently. It was a design for Orphea, a 2020 collaboration between the venerable 89-year-old German filmmaker Alexander Kluge and an artist called simply Khavn. The poster had a certain iconoclastic energy and a stylish title treatment and so I decided to dig deeper. And there was a lot to uncover. Born in Quezon City in the Philippines in 1973, Khavn has made over 50 features and 150 shorts over the past 20 years, but he is also a musician with 40 albums to his name, and a writer who has published eight books of poetry, a novel, and two collections of short stories and has twice won the most prestigious literary award in the Philippines.

Quite an impressive short film from Khavn, who is considered the father of the digital filmmaking in the Philippines. Furthermore, Khavn is quite an artist, as he is also an award-winning poet and novelist, an acclaimed composer, songwriter, singer and pianist and leader of a band named Brockas. In this particular short, he also enlisted the cinematographer Christopher Doyle and Tadanobu Asano, thus resulting in an impressive production.

The film takes place in Manila, where a crime boss (aka The GodFather) rules by using a poet who recites religious poems in order to lure customers, although he frequently resorts to violence by unleashing his numerous henchmen. At one point, he assigns his most trusted one (aka The Criminal) to guard a whore of his (aka The Prostitute). Eventually however, and as the title so eloquently states, they fall in love with each other and try to run away,...

Khavn’s experimentation with every notion associated with film and essentially entertainment was bound to bring him eventually to a movie that functions like a stage play. However, as usual in his works, this is just one of the many elements included in “The Trials of Mr Serapio”, which is based on Paul Dumol’s classic one-act play, considered by many as the first modernist play.

The movie starts with a man playing his guitar and singing by a rather busy street, with the quality of the film in this sequence, which is actually repeated throughout the movie, being purposefully bad. The next sequence brings us to the “stage play” part, where the aforementioned man is revealed to be Mr Serapio, who has been arrested and is now subjected to a trial by two interrogators and a judge, who can only be described as caricatures. Serapio does not know the reason he is being tried,...

The extended lock-downs of the last two years affected families in various ways, one of which was “forcing” them to spend more time together than ever. Thus, it was just a matter of time before filmmakers decided to cast their children in their movies, with the non-stop artist that is Khavn probably being the safest bet. Luckily for him, it seems his household have nurtured at least two future stars, with his son Katch23 as Gunam-gunam, and his daughter, who is playfully nicknamed 1Delacruz, as Guni-guni, being more than worthy protagonists of his latest short.

“Gunam-gunam X Guni-guni Rumi X Phantasm” is screening on International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, and is also available through the This Is Short Platform

The script is adapted from the book “Supporting Materials for Teaching the Filipino Language”, written by Khavn’s mother, Kelly Clarinda (a former elementary teacher), with her also functioning as the narrator of the film,...

Khavn is the sorcerer of digital cinema, enchanting his way through the Filipino ether. He is an artist, a poet, a script writer, a punk rock musician and an excellent pianist. All his films are ‘This Is Not A Film By Khavn’, an ironic nod to the nature of film-making itself, a collaborative process. His irony is to raise an eyebrow at the idea of the auteur, though his films have a distinctive signature of ‘This Is Not A Film By Khavn’! Through his wit, Khavn is a thinker within cinema, exploring its limitations and potentials, making the most of small budgets and a small crew, within his compact cinematic experiments. Khavn is a director of short films, documentaries, as well feature films! “Squatterpunk” is one of his micro budget documentary films showcasing his off-the-cuff filmmaking style. There is an improvisational feel to this movie, but there is a well...

Four years after “Town in a Lake”, Jet Leyco returned with two movies (the present one and “Second Coming”), with “My Alien Friend” being produced by Qcinema. Billed as a documentary, the film is actually an experimental hybrid that shares many similarities with the cinematic style of Khavn.

The narrative unfolds through the effort of someone, essentially the narrator of the film who emerges as the protagonist, to communicate with an alien friend, by sending him a kind of time capsule about all that is Earth and more specifically, the Philippines. In that fashion, the movie unfolds as a series of vignettes, juxtaposed with live sound footage from the Americans that first landed on the moon and a narration that focuses on a number of topics revolving around the protagonist (Jet Leyco?) including his family and friends, his overall life in the Philippines.

Apart from personal topics however, the film also deals with political issues,...

Expanded from a 6 minutes short with the same name, “Kommander Kulas” is one of the most formulaic films by the Filipino director, although its experimental nature is undoubted.

The film begins in unusual (not for Khavn) fashion, with narration on black screen explaining the myth of Kommander Kulas, followed by images of a painting, before the narrator begins addressing the audience. Then come the credits, then the actual film, which follows a repetitive, but highly unusual narrative.

In that fashion, sequences of Kommander Kulas riding his destitute friend, Carabao, a water buffalo, through the forests and fields, with the narration eventually revealing that he has lost his heart and is in search for it. These sequences are followed by a series of vignettes whose artful grotesqueness can only be compared with their blasphemous concept and the preposterous narration, usually by someone of different sex than the person featuring in the segment.

Severe Tropical Storm Washi, known in the Philippines as Tropical Storm Sendong, was a late-season tropical cyclone that caused catastrophic damage in the Philippines in late 2011. Washi made landfall over Mindanao, a major region in the Philippines, on December 16. The storm weakened slightly after passing Mindanao, but regained strength in the Sulu Sea, and made landfall again over Palawan on December 17. Its consequences were tremendous, with the fatalities being over 2,500 and the damages estimated at almost $98 million (2011 Usd).

Khavn decided to shoot a movie after the events, which eventually premiered on March 10, 2012 at the Barangay (village) Nazareth Covered Court in the capital city of Misamis Oriental, the same devastated place that inspired him to shoot the film. “Kalakala” is the name of a flooded sitio in barangay Macasandig.

The main story of this rather experimental film takes place three weeks after the catastrophe, and revolves around a...

Instead of simply writing our wishes to all our readers, for 2021 we decided to ask our friends to do so.

Mattie Do, Joko Anwar, Taku Tsuboi, Indrasis Acharya, Leena Alam, Takeshi Kushida, Bront Palarae, Torico, Isabel Sandoval, Ryo Katayama, Anthony Chen, Roya Sadat, Kazutaka Watanabe, Akio Fujimoto, Min Siu Goh, Scott C. Hillyard, Gerald Chew, Amy Cheng, Ronny Sen, Kenichi Ugana, Mostofa Sarwar Farooki, Park Jung Bum, Kim Min-jae, Shogen, Atsushi Funahashi, Jero Yun, Shuna Iijima and Khavn responded to our call. Check out their wishes...

The drama usually associated with life in the slums of the Philippines has been repeatedly portrayed on cinema, with directors like Brillante Mendoza, Khavn, Adolfo Alix Jr and many others presenting their version, in various cinematic styles. Arvin Alindogan Belarmino presents his own view of this life, through a rather harsh but also quite realistic approach that frequently borders on the documentary.

“Life’s Pedal” review is part of the Submit Your Film Initiative

Rodel is a pedicab driver who tries to make ends meet by working alongside his wife, Aya, who is a prostitute. She and a number of other “girls” hang out in the same place, where the boss seems to be Amir, whose wife is in prison for stealing. The women there take turns taking care of each other’s children as they go with customers, in a rather extreme commune-style setting. Amir has an underage daughter...

Under the aegis of the dictatorial regime in the 1970s, the Ministry of Human Settlements introduced a shelter program that would fulfill basic housing needs. The housing project called the Bagong Lipunan (New Society) Improvement of Sites and Services (Bliss) was envisioned as a self-sustaining program that would help foster the development of its residents while serving as a model urban community. Former First Lady Imelda Marcos, who led the ministry in 1979, planned for the settlement to house 50 to 100 families in a two-and-a-half hectare area (Lico 2008). Despite the instability of the times, its offerings were promising for both low and middle-income families alike. The residents were to receive subsidies, livelihood opportunities and services, and the formation of a close-knit community was facilitated by inviting members to participate in group activities promoted by duly registered community associations. The physical dwellings were standard building types comprised of several floors, each building consisting of 16 to 32 units,...

Part of the Dox:Lab workshop, an international cooperation in which filmmakers from Scandinavian countries were linked to filmmakers from developing countries, in order to present creative documentaries. And creative “Son of God” certainly is.

The documentary begins in Manila during the “Black Nazarene” where scores of Roman Catholics gather around a centuries-old black wooden statue of Jesus Christ believed to have healing powers. Among the people there, a number of Messiahs (?) are present, but no one seems to be more popular than Son of God, a dwarf in a blond wig, who is dressed as a bishop and actually worshipped as a true miracle maker. The two directors follow the Son of God, in an effort to find out if his claims and the beliefs of his followers are true or figments of Christian fantasy. Soon, however, their research leads them to paths that are uncanny, as much as dangerous.

Since we dealt with the monochrome ones somea few weeks before, the most impressively colored films were a path we had to take. Essentially, a number of directors considered masters have always invested on intense coloring for their films, resulting in audiovisual poems. As usually, with a focus on diversity, we present 30 of those films, in alphabetical order.

You can read the full reviews if you click on the title of each entry.

1. 2046

Cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who has been a long time collaborator of the director, has done a great job in capturing the beautiful world created by Wong Kar-wai, along with all of its dirty parts which only makes it more magnificent. Wong is famous for his use of lighting, music and set design which always keeps the audience in a mood that he alone can give. The design of the futuristic 2046 world is also consistent with the beautiful...

According to Khavn: the script, which will be included in my book “Uncollected Screenplays”, is one of the longest I have written. It goes like this: Seven kings of seven tribes wearing the seven colors of the rainbow go on a quest looking for the Great Nothing. The film was shot in one day (Day-Old Flicks) and the actors are also the cinematographers and still photographers, as they pass the cameras around.

The aforementioned seven kings all wear bahag, a loincloth that was worn by the indigenous Philippine population, according to descriptions by missionaries, during the 19th century. The spread of Christian morality discouraged its use, as it was perceived as an unacceptable form of attire. Now, seven individuals, including Khavn, pretending to be the descendants of majestic native rulers and at the same time, village idiots, wear the bahag as a symbol of their ethnicity and...

Olaf Möller is a film programmer and critic, as well as a Professor in the Department of Film, Television and Scenographyat Aalto University in Finland. He regularly collaborates with prestigious film magazines such as Sight & Sound, Cinema Scope, Mubi Notebook, Eye for Film and Film Comment, among others. He is considered one of the most authoritative voices of film history and criticism, along with Jonathan Rosenbaum, Laura Mulvey or David Bordwell. He has curated cycles and retrospectives for festivals such as Rotterdam, the Viennale or Locarno, and was a member of the Selection Committee of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. Möller is the author of numerous publications, including Fragmentos de búsqueda (2013), focusing on the cinema of Thomas Heisse, Romuald Karmakar (2013), about the German filmmaker, or Geliebt und Verdrängt: Das Kino der jungen Bundesrepublik Deutschland von 1949 bis 1963/ Loved and repressed: the cinema of the young Federal Republic of Germany from...

Khavn’s statement about the film: In 2005, the organizers of the La Palma International Digital Film Festival posted a challenge to the filmmakers in attendance: create a short film within the span of the festival. I finished twelve. The following year, I decided to challenge myself further: I tried to make a full-length film within the week of the festival. This is the result.

Khavn directs another experimental film, which functions as both a tribute to Philippine National Hero Jose Rizal through the poem he wrote before his execution in 1896 titled “Mi Ultimo Adios”, and a kind of a tour guide to Las Palmas. In that fashion, the narrative follows a path that includes black-and white shots from various locations of the island, frequently featuring dancing sequences, which are interrupted by black screens with lyrics from Rizal’s poem, in a style similar to that of silent movies. There is no dialogue,...

A total of €395,000 awarded to projects from Argentina, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Egypt, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, Senegal, Turkey and Venezuela.

Berlinale’s World Cinema Fund (Wcf) has awarded a combined €395,000 ($455,000) to 14 projects in its latest funding round.

The recipients hail from Argentina, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Egypt, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, Senegal, Turkey and Venezuela.

Selected directors that previously participated in Berlinale Talents include Amanda Nell EU (Tiger Stripes), Laura Citarella (Trenque Lauquen), Khavn de la Cruz (Love Is A Dog From Hell) and Katy Léna Ndiaye (Une Histoire Du Franc Cfa).

The latest funding round includes...

A 6+ minutes short that eventually became a feature (as is the case with many of Khavn’s works) “Kommander Kulas” is another film of his that seems to defy every cinematic convention.

The narrative begins in repetitive fashion, with sequences of a man who is probably Kommander Kulas, riding his water buffalo in the jungle, at a leisure pace, while a soft voice narrates repeatedly that he had a restless night, in which he dreamt he was a giant cockroach. As soon as the narration ends, a number of grotesque, to the point of being blasphemous shots appear, including a nun with a butchering knife, a dead, naked woman and an almost completely naked man who only wears stockings and a bra. As Kulas reaches an urban setting, the narration changes after and reveals that the Kommander has lost his heart and is in search for it, with the camera...

The Manila Film Center is one of the most notorious buildings of the Philippines, particularly due to the accident that occurred during its construction on November 17, 1981, due to the rush to complete it in time for the 1st International Manila Film Festival. An entire floor and six giant beams collapsed and crashed down to the main theater, burying 169 workers in newly dried cement and a tangle of wood and steel. Marcos’s regime tried to conceal the magnitude of the disaster, with the rescue operations starting after nine hours and ending rather briefly in order for the construction to continue, with the festival actually happening in the building from the 18th to the 29th of January 1982.

In “Pilak: The Manila Film Center Invasion” Khavn narrates the story through text on black screen in silent film style, before introducing his trademark absurdity, by suggesting that one of the workers was an alien,...

Khavn said about this film that it was inspired by the magic realism of Italian author Anna Maria Ortese and is populated by creatures of Philippine myths—duwende, kapre, manananggal, tiyanak. “I wanted to create a meta-fable, an otherworldly questioning eye… make the silly sensible and the mad logical,” he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

The film begins in black and white, as a very well-dressed woman is ascending some stairs in a European setting, in order to reach the bank of the river, with the camera following her closely from behind and on the side for the most part. An intense piano track accompanies her steps. Two stanzas from a poem by Alejandro G. Abadilla, the father of modern Filipino poetry, presented on black screen (in silent movies-style) function as transition to the second part, where a number of unlikely creatures emerge from every corner, taking their place among the “regular” humans.

From a description only Khavn could have written: Three years before Georges Méliès’ Le Voyage dans la Lune and ten years before Segundo de Chomón’s Excursion en la Luna, indigenous proto-surrealist Philippine filmmaker Narding Salome Exelsio made Nagtungo si Juan Tamad sa Buwan in 1898 while the Philippines were being sold by Spain to America for twenty million dollars (Vat not included).

In this 4 minute short, Khavn plays the titular character as he embarks on a series of absurd “adventures”, while text on screen gives additional info about Juan Taman. What becomes evident from the text is that Khavn considers Juan as a true scumbag, as lines like “the laziest bastard of Spanish priests, adopted by American nuns” eloquently state. This aspect and the overall, silent film frame speed induce the short with a sense of comedy, while the series of surreal vignettes that comprise the narrative are the source...

Creating a film where irony is the main ingredient and mocking the main purpose sounds like a very dangerous business in these ridiculously politically correct times. Carlo Francisco Manatad, who is mostly known for his editing work with directors like Khavn and Chito S. Rono, but has also been directing movies for more than a decade, manages to pull off this “dangerous” endeavour, which actually starts with the title.

Most of the short takes place in a gas station, where Jodilerks, a middle aged woman, and a young man are working the night shift. Jodilerks tries to sell bottles with gas on the side while smoking, but when that does not work, she and her colleague decide to get drunk. As expected in the particular hours, their customers are also drunk, and furthermore, weird, not willing to pay and even dangerous. When her colleague is knocked out due to their drinking,...

The film description, which seems to be truthful, apart from the last sentence which was probably written by Khavn, states: The first film made in the Philippines to feature optically recorded sound was George Musser’s Ang Aswang (The Vampire). In 1932, Musser imported 50,000 Php worth of optical sound equipment and turned his house into a studio. He spent a year shooting the film with Charles Miller as his cinematographer and William Smith as his soundman. Despite its Tagalog title, the film was actually recorded in Spanish and English. The film opened to acclaim at the Lyric on January 1, 1933, then at the Tivoli on January 4. Unfortunately, according to some observers, the sound was sometimes out of sync and inaudible.

According to www.aswangproject.com, no known prints of the film exist. Inspired by this whole concept, Khavn presents his own take of what such a film could look like.

The 7-minute...

After extensive travels across Asia, internships and junior positions in Paris and Los Angeles at companies such as Anonymous Content, Wild Bunch, Endgame and Ad Vitam among others, Nathan decided it was high time to start his own business and launched Stray Dogs in a couple of weeks with a small bank loan in early 2015.

Stray Dogs is dedicated to bringing international, director driven, edgy films to worldwide audiences, and is very proud to work closely with its filmmakers. During its first year, Stray Dogs films got around 30 prizes in international film festivals, and did quite well. Stray Dogs now has a team of four people making sure promising international talent is discovered and their gems are distributed worldwide.

On the occasion of our #TheKhavnProject, we speak with him about his career, Stray Dogs, Asian cinema, the French market, the Indian movie industry and of course, Khavn.

Can you give...

We at Asian Movie Pulse are admirers of Filipino director Khavn so much so, that we are on a mission to review all of his films with our ongoing The Khavn Project.

We thought our readers might be interested in checking out some of his films and so, with that in mind, here are a couple links where you can watch some of his films on demand as well as listen to some of his original music, most made for his films’ soundtracks.

To see what films are available, please follow this link. To listen to his music, please follow this link.

Lawrence S. Ang is an editor from the Philippines. After studying Communications in De La Salle University, he started editing in 2001, mostly corporate and broadcast videos. The first film he edited was Khavn’s “Bahag Kings” in 2005. Since then, he has been awarded for his work in editing multiple times, including accolades for films like “Respeto” and “Apocalypse Child“.

On the occasion of the #TheKhavnProject, we speak with him about his career and his many works, the role of the editor in a film, working with other editors in the same movie, and of course, Khavn.

Can you give us some info on your background on cinema?

I studied Communications in De La Salle University, where I took an Experimental Film class under Mowelfund’s Ricky Orellana. In a field trip for that class, we had the opportunity to sit in on a color grading session for Jon Red’s Still Lives.

Lilith Stangenberg began her acting career at P14 youth theater of the Volksbühne Berlin. Without training as an actor, she was then hired at the Basel Theater and the Hanover Theater and from 2009 to 2012 was in the ensemble of the Zurich Schauspielhaus. At the same time, she also worked for film and television. As a film actress, Stangenberg was best known for the multi-award-winning leading role in Nicolette Krebitz ‘s feature film Wild , in which she played a young woman who had a relationship with a wolf. In October 2018, she starred in the television film “Tatort: ​​Blut”, the leading role in an episode of a woman suffering from a light allergy, who believes she is a vampire. In “Orphea“, the adaptation of the myth of Orpheus with reverse gender roles by Alexander Kluge and Khavn, she embodies the title role. The film celebrated its world premiere at the Berlinale 2020.

On the occasion of the #TheKhavnProject,...

Stephan Holl is Managing Director of Rapid Eye Movies, a German film label dealing in distribution, production and music. Since 1996 the company has been distributing highly aesthetical and extraordinary cinematic gems. As distributor, Rapid Eye Movies triggered the breakthrough of Asian directors like Takeshi Kitano, Takashi Miike, Park Chan-wook and Kim Ki-Duk in Germany and above all, popular Indian cinema in Europe. The initial focus of primarily distributing national and international film has been extended bringing together talents from a diverse array of cultures and artistic spheres – from music to film and visual arts – to create and produce movies that push boundaries and defy the conventional.

On the occasion of our #TheKhavnProject, we speak with him about his career, Rapid Eye Movies, Asian cinema, the future of the movie industry and of course, Khavn.

Can you give some details about your background in cinema. How did you end up creating Rapid Eye Movies?...

Kristine Kintana is a production manager, at least when she is not acting, designing costumes, subtitling or doing anything in fact, for the films of Lav Diaz and Khavn for the most part. Occasionally she also programs for festivals like Cinemanila and QCinema.

On the occasion of our #TheKhavnProject, we speak with her about her life, career, programming, working in movies, the way the industry works in the Philippines, the festival reality after the pandemic, and of course, Khavn.

Can you give us some info on your background on cinema?

My first course was computer science in the University of the Philippines in Los Baños, and then I was kicked out. I had to move back to Manila, and start again from scratch. I ended up studying Mass Communications in Far Eastern University. It took me eight years in total to finish college.

My first ‘job’ in the film industry...

Gertjan Zuihof has worked as an art historian, film critic and film festival programmer. One of those programs – a workshop with young African filmmakers – brought him for the first time to Songzhuang in 2010. This first collaboration with the Li Xianting Film Fund and Film School was followed by several other formal and informal projects like the Home Town Home exhibition in fanHall in 2012. Zuilhof travelled for the Rotterdam Film Festival for 25 years or on his own in South East Asia and Africa. His most recent project was curating an exhibition with artists from Burma.

On the occasion of our #TheKhavnProject, we speak with him about his career, programming for Rotterdam International Film Festival, the festival reality after the pandemic, and of course, Khavn.

You are both an art curator and a film programmer. What are the differences and what the connection between the two?

The way I do it, there...

Albert Banzon is a Filipino, multi-awarded cinematographer. After graduating from college, he took a series of workshops from the Mowelfund Film Institute. From there, he met Bahag-Hari, an Mfi Alumni cinematographer, who hired him as a gaffer to work for Lav Diaz, in essence starting his career. Currently, he has more than 115 credits to his name, having cooperated with directors like Timmy Harn, Shireen Seno and Adolfo Alix Jr, although his most frequent collaborator is Khavn.

On the occasion of our #TheKhavnProject, we speak with him about his career, the differences between working for TV and movies, the changes the industry has undergone and of course, Khavn.

You have been working in film since 2000. Which were the most significant changes you have witnessed in Filipino cinema and which on the field of cinematography?

The most significant change I saw was the transition to digital filmmaking. It changed everything.

There are...

There are two titles for this short experimental film of almost three minutes. “Journeyman” refers to the song that is underlayed to the video and “Overdosed Nightmare”, which is the title of a feature film Khavn produced in 2008, and describes the experience the viewer has with the video quite precisely.

For his music video, Khavn has combined scenes and fragments from several of his short films. Recognizable, for example, are scenes from “Pushcart Family” in which a man pulls his sales cart through the busy streets or from “Christmas Alms” in which children ask for alms. In between, you see black and white pictures of a Jesus or a hanged man. A landscape with a satellite is recognizable and a man with long hair sits somewhere at a bar and talks to the beer bottle standing in front of him.

The video resembles a colorful kaleidoscope, the pictures follow each other in a fast rhythm.

Khavn signed Epy Quizon for his short film with the romantic title “The Last Gag of Buster Quizon” or “Nothing Funnier than Unhappiness” in the leading role. The ballad, for which Khavn did the directing, wrote the screenplay, was in charge of cinematography and produced the soundtrack, has the aesthetic of a silent film without being mute.

A man is in the foreground of the film. He is introduced to the viewer and right from the beginning a sad ending weighs on him. On a black board there is a white writing, “He will die tonight”. But what will he do in the meantime? The viewer asks himself this question and watches curiously as he wanders, apparently aimlessly, through the landscape. He doesn’t seem particularly worried; on the contrary, he seems rather bored. He passes a tree, a beach and a campfire on his wanderings; he makes pauses and stretches out again and again.