No-budget film adventures with Khavn

This is how I described no-budget Filipino filmmaker Khavn de la Cruz in last year’s Manila blog:

Tikoy wraps his bear arms around me and says, “You have to meet your younger double in Manila. Andrew, this is Khavn.”

A blonde, bearded, definitely younger and slightly browner me shakes my hand. Khavn’s feature Squatterpunk, a slice-of-life in a Manila shanty town following a seven year old would-be Travis Bickle, wins the second prize at Cinemanila’s awards later in the week. I watch its stunning b&w stream of poetry and documentary realism later in Khavn’s lounge, along with his no-budget, Miike-esque The Family That Eats Soil and Vampire Of Quezon City, and I’m floored at how varied, how experimental and yet how accessible and entertaining each film is. To date, Khavn’s output numbers 16 digital features and over 50 shorts. That’s 15 features more than me, I mentally count with shame. Khavn and his crew of crazy-assed filmmakers, artists and musicians end up becoming my unofficial tour guides, and at each turn in the road, I’m pleased to report, the DIY spirit is alive and well in the Philippines..........

(left to right) BIFF volunteer Hannah Wollin, ABC Movie Show's David Stratton, me and Khavn. Sorry Hannah, I couldn't resist...

He and his family played host to me on my two subsequent trips to the Philippines. I’ve lost track of how many bars, bands, galleries and screenings we’ve been to – he even added me to a spoken-word poetry night at Quezon City’s Magnet Club (less than four hours after getting off the plane from Brunei!). Magnet Club also saw the birth of “Weng Weng Brocka” – me on drums for his band The Brockas playing two songs at an “Impeach The President” multi-media event. Luckily my passport and visa remained in one piece.

Khavn was a guest at the 2007 Brisbane International Film Festival. I was given the task of tour guide and PR manager, not to mention “Weng Weng Brocka” for a live soundtrack to Squatterpunk. Here’s the liner notes I wrote…

SQUATTERPUNK review (from the Brisbane International Film Festival 2007 Program)

“Squatter” is the N-word of the Phippines, suggesting the poorest of its Third World inhabitants only one rung up from living in Manila’s garbage citadel of Tondo. Hardly a cause for Squatter Pride, but Filmless Films’ Khavn, the bleached enfant terrible of the new Philippines digital scene, may convince you otherwise.

Filmed in just one day, Squatterpunk follows an eight year old Slum King, a cocky would-be gangster with a Travis Bickle haircut, and his ratbag minions through one of the thousands of shanty towns that spring up between the cracks in the Manila pavements. The manic collage of stunning hand-held black and white images capture kids being kids as they frolick amidst the cardboard and corrugated walls of home-sweet-home and the surrounding debris, human and otherwise.

Like watching infants at play at a car crash, it’s a mesmerizing, almost seamless collision of social realism and visual poetry. It’s a rush to the heart, too, fuelled by the mostly improvised punk score by Khavn’s outfit The Brockas. Performed live in Brisbane by Khavn and his motley crew of local misfits, the relentless clang-bang drowns the need for dialogue or background noise, leaving a stark impression without comment and, more significantly, without judgement.

A vivid and jarring collection of postcards of innocence at the brink of a short and possibly non-existent adolescence, of simple pleasures amidst appalling squalor, of human junk that society ignores in a country the rest of the world prefers to forget.

…........….....…..ALSO AT BIFF, DIREKT FROM THE PHILIPPINES: SQUATTERPUNK! Our good friend from the Philippines, digital filmmaker Khavn, is a special guest at this years BIFF screening his incredible feature SQUATTERPUNK, and yours truly is helping Khavn perform a LIVE SOUNDTRACK to the film! Joining Khavn is his Brisbane version of his punk/noise outfit The Brockas: BIFF's Dani Haig (aka Gonzo Brocka) on bass, Yusuke Akai (aka Lone Wolf Brocka) on guitar, and Andrew Leavold (aka Weng Weng Brocka) on drums. GALLERY OF MODERN ART (GoMA) FRIDAY 10th AUGUST at 9pm. WASAK! (in Tagalog: DESTROY!)…........….....….

Playing drums to Filipino filmmaker Khavn’s mostly silent Squatterpunk in a rough-and-ready local version of Khavn’s punk-noise outfit The Brockas, somehow the audience didn’t realize that not only hadn’t we rehearsed, we’d never sat down together in the same room! So the entire 80 minute soundtrack we played was entirely improvised, and yet we got a standing ovation! Here’s a photo of Khavn and I from BIFF opening night:

Khavn ended up spending most of his Brisbane visit on a mattress on my loungeroom floor. I guess he wanted to immortalize the floorboards in some way, so on his second last day he sat up in bed and said “Let’s make a movie!” It’s the old “boy becomes zombie, zombie meets Eggnog Girl, zombie imagines falling in love while not being a zombie, zombie loses Eggnog Girl” routine; I play a White Hunter running amok with a power drill, fellow Filipino Migs wandered up Queen Street Mall covered in grey paint and fake blood, and at some point it all becomes “art”. Keep tabs on the as-yet-untitled film’s progress at Khavn’s website www.kamiasroad.com/khavn/index.htm