The Brockas and Manila in the fangs of darkness

Filmmaker Khavn dela Cruz texted to say that his latest film, Maynila sa Pangil ng Dilim starring Bembol Roco, will premier in the month of October in Vienna and Czech Republic, and that he himself will have a film retrospective and serve as jury member in Copenhagen in the same month, possibly part of the European Oktoberfest and fall of Asian cinema.

But before packing his bags for those colder climes, indeed amid the Champions’ League group matches in major European cities, Khavn who is sometimes known as not-a-Khavn, presided over the recent “dot movfest” of digital cinema in Robinsons Indiesine.

At more or less the same time Dela Cruz also produced the first CD of Lav Diaz, perhaps aptly titled Impierno, which if reports are to be believed runs something like four hours. Now Lavrente himself is fresh off a successful stint in the Venice film fest, where his latest epic, the eight-hour Melancholia, won the top prize in a side competition of art films.

Melancholia employs roughly a similar posse that worked on last year’s Death in the Land of Enkantos, which clocked in at nine hours but was cited for its excellent cinematography by local award giving critics groups.

Not-a-Khavn also published fellow indie Roxlee’s book, Planet of the Noses, for which he had solicited a blurb. Wait a while as I skim through the back files to see what I wrote. It goes something like this:

“The first time I came upon rough copies of Roxlee’s Planet of the Noses it was obvious that here was a Filipino original. It’s not exactly a graphic novel in the strictest sense of the term, nor is it comics as we knew it in our younger days. Rather, the closest we could come up with is ‘illustrated shorts,’ since they are in the same league as the filmmaker’s now classic shorts, The Great Smoke and Juan Gapang. The narrative seems to have sprung out of the wild, and the drawings are of course unmistakably Rox. Even those not certified deep thinkers will find enjoyment here, and the most we can do really is to learn how to stop making sense.”

Wow, makes me want to get hold of the book.

Roxlee’s latest opus Juan Baybayin we were able to preview at a special screening in UP’s film center during the monsoon months, and by all indications the 60-minute feature shows him in fine vintage form.

Largely a collaboration with Roxlee’s better half Lot, Baybayin tells of a man’s search for the original Filipino alphabet before the colonizers came, part documentary and part animation of the tale of the monkey and the turtle, but on the whole a testament and biographical guide to the filmmaker’s newborn son, Zerox.

“Bitin,” was Roxlee’s first comment after the screening, and true enough this signal film of his long-delayed fatherhood deserves a sequel, on which he is hard at work.

Baybayin has lost none of the old comic Roxlee touch, and features cameos by fellow artists Lav Diaz and Dante Perez in a kind of shamanic baptism ritual for Zerox, complete with gongs and tribal dancing and chanting.

The little we’ve heard so far of Impierno imparts a rather lethargic, shoegaze feeling, the filmmaker as troubadour which Roxlee at any rate made inroads with his CD album some years back, the now collector’s item “The Ghost of Rocker Janis.”

But since Impierno is a possible four hours long the jury is still out on this one, although we’ve heard it said that it is perfect music with which to drive the neighbors to suicide or a companion piece for the Holy Week pasyon or perhaps All Saints Day lamay at the cemetery: the dark, dark night of Lavrente’s soul.

Khavn meanwhile had sent a copy of his Squatterpunk, which is unlike any music video we’ve seen before. The not-a-film seethes with shots of squalor and poverty in a waterfront section of Tondo while the soundtrack by Bobby Balingit late of The Wuds and the Brockas themselves (Khavn’s not-a-band featuring at different times Diaz and Lee) throbs in the background.

A good point of comparison with Squatterpunk would be Roxlee’s Romeo Must Rock, which is the filmmaker’s tribute to his younger brother rocker Myolee and his endless undying version of the song Wild Thing.

Squatterpunk has been screened in independent film fests both here and abroad, sometimes with a live band providing the soundtrack.

The documentary music video has as protagonist a boy of about nine or 10 sporting a mohawk hairdo, which however begs the question of possible exploitation on the director’s part of the street kids, although there can be gained a biblical insight that poverty is in fact God-given, which notion is further reinforced by the sight of an army of beggars that descend upon the city when the -ber months come around.

Less problematic is Romeo Must Rock, where the viewer gets to appreciate how Myo came to be Myo, not as a curiosity but rather as spawn of his weirdly troubled times.

Myo’s monologue on his ars poetica is also revealing: He knew his art would spring forth, it’s just that punk made it easier.

Romeo Must Rock is quite well made in the maverick Lee style, with enough compassion and irreverence to merit more viewings.

And to think that Roxlee like most of his generation started with a Super-8 camera. He’s been quoted as saying that kids are lucky with today’s technology.

According to Lee, Khavn had compressed one of Lav’s marathon films into a five-minute wonder. But Rox says, “Okay lang kay Lav ’yon.”

The Brockas played at the art exhibit opening of Dante Perez’s “Versus” at the Alliance Française on Reposo, Makati. Perez has been a staple in production design in the past two Diaz films, earning him some awards in the process, at par with his latest works on the doppelganger.

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Public service: Margaret Chen, editor and CEO of iCUBED.us, the youth oriented magazine and website, was in town some months ago to launch the one-minute silent film competition for adolescents and post-adolescents. Chen and iCUBED.us’s one-minute silent film contest is like a return to roots via the short silent treatment. Registration fee for joiners has been waived for donation of proceeds to a favorite charity. Deadline has also been pushed back. Click on their website for further details.