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 thought out process of filmmaking already in place, that enables Khavn to leap before looking.
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Khavn is a weaver of paradoxes, contradictions, delights, disturbances and absurdities. Through his alchemical process, he delves into his documentary ideas from unusual angles, an ecstasy amongst pollution! He juxtaposes the sheer joy and delight of life, within the context of extreme poverty and a trash strewn environment. In the far unreachable distance, the decadent towers of Capital and their fictional utopias, tower. Khavn's eye does not tell but shows! Storytelling at its most rudimentary, but sublime in its impact. The sun rises on the slums, stuff happens, and then the sun sets, and stuff happens. It is this raw stuff that Khavn captures in his wildly experimental and eccentric way. Huge energy pulses through the filmmaking of “Squatterpunk”. Khavn opens his lens onto an unfamiliar reality and captures life in that moment. The reality of the slums, the shanties, (the joy of DIY homemaking?!) squatting alongside a trash vista, the litter carnival. The kids that live life in this challenging environment, live it to the maximum! Everything is uncertain, so live!
The raw pulse of the kids that live in these spontaneous housing estates is a perfect foil for Khavn's other passion, punk rock. Improvised crazy punk is weaved alongside the adventures of the children, old ladies and world-weary mothers. Khavn's band, The Brockas, blast away with their lo-fi nasty, crazy, wild, melodic, cacophonous soundtrack. “Squatterpunk” is about lives in the slum, with pulverising punk, the soundtrack to the endeavours of the survival artists! Energy is eternal delight! The kids are full of energy, the music is full of energy, this is the raw potential of possibilities within challenging human situations, which is the point Khavn is sublimating. Look at these human beings creating their own moment and they have nothing! The future is an abstraction, yesterday is already forgotten, and one mighty step after another is the thrilling moment of the now. Such beautiful potential is unseen by the distant towers of Capital, as the never-ending trash, the detritus of consumerism, washes upon the shoreline.
This Is Not A Film By Khavn
“Squatterpunk” is one of Khavn's concise experiments into the cinematic documentary. The time of actual filming is squeezed to one day and one day alone. Post-production, editing and the recording of the punk soundtrack will occur later, but the raw footage of life will be accumulated in one day. There is the sorcery of the camera lens and there is the magic of the intelligence crafted in post-production. Khavn will weave a vision of the slums, full of experiment, spectacular images, juxtapositions and the squeezing and stretching of time.
Everything has to be ready to go on that particular day of filming and whatever happens, happens! Khavn pulls his crew together and they prepare to dive. The location sourced, permission from the residents. 5,4,3,2,1 we have lift off!
There are two aspects of Khavn's texture that creates “Squatterpunk”. He gathers up his cinematic crew for the actual filming. The second aspect is the band and the audio crew to record the improvised punk soundtrack. Both aspects are essential to the vision of the film; one aspect does not work without the other.
Khavn performs the lion's share of the work, directing, writing, and producing the film. Albert Banzon creates a dystopian paradise with his excellent cinematography, lensing a whole series of spectacular shots. They are then shovelled through the experimental grinder. Lawrence S. Ang has a deft handling of the editing, ramming “Squatterpunk” with overloaded insane Dionysian energy, an achievement! Khavn is ably aided with his assistant director Rayg Generoso, to maximise the effort and the digital footage in such a short shoot. The crew dive deep into the shanties and slums, capturing the daily slice of life in those poverty stricken, but vibrant communities.
Khavn takes an experimental approach to the audio used within the film. This is punk filmmaking, provided with punk sounds. The images of the film are accompanied by The Brockas improvised rock'n'roll punk score. Khavn ditches dialogue, it is unnecessary, he shows lives, there is no need to tell. People narrate their own stories through their actions and their visual emotions, caught by the camera.
There are ambient sounds of animals calling, distant sounds of children playing, mothers in a mush of chatter. The background noise of the slums is layered around the improvised soundtrack. The paradoxical use of subtle sounds splattered with deranged punk increases the atmosphere of the film.
The Brockas transform the soundtrack in the flick of an eye. Frantic thrashing 1000mph punk, to heavy heavy noise with a heavy metal tinge. The Brockas then lay back a little, with a harmonica wailing, and whiff of rhythm and blues thrown into the mix, as the band groove. The is a droning fuzzed out Krautrock jam, that is hypnotic. In the buzz of a bee's wing, the band will go back into 1000 mph mode. The Brockas change the mood and atmosphere of the music, depending upon the nature of the images, within the rapture and erratic rupture of the visual narrative.
Amusingly, Khavn laces plinky-plonky childlike keyboard occasionally, to give the film a children's TV feel, but the crazy images of children doing their thing in a challenging environment, yields this well-known musical motif, paradoxical. This use of musical plinky-plonk humour shouldn't be ironic in a film that is dominantly about children, but the nature of the actual images reveals Khavn's visual and musical wit.
When the film was first screened at film festivals, The Brockas played a live improvised soundtrack at some showings, increasing the avant-garde nature of the film, constructing a multi-media mashing of the senses. Children are running wild on screen, punk blasting out live by The Brockas, what a rush! The is a spectacle I would have loved to witness, raw creativity in action!
Into The Trash Polluted Wine Dark Sea!
Squatterpunk is Blakean vision of pure wild untamed energy. The undiluted joy of children living their lives to the full. The quirk of the film is that Khavn is filming life within the Isla Putting Bato Community at the edge of Manila. This coastal community is a clichéd example of slum, shanty, homemade housing community, at the edge of a big city, living in challenging circumstances, in a hand to mouth existence. With rapid industrialisation, the sea around the community is a trash strewn soup of debris, detritus and throwaway, bobbing on the waves, like a big confetti disaster. To the children of this community though, this trash is paradise. Hapon and his gang of friends, dive, somersault and dive bomb into this floating garbage dump. “There's gold in them there hills” and the children will make the most of swimming and surveying for hidden gems, that can be weighed in for cash.
Khavn does focus in and around the wider community, but it is Hapon, the Mohawk sporting cool kid of these mean streets, and his posse of pals, that that the director focuses upon. It is cinematic gold to watch these children do their own thing, through a day in the slum. Squatterpunk is ostensibly about the infinite ingenuity of children, their problem-solving capabilities, their pranks and humour in these difficult circumstances. They just don't just make the most of it, they dive headfirst into the swamp of grime and come up smelling of roses.
Another aspect of Khavn's eye is the nature of games and gameplay that infuses throughout this community. There is a myriad of strategies for survival and the constant presence of gameplay is the best preparation. These games can be active in relation to sports, basketball or some hybrid of rugby/American football. There are the communal games of the karaoke, when sour faced mothers, suddenly spark into smiles, as songs are sung, and all the kids all pile in to join in the fun. The whole event transforms into a jamboree of joy. There is the diving and swimming games of the children, with the subtext of an economic purpose to discover pearls within the trash, to make money. Finally, there are the more contemplative games, as two young men sit out on an empty street, considering their game of chess, not a game one would associate with slums.
Throughout the film, there are small acts of kindness, collaboration and generosity, within this deprived community. An old lady passes around home-made ice lollies/ice cream to the mothers in one of the communal areas, where a TV sits. A little child keeps jumping up a counter where various sweets and candies are for sale. His jumping efforts are rewarded with a free treat from the stallholder. Hapon and his gang contemplate the issues around one of boy's bikes, and they put their heads together to fix the bicycle.
Khavn And His Digital TV Eye
Khavn's camera work, in parallel to digital effects, is an anarchic melange of wild filmmaking. The documentary is filmed in black and white, but that wouldn't be quite the reality. High contrasts, loud overexposure, film overlaying film. Upside-down shots, sideway shots, any mad camera angle will do! Soupy grainy shots to high definition. Murky and foggy to the district. Children smiles fill the screen, bigger than Manila, as the distant towers of capital hover ominously. Time to speed the camera up and charge through the shanties! Slow the filming down; a static camera observing whatever action is taking place, over one long take. Khavn scoops out the broth of Three Witches cauldron, he lobs it into his camera and you have pure Energy Is Eternal Delight, the zip zap of Khavn's eye. This is wild wild STUFF, the vitality of children, fizzing with vibrant creativity. Disciplined filmmaking is for dullards; this is the zipping, skipping, erratic joy of filmmaking! Children jump and dance, as roaring punk rock whizzes. Eat those images!!! Khavn stirs up a stew of stunning joy, dig it!!!!
Punk Punk Punk
“Squatterpunk” is a ‘show not tell' documentary, screaming with joy and the never ended creativity of children, an explosion of life! Squatterpunk is an adrenalised wonder of a documentary filmmaking. Poverty, creativity, debris strewn seas and massive smiles. Take a jump into the soupy wine dark polluted sea; be blinded by Khavn's overexposed light! Into to the deep my friends, into the deep!
