“Vampire of Quezon City”
Europe is virtually staging a Khavn dela Cruz film festival in the last quarter of the year.
Quick on the heels of his recent trip to Venice, where “Happy Lamento” (his collaboration with German cinema stalwart Alexander Kluge) was presented, the Filipino filmmaker has been invited to different festivals abroad.
His award-winning historical treatise, “Balangiga: The Howling Wilderness,” will have its international premiere at the 47th Montreal Festival du Nouveau Cinema, in Canada from Oct. 3 to 14.
Next, “Balangiga” will be screened at the Geneva International Film Festival in Switzerland (Nov. 2 to 10) and at the Exground Film Festival in Germany (Nov. 16 to 25).
“The Middle Mystery of Kristo Negro”
Khavn’s latest film “Bamboo Dogs” will have its world premiere in the competition section of the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival in Catalonia, Spain (Oct. 5 to 14).
“Bamboo Dogs” will also compete in the Warsaw International Film Festival (Oct. 12 to 21) and Geneva International Film Festival.
A retrospective of Khavn’s films will be held at the Lausanne Underground Film and Music Festival in Switzerland (Oct. 17 to 21).
Epy Quizon (third from left) in “EDSA XXX”
He will present five of his films—“The Family That Eats Soil” (2005), “Vampire of Quezon City” (2006), “The Middle Mystery of Kristo Negro” (2009), “EDSA XXX” (2012) and “Alipato: The Very Brief Life of an Ember” (2016); and five vintage Filipino films—Mike de Leon’s “Kakabakaba Ka Ba?” (1980), Butch Perez’s “Haplos” (1982), Celso Ad Castillo’s “Virgin People” (1984), Peque Gallaga’s “Magic Temple” (1996), and Gerardo de Leon’s “Dyesebel” (1953).
“I deliberately picked the more obscure titles, in terms of world cinema,” he explained, “the ones not usually included in the canon of great Philippine cinema, to show the other facets of our film culture—the more popular, genre-based movies.”
“Dyesebel” will be presented as a silent film and will be scored live by his band from Berlin, Khavn & the Kontra-Kino Orchestra.
Khavn dela Cruz
The band will launch its album in Berlin on Oct. 16. His omnibus work, “This Is Not a Lost Film,” will also be screened with live scoring by his band.
Lastly, he will conduct a filmmaking workshop at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival in the Czech Republic (Oct. 25 to 30).
“Cinema is our culture,” he said. “Sharing it with the rest of the world is part of the filmmaker’s responsibility.”