"Anyone can be a great artist," declares Khavn De La Cruz, "Everyone can direct a film. Everybody is worth seeing or talking to. Everybody has something to say." The rather personal proclamation can perhaps be attributed to the common quotation that says, "If everybody can do it, I can do it too"; "can" being an unintentional tribute to his first name which is pronounced exactly the same as the action word.

Khavn's name still doesn't ring a bell but to the young circle of artists, he has already made a mark of his own. Considering himself a full-time artist, this young man occasionally helps in their family's many businesses.

Khavn's first international exposure passed on unnoticed when his short video "Alaala Ng Madaling-Araw" [Memory Of Dawn] won the Bronze Award in the 1997 19th Tokyo Video Festival. It was the only Filipino entry which was honored from among the 1,947 entries submitted for the competition this year.

As opposed to many filmmakers out there who exert extra effort to show works which are set in a different realm and dimension, Khavn's films transport the viewers back to where they belong: their own worlds.

From his early works "May Isang Sundalo" [There's A Soldier] and "Kamatayan Ng Presidente" [Death Of The President], one can already see Khavn's ability to make simple things interesting.

His raw video "Pig", showing the "complete rites" of slaughtering a pig, is a one-of-a-kind take in showing the suffering of a living creature whose life is to be taken by another living creature.

Then there's "5 Shorts", a video collection of five rugged monologues, incorporating human emotions with life's ironies. The film is a fresh and candid effort meditating on topics which other artists would never attempt to touch only because they sound too simple to catch the juror's fancy, or to be blunt about it, worthless to be given attention to. The beauty of "5 Shorts" comes from the soul of the video, mixing humor and drama in a unique fashion, reminding watchers of prominent monologue-films like Spalding Grey's "Swimming To Cambodia" and "Monster In A Box". In his efforts to give attention to trivial matters, putting his magic touches to make them appear significant, Khavn says, "It's a matter of giving importance to things. If you have given importance to inanimate objects, how much more to the living things around you."

As a filmmaker, Khavn professes his concerns that film, as a medium, is limited. Yet he believes in the limitless power of the mind. With the many events that unfold every minute of everyday, he is a little frustrated not to capture things on the videocam only because of its limitations. But his deep liking for films keeps him going. Asking if he can still live without films, he claims, "We can live withou art. We can live without clothes. But life would be better if art is around."

Given the chance to direct a full-length feature film, what has Khavn to offer? "The only thing a director can offer is himself and his uniqueness. What makes one a good artist is how open one can be. You just have to let out what's inside you."

Apart from being a filmmaker, Khavn is a musician having won many awards in the field of music which include the Grand Prix in the Yamaha Electone Festival in 1991 and his inclusion in the Top 25 entries of the 1997 Metropop Song Festival. He's a musical director and arranger of "Joseph The Dreamer" and the "Miss Universe Pre-Pageant" in 1994. His biggest accomplishment as a musician to date is being a composer, librettist, pianist, and musical director of Tanghalang Ateneo's "2Bayani", a rock opera staged in Ateneo, Central Luzon State University, and the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

A graduate of Ateneo De Manila University in AB Interdisciplinary Studies, Major in Film, Literature, and Development Studies, Khavn also writes poems, scripts, and short stories. He has contributed articles and works to notable national publications. But despite his endless efforts in the improvement of his craft, he never worries much about his critics. He says, "It goes back to you. you have to believe in yourself. There are good artists out there who gets frustrated when critics and non-critics lambast them in workshops and thru printer articles. But it only takes one to believe in himself."

What transforms independent works into popular items is marketing and packaging. Khavn believes that somebody has to discover somebody. "Every artist is worth it but somebody has to market that artist," he implores.

Before ending the interview, I asked Khavn about his observations on the current influx of disaster movies from Hollywood which uses state-of-the-art technologies to come up with eye-popping special effects on screen. He has a good view on the matter: "Technology in filmmaking has a purpose and its purpose is to aid filmmakers. What people forget is that it's only there to help. Everything still depends on the filmmaker. What really matters is how the concepts of these filmmakers are being translated on screen."

Manila Standard
June 16, 1997

Back to Top^^