GREASEMAN Juxtaposes a day in the life of a greaseman (street bum) and a yuppie, and watches as their worlds cross and their lives collide to devastating effect. This avant-garde experimental feature is grounded in a non-dialogue driven narrative, as musical improvisers provide the ethereal soundtrack to the hyper-imagery. (Lav Diaz)
A multi-media whimsical trip that presents life in all its tedious, hazardous glory. (Mayo Uno Martin)
10th International Tehran Short Film Festival, Iran, 2005
29th Sao Paulo International Film Festival, Brazil, 2005
34th Rotterdam International Film Festival, 2005
Excellence Award, 26th Tokyo Video Festival, 2004
4th La Palma International Digital Film Festival, 2005
Grand Prize, 15th Philippine Independent Film Festival, 2002
TRAILER
GALLERY
SYNOPSIS
A psychedelic silent film about the contrary lives of a Greaseman (Third-world Bum) and a Yuppie, intersecting and interchanging, one hazy night. With a freely improvised score.
STORY
We follow a day in the lives of 2 polar characters: a Greaseman and a Yuppie Loner. The former walks the city barefoot looking for food, while the latter repeats another working day in his monotonous life. Until that ominous night, their lives intersect as the Loner almost runs over the Greaseman lying unconsciously on the street bloodied and bruised. The Loner rushes the Greaseman to the hospital, wherein the latter is coldly and haphazardly treated and quickly dismissed an out-patient. The Loner, uncomfortable in leaving the Greaseman back in the streets, brings the semi-conscious man to his bachelor's pad. As the Loner sleeps, he is murdered by the Greaseman with his string belt. The next day, the Greaseman assumes the role of the Loner: wears his uniform, drives his car, and goes to his office. His officemates, neighbors, and passers-by don't seem to mind, accepting the Greaseman perfectly as the Loner, as if there's no anomaly. On his way home, the Greaseman sees another greaseman on the streets who looks like the Loner he killed. PHILIPPINE PREMIERE: Digital Sunsets, Manila Film Center
NOTES: There are two versions of GREASEMAN: the 15-minute short film and the 67-minute full-length feature; the difference of which is that the latter is more dense and elaborated. The acting, music, & camera work are all improvised. Shadow-work by the Anino Shadowplay Collective. One-day shoot.
by Lourd De Veyra
Here, the filmmaker takes the experimental spirit further. The storyline is less complicated that that of The Twelve, but here he completely takes out dialogue and instead relies on pure stream-of-consciousness spoken word narrative, flowing freely with the rhythms of a live band churning out similarly improvised free rock-jazz-pop-ethno-avant garde musical textures.
The title "Greaseman" is the literal English equivalent of the "taong grasa", the markedly disheveled, filthy gutter dweller who roams the streets of Manila in rags and mud-caked hair. The greaseman is someone who has lost all hopes as well as his sanity, looking more like a character from the Paleolithic age rather than a beggar in a modern city. He is a complete picture of despair: drinking and bathing in clogged canals, rummaging through trash cans, and muttering loudly to himself.
Greaseman follows the parallel stories of a taong grasa (played by veteran stage/movie actor Lou Veloso) and a condo-dwelling, car-driving yuppie (the clean-cut mainstream film actor/director/sometime heartthrob Eric Quizon). They are worlds apart, but a series of events allows their paths to cross. The yuppie accidentally runs over the taong grasa, drives him over to the hospital for medical treatment, and then to his condo unit, in an unexplained fit of humane kindness. However, the greaseman overpowers the yuppie, dresses up in office clothes, and takes over his life. There is a reversal of conditions.
Such material may turn into socio-political commentary in the hands of other directors with less whimsical imaginations. As a manifesto for whatever social and philosophical persuasion, Greaseman remains hazily floating in an abstract cloud. The film actually derives its expressive power from the interaction of the different art forms involved.
Khavn takes all the time in the world to tell his story, letting his camera flow organically to the point of taxing the viewer’s patience. One marks the oblique camera angles, the somber dark-red tones of the photography, and the interesting atmospheric counterpoint provided by the sound. Khavn himself does the voice-over, in a half-recited-half-sung manner. The vocals actually flow in two tracks, one in English and the other in Filipino. The words/phrases used only suggest mood instead of literally annotating the story.
Then there are the startlingly hallucinatory visual intrusions: line art animation by Khavn’s perennial partner-in-crime film editor/filmmaker Gatla Gunawin and surreal, kaleidoscopic imagery by the Anino Shadowplay Collective. Both the animation and the shadowplay weave in and out of the narrative intermittently, supplying a different sort of tension to the film.
REVIEWS
Khavn De La Cruz, the guy who brought us the revolutionary .MOV digital filmfest earlier this year, had Eric Quizon and Lou Veloso star in his techno/poetic ("psychedelic" may be the more appropriate term) "Greaseman," previously screened at the CCP/Manila Film Center Full Moons by the Bay. Khavn, the man who's also behind the now-defunct Oracafé, wrote the script, provided the cinematography, and edited the film, probably even improvising its musical score. Good thing he was able to acquire the services of the comedian-turned-councilor of Manila in the title role and Dolphy's most talented son in the business, that is before Jeffrey Quizon came along.
www.peyups.com
August 19, 2002
For experimental video, the winner is "Greaseman" by Khavn dela Cruz. It was originally a full-length digital video but the filmmaker did a reedit. The 15-minute film became a mixture of visual and musical bombardment about the two contradictory lives of a taong grasa and a yuppie. It stars Lou Veloso and Eric Quizon.
INQUIRER
Feb. 15, 2002
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