HEADLESS
(Pugot)
34th Rotterdam International Film Festival, 2005
17th Singapore International Film Festival, 2004
6th Cinemanila International Film Festival, 2004
New York Filipino Film Festival, 2003
Original Title: Pugot
International Title: Headless
Country Of Production: Philippines
Year Of Production: 2002
Format: Digital
Length: 15:00
Director & Producer: Khavn
Production Company, Sales Company, & Print Source: Filmless Films
Screenplay: Khavn, Lav Diaz, & Banaue Miclat
Camera: Bahaghari, Lav Diaz, & Khavn
Editing & Effects: Gatla Gunawin
Art Direction: Chits Jimenez
Music: Jun Lopito
Leading Actors: Lav Diaz & Banaue Miclat
GALLERY
Weblog S.E.A. Eyes, July 2004
by Gertjan Zuilhof
http://www.indiewire.com/onthescene/onthescene_040510siff.html
http://www.filmfest.org.sg/fframe.html
"We can hit a point in cinema where basically there's no need for any one to be in the room except for two actors, let's say, involved in a scene sitting at a table, each one wearing a video camera on their shoulder. The director would only have to come and tell them what the scene's about, and possibly where they should go and then the director could leave and go get something to eat. Then come back two hours later, [the actors] would still be going and there'd be these matching one-shots." - Harmony Korine (Gummo, juliendonkeyboy)
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I have to start somewhere. Southeast Asia is a large and very diverse part of the world. In the field of cinema, there may be more differences than similarities. In this huge archipelago, there may be more blank spots than activities that have been filled in and described.
An archipelago that is not just a geographical concept, but the cultural one too. It is quite conceivable that film makers in Bangkok are more aware of what leading galleries in New York are presenting in the field of new video art than that they follow the activities of colleagues in Kuala Lumpur or Manila. This in turn is related to a different archipelago: that of digital reality.
That's why I just have to start somewhere. With a special and very outspoken film maker who is building a striking and idiosyncratic oeuvre somewhere in this fourth world, between the third-world location and the first-world digital culture. His name is Khavn De La Cruz. Khavn has to be pronounced as Kavin. He is a Filipino and lives and works in Quezon City near Manila.
De La Cruz works fast. For someone who is only just 30, he has an imposing filmography comprising several long video films and dozens of short ones. I recently first saw his work when he asked for support from the Hubert Bals Fund.
Between all the balanced feature proposals from all parts of the world, his project was a strange contribution. The treatment for the script comprised several furious sketches from the life of an absurd and extremely dysfunctional family. The title - The Family that Eats Soil - turns out not to be a metaphor. The poor family prostituting itself literally eats baked and steamed earth in order to fill their hungry stomachs.
With the visual language of the splatter-horror-gore and sex film, De La Cruz wants to tell a story that comprises an evident social indictment, but that belongs to a different universe from the political film in its design.
Previous films by De La Cruz I have now seen, such as Greaseman, Amen and Barong Brothers, make it clear that he earns a place of his own in the international foreign legion of experimental extremists and cult film makers such as the Japanese Takashi Miike, the German Jörg Buttgereit and our 'own' Aryan Kaganof/previously known as Ian Kerkhof.
Under the extreme images of De La Cruz, one occasionally finds a powerful simplicity. Take his short film Pugot (Headless). Hidden behind his camera, an artist has a half bored, half quarrelling conversation with his girlfriend. Whether she won't model in the nude for a friend of his. She is not interested, but he continues to complain and gripe insistently. The shots of the conversation are interspersed with shots of a long-haired man who was walking the streets of Manila wearing a very bloodstained pair of trousers. It looks like some kind of performance, but people in the street barely react. Don't they dare? The long-haired man is played by the film maker Lav Diaz.
Diaz is rightly regarded as the most promising independent film maker in the Philippines. Not as extreme as De La Cruz, but apparently he didn't balk at performing this service for a friend. The leading man turns out to have cut off his penis, which puts the quarrelling couple in the parallel montage in a strange light.
Pugot is but one example of the many digital films in which De La Cruz investigates the boundaries of moral and cinematographic abilities. He plays with all conceivable forms, from the silent film to the melodrama and the experimental tradition. And, as if that isn't enough, as a musician he often makes his own music for his films, runs an artists' and web cafe and his digital film festival .MOV is approaching its second edition. If there wasn't an experimental film climate in Manila, then there certainly is one now in the person of Khavn de la Cruz.
PUGOT (2002)
by Lourd De Veyra
Given the standards of The Twelve and Greaseman, Pugot (Severed) emerges to be Khavn’s most "conventional" film, in comparison to his other works. Pugot shows a Khavn seemingly more in control of his cinematic kinetics.
This is a more compact, slightly straightforward story of a relationship ending in macabre tragedy. But here we still do not see a linear narration. Instead, the film alternates between two parallel situations: a room where we witness the freely improvised dialogue between the lead character and his wife; then the streets at the break of morning, where Khavn’s camera follows the image of a dejected, desultory man, long hair cascading down his face and blood flowing down his jeans. In the darkly moody opening credits, we see a man holding a knife. It is implied that he castrated himself, and the act of emasculation somewhat becomes a central metaphor. When he wanders aimlessly through the empty avenues, we hear the minimal piece of musical scoring atmospheric electric guitar riffing courtesy of legendary Pinoy rock axeman Jun Lopito.