KHAVN (pronounced kavin or kan) DE LA CRUZ, the brainchild and festival director of ".Mov" (pronounced dot mov)-dubbed as the first major digital film festival in the country- has an interesting, frantic demeanor about him. Talking to this 28-year-old, digitally inclined independent filmmaker at Greenbelt Cinema 1-one of the different ,Mov venues-you get the impression that he's got a lot on his mind. Such that, while he may be talking to just you, he seems to be addressing many listeners.

To be sure, Khavn is busy with many aspects to his latest project, foremost of which is the abrupt addition of venues. Besides Greenbelt Cinema 1, originally the filmfest's sole location, .Mov is also ongoing at the audiovisual room of the Cultural Center of the Philippines and at the haunt of the group called Brash Young Cinema at the basement of the Unisys Building in Makati. Khavn would rather not shed light on this development just yet, instead looking at the bright side that there are now many venues for .Mov-goers.

Moreover, the filmfest, which will run until January 30, offers a lot of movies-26 full-length features (11 Filipino, 15 from other countries) and 50-odd short films, either entirely or partly in digital format. Thus, .Mov has gathered several talents that are either seasoned, such as Kidlat Tahimik and visiting director Rob Nilsson (see sidebar], or younger such as Jon Red and Jolly Feliciano. There are even seven digital filmmaking workshops-one every morning-at Greenbelt during .Mov week. Best of all-as Khavn intended it-admission to the .Mov flicks (and workshops) playing at the CCP and Brash Young Cinema is free, (Greenbelt charges P60 per screening.) "Para mas maraming makapanood," Khavn says.

More is more

"MANY," in fact, seems to be the operative word, the common denominator, for Khavn, who has also called himself "Jesus Cave" and "Nicolas Jump" to avoid repeating his name in his one-man projects.

A dude of several, mostly artistic inclinations, he is, among others, a filmmaker, scriptwriter, composer, poet, piano player and, at least while his Oracafe bar-restaurant was still around, proprietor. (Oracafe itself offered booze, live music and fortune telling all under one Kamias, Quezon City, roof.) Interdisciplinary studies, Khavn's major back in college at the Ateneo de Manila University, encompassed film, literature and development studies. Even his raison d'être for making movies connotes multiplicity: "You can do a lot with filmmaking-direct, score, act, write. Kinakain lahat ng iyon." He even had an obsessive-compulsive episode in his film class days, when he longed to keep shooting and shooting whatever came his way to the point that he wished he had a camera installed in his head.

Of course, it was inevitable that Khavn would make movies - the sort that elude the radar of, say. Mother Lily and her movies' avid consumers. But it also came naturally for Khavn to mount his own film outfit, through which his works and those of other alternative filmmakers can see the light of day. Formerly called FixSeeCrew (a play on the word crucifix), Khavn's group is now called Filmless Films, the deliberately alliterative name alluding to digital filmmaking. "Even our foreign-filmmaker contacts love that name," enthuses Khavn, whose own favorite movies-including the Coen Brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy, Mike de Leon's Aliwan Paradise and Lars von Tier's entirely digital Dancer in the Dark-are alien to most. Generally, besides making the"filmless" movies he wants to make, Khavn shoots "as if it's the last film I'll ever make." He has made more than 30 film and video short films and two full-length digital works, namely, The Twelve, a fairly odd work about modern-day Counterparts of the apostles awaiting Christ's second coming, and Greaseman, a rich man-poor man tale essayed by Lou Veloso and Eric Quizon. And, yes, Khavn has been taking advantage of digital technology-its handiness and relative affordability allowing more budding moviemakers to get to work. "Mad magaan dalhin ang digital camera at ' hindi masyadong maiilang ang actors kasi malllt," observes Khavn, whose ideal digicam is the smallest yet cheapest there is, whatever it is.

In all, Filmless Films has five full-length movies and several shorts to its name. These works-which include those of Khavn's collaborator, animator- oo'9HIH producer Gatia Gunawin, and others in the indie realm-have made the rounds of mostly nontraditional venues (small theaters, bars). The movies of these, well, showbiz outcasts were also the main fare of a couple of predecessors to .Mov, both held last year: "Digital Dreams: A Filmless Filmfest," held at the De La Salle University, and "Digital Sunsets," a three- Sunday filmapalooza at the Manila Film Center that also offered live indie music and spoken-word poetry from sundown to midnight. .

Besides those two Filmless Films affairs, Khavn acknowledges that there were other festivals that have showcased digital movies, "but they were smaller in scale and were held in schools and cultural venues." Yet .Mov itself is somewhat an accident. Originally, Khavn merely wanted to stage the awarding ceremony for Filmless Films' amateurs competition called "Silvershorts" (a combo of\silverscreen and short film, that).

Eventually, it came to be that Silvershorts would be appended to what would become .Mov.
So now, after being turned down by possible sponsors and venues, Khavn and his digital filmfest are rolling.

Feeding cineastes, digitally

WITH .Mov, Khavn can be likened to o Bob Geldof circa "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

Whereas The Boomtown Rats vocalist's multiartist benefit recording was meant to help arrest famine in Ethiopia, Khavn's .Mov somehow satisfies the local filmgoer's hunger for celluloid tare that differs from local or Hollywood junk. "I think gutom in]nga ang tao," he echoes. "Maraming tumatawag ,sa amin para magtanong, o mag)-volunteer." That's a rather heartening tact, considering that this filmfest has zero advertising, relying only on the Internet, word of mouth and limited press coverage for promotional exposure. "Kung may mnkinarya lang tayo gaya ng movie companies, [magigingg] tae sila," he casually quips.

Big-name stars and the usual coterie of showbiz writers were nowhere in sight at .Mov's opening on January 22. That was the night Greenbelt became a haven for provocative, digitally themed installation art by the likes of Tad Ermitano. It was also the evening for the Sllvershorts awards and a presentation of a collage of .Mov films via a "him concert," rendered by a motley crew of "Orkestra.Mov" musicians doing a rather surreal Jam-along.

Yet the opening night was not without alternative-level celebrities. For one thing, the trio of Silvershorts judges was on hand to proclaim the three awardees. Raymond Red, whose Anino won the short-dim category Palme d' Or at Cannes in 2000, gave the third-prize trophy to Arleen Cuevas and Elizabeth Balitaan's Taguan, which features actor John Arcilla as a family man. Lav Diaz, whose latest guerrilla-filmmaking works are Hesus Rebolusyonaryo\ionnryo and the five-hour saga Batang West Side, bestowed the second-prize honor upon Mo Zee's Sulyap, which involves a well-off gal in traffic and a sampaguita vendor insistently tapping on her car window. The top prize was turned over by living legend Kidlat Tahimik-the grandfather of local indie filmmakers-to Jolly Feliciano's Kawala. (Kawala, which was shown in its entirety that night, is a captivating enough work, employing the "clip motion" digital style to essay a married man's awakening from catatonia. Still, I expected Quark Henares's brutally funny/A Date with Jao Mapa to win. Henares will have to make do with the Palanca award A Date got last year in the teleplay/short Film category.)

The 12 Silvershorts entries, along with those by "Net Cinema," Ateneo and Mowelfund students comprise .Mov's shorfilm lineup. The festival's full-length offerings, meanwhile, include locals like Roxlee's Limbo Rox, Jon Red's Still Lives, JJ San Pascual's A Pilgrim's Journal, and imported stuff like Todd Verow's Once and Future Queen and Dogme95's Mifune and The Celebration. (For sked updates, log on to mov.moviespage.com) "Ideally, strictly digital lahat-shooting at editing," Khavn notes of the criteria for picking the .Mov movies. For now, he had to make do with the reality that many of the films are bastard kids of film or video and digital formats.

The art of positivity

OVERALL, .Mov is a rich feast, one that infuses further adrenaline into the stagnant film industry. Now that it's here, Khavn realizes that mounting it is no mean feat. "Alam mo 'yon, parang walang nagbubuhat pero dapat buhatin," he muses. Now that he has shouldered the responsibillty of bringing digital films to a wider Pinoy audience, "Ang bigat pala. Pero buti na lang may mga tumutulong."

Even so, one wonders why Khavn -who is planning a nationwide .Mov tour-takes on something that only a minority of the population would find compelling. "I ask myself that every now and then," he shares. "And every time I do I keep rediscovering the answer." The answer that Khavn -who will continue work on his next film once .Mov's over -does volunteer is "Tae ang past life mo kasi you have no idea ot it at tae din ang future because you have no idea about it. What matters is the now."

Moreover, "You have to ask yourself, 'Ano 'ng magagawa ko para sa aking kapwa at sa next generation?' So in our own little way, we'd like to contribute something positive. Big or small, any day, may magagawa tayong positibo. You don't have to be a president to do that." As .Mov shows, one doesn't have to be a well-known, traditional filmmaker to contribute positively, too.

 

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