A film that’s a hallucinated (and hallucinating) journey through the literary world of José Rizal (a Filipino nationalist writer and revolutionary during the Spanish colonial period), which reconfigures and plays with the colonial history of his country. The gesture is surreal and based on allegorical characters: the poet, the priest and the madwoman. The film is silent, using the out-of-date 35mm reels as a canvas that was painted on. A suis generis movie and a delicious delirium.
Khavn, a subversive filmmaker, writer, and composer from the Philippines, reimagines the legacy of the revolutionary writer José Rizal as an acid-infused avant-garde silent film that could never have existed. The film is crafted from hand-painted, expired 35mm footage, scarred, it seems, by the brutal violence of Spanish colonial rule. At its heart is Madwoman, a tormented figure symbolising a raped nation searching for her lost children. Her lovers — a rebellious sad poet and a lustful evil priest — circle her in a frenzied dance of destruction. In his quest for identity, Khavn steps into the role of the priest, while fellow cult filmmaker Lav Diaz, enters the scene as Castrated Christ. “The world is sick. But the band plays on,” the opening intertitles scream. It’s not about finding a cure; it’s about shaking the world up with color, rhythm, and pure anarchy.
Anastasia Lukovnikova
