Filmless Films

Mondomanila tells the story of teenage anti-hero Tony de Guzman and the rough neighborhood he calls home.

Hapon is an 8-year-old survivor in the slums of modern Manila, scratching out an improvised existence at the margins of society. This rawly shot documentary follows Hapon and his mates as they swagger around their dilapidated universe. Featuring a punk-rock score by director Khavn's band the Brockas, the film captures a carefree spirit in the children that completely belies the squalid conditions in which they live.

A man follows a woman through the streets.

"The Twelve" is a pre-apocalyptic vision reminiscent in theme to Hal Hartley's 2000 As Seen By film "The Book Of Life". This feature-length genre-bending digital work features scenes of "The Apostles" drinking the night away while waiting for the Second Coming of Christ, interpolated with musical vignettes that evoke but take further the shattered narrative of "Breaking The Waves". "The Twelve" is a deceptive postmodern work that explored themes of faith, redemption, and contemporary values, and balances satire, science fiction, and social critique.

The directors want to shoot a film about a man known as the son of god. But what starts out as a practical joke, extends to become a curious portrait of what could either be a petty fraud or the world’s most secret miracle. A film crew tracks his bizarre pilgrimage as magic and religion, faith and doubt, real and unreal blur and melt to the point that one of the director becomes one of the characters. The film traverses all descriptions, before ending as both an affirmation of faith for the faithless and a criticism of faith for the overly faithful.

Absurdist short comedy in the best camp and gore tradition. Little Ali has the handicap as a boxer that he keeps crying continually and heartrendingly. As a result, he keeps losing his bouts with the lightweight boxing champion Mad Cow. One day he sees an advertisement by the Klinika Lakrima, where they can operate to remove his tear ducts. Sensitivity is not the right word to describe this operation.

K. loves Ana. But Ana’s now gone. Once she was there. But not anymore. A chance encounter from their past leads to this new meeting between K. and Ana. A mix of music video, poetry reading, and offbeat romance – this is Khavn’s wildside romance.

A merman is washed not ashore but into the heart of a bustling metro. Disoriented, he walks around and runs into several characters, all of them in the middle of their nightly grind.

Strikingly captivating and accessible short film by someone who tends to make more experimental and raw films, even though the situation in the film is raw enough as it is. We follow Piling, a young soccer fanatic, through a slum district of Manila. No ball or cleats, but a Coke can and flip-flops are the ingredients for a virtuoso demonstration of the football art. Only at the end does it become apparent why the little ball juggler will never be a Ronaldinho.

"Philippine Bliss" tells the tale of six modern-day Filipinos living in a single neighborhood, a housing project called B.L.I.S.S., started by the former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos during the Martial Law era. These people, whose names allude to familiar characters from Jose Rizal's novels, narrate their private yet vivid stories of loss, longing, and Third World despair, all intersecting in a public arena that is their packed community. Theirs are lives seen with an oftentimes comic eye, unabashedly bound by a wild and brimming sense of Filipino hope.

Khavn is jack of all trades. In this case he brings an improvised homage to the great silent slapstick tradition. In the idiom of the silent film, but with the absurdist humour of Dada, he presents two brothers who wear the traditional Filipino barong. They are looking for two missing brothers, but in fact mainly get in each other's way. The necessary colourful slapstick extras cross their path as well.

"Overdosed Nightmare" is Kidlat Tahimik's "Perfumed Nightmare" without the perfume, a pure nightmare set in wounded Manila, a close-up view of all that gangrene and pus. A gang of rat-munching, homophobic bums kill the night clumsily. Jesus H. Christ gets crucified for the nth time in Dagger Island. A greaseman, the image model for Poverty, bums around the Edsa Revolution anniversary which ousts another corrupt president, Estrada the actor. And Tony D., the shrewd short-fused citizen of the Philippine ghetto, sets his sights on foreign classmate Steve Banners, a pompous self-righteous dude with delusions of America's grandeur at the expense of Third World inequity.

A short documentary on how one family lives out each day to earn their daily bread. How one man's trash is literally transformed into this family's treasure.