Vampire of Quezon City (Khavn, Philippines 2006) After several young women disappeared in Quezon and was recovered then raped and disemboweled, it is very likely to have to deal with a
Aswang, a vampire. A ruthless policeman goes on a search and end up on the wrong track of a serial killer ....
In contrast to this straight Synopsis has to do it here with a story that reveals itself only gradually, a very brutal and explicit, while always disturbing confrontation film of the controversial Philippine Underground filmmaker. Generally it can be said that his films completely Khavn independently produced and to its program, makes against the laws, requirements and standards of mainstream cinema, and notices (on his YouTube channel are under the constant changing its full-length movies to see), and a manifesto he wrote for digital cinema:
Digital Deka Logo: Re-Defining Video . Here's an excerpt:
Digital Deka logo
A Manifesto for a Filmless Philippines
film is dead. It is dead as long as the economy is dead, when public taste and creativity are dead, when the imagination of multinational movie companies is dead. At millions of pesos per film production, there is not going to be a lot of happy days for the genuine filmmaker, the true artist who wants to make movies, not brainless displays of breasts and gunfire.
But technology has freed us. Digital film, with its qualities of mobility, flexibility, intimacy, and accessibility, is the apt medium for a Third World Country like the Philippines.
Film is dead. Please omit flowers.
I. Economics: A minute of celluloid film including processing costs around P1,500. A minute of digital film costs around P3. Do the math.
II. The only way to make a film is to shoot it. Shoot when you can. Do not delay. If you can finish everything in a day, why not? Sloth is the enemy of the Muse.
III. Your attitude towards filmmaking should be that of an amateur—half-serious, playful, light, not heavy, thus without baggage. There are no mistakes; the important thing is you learn.
IV. Utilize all elements within your resources. If you have a knack for music, score your own soundtrack. If you have writing skills, craft your own screenplay. If you have money, invest in gear.
V. Work within a minimized budget. Artificial lighting is not a necessity. The story is king—everything else follows.
VI. Work with what you have.
VII. Forget … the star system. Work only with those who are willing to work with you, and those who are dedicated to the craft.
[
Quelle ; und
hier der Link zur verfilmten Version auf youtube]
But back to the movie: The perspective changes while constantly between the offender and the police. The graphically quite distinct scenes (which is no way to see "female nudity") seem especially so drastically as to be right at the start already unmoved perpetrators photographed with an erection, and this for several minutes in the picture is running around (and then also a Masturbation scene is shown).
shot on video in black and white works Khavn told by its non-linear plot, which has only in the monologue scenes intradiegetic tone. Otherwise, this is completely extradiegetisch and mainly determined by an elegiac and religious organ theme (Interrupted by abstract noise cataracts) that gives the realistic yet stylized, hypnotic images an extremely eerie atmosphere. Not always in style is that, as if made on the biography of the offender and the figure is primed with a psychological depth (a little belt-drive scene, but pretty gruesome scene with the dog in the bag). So, here's so consistently a very high degree of hardness to endure: cause strokes and abuse in childhood to this messed-biography, which takes place in the religious-mythological delusions an exaggeration in the figure of the Aswang of expression and the disembowelment of bodies and their eating their cruel climax achieved.
out The English title of the film we Westerners somewhat misleading: the vampire, at issue here is, as I said, a Philippine
Aswang , a deep-rooted in mythology figure, the more equivalent to a Ghoul, a corpse eaters (hence the evisceration and eating the dead women) - but depending on the origin - and here comes into the diverse islands of the Philippines, can take various forms. See Ortlosigkeitsthematik in the movie: this is Aswang a drifter, a man who left his homeland (Visayas) in search of his mother and was stranded in Quezon.
One of the possible forms of the Aswang is actually a vampire but similar Creature, the "sucking of [its] long, thin and hollow tongue the babies in the womb of a pregnant woman sleeping" (wikipedia
). In the movie there is a scene where the killer with his rolled-up tongue approaches the belly of a pregnant woman and begins to suck on that. The scene I did not understand at all without this knowledge at the screening - I thought it be a fanciful erotic practice of kissing the inside of the belly button (to get input, etc.).
A reflective moment at the end of the movie white again add a further level, which unsettles the viewer still uncomfortable leaves without beautiful, to show off on a poignant surprise. VAMPIRE OF QUEZON CITY works so well because it is here in the middle of the city and unaware of the everyday urban sound, just casually - there is so far from all the exotic and is here also, logically, worked without lavish production budget. A room, a candle, a chair, a little mud. It makes the man an experimental, mythological torture film, the skin in the stomach. That alone is worth seeing in itself. Good films do not always need a lot of money.
[A good introduction to Khavn found in
The Canine Condition (Lukas Foerster).]
