Khavn / Philipines, Thailandia, Emirates / 62’ / 2023

Lost cinema. Lost culture. Lost country. Lost people. How to recreate the past with nothing? Cinema of the impossible. The silent past as a horror film. The smell of nitrate in the morning. How many ghosts can the cinema contain? 75 films. 22 years. What is the numerological significance? Too late. Never too late. Meanwhile, some films from the Philippine digital revolution have mysteriously disappeared.

Directed & Written by Khavn
Editing & Sound Design by Furan Guillermo
Associate Editors: Jason Aquino & Jet Leyco
Produced by Apichatpong Weeresathakul, Achinette Villamor, Khavn

Khavn
born 1973 in mondomanila, khavn (pronounced ka-vin) means “prophet of peace” in 13th century pre-hispanic filipino. he is a prolific, eclectic filmmaker, writer, and composer.
He made his first film in 1994 and has made more than 365 films (50+ features, 300+ shorts) since, ranging from the grotesque to the romantic to the surreal and meditative, playing with different registers, modes, styles, attitudes, exploring the human psyche like a visitor from another planet. from 2002 to 2011, he was the festival director and programmer for .mov, the first digital film festival in the philippines.
his films include Squatterpunk (rotterdam 2006); Manila in the Fangs of Darkness (viennale 2008); his two collaborations with alexander kluge —orphea (berlinale 2020), Happy Lamento (venice 2018); Solar Syokoy, produced by olafur eliasson; & ruined heart (tokyo 2014) starring tadanobu asano with cinematography by christopher doyle. Balangiga: Howling Wilderness (2018) won the best film and best music prizes in the philippine urian & famas awards, the equivalent of the oscars and critics circle.
Khavn has served in the jury of various film festivals such as the berlinale, clermont-ferrand, cph:dox, jeonju, bucheon, jihlava, new horizons, seashorts, dok leipzig, aswan, & zinebi. he has exhibited at the moma, maxxi, guggenheim museum, tate modern, museo reina sofia, national museum of singapore, & venice architecture biennale; lectured at the berlinale talent campus, bela tarr’s film factory, goethe institut, the danish film institute, and his alma mater, the ateneo; and curated programs for the viennale, the edinburgh international film festival, & the sharjah biennial. selected retrospectives of khavn’s films have been presented in rotterdam, pesaro, kosovo, sao paulo, taiwan, croatia, & oberhausen, among others.
Khavn has written eight books of poetry, two short story collections, a novel, an anthology of contemporary philippine poetry, and a film book about the philippine no wave. he has won various prizes for his poetry and short stories, including the highest literary prize in the philippines, the palanca, for his novel.
Khavn has written and composed more than a thousand songs and recorded more than forty albums: rock operas, concept albums, piano solos, instrumentals, and soundtracks. he’s the leader of several bands, among them are the brockas, babel gun, fando & lis, vigo. the longest he has played on solo piano non-stop live is for 13 hours for his silent 13-hour film Simulacrum Tremendum in rotterdam.
Like his films and books, his music is characterized by ferocious artistic restlessness expressed through the blurring of conventions, resisting labels while also invoking them, making his whole body of work wildly divergent but also singular in vision.