At FIDMarseille, Khavn pumps new life into Rizal’s unfinished novel 

Khavn has long been meaning to reimagine, put to the screen, and sort of complete José Rizal’s unfinished third novel, Makamisa, since reading around 1992 historian Ambeth Ocampo’s book about its discovery.

“During that time, I wanted to make a rock opera adaptation inspired by [Luigi] Pirandello, but fate had other plans,” he tells Rappler.

This, until he received an invitation to write and direct a staging, the mouthful SMAK! SuperMacho AntiKristo: A Headless 100-Act Opera To Avenge All Bicycles Of The Universe According to Jarry & Rizal, for Berlin’s Volksbühne theater in 2019.

“I took this as a sign to revive my dream of finishing Rizal’s magnum opus,” he says. “The seminal idea of SMAK! is to fuse Rizal who died in 1896 and the father of surrealist subversion Alfred Jarry whose masterpiece Ubu Roi premiered in 1896. Rizal’s Makamisa is my response to Jarry’s Ubu trilogy.”

Such fixation led to Makamisa: Phantasm of Revenge, Khavn’s latest film and entry in the main competition section of this year’s FIDMarseille, chiefly a documentary film festival in France, where Lav Diaz’s seven-hour epic Isang Salaysay ng Karahasang Pilipino also had its debut two years ago.

Makamisa, a hand-colored silent film, had its world premiere in June. Says FIDMarseille programmer and film critic Nicolas Feodoroff, the film is “part pamphlet, part historical saga, part intimate novel, [and] part parable” that mines “the agonies and torments of a malevolent priest (Khavn himself) and Rizal the poet as they vie for the favors of a poor woman, Crazy Sisa.”

It is Khavn’s collaboration with John Lloyd Cruz (playing Rizal and Simoun) and German actress Lilith Stangenberg (playing Sisa and Josephine Bracken), “egoless” artists, as the Filipino director describes them.

“They came on the set possessed by their characters,” Khavn says. “As you will see in the film, both of them gave their all, not just their hearts but also their intestines. They surprised me in every single scene.” 

Khavn notes further that two films set to come out soon will serve as companion pieces to Makamisa. “One is the 10-hour black-and-white silent film El Demonio de las Comparaciones. The other is Pomeglycerina, a found footage feature akin to Nitrate and National Anarchist that also utilizes hard-to-find archival material,” he says.

Here, Khavn shares the gestation period of Makamisa and why he gravitates to the revolutionary hero.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Makamisa: Phantasm of Revenge recently had its world premiere at FIDMarseille. How did you feel when you learned about the news, and how was the experience during the festival?

We were still reeling from the world premiere of Makbetamaximus: Theater of Destruction at International Film Festival Rotterdam last January, where festival director Vanja Kaludjercic lauded us for creating this mindfuck of a Macbeth deconstruction — “Better than Joel Coen’s!” — when our German co-producer Stephan Holl told us the good news that Makamisa: Phantasm of Revenge was officially selected for the main competition of FIDMarseille, similar to Isang Salaysay ng Karahasang Pilipino by Pugot Brocka aka Lav Diaz two years ago. 

Finally! A film I’ve been dreaming of since the 19th century! A hand-colored fake-but-genuine 1920s (proto-)surrealist silent film will be born and see the light of the projector. 

This postcolonial project starts with the premise that surrealism was born in the Philippines via a Filipino polymath neighbor of Jose Rizal. It’s always fun and funny to premiere more than one feature in a year. We shot this in December 2021, during the longest lockdown in the world. The German actress Lilith Stangenberg had to quarantine more than a week in a windowless hotel before we could head to Zambales for the seven-day shoot. 

A film professor based in Congo and Belgium thought that there were a lot of post-production effects done to simulate this old archival footage look; even though there were actually none. It was all cut and paste. The look was achieved with in-camera techniques and experimental hand-processing.

One of the magical moments — according to some the audience afterwards — happened during the end credits, when they realized that the saxophone they were hearing was not from the cinema speakers but from my nine-year-old son Katch23 playing live on his curved soprano sax, joined by my seven-year-old daughter 1delacruz’s feral snare-drumming, followed by me doing a spoken word litany about the postcolonial Indio, the lethal Philippine heat stroke, and the consistent tragedy of government.

I’ve learned that Makamisa: Phantasm of Revenge is the film component of your cross-genre musical SMAK! SuperMacho AntiKristo: A Headless 100-Act Opera To Avenge All Bicycles Of The Universe According to Jarry & Rizal shown at the Volksbühne Theater in Berlin in April 2022. Can you talk about the significant changes it went through since that staging?

No. Makamisa is a totally new work.

What the Volksbuehne Berlin audience saw in 2022 were ghost sketches projected on the translucent curtain while actors performed behind as silhouettes, or in front as live cinema. During SMAK!, the focus was total theater, with film as one of the many components that were cockfighting with each other to create something Ezra New.

In 2023, we had a rough draft which was already impressively expressionist, according to a few friends who saw it. But it was only during the last two months before the world premiere at FIDMarseille this June 2024 when the film was fully sculpted in terms of editing (with editor Furan Guillermo and co-scriptwriters Homer Novicio and Douglas Candano); the soundtrack (created by David Toop and my Kontra-Kino Orchestra, edited by sound designer Diego Mapa); and the hand-coloring (meticulously painted by Timmy Torres and her 200-woman team of dedicated tint magicians).

How long did you have to shoot the film, and where did you shoot it?

Somewhere between three days and 30 days, depending on who you ask from the cast and crew. We weren’t on hallucinogenic gummies but it was definitely a trip.

Six days in the Kingdom of Zambales, where we also shot Balangiga: Howling Wilderness, although the locations were different. One day in RSVP Film Studios in Makati.

What was it like working with John Lloyd Cruz and Lilith Stangenberg for this project?

Lilith is the loveliest, wildest, most authentic acting machine/creature a director could ask for. One day, Philippine cinema will have its own Lilith Stangenberg, once we’ve harnessed more intelligent self-reflexive thespians; once we’ve freed ourselves from formulaic dumb obedience to the whims of the algorithm and the audience. Then, Philippine cinema will have embraced its true meaning and thrown away its ugly pretentious TV clothes — in other words, to be art.

John Lloyd Cruz also over-delivered. He totally unleashed the saddest poet and the darkest revolutionary inherent in Rizal’s multi-faceted tortured/tortuous psyche. He was unpredictable — in a good way, interpreting my jazz cues.

Throughout your body of work, you’ve always been particular about form. For this film, did you begin with the form in mind before crafting the story or is it the opposite?

The concept is greater than form. In the beginning was the concept. Cinema is not story. Story is just one of the many elements that the filmmaker juggles with. And like the juggler, you have the liberty to let the story fall on the floor and gloriously rot.

Of course, form is important. We are formless and all forms are ours. Form is how we communicate. In the future, we can just lock heads to share each other’s mind movies. But for now, go to the cinema.

Form is the container. Even the ocean needs the earth to be its container. Art is impossible without form. To embrace form is to embrace the fluid, uncontainable, uncontrollable properties of the soul, which is what art is all about.

Which comes first: the duck or the balut? We will never know. Each film is case to case and beer to beer. If you really want to be chronological, first came Rizal’s Makamisa circa 1890s. Then the desire/urge/hunger to create this monster of a movie in 2015. You can consider my short films Filipiniana (2016), Aswang [1933] (2017), Juan Tamad Goes To The Moon [1898] (2018) as pre-prod. Or you can also go a few years back with the first two-hour draft of Nitrate: To the Ghosts of the 75 Lost Philippine Silent Films (1912-1933) which we first screened with a live soundtrack by The Brockas in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Mirage Cinema as part of the Sharjah Biennial 2013. The shooting screenplay of Rizal’s Makamisa was officially written in 2021. Needless to say, a lot of things changed during the actual shoot. And the final crafting in the aforementioned elaborate and laborious post-production happened this year.

I’ve learned that you colored and reworked each image by hand. Has it always been your plan visually? What was that process like, and how long did it take?

Yes. No one could plan what would come out of this mad experiment. One can only desire/wish/dream, but not plan. This is too chaotic even for the freakiest of celluloid freaks. 

Step one: Shoot on expired Fuji 35mm film stock. 

Step two: Hand-process in your toilet, courtesy of Jesed Moreno of The Happy Chimps Lab.

Step two & a half: Flush. 

Step three: Look for a film scanner that could handle wet, sticky celluloid. 

Step four: Hand-color each frame ‘til you go blind. And voila! MAKAMISA!

What was that process like? Tedious as T.

And how long did it take? Very, very long.

I saw your film National Anarchist: Lino Brocka at QCinema last year, and the film is largely made through archival audiovisual work. Since Makamisa: Phantasm of Revenge is informed by Jose Rizal’s unfinished third novel, I wonder, did you also use archival images for the film, and was there any difficulty in terms of access?

No, we didn’t. Everything that you will see we created from scratch. 

They look like archival images from the early 20th century Philippines. Dirty, ruined, improperly archived, lost but found footage from our erased/neglected/forgotten history. This is what’s left from the 75 or so silent films of Philippine film history. But no, nothing’s left. The Filipino is forgetful. The Filipino doesn’t care about his past, his self, his identity. Let him forget. This is just another bad dream.

What is it with Rizal that makes you gravitate to him and his work?

R-i-z-a-l is a five-letter vessel, similar to J-e-s-u-s, that one can project one’s brutal fantasies into. Rizal is the devil. Rizal is the antichrist. Rizal is the savior. Rizal is God. Rizal is a writer. Rizal is an anarchist. Clearly he is a metal and I am the magnet. Or is it the other way around?

He wrote more poetry and fiction than the other Ilustrados and Katipuneros. His name was used as a secret password to Katipunan meetings. He had a voracious appetite for destruction and reconstruction. I sincerely believe he is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and that the Holy Volcano of Banahaw is the New Jerusalem.

Since June, you’ve been part of a six-month residency fellowship grant sponsored by the DAAD-Artists in Berlin Program. Can you share more about it?

The DAAD Artists In Berlin Program has been a prestigious residency since 1965. Its roster includes Andrei Tarkovsky, Jim Jarmusch, Steve McQueen, Nam June Paik, Damien Hirst, Marina Abramovic, Mario Vargas Llosa, Stanislaw Lem, Margaret Atwood, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag, John Cage, and Igor Stravinsky. It’s a residency that doesn’t technically require any output. They invite the artist and his family to reside in Berlin for a period of time as a kind of sabbatical from the hectic world and percolate new ideas for a rebirth, reincarnation — to become the multiple souls that artists are designed/destined to be. You’re totally free what to do with this six-month-bubble-of-a-gift. You can treat it as a long holiday reward for all your hardcore toiling years. And/or a going-back-to-the womb/cocoon to meditate/ruminate on your next strategies/plans. As part of its long-term support of artists, works by current and former guests are presented at the Daadgalerie in Kreuzberg as well as at partner institutions in Berlin, around Germany and also abroad.

My family and I are based in Berlin until the end of the year.  Every now and then, we host Folk U Mondays at the DAAD Galerie, a little night of free-jazz-punk with my trio Babel Gun, featuring various musicians and artists from Berlin and beyond. On October 1, the Berlin premiere of Makamisa will take place at Volksbuehne. Upcoming retrospectives, concerts, and workshops at Filmhaus Köln, Underdox Munich, Le Alleanze dei Corpi in Milan, Sinema Transtopia, etc.

Earlier this month, the Austrian Film Museum also arranged a retrospective of your work. I’m curious, has your approach to filmmaking changed over the years? If yes, how so?

Every year, my filmmaking metamorphoses into a different animal perpendicular to Chinese astrology. It’s like shedding skin and emerging as a different species of cinema/art/music/literature-making animal. This year is the year of the Titanium Dragonfly. It’s extremely exciting, not just from the outside, but even more from the inside. Like a psychedelic phantasmagoric rave party minus the hangover and side effects.

Change is inevitable. If I made my old films now, they would surely be different. And vice versa. If you put my films under a microscope, you will notice that I make the same films but different timestamps. Different time, different place, different cast, different crew, different ingredients, different recipe, different everything, but same banana chips. What is constant? What remains? I actually don’t know. I’m still me. I am Rumi’s ball/pen. I create films. It’s the critic’s duty to write about the changes. – Rappler.com