Mondomanila

Life in the slums of large Third World cities has been filmed in many different ways, but never before was a musical made about it. Khavn De La Cruz has been involved since 2003 with a unique celebration of the lives of losers in the ghettos of Manila, the Filipino capital. Characters like the teenager Tony D and his depraved friends. There’s Lovely Loanshark, the gambling addict, a slum milker who's always screaming. Sgt. Pepper is a policeman and (to his great dismay) the father of only daughters and a gay son. There’s Steve Banners, the old white pederast, and Ogo X, the misformed rapper. Mondomanila got support from HBF a long time ago and was finally made with mainly private money. The film shows a colourful, occasionally almost glamorous but also violent, rancid and perverse society in the gutter, in flashy, fast-cut scenes, with absurd dialogues and bizarre events. Khavn shakes up film styles to his heart's content: exuberant video clips, grubby film noir, hyper-realistic documentary and even slapstick - linked by an original story and rousing music.