Cameroon Love Letter (For Solo Piano)

There are film makers who work with a well-considered plan and a written script. There are also film makers who believe in spontaneity, chance and intuition. There is no doubt that Khavn, the most independent of Filipino film makers, belongs to the latter category. He films like a jazz musician. His camera is a solo instrument and everything around him is part of his band. He started filming even before he passed immigration control at Yaoundé airport, and during his stay in Cameroon he didn’t really stop.
It’s clear that Khavn’s film acquired its final form only after the wild filming in Cameroon. The term ‘jazz musician’ is not only a metaphor. Khavn is also a musician; maybe he is primarily a musician and only secondly a film maker. In any case, his film, in monochrome blue, acquired an outspoken musical and poetic form. A continuous piano composition holds the various images together and two long letters tell the story.
Khavn was often held to be the director of the Filipino soap series The Promise (Pangako Sa ‘Yo’), which is very popular in Cameroon, and that was a great advantage for him. He playfully borrows his protagonists from the series. At a serious level, Khavn also refers to the film couple Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc, who were brutally murdered in 2009.

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