National Anarchist: Lino Brocka

In the Philippines, Lino Brocka is a national monument: an artist-fighter against corruption and oppression who went to the barricades with masterpieces like Bayan Ko: Kapit Sa Patalim (1984) or Orapronobis (1989). In all, he directed over sixty fiction features between 1970 (Wanted: Perfect Mother) and 1991(Makiusap Ka Sa Diyos), the year he died in a car accident. Of these, some are considered lost, and not all are political in their intentions, albeit more than at first meets the eye.

Khavn De La Cruz is no stranger to Lino Brocka, having played with and meditated on his legacy. For National Anarchist: Lino Brocka he grabbed everything the master ever made that is still available in some form, however dilapidated, which in many cases means old VHS tapes and YouTube clips. It doesn’t matter that in many cases the pictures are magenta or oddly pixellated, as Khavn gets at ’em with every mad editing move he knows, plus all his accumulated grading ninjutsu to craft a cacophony of sounds and images that howls and hollers like the soul of the eternally oppressed Philippines, rising again and again for another battle to finally be free. If you know how to look at ruins, you can see future empires. With this work, Khavn excavated Brocka’s once and future dominion.

– Olaf Möller

Trailer

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