KAMIAS: MEMORY OF FORGETTING

This is not a film by KHAVN.World Premiere: Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival 2006Original Title: Kamias: Alaala Ng PaglimotKamias is a green sour fruit. It is also the road where I live. This is what the video camera remembers. My amnesia lies in between."Kamias" weaves images of the artist's family and personal life with a strong, if not sad, narrative thread. Khavn gives us images of the day that transpired: his mother preparing merienda, his sister playing with her infant son, his brother-in-law and himself picking up his sister from school. His reminiscences take him well into the dawn, when he finds it difficult to sleep. In concise, poetic narration, Khavn takes us deep into the psyche of a young artist. The images shift quickly, like someone whose gaze flutters from one interesting item to another. The language is direct without being hip-smart, simple without being droll. This approach gives the film the quality of a dream. (Vincenz Serrano)A collection of vignettes that Khavn spliced together into a full-length feature that he named Kamias, after the road in Quezon City where his family lives. There are moments of great poignancy, as when his family is forced to give up their backyard to utility men encroaching on behalf of the electric company. The typical chaos of Quezon City — the harsh daylight, the heavy traffic and the endless drilling on the streets — is accompanied by Filipino poetry as recited by its author, Khavn, like the ghost of a failed suitor lamenting the deformed true love that is his neighborhood. (Ricky Torre)Kamias is a green, tart fruit that grows in Southeast Asia. The oxalates it contains can bring on fits in some people or brain disorders that in extreme cases may lead to death. Kamias Road is in Quezon City, where the director Khavn lives, and where camera-in-hand, he rebels against the fading image.The legacy of Mekas' lyrical film memoirs hovers over the family scenes. The quick shots present life in a home in the suburbs and simultaneously come together in a kind of hallucinated reality to compose a portrait of the artist.The ideal camera should have a direct connection to the mind so that it is capable of recording everything we have seen, says the director, and in a strange state of mind, between consciousness and sleep, he attempts to create a film out of registered images, which lodge themselves deep in the memory and are said to be re-evoked by approaching death, so that they can flash the life of the dying person before his/her eyes.The spontaneous images of the subconscious emerge out of the initial indeterminacy of the moments captured: capture everything that you see and that shapes your mind! Such images also point to the potential of digital cinematography, with its adaptability, intimacy, and accessibility, making it an ideal artistic tool.However, technology itself does not drive a film, it can only be an intermediate space, preserving what is seen until the creative impulse transforms its latent presence into a work of art. (Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival)

Channel: Sports
Uploaded: May 6, 2008 at 8:43 am
Author: oracafe

Length: 00:45
Rating: N/A
Views: 87

Video Comments