- Filmed in just one day, Squatterpunk follows an eight year old Slum King named Hapon, a cocky would-be gangster with a Travis Bickle haircut, and his rat-bag minions through one of the thousands of shanty towns that spring up between the cracks in the Manila pavements. The manic collage of stunning hand-held black and white images capture kids being kids as they frolic amidst the cardboard and corrugated walls of home-sweet-home and the surrounding debris, human and otherwise. Like watching infants at play at a car crash, it's a mesmerizing, almost seamless collision of social realism and visual poetry. It's a rush to the heart, too, fueled by the mostly improvised punk score by Khavn's outfit The Brockas. The relentless clang-bang drowns the need for dialog or most background noise, leaving a stark impression without comment and, more significantly, without judgment. A vivid and jarring collection of postcards of innocence at the brink of a short and possibly non-existent adolescence, of simple pleasures amidst appalling squalor, of human junk that society ignores in a country the rest of the world prefers to forget.—Andrew Leavold
- Philippine underground filmmaker Khavn directed this purposefully rough and tumble portrait of life along the margins in Manila. Hapon is an eight year old boy living in a shantytown in the city's poorest neighborhood. Despite the grinding poverty around him, Hapon seems to enjoy his life as he and his friends run free through the tumble down shacks they call home and play in the garbage-strewn streets. Hapon and his pals seem largely unconcerned with their future (or even entirely aware if they'll ever have one) as they live for the moment in a place largely governed by misery. Featuring a pounding score by Philippine punk band the Broacks, Squatterpunk was screened in competition at the 2007 Rotterdam International Film Festival.
It looks like we don't have any synopsis for this title yet. Be the first to contribute.
Learn moreContribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content