Electric Sheep are proud to present a screening of Khavn de la Cruz’s Mondomanila at the Flatpack Festival in Birmingham on Friday 29 March.
A joyfully outrageous slice of life in the slums set to a punky soundtrack, Mondomanila is a slap in the face of Western expectations of politely miserabilist depictions of the downtrodden. A hyper kinetic, super stylised wild carnival of the destitute, it follows a midget, a one-armed rapper, a ‘day-glo fairy’, a disabled pimp and their friends as they try to get as much sex and drugs as they can and tackle a racist white paedophile. A toothless showman opens this exuberant bad taste spectacle, promising something horrible and creepy, but the Mondo-style shockumentary aspect is underpinned by the crude reality of life in Manila, making the film vital and energising.
Although Filipino director Khavn de la Cruz has made 33 feature films and 100 shorts, British festivals have tended to ignore his prolific output, and the Flatpack screening provides a rare opportunity to discover his provocative work.
Read our interview with Khavn de la Cruz at the Edinburgh Film Festival in June 2012.