With Rizal’s MAKAMISA: Pantasma ng Higanti, Khavn De La Cruz delivers a monster of a film, both epic and highly personal, radical as is his wont, part pamphlet, part historical saga, part intimate novel, part parable. The setting? The Philippines in the late 19th century, between two forms of colonialism, Spanish and American. The starting point is a text, Makamisa, the outline of a novel left unfinished in the 1890s by the poet and revolutionary José Rizal – a veritable national treasure – in which he denounced religious abuse and oppression. Passed through Khavn’s caustic and furiously political filter, the result is a film that looks like a fresco from the early days of cinema, a little like Griffith’s – without the extras, but with the excess. The figures could have stepped straight out of a genre film, somewhere between a zombie movie and a Western set in a fantasy universe. The fable follows the agonies and torments of a malevolent priest (Khavn himself) and Rizal the poet as they vie for the favours of a poor woman, Crazy Sisa. An intense nightmare, for which Khavn has meticulously reworked each image by hand (colours and scratches), giving the movie the shaky effect of an old film reel that was forgotten, or that fell into the hands of a scratch fanatic. A not-so-distant past is thrown into sharp relief, with obvious echoes in today’s Philippines – and far beyond. An otherworldly soundtrack by David Toop, Khavn and the Kontra-Kino Orchestra lends a gloomy tone to this firebreak against today’s political crises.