Amoeba Music

This documentary, shot in a day and following the rambunctious pastimes of a young boy named Hapon, left me in the middle of two unsettling thoughts. Maybe they were impulses, and perhaps in a week I'll feel differently. I haven’t quite recovered from the moral confusion. The first thought was to reject the glorification of the slums and squatters in the Philippines that are documented here. The film follows Hapon and a large amount of children who sort of see him as an icon. The back of the DVD compares the film to seeing children playing at a car crash. Believe me, it's much worse. The beach they swim in is overflowing with garbage and debris; the toddlers roam the dusty streets without diapers and relieve themselves in alleyways. Hapon prances around with his distinguished Mohawk like a king, and yet his open sores have flies hovering over them. The film has no dialogue. It's set against punk music, shot in black and white, with the edgy quality of a skate film. And it shows confident children, satisfied with their play and overjoyed at the thought of someone wanting to document their existence. Hapon and his friends, while malnourished and left unattended, carry a familiar spirit. They are tiny anarchists who enjoy being enveloped in anarchy—no rules, no enforcement, and absolutely no parental control. My second thought following a short-lived disgust is that I'd envy this free-spirited childhood, were it not for the realization that I would have to be happy with the fact that I might not reach adulthood.

The adults are certainly not getting along any better, and like the children, they don't seem to care. They sit in shacks playing cards or sing karaoke in bars—some chagrined, but most very confident. Another jarring aspect of daily life in this city is the commingling of children and adults. There is a shot of a bar where a man is passed out at the counter, and next to an empty pitcher of malt-liquor is a bored toddler. Age seems to have no relevance at all, as minors and elders share the same fate. While the adults have their alcohol, the young children sit underneath a pier and huff chemicals out of plastic bags. The lack of culture was also startling. Like most other countries that have had a relationship with America, citizens of Manila are highly westernized. They have the donated hand-me-downs of the West, and those small "treasures" are seemingly enough. It gives the impression that one must be able to afford culture, or at the very least have the means to hang onto it. The shantytown is filled with American garbage, from bicycles and Mickey Mouse t-shirts and every other useless thing in between. You begin to wonder what the city used to look like, and how quickly it fell into despair.

That must be what is keeping me in limbo on this experience. While it is terrible, it is presented in such a fascinating way that it does make you wonder about your luxuries. A photo from your youth can be seen as a powerful thing, for example. With home movies and photographs, or even stories of your ancestors, you feel at ease with the past and can decide, looking back, if you had a good childhood or not. For Hapon and his friends, there is no such illusion. While they grin and smirk at the camera and are proud to have someone following them around, it isn’t the promise of being able to look back on it that counts, but simply that someone came and saw them for them. No interviews and no explanation. That touched me the most—the sort of "here I am world" bravado that these young children express.

Aside from content, I will hand it to the director that this was a stellar way to document these children. The time-lapse, shifty editing and wash-outs present them like a group of punks or skaters, who likewise have the same knack for danger and grit. I'm glad to have stumbled across this film, but again, it left a strange impression that has the tendency to shift. Fictional films surrounding children in slums, while still a touchy subject for most, has dialogue and plot. In the end, you know the actors will walk away, many to comfortable homes. Sure, you understand that they're acting out events that happen all the time, but it's different. Squatterpunk is something that you desperately cling on to. Not because most of these children won't make it to better circumstances, or the fact that poverty deserves attention, but because these particular children inspire you. Their faces aren’t asking for pity, and you have to struggle not to give it. Sounds odd, but that's really how I felt.