Undiscovered country

Serbia’s cinematic underground is feted at
Fantasia 2010

LUDICROUSLY INSPIRED: The Life and Death of a Porno Gang

by MATTHEW HAYS

I hadn’t really given a lot of thought to what I might be missing by not being in the loop on Serbian cinema. And here’s where a film festival can step in and illuminate something most of us didn’t even know existed, let alone pondered. This year, Fantasia programmers have created a section for Serbian fare, and the nation, which has obviously suffered from a recent war-torn past, has produced an entirely unusual, often thrilling spate of movies.

Given its title, I was first drawn to The Life and Death of a Porno Gang, and though following the titillating-title policy of picking movies usually doesn’t work, in this case, the thing actually lives up to its name. Written and directed by Mladen Djordjevic, the plot involves Marko (Mihajlo Jovanovic), one inventive young Serb who’ll do anything to get into the film biz. After dodgy financial backing falls through, Jovanovic manages to assemble a ragtag group of actors who begin to make porn, and eventually decide to travel throughout Serbia, performing porn cabarets as a way of educating rural types about the intricacies of sex—what Jovanovic calls a “guerrilla mission.”

HYPERBOLE-WORTHY: More Porno action

The movies-within-the-movie are utterly hilarious: we see Jovanovic’s experimental poetic student film, When the Pig Cried (which strikes me as a parody of some of Polanski’s student work, but it’s also a pretty universal jab), as well as Jovanovic’s sci-fi/horror/porn movie. The travelling porn cabaret goes even further. One sketch has a peasant railing against the earth: “You frigid whore,” he tells the soil, “you didn’t bear enough wheat!” He then whips out his member and begins raping the earth. (Yes, Von Trier’s The Idiots did spring to mind.)

But wait—there’s more! My fave bit comes when a Deborah Harry-obsessed trannie dons a blonde wig and tells the assembled crowd about how when she first fell in love, it was with a goat. This story is met with shrieks of laughter from the depraved, semi-toothless yahoo peasant Serbs—but they are silent as the trannie follows up by going down on the horse she has up on stage with her. Needless to say, Disney has not acquired the English-language remake rights to this movie.

SNUFF ART

Jovanovic finally gets the financial support he needs, but as war-weary Serbs will tell you, everything arrives with a terrible price. A producer tells Jovanovic that some Serbs are so bored with their horrid lives that they are willing to get offed in a movie. He coaxes Jovanovic into believing that this is simply the right thing to do: “Real artists should go where others fear to tread,” he says, in a barely-adult game of dare. “You’ll be the first artist of snuff!” Jovanovic heeds this worthy call, and that’s where Porno Gang continues down its ludicrously inspired plot path.

In the past, I’ve occasionally felt stung by the hyperbolic tendencies of some Fantasia programmers. But Porno Gang is everything its title and program note promise: a truly crazy-ass, twisted and utterly subversive look at a group of people on the margins. One of those rarefied movie experiences you’re only ever going to have at Fantasia. And Djordjevic has crafted something approaching genius—I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

WIDOW SHOPPING: Tears for Sale

Also playing as part of the Subversive Serbia section will be the director’s cut of Tears for Sale, Uros Stojanovic’s feature about a Serbian town where virtually all of the men have been killed by the war. Two women make a living by attending funerals and crying as if they knew the deceased. The film received rave reviews on the festival circuit in 2008, but this is the world premiere of the director’s cut. It was written by Aleksandar Radivojevic, the screenwriter behind A Serbian Film, also screening this year. Here, our protagonist attempts to retire from the porn industry, but is lured into one final gig—or so he thinks. Another horror-porn fusion from our Serbian friends. Additional screenings include Technotise: Edit & I, Serbia’s first animated feature; Variola Vera, a based-on-a-true-story film about a Muslim intentionally infected with smallpox; A Holy Place, about a haunted church (what could be scarier?); and T.T. Syndrome, a landmark Serbian slasher.

THE SUBVERSIVE SERBIA SERIES
SCREENS AS PART OF FANTASIA. “AN
INTRODUCTION TO SERBIAN HORROR
CINEMA,” A PANEL DISCUSSION AND
MULTIMEDIA PRESENTATION, WILL
TAKE PLACE AT CONCORDIA’S EV
BUILDING (1515 STE-CATHERINE W.) ON
JULY 14 AT 6 P.M. ALL SCHEDULING
INFO IS AVAILABLE AT
FANTASIAFEST.COM