LIFE AND DEATH OF A PORN GANG – Mladen Dordevic

Marko wants to become a filmmaker and he focuses all his energies to get this goal. But as he realizes that his dream is almost impossible (and his father sets up his mind not to finance his aspirations anymore) he decides to shift his attention on another kind of market: porn.

Unfortunately his choice soon gets him entangled in a negative downward spiral, starting with the clashes which soon arise with the movies’ producer. Therefore Marko resolves to leave his city, Belgrade, and to start touring across Serbia with some sort of porn-theatre with the help of Una, his girlfriend and actress, and blue film actors: social outcasts and troubled people such as drugs-addicted, HIV positives or homosexuals.

The tour starts with enthusiasm but on the way it becomes tough and troublesome: Marko meets Franz, a German journalist who proposes him to shoot some snuff-movies . Marko accepts this new challenge, thus dooming the whole company to a painful fall into the underworld.

Life and death of a porn gang gained a special mention at Ravenna Nightmare Film Fest 2009 and together with the winning The Human centipede, it distressed (and carried away) the audience’s souls.

Fully shot in Serbia in very short time and with a very narrow budget, this movie goes over various themes: the political and social background of a country during a difficult period (images of Milosevic’s fall can be seen); the conflicts and the differences between the city and the small rural centres; the problems linked to the present-day pervasive tendency to temporary employment and the disaffected hopes of the young; violence, death, sex and love in their different and fiercest aspects get depicted throughout the movie.

The bluntness and depth of this movie hit like a punch in the stomach. Marko, Uma and all the people following them in this porn-theatre adventure, end up slipping into a hell of soul and body where all limits get outstepped and no hope is left. With such terrible and shocking consequences to let this movie flow into horror. A happy ending is not meant to be. Not for people who stroke themselves with such deep and bleeding wounds.

Life and death of a porn gang is definitely an original and well structured work, which succeeds in showing and looking deep into the human mind and its darkest and most hidden aspects, in a whirl of emotions able to leave the sign and to make one think. A difficult but extremely interesting movie, enriched by excellent convincing actors able to appear true in every minimal aspect.

The main actor, Mihajlo Jonavic, strongly collaborated with the filmmaker, Mladen Dordevic, to let this work spring out. The result is a little masterpiece of independent cinema, another clear evidence that great results can be reached even with little means.

But as it often happens in this field, this important goal gets scarcely esteemed by a neglectful market. By now nobody knows whether Life and death of a porn gang will find a distribution outside the Serbian boundaries.

 

[translated by Elisa Clava]