When it comes to porn movies, the situation in Serbia is progressively getting worse. Times were better in the days of Milosevic testifies the famous screenwriter Mladen Djordjevic.
While making the documentary Made in Serbia, which was screened at this year's Zagreb Film Festival (ZFF), he once again delved into the world of the social conditions in which Serbian porn actors live and work. By using the pornography metaphor, he showed a realistic picture of a society without hope or goal and the struggle to endure in raw survival conditions.
"People who decide to act in porn movies [in Serbia] are people on the verge of social existence, they live from one day to the next. Still, they have nothing to be ashamed of," Djordjevic adds.
The young director has depicted the fates of the several most attractive Serbian porn stars. They live in misery and poverty and often make movies precisely because they can earn the most money in this way. In Serbia, where the average salary amounts to 150 euros [per month], the money that they get from a single movie is far more lucrative to actors than, for instance, farming an agricultural tract of land.
The 50 euro Serbian Stud
No one wants to watch domestic movies anymore - Djordjevic reveals to us.
"Those are exceptionally low quality movies, even though the actors try. Anyone would sooner rent a foreign porn movie and even the numbers here are - laughable. Men get 50 euros for the whole film and women get 100. Djordjevic is worried by the fact that the situation has remained unchanged for years, so Serbian porn actors are looking for a break abroad, for instance - in Budapest," he says.
In Hungary, for example, the average price per scene is 500 euros + 20 percent for the agency that books the model. Therefore, as the people we have talked to tell us, a producer will pay as much as 600 euros for one good girl if she is an established name. In Serbia, the price depends on the appearance, the series of scenes that are filmed, and their variety (several diverse scenes - bigger price) and, naturally, on the way the scenes are acted.
Low Quality Productions
We looked to the master of the Serbian porn scene for an answer to this question. Slobodan Stankovic is the self-declared emperor of the Serbian porn industry, the owner of the magazine Striptiz and probably the most influential porn producer.
"It is hard to have a good producer who is ready to invest money and not to have good models. It is easy when I have both one and the other, but those are really rare situations," says Stankovic, who collaborated with Djordjevic on the documentary feature Made in Serbia and presented himself to the audience in an autobiographical role in the film.
It seems that, after the film had been made and screened at the festival, there was a difference of opinion. To clarify, Djordjevic and Stankovic are not on speaking terms today. They do, however, agree on one thing. The Serbian market is in urgent need of investments in order to recover.
Serbs more open than Croats and Slovenians?
"We produce the biggest number of movies and have the biggest number of magazines [that deal with] those themes. There seem to be several reasons at play: the first one is the citizens' mentality, I think that Serbs are more open than Croats or Slovenians. The second reason is definitely the influence of religion, since Catholics live 'more virtuously.' The third is that Serbia has been though a difficult political period, so sex served as an outlet for the problems to people. As the final reason behind the expansion of porn in Serbia, Stankovic mentions the 'general beauty of citizens.' Owing to the good looking guys and girls on the streets of Belgrade, it is not difficult to gather a crew and make a good project," Stankovic points out.
Of course Stankovic's view of his Muslim Croat neighbors is a bit shortsighted when it comes to piety, faith and acceptance of adult material
Croats in the porn business
The Belgrade porn company Balkan Exotic, with Slobodan Stankovic at the helm, regrets that there are not more Croats in the business.
"Ira Tigerman once tried to do something in the area, but she asked us how we find so many models," Stankovic confides.
Serbs are not bashful and they are in dire need of money, so they prefer to make movies. Since the domestic film Kozjak, which has been banned and caused a huge stir on the Croatian porn circuit, nothing has happened that had any major differance in the industry. "It is a pity because Croats are certainly a good looking people too, we do not have any doubts that the actors would be top notch," concludes Stankovic.
