TEN YEARS ago, on August 26th 2010, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) announced one of its most severe acts of censorship in over a decade. After reviewing “A Serbian Film”, the directorial debut of Srdjan Spasojevic, a Serbian-born film-maker, the BBFC stated that the film would need 49 individual cuts—a total of three minutes and 48 seconds—before they could consider granting it an 18 certificate. The film follows a retired porn star (played by Srdjan Todorovic) who goes back to work in what he thinks is an arthouse movie. The director, in fact, is making a snuff film and asks him to perform a series of extremely violent acts, including the sexual abuse of an infant.
Even before the BBFC’s ruling, “A Serbian Film” had received a remarkable amount of publicity. Due to be screened at Frightfest, a horror-film festival in London, Westminster Council received a number of complaints about the proposed viewing. The council made the irregular decision to allow the screening on condition that it be classified by the BBFC first. The question of censorship became a talking point in Britain, and attendees at that year’s Frightfest were primed to see one of the most bowdlerised films in the festival’s history. But the organisers would not settle for the BBFC’s cuts. “Frightfest has decided not to show ‘A Serbian Film’ in a heavily cut version because, as a festival with a global integrity, we think a film of this nature should be shown in its entirety as per the director’s intention,” said the event’s co-director, Ian Jones.
While the film was testing critics’ and audiences’ boundaries—depicting acts of horrific sexual violence that make “120 Days of Sodom” look like “101 Dalmatians”—it also drew attention to the cultural tastes and limits of individual countries. Denmark and Sweden classified the movie as a 15; in France and Brazil, the uncut version was awarded an 18 certificate. Many countries, including Spain, Malaysia and Norway, reacted with an outright ban. The film is still forbidden in Australia, New Zealand and Germany, among many others, and it has earned a kind of cult status.
“Did we suspect something might happen? Yes. But never in the range that it did,” Mr Spasojevic says. “Germany destroyed the film and materials. Many other [distributors] throughout the ‘free world’ cancelled the deal and destroyed materials in different stages of post-production. Festival directors and programmers were prosecuted for screening the film. Ordinary people were prosecuted for possessing the film.” Mr Spasojevic still feels confusion towards the censorship of his film, noting that the majority of cuts made were not to the acts of violence but the shots alongside them.
In much the same way as “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974) probed the dark mood in America after the Vietnam war, with “A Serbian Film” Mr Spasojevic was attempting to bring a hyper-sexual, hyper-masculine vision of Serbian identity under Slobodan Milosevic’s rule to an international audience. Shot on a digital camera across Belgrade, with a soundtrack of unsettling techno music, the director intended his film to be an allegory of Milosevic-era Serbia. In 2010 he referred to his film as “a diary of our own molestation by the Serbian government. It’s about the monolithic power of leaders who hypnotise you to do things you don’t want to.”
When classification boards around the world were assessing the film they overlooked this political theme; distributors (as they must) assessed the movie’s suitability within the context of their own national values. As a result, audiences have largely come to understand “A Serbian Film” as the work of a sadist, not a political satirist. Mark Kermode, a British film critic, said that “if it is somehow an allegory of Serbian family and Serbian politics then the allegory gets lost amidst the increasingly stupid splatter.” Writing in the Village Voice, Karina Longworth said that the film makes “a passionate argument against a no-holds-barred exploration of extreme human sexuality and violence”, adding that its commentary on post-Milosevic Serbian society is merely “specious lip service”.
Mr Spasojevic’s career has suffered ever since. “He used to live in Los Angeles for several years but he had a hard time getting work out here because of the content of ‘A Serbian Film’,” Stephen Biro, a close friend of Mr Spasojevic and a director of an upcoming documentary on the movie, says. “The studios were excited to have him on board a project but when the financiers would find out that he made ‘A Serbian Film’, the project wouldn’t come to fruition.” But Mr Spasojevic still remains hopeful that the film will eventually be embraced the way he intended it to be. “When the time comes for ‘A Serbian Film’ to be free of its chains”, he says, “some other artwork will be banned in its place. That’s just the way it goes.”
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