zltdaniil ·
03-Авг-19 02:07
(спустя 3 месяца 6 дней)
mondo films
In 1962 Italian filmmakers Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavara and Franco Prosperi made the film Mondo Cane (A Dog’s World). To make the film, they travelled to exotic cultures in different parts of the world and filmed crude and extreme rituals and rites. This film depicting lots of nakedness and cruelty to both humans and animals gave rise to a whole new genre called Mondo films.
The basis to these Mondo films is documentary recordings that, however, are almost always presented as reports. These longforgotten Mondo movies are the origin of a certain type of sensationalist TV that we have today. Mondo Cane was a milestone and from then on most directors who started making this kind of film included ‘Mondo’ in the title. In most of these films, in addition to recording real happenings, there is also a lot of trickery going on (a lot of the rituals and things that happen are staged). The objective was to show these unknown hidden places as they truly were, a bit like the freak shows that were so popular at the beginning of the 20th Century. They are also known as Shockumentary in English and when this type of film is distributed in the US, they are titled Shocking instead of Mondo. While the main objective was always to astound the viewer, irony and humour were always essential elements.
The Mondo Cane directors went one further in 1966. That was the year they filmed Africa Addio. The film, most likely unintentionally and certainly with no political objectives, showed the consequences of the decolonization of Africa. Ethnic murder, military regime savagery, slavery, the massive hunting and killing of wild game… Africa Addio soon put paid to the innocence of these naïve young directors who only wanted to shock and astound. In the 1970s the production of Mondo films turned into a race to be the most shocking and sensationalist. They began to use material from television archives and other films. When the spectators began to tire of the exotic crudeness, the filmmakers turned to topics more in tune with the audience’s ‘reality’. From then on it was accidents, operations, anything to do with sex, executions, drugs, suicides… by the time the 80s came around there was no way to categorise the scripts and films being made. The Mondo films were basically a collection of brutality. Cheap seedy films were made in little or no time and produced directly for video rental clubs. Mondo films have continued down that road ever since. They are still being made but nowadays they are very similar in structure to youtube playlists. Just one scene after another in order to try and shock the viewer. And that, in the type of society we now live in, is far from easy to achieve. In this day and age of the internet, Mondo films don’t really make any sense. Where once you needed an adventurous camera crew to go off and film something astonishing, nowadays it’s just not necessary. All you have to do is turn on your computer. Anybody who wants to see a Mondo film has plenty to choose from: the Mondo Cane series (nobody knows how many of these films there are), Africa Addio, Mondo di Notte, Mondo Trasho, Mondo Topless, Afrika secreta, Mondo Hollywood, Savana Violenta, Droga Sterco di Dio, Mondo Mudo, Malamondo, Mondo Balordo, Mondo Brutale, Mondo Bizarro, Shocking Asian, Mondo Porno, Mondo Delirium, ...
