Mandragora

[Will]

The other night I watched the Czech film, MANDRAGORA, which is the story of a 15-year-old runaway to Prague who's more or less forced into street prostitution almost the instant he gets off the train. Apart from the predictable Mitteleuropisch gloom that hangs over the whole film like a sooty shroud, the story itself made me think about the fates of runaway teenagers everywhere. What surprised me, I must say, was the huge number of adolescent hustlers to be found -- according to the film, anyway -- on the streets of Prague. The film also made me think about the huge quantity of gay porn now being produced in Eastern Europe, to say nothing of the actors who have reached the zenith of their profession by appearing in Kristen Bjorn films, Belami videos, and in the escort reviews of this venerable site.

 

I've never been to Eastern Europe myself and therefore have no first-hand way to know whether or not the grim images of MANDRAGORA come close to reality. Can anyone enlighten me?

[fedssocr1]

That film is seven or eight years old at this point, so I don't know how much it represents today's reality. The same director also made two documentaries about the same subject "Not Angels but Angels" and "Body Without Soul". The docs predate the fictionalized "Mandragora" by a couple of years and are even more depressing.

[Barry]

Will,

 

Though that film is old I don't think the situation is much improved. An American living in Prague has an online Journal about his life there and the street/rentboys. He moved back to Chicago this month for financial reasons but plans on going back. You might find his journal entries interesting and sad.

 

http://www.skinback.com/rentboys/

 

 

Barry

[+ Charlie]

I saw the film when it first came out and found it incredibly sad and depressing. I lived in Czechoslovakia in the years immediately following the Velvet Revolution, and I can tell you that the film felt very real to me then. I don't know what the situation is now, because it has been almost ten years since my last visit.

[Guest ReturnOfS]

I just saw Mandragora today and man was it sad. The credits say that this film was made in 1997 which really wasn't that long ago. Things couldn't have changed much since then.

 

At first I thought that this film was going to be so bad that it was going to be good. Thats becasue the pimp in the beginning of the movie was such an archtype character (dark, sleazy, oily skin, long black coat) that it actually seemed funny. Boy was I wrong. That movie went from dark to darker. It was like the director wanted to torture the viewer especially with that scene in the end, when the father was just on the otherside of the door. All the father had to do was call out his son's name. So close and yet so far.

 

Damn, how many times did those boys get beat up in that film, especially Mark?

 

Has anyone else seen this film?

[Guest rampo]

First, remember that Mandragora is a fictional film. American films on street hustlers don't paint a very nice picture either. I also saw the "documentary" Not Angels but Angels and agree that it was quite depressing, but I got the feeling that some things were hyped up a bit for effect.

 

For places like Eastern Europe, 7 years can be quite a long time. (I've been going to Thailand for the past 5 years and things have changed dramatically in that time.) In 1997, street hustling (which is never a pretty scene no matter where it is) was probably the main venue for commercial gay sex in most Eastern European countries. Today there plenty of Czech escorts advertising on the internet and I'm fairly certain that many involved are quite aware of the growing interest of well-heeled gay tourists who live in countries beyond Germany, primarily because of films like those of BelAmi and the tons of porn sites featuring cute Eastern European guys.

 

This month Sundance Channel premiered Garden, an interesting documentary about two street hustlers in Tel Aviv (one an Palestinian illegal, the other an Israeli Arab). Hated by both the Israelis and the Arabs, these boys did not have an easy life.