A film about war veterans providing security for a Pride march challenges Balkan homophobia – and is a major hit
It's probably the law of paradox that says that the country to provide the next significant contribution to gay culture would be Serbia. Petrol bombs and rocks were hurled at Pride marchers in Belgrade in 2010, where 5,000 police had to guard 1,000 very brave people; the event was completely scrapped last year. But a film about the battle to stage a Serbian Pride has just claimed the crown for 2011 at the country's box office, easily outpacing fellow gay icons The Smurfs in the No 2 slot, with an incredible 500,000 admissions across the Balkans so far.
Surprisingly, Parada (The Parade), written and directed by Srđan Dragojević, isn't a solemn arthouse lecture; it's a cheeky, crowdpleasing comedy about a former Serbian para who gets a job providing security at Pride. It begins with a glossary of the slang – "Chetnik", "Balija", "Shiptar" – by which the various factions in the Yugoslavian war fondly referred to one another, before ending with the one "used by everyone": "peder" ("faggot"). That sort of worldly cynicism is how Dragojević goads Serbian audiences into his comedy's embrace; his lead character, Limun, has to head out on the road to corral former sparring partners from the war – a Croat, a Bosnian and Kosovan Albanian – into his Seven Samurai-style bodyguard squad.
Dragojević is sceptical about whether the film's success means Serbia is coming out. "Five hundred thousand admissions is quite extraordinary for a region that has, after the devastating transition it has been through, less movie theatres than London," says the director. "But things are more complex. If I had made a kind of hermetically sealed drama about the tough life of a gay couple in contemporary Serbia and it scored 3,000 admissions, it wouldn't be fair to conclude that the number of liberals here doesn't go beyond that number, right?"
His film probes as deeply into the reasons for Serbian homophobia as any film in which the protagonists drive around in a pink Mini can. "Parada could have been satisfied with the status of being an ultrasound of Serbian society and cinema," writes Miroljub Stojanović of Nin magazine, "but instead it took a step further and became its MRI."
I'm no medical expert, but Dragojević certainly deepens his comedy's scope by focusing it on the machismo of the region as much as on gay rights. It's not above some rather, shall we say, choice camp comedy (it recycles the "pinkie" lesson from the biscotte scene in La Cage aux Folles), but its satire begins to connect more devastatingly when it ricochets on to the local alpha-male mentality as well. "There is another theme that certainly couldn't wreck the box-office success of Parada," writes Ante Tomić in the Croatian newspaper Jutarnji List, "The crowd can never resist when someone makes fun of our Balkan machismo, our determined heterosexuality, our epic tradition and its ludicrous, panic fear of 'faggots'."
He's probably thinking partly of the flashback where Limun and his buddy Roko first bond on the battlefield when the Serbian is weighing up whether to shoot the Croatian as he is wiping his arse amid the rubble. Tomic continues: "Parada is a whole lot more politically correct than the blood-soaked horrors brought upon us by those heterosexual men who were afraid to accept their true nature."
Dragojević, a director with a punk-rock past and turbulent dealings with Hollywood, says he wanted the same confrontational approach towards homophobia that he took with the Yugoslavian war in his most critically acclaimed films, Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (1996) and The Wounds (1998). He cancelled plans to shoot at the 2009 Pride because, ironically, of security concerns, but scenes shot at the besieged 2010 event are in the film.
Dragojević is swift to point the finger about who is to blame for Pride's cancellation last year. "If the Serbian president had the courage to support the march, followed by a couple of ministers, as the Croatian president did several years ago, Belgrade Pride would have happened," says Dragojević. "But he cares more about homophobic and nationalistic voters and the upcoming election than about the constitution and human rights."
Parada is being screened for free in Serbia schools to stimulate debate. There's more weary humour from Dragojević when you ask him how much impact he thinks his film will have. "A friend of mine, a journalist, called me recently to thank me. His teenage son had just come back from watching Parada. 'The film's a piece of shit,' the kid says. 'Why is it shit?', asks his father. 'It's shit because I do not hate fags any more.'" It would be great for connoisseurs of politically incorrect movies if Parada became an international success, but really, its importance lies in one place. For the director, there's a single litmus test. "If Belgrade Pride 2012 happens without violence for the first time in history, I will be proud that I made something important for the society in which I live."
Parada is screening in the Panorama section of the Berlin film festival on 13 February. Details: berlinale.de
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