Reeling Film Festival
Official Selection
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also known as Telo bez duse
Body Without Soul1994
From director Wiktor Grodecki, this startling and disturbing feature is a graphic insider's view of the seedy but burgeoning East Europe industry that trades in nubile young men. Told with unflinching honesty, BODY WITHOUT SOUL provides an explicit view of the exploitation, pain and pitiful existence of young men who, out of necessity, sell their bodies to survive. The camera follows the young men as they walk the streets, hustle for money and talk about their emotions, bodies, sexual preferences, fear of AIDS and hopes and demons.
What makes this film worth watching?
1 member likes this review
Most movies about street hustlers anywhere have a titillation value that exceeds the content. This movie is different. It's sympathetic to the young men to the point of transcending or obviating their sexual appeal, focusing instead on their everyday lives and revealing and illuminating the sometimes complex, sometimes tragic relationship to poverty and prostitution. You know that these lads were paid to talk to the filmmaker, but once they begin, they really talk. It's capitalistism-gone-wrong - young, desperate lives that you wish you could turn around, but can't imagine how. From the insightful to the ignorant, these adolescents have stories and personalities that are startlingly varied, rich and desperate, as much about the privations, exhaustion, desperate hopes and cynical self-destruction of poverty itself as they are about selling their vulnerable bodies. A pornographer at the center of the movie is portrayed unsparingly (but in his own words). He's fascinating, vile, cynical, and also desperate in is own lower-middle-class way. The abuse and use of the young men he films is shown with little commentary which makes it the more chilling and damning. This movie haunts.
top reviewer
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Member Reviews (9)
top reviewer
Most movies about street hustlers anywhere have a titillation value that exceeds the content. This movie is different. It's sympathetic to the young men to the point of transcending or obviating their sexual appeal, focusing instead on their everyday lives and revealing and illuminating the sometimes complex, sometimes tragic relationship to poverty and prostitution. You know that these lads were paid to talk to the filmmaker, but once they begin, they really talk. It's capitalistism-gone-wrong - young, desperate lives that you wish you could turn around, but can't imagine how. From the insightful to the ignorant, these adolescents have stories and personalities that are startlingly varied, rich and desperate, as much about the privations, exhaustion, desperate hopes and cynical self-destruction of poverty itself as they are about selling their vulnerable bodies. A pornographer at the center of the movie is portrayed unsparingly (but in his own words). He's fascinating, vile, cynical, and also desperate in is own lower-middle-class way. The abuse and use of the young men he films is shown with little commentary which makes it the more chilling and damning. This movie haunts.
1 member likes this review
hypnotic and frightening . The human science of male sex workers, ages 15-18, reveals an unapologetic place. This desperate poverty stricken Prague in the 90’s is narrated by the boys of the night themselves, and is of the most intimate and revealing documentaries on male prostitution. How do we find ourselves able to move through trauma, due to poverty? There may not be any answers in BODY WITHOUT SOUL, but we are given an insight into the lives of these boys. Not to be missed.
1 member likes this review
Reality is uglier than art sometimes!
I got lost with them. The abuse is sad. I have no sympathy for the people that abuse the poor. I would tar and feather them , make them walk thru the streets. I notice none of the clients are in this film. I damn them. I know I should not judge but there is a limit and this film had it.
Devastating though at times I did feel manipulated.
vulgar
sad but honest
great
what's with the censorship stuff? pretty lousy.