Mondo Transcripto
It's a weird world out there.
In the late 1980s, I travelled around Europe with a film program called “Visions of Occulture.” It contained some Jodorowsky classics, Benjamin Christensen’s “Häxan” (in the “Witchcraft through the ages” version from 1968, narrated by William Burroughs) and other films. Also included was the classic 1975 Italian Mondo film “Mondo Magic.”
This highly entertaining “shockumentary” takes us into a world of strange rites and weird customs of indigenous people in Africa, Asia and Latin America; from manual surgery in the Philippines, drug use and duels in the Amazon, Moslem magical spells, Christian self-torture, fertility rites and a whole lot more. The film is literally a colourful trip through a world of remarkable and sometimes disturbing phenomena.
I loved all the documentary footage (and still do). Also, the juxtaposition between images of wonder and fascination and a narration that swings between deadpan observation and casually condescending comments – yet always under some kind of umbrella of tolerance and understanding – immediately made me love these kinds of Mondo films.
“Much like the days when Stanley cut through the jungle in search of Livingstone, there are still places on the outskirts of our global village where calloused hands pounding on tom toms announced the intrusion of the white man.”
You might assume that the weirdly poetic tone used would come from some hack writer’s desk; quickly penned down as bizarre scenes flickered on the editing table monitor. But no, “Mondo Magic” was written by Alberto Moravia, esteemed Italian author of highbrow books such as Il Disprezzo (1954, made into the celebrated Godard movie “Le Mépris” in 1963, starring not only Brigitte Bardot but also Fritz Lang!) and friend of people like Pier Paolo Pasolini.
When watching Mondo films, you feel uncannily uneasy because the discrepant relationship between what’s being seen and heard (through the narration) is often sizzling in temperature – even to the degree of causing what I will henceforth call “Spontaneous Synaptic Combustion” (SSC). This is the moment of experiencing astounding disbelief that is still somehow accepted by the assaulted senses and the mind. This is a common occurrence when watching good “exploitation” films, and/or derivatives such as “sexploitation” or “blaxploitation, “psychotronic” films, etc.
