In the world of transgressive cinema, Marian Dora has surely cemented himself as one of the most hardcore exploitation film directors along with Ruggero Deodato (director of Cannibal Holocaust; 1980) and Srđan Spasojević (director of A Serbian Film; 2009). His arthouse films, he claims, deal with both the best and worst of human nature. Now, based on an extensive set of reviews about The Angel’s Melancholia (2009), and some of his other films, the claim that his films deal with the best of human nature is rather arguable. His films always accompany a sense of macabre, and feature no less than—nudity, masturbation, rape, sadism or paraphilias as extreme as coprophilia or urophilia. Eviscerating animals and even humans is rather common in his films, and that too in full nauseating gory detail.
Marian Dora is a pseudonym, based on the initials of his real name. He was born on 1970, and is known to be a resident of South Germany1. All the interviews featuring the director have his face censored as he wants to remain anonymous. Some say he’s a physician/surgeon, but he never verified it. If he is however, that may or may not explain why he feels the need to display autopsy, colonoscopy, eviscerating in such gory detail. His films are the very definition of “hell on earth”, and perhaps are best described as “cinema of the caveman”.
Dora himself admitted to be an acquaintance of Ulli Lommel (director of Boogeyman; 1980), and has worked with him as a second-unit director. Before that, he made several short-films (of no value) involving graveyards and slaugtherhouses. Nonetheless, he’s quite a hardworker as he deals with many aspects of his films, starting on from being a sound/lighting engineer to cinematographer and director.
It should be immediately clarified that Marian Dora has no relation to the other Dora, although both have a knack for exploration.
The audience of his films are polarised into two categories—followers and loathers. Two of his most famous and controversial films are Cannibal (2006) and The Angel’s Melancholia (2009). The latter of which brought him fame or perhaps infamy as a director.
His other films include—Debris Documentary (2003), Trip to Agatis (2010), Carcinoma (2014), The Blight of Humanity (2018) & Yearning of Maria D. (2018), Thomas and Marco (2022).
Cannibal (2006) was based on the real case of Armin Meiwes, the Rohtenburg cannibal who in 2001, invited a man on the internet over to his house to eat. It was an assignment of Ulli Lommel to Marian Dora, but the gore horrified Lommel, so he scrapped his work made his own film Diary of Cannibal (2007), which unfortunately became one the worst films ever made.
It’s all done very abstract, using minimalist dialogue, buffering scenes with every Bible quote Lommel could find about eating or sacrifice, over directed with a masturbatory amount of fancy edits, fades, black & white footage, fake scratches to the digital image to make it look like an old 8mm reel, and montages out the wazoos.
— The Dread Central on Diary of a Cannibal (2007).
Dora’s film was particularly famous or rather say “infamous” for depicting evisceration of Bernd Brandes (victim of Armin Meiwes) in its full gory detail. Despite of being accurate, Meiwes himself had recorded a four-hour long video of the actual incident, where he dismembered and eviscerated Brandes and hung his body from a meat-hook. That video had never been made public by the German police for good reasons; for if it was public, may our beloved Carsten Frank masturbate to that, and his associate Dora include that in his films too—it’s free real estate!
Now, if I have to draw a comparison though, Frank would be the more extreme (and real life) version of Shinji Ikari, who in a hospital, masturbates to a fourteen-year old topless girl in coma.
Angel’s Melancholia (2009) was Dora’s first original feature. It features an ensemble cast of three male leads—Katze (Carsten Frank), Brauth and Heinrich; and four female leads—Anja, Bianca, Melanie and Clarissa. They embark on a sadistic orgy in a haunted house, where all turn insane and hurl violence upon each other.
The story of it is simply that, two friends—Katze and Brauth—long ago tortured a pregnant woman, and the house is haunted ever since. The friends reunite, then Katje confesses his paranoia for his soon-to-come death to Brauth. They enter a fair where they meet two young girls—Melanie and Bianca. At the bathroom of bar Katze meets Anja, who was pissing at the moment, and the group then drive away to the haunted house. On the way Katze becomes hysteric; gets out of the car, and ROFLs on the street. They meet an artist named Heinrich, and things begin to escalate from who claims himself to be dead, and also a woman named Clarissa who was tied to a wheelchair with a colostomy device. Things start to escalate from that point onward, and they swirl into an inescapable abyss of pure sadism. Many animals are cruelly murdered for real—a dead rabbit is beheaded, then disembowelled; a living cat’s throat is slit; a pig is slaughtered. Some of the women are brutally raped and tortured; a girl’s vagina stabbed with a knife. The men inflict self-harm on themselves, especially Katje. A girl masturbates to a VHS tape (like Carsten Frank), where a newborn being beheaded is seen. A nun strips and masturbates in a church. The group murders Heinrich, and burn him on a pyre, while simultaneously masturbating and ejaculating into the fire. Finally, Katje dies and Anja mourns his death while leaving with a nun. And, it is announced that Katje is an angel (in Ulli Lommel’s voiceover)—from what angle however, is something only god knows.
It’s without a doubt his most discussed film, and one of the projects Dora was most passionate about; frequently it appears in the lists of “most disturbing movies ever made” across the internet, often billed as “beauty within madness” or “a depraved, perverse and nihilistic endurance test.”
Filming it was not only mentally stressing, but also physically. Dora himself lost more than 16kg during film production and slept for barely half-an-hour during the shooting. He admitted that only ten-percent of what he had in mind materialised the film. His lead actor-cum-producer Carsten Frank had disagreements over inclusion of the some more extreme scenes, involving a mutilation of a real dead body in a morgue. It was illegal, but Dora told it was supposed to serve as a central plot to the story. This means he not only violated animal rights, but also human rights! He admitted manipulating people on the set to shoot his film, inspired by Andreas Baader (German Charles Manson). He received a lot of death threats following the premiere of his film.
He recounts in Revisiting Melancholie der Engel (2017), that film was based on a true incident, where a group similarly went into an abandoned house and the members went missing thereafter. Similar to the film, there were carcasses of children around the house.
The cinematography is said to be poetic at times, but the film itself can’t redeemed from any artistic angle, not even by David Hess’s song Lullaby.
The following is a set of (relatively neutral) reviews of this film, in case you want to know more.
In his interviews, Marian Dora’s elusive speeches could be summarised as ramblings of the severely delusional. His words are devoid of any clarity and often contradict each-other. Any search for logic would turn futile, for it is skewed to the point of non-existence. The following Q&A’s are interviews with the director by people at Severed Cinema.
Bodily fluids are a central theme in your world of cinema. Where does the fascination with excrement come from?
Imagine the situation: You make a film without any time, without any money, and without any possibilities. Underground filmmaking simply. The only thing you can use is the body of the actor, of course. This is why I routinely show bodily functions. What you see is nothing special, it is everyday occurrences. Here I pay attention to keep the right measure. For example, I show in every film more often a person eating, than a person emptying the body. Oddly enough people speak me about the body emptying scenes, but not about the eating scenes. There is obviously an imbalance in the perception of some people. I can only speculate about the reason.
Assuming what he says is right, it doesn’t still justify coprophilia or urophilia. Had he shown people plainly urinating or defecating, it still would have made sense according to his logic of balance between “body filling” and “body emptying”; except he doesn’t do that, and rather turns it into a fetish fuel.
A lot of your viewers, even your devoted followers seem to detest your use of animal violence in some of your films, in particular Melancholie. Why do you feel the need to portray animals suffering, tortured and killed in your work? Do you feel it’s a strong metaphor for human suffering and easier to get across with such raw emotion from an actual dying life form?
It is a part of the specific philosophy of my films to avoid the faking of scenes like torturing animals or human beings. But there are some reasons going beyond that philosophy. Usually there are three reasons to use scenes like that you mentioned in your question. The first reason is that such scenes help to clarify the characterisation of the protagonists. Personally, I don’t think this is a good justification for the use of reality. The second, more important reason is to create the appropriate atmosphere. The closer you come to reality, the more intense the pictures will be. The third reason is the most important reason — scenes like that are a declaration that the film you are watching is not made for entertainment. You can select the audience — everyone just watching a film to have fun will be rejected.
Why should the animals be abused and slaughtered to become a part of film, which is going to watched by fans of horror cinema, who’re oblivious to the so-called intensity of the pictures? Let’s assume for a moment, animal rights don’t matter.
Was the cutting of Anjas’s breast in Melancholie der Engel real?
Yes.
Then what’s the excuse for abusing human rights like this? Only because technically, a human is also an animal? Or, is it because in underground filmmaking, all the director can use is the body of a human for the horror element, according to him? Can he not just leverage special effects or makeup if he deems the scene to be absolutely necessary? Who cares if the cut is fake? Either he’s lying in hopes of generating controversy, or he’s an actual criminal—the kind who release beheading videos online.
In Melancholie Der Engel a young wheelchair bound girl is constantly mistreated and brutalized. What point were you trying to get across with this?
The girl in the wheelchair was a victim and she was consequently treated as a victim. For the film it is not very important what happens to this girl. Only the feeling and thinking of the main protagonists is important. Sometimes it’s a little bit sad that people only look at such marginal — and very short in relation to the running time — scenes. Angel’s Melancholia is about much more — about friendship and the destiny of the two leading males. If I only would have in mind to shock the people, I could do much better, believe me.
His words sound borderline misogynistic, because if the women don’t serve an autonomic purpose in Angel’s Melancholia, why feature them in an ensemble cast? To be defenceless objects for the men to vent their anger or perversion? Does he mean to say, men can brutally rape them at will, and they won’t be affected afterwards neither physically nor emotionally?
… You stated that Debris Documentary is in some ways autobiographical. Do you resonate with the sexual depravity and copious amounts of bodily fluids presented forth by Carsten Frank? Could you elaborate?
Indeed Debris Documentary shows the real person Carsten Frank. There is a lot of intersection between him and me, this is why it is justified to call the film autobiographical. In a way the film addresses the eternal question of underground filmmaking: how far would I go? Is it justified to bring the sacrifice of a human life for my film?…
For the context, in the film our beloved Carsten Frank indulges in no less than rape, bestiality, anal fisting, coprophilia, urophilia and necrophilia. He, like always, masturbates to his collection of snuff films, and loves to read stories of Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof from the Red Army Faction (a group similar to Naxalites).
…How are your relationships with colleagues? Have any colleagues seen your films and taken umbrage to the extreme nihilism and graphic cruelty depicted within them?
…Other underground filmmakers know my work, of course. But I am often criticized of being too superficial and too mainstream. Without wanting to be arrogant, I want to assert that in contrast to some colleagues who only supply the market of the Peter Madsens of this world I am someone who love films.
Imagine if Dora is mainstream in respect of underground cinema, then just what sort of illegal pornography in produced there.
… Unfortunately, people keep assuming I want to break taboos. Especially this day and age is full of many ridiculous taboos, and I feel it beneath my dignity to deal with them. I never did. All I show in my films everybody saw a thousand times in other film or in reality. However, I am interested in showing things that SHOULD be taboo, but aren’t.
I would like to give an example: maybe it would be a good idea to taboo land consumption. Nobody cares at the moment that nature and in the end every living being find dwindling habitats. Another example: four or five hours after food intake I am hungry again. If I would eat a fried chicken, a living being would lose his existence only for a few hours of my feeling of satiety. This is no justifiable proportion. Why not make eating animals a strict taboo in the future? Or take the fact that from the beginning of social life there is an exercise of power between humans. Maybe it would be a resolution for the future of society to taboo that from early childhood? …
This without a doubt had been the peak of Doraesque. And, he made numerous such statements in interviews, which if you attempt understanding, bring you to question that if you understand anything at all—a very unique quality of M.D.
What directors of arthouse cinema like Marian Dora don’t understand is art itself. Cinema isn’t a gorefest to masturbate to (as does Carsten Frank in Cannibal or Debris Documentary). It is a medium of expression, an art form. Great cinema is coherent, nuanced, and expressive. And, using it to depict your fetishes is certainly “an exercise in poor taste”. Violence is a plot device used to convey a poignant message through its metered and effective use. Relying merely on shock value is what pseudointellectual arthouse film directors do. Dora’s films stand as a comprehensive manual of how a filmmaker should never approach filmmaking.
Yes, cinema can be grotesque, but it has to be meaningful. Eraserhead (1977) by David Lynch is a grotesque, and surreal, but meaningful in that it embodies the fear of fatherhood through imageries. A Clockwork Orange (1971) by Stanley Kubrick is an ultraviolent film that was controversial for its time, but meaningful in portraying a cynical view of how society deals accomodates pure evil that is Alex DeLarge. Even Salò (1975) by Pier Paolo Passolini, an adaption of Marquis de Sade’s novel 120 Days of Sodom, could be considered a poignant film about the horrors of Mussolini’s facism.
Angel’s Melancholia or any exploitation film don’t contain any substance in them, compared to these films. They merely exist to shock or disgust, but not invoke thought. Quoting poets, philosophers or libertines in film monologues or dialogues, does not make it profound but merely pretentious. Juxtaposing a dramatic musical score with dissonant grotesque imagery doesn’t create a divine symphony of beauty within madness.
Magnus Blomdahl’s documentary Revisiting Melancholie der Engel (2017) briefly mentions the title card “South Germany.” ↩