As we all know, Hollywood destroys America every week. But one movie also wreaked havoc in the tiny, obscure Romanian town of Glod. Sacha Baron Cohen used the place (whose name aptly translates as “mud”) as a stand-in for Kazakhstan in Borat: Cultural Learnings, etc., etc., and notably depicted its residents as whores, thieves, and rapists.

By chance, filmmaker Mercedes Stalenhoef was on holiday in Romania before the Borat crew arrived, and had been documenting the life of a charismatic 17-year-old girl with dreams of escaping to the good life in Spain. When Stalenhoef returned, post-Borat, it was to a pissed-off town, about to be pissed on again — this time by unbelievably insufferable American lawyers, who dangled empty promises of fortunes to be had by suing 20th Century Fox.

Carmen Meets Borat is both a fascinating portrait of Gypsy (or Roma, if you prefer) life on the edges and also manages to turn the image of comedian Cohen in his Borat costume into a villainous figure, up there with Lex Luthor and Montgomery Burns.

I sat down with Stalenhoef at her hotel for a chat about her film and how chance is the documentarian’s constant companion.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Video, silverdocs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.