The Dutch arthouse movie Diary of a Weak Yogi was made to shock audiences.
When the black-and-white film was first screened at an independent film festival in 1993, viewers were confronted with a provocative story packed with nudity, jealousy and explicit, sexually charged scenes.
But the real drama unfolded behind the camera.
The film, directed by Pim de la Parra and Ronaldo la Silva, was so explicit that it never made it to theatres.
The production was further clouded by tragedy when its lead actor died by suicide just days after filming wrapped.
Now, more than 30 years after cameras stopped rolling, Diary of a Weak Yogi has finally reached cinemas.
Director de la Parra, who died three years ago, never lived to see the film receive its theatrical release.
One scene shows character Derek being whipped by a group of people as he is strapped to a desk
Character Loes appears in this still from the film riding her racehorse naked
The controversial movie went unreleased for more than 30 years
The film centres on two seemingly happy couples, whose relationships begin to unravel as jealousy, sexual frustration and resentment creep into their lives.
Derek, played by Kamaran Abdulla, is a university professor married to Audrey, played by Manouk van der Meulen, a successful novelist.
Their friends Robert, a painter preparing for an exhibition in Rotterdam, and his wife Loes, a motorcycle mechanic, appear to be equally settled.
But as the four spend more and more time together, tensions begin to emerge.
In a turn of events, the couples swap partners, leading to a series of provocative encounters involving sadomasochism and BDSM.
The film goes beyond conventional romantic scenes, including disturbing sequences in which Derek is violently whipped by a crowd of people dressed in bondage gear, while another scene shows Loes riding her racehorse naked.
But it was not just the film’s extremely graphic and disturbing scenes that would make its journey to the big screen so troubled.
The movie’s extreme nudity, alongside the suicide of actor Kamaran Abdulla just days after filming ended, shocked the conservative Dutch Film Fund, which refused to provide the money needed to complete production.
Without the completion funds, the filmmakers were unable to carry out basic finishing work, which included adding the soundtrack, as well as the film’s opening and closing credits
De la Parra and la Silva eventually won lawsuits against the Film Fund, with courts ordering it to pay the grant money.
Despite the rulings, the fund did not pay up, and the unfinished film remained stuck in limbo.
But the film’s release was also clouded by tragic circumstances.
Abdulla, who played Derek, died by suicide aged just 34, only days after filming had wrapped.
The Dutch-Iraqi artist’s death sent shockwaves through the production and cast a long shadow over the controversial movie.
In a recent interview, director Paul Ruven, who contributed on the film and secured its release this year, revealed that Abdulla agreed to play the leading role just one day before filming was meant to start.
‘I called him around midnight for the role,’ Ruven said.
‘He was willing, but he had just called his parents in Iraq to tell them he was going to commit suicide… But as far as he was concerned, the suicide could wait until after filming.
‘Because of that, Kamaran felt no shame whatsoever, because he wouldn’t be around anymore anyway when the reviews came out. No other actor I know would expose himself like that.’
The film centres on two seeminly happy couples, whose relationships begin to unravel as jealousy, sexual frustration and resentment creep into their lives
The movie’s extreme nudity, alongside the suicide of actor Kamaran Abdulla just days after filming ended shocked the conservative Dutch Film Fund, which refused to provide the money needed to complete production
For decades, Diary of a Weak Yogi remained an almost forgotten piece of Dutch cinema.
But more than three decades later, filmmaker Paul Ruven finally brought it to the big screen.
It was, he said, part of a promise made to his friend de la Parra, and a chance to finally give audiences a glimpse of Abdulla’s last, raw leading performance.
Diary of a weak yogi is not the only European film to run into issues for its explicit content.
French soft-porn movie Emmanuelle was released in 1974 and shocked viewers with its steamy scenes and focus on a woman’s voyage of erotic discovery.
Following the life of teen Emmanuelle as she moves overseas to distant Bangkok, forsaking her marriage vows before she has even touched down by having two sexual encounters with strangers on the way over, the film caused a stir upon its release.
Deemed ‘unacceptable to British taste’, tasteless’, and ‘extremely problematic’ the scandalous cult-classic was slammed in France for its striking representation of female sexuality.
The film broke several taboos of its time, including showing masturbation, having multiple sexual partners, and having sex with anonymous people – but despite the controversy, Emmanuelle was a box office sensation, selling nearly nine million tickets in France alone after being initially banned by French censors.
Becoming the first adult film to play in regular British theatres, the film went down in history as a landmark production and was one of the first French films to become a global phenomenon.
Although the movie was watched by 50 million people around the world and played on the Champs-Elysees for a decade after its release, Emmanuelle had an overall negative reception.
The censors and critics of the time were left fairly appalled by what some of the scenes entailed – from implied thrusting to an entire sequence showing a night club act in which a woman ‘smokes’ a cigarette with her vagina, which the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) later deleted.
Mainstream French audiences, however, lapped up the movie and its steamy contents, but the BBFC was left unconvinced that sex films were of great significance or importance to viewers.
As Stephen Murphy, Secretary of the BBFC, said in a letter addressed to several local councils: ‘With the best will in the world, we were unable to see it in these terms.
‘It struck us as a sex film quite outstandingly well photographed and edited but still containing material which, to our minds, would be unacceptable to British taste’.
