Michael Jackson One at Mandalay Bay
In an impoverished Serbian village, a barber named Marko hatches a plan to lift spirits and bolster the local economy through tourism. There’s an empty pedestal in the town square where the carved stone figure of a Communist leader once stood. Imagine, suggests Marko to the village elders, the joy that will ensue if we replace that antiquated tribute to an old world order with a crowd-pleasing symbol of contemporary global unification: a statue of an African-American entertainer.
That’s the plot that drives Monument to Michael Jackson, a comic feature film by Balkan Director Darko Lungulov currently making the European festival rounds (www.facebook.com/pages/monument-to-michael-jackson-the-movie). And yet, as with so much in the court of the King of Pop, the truth is stranger than fiction.
Keep reading over at Passport magazine online…