01/07/2021 - Director Stephan Bookas zooms in on JJ Proferes, dubbed the "sultan of an X-rated empire"

There is no better way of finding out interesting titbits about one’s family than via a documentary, it seems, and sure enough, Stephan Bookas takes full advantage of this, bravely exploring his great-uncle’s past in Porno Uncle Jim, a film fresh off its world premiere at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. And what a past it was, as JJ Proferes truly embraced his title of the “Sultan of an X-rated Empire”, as one newspaper put it, and while the glory didn’t last very long, the anecdotes keep on coming. As do practical tips, with Mr Clean named as your go-to brand for washing semen off the walls. As far as incidental product placement goes, this one is bound to stick.

It would be hard to ignore all the hilarity gathered here, from old propaganda films about “unnatural sex acts” that will pervert the whole country, given the chance, to JJ’s own oeuvre: boasting such titles as Of Hot Nights… and Damp Beds or the rather adventurous-sounding Cross-Country Orgy. He was so prolific that he was even described as “vomiting books”. But even his relatives didn’t quite know what to make of his interests, and Bookas shows that, as always, fun actually comes at a cost. While straight men could always find their own entertainment easily, the gay community in the 1960s and 1970s was often deprived of it, or vilified for even wanting to try. Needless to say, all it took for the sultan himself was one false step and a mention of underage models for the dream to come crashing down.

While the film could have benefited from a larger budget, or any budget at all, the story flies by – fast enough for one to ignore its amateurish look and dreadful lighting, or almost. As an exploration of the whole movement, or even porn, for that matter, it doesn’t go very deep, and more time would certainly have helped. But it’s a fun look at someone who, despite all of this material, still remains an enigma, going from “looking like a minor mafia don” in a press article to a steady gig as a local Santa, much to the blissful ignorance of everybody involved. It’s not all about titillation either, as – at least in this film – Proferes emerges as someone who just wanted to tell stories, first and foremost, and clearly saw sex as something quite joyful. Then again, asking family members to show up in his later productions still seems like an odd decision to make. Maybe he was just trying to be polite.

Porno Uncle Jim is a US-UK co-production staged by Stephan Bookas and Whatnot Films.