Steve Cadro
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Steve Cadro was noted political figure before making films
By
Jim D'Entremont
On March 21, the meteoric career of Hungarian gay erotic video director Steve Cadro ended abruptly with his violent death. Hungarian authorities say that Cadro, 53, was bludgeoned and stabbed by a former porn
model known as "Sanyi." Sanyi is apparently using a "homosexual panic" defense, claiming to have killed Cadro in a fury triggered by an "uninvited sexual advance." Authorities, however, reportedly suspect that Cadro was
the target of an extortion scheme, probably involving more than one individual, that led to his murder.
Under his real name, Istvan Korda, Cadro was a public figure in his native country. He was a past president of Antenna-Hungaria, the Hungarian national broadcasting system; following the fall of
communism, he served for a time as director of the State Privatization Board. After his body was discovered in his Budapest apartment, the Hungarian police pursued their investigation with an urgency reserved for addressing
outrages against government officials, rounding up over 400 individuals for questioning.
That Istvan Korda should have carved out a second career as a director of handsome, professionally crafted videos is not surprising. His family background provided him with strong ties to the worlds of
film and art. He was a relative of producer/director Alexander Korda
(The Private Life of Henry VIII), director Zoltan Korda
(Cry the Beloved Country), and art director Vincent Korda
(The Thief of Baghdad). He was on the board of Mafilm, Hungary's principal film studio, and headed an art-dealing enterprise known as Idea.
Korda's involvement in gay adult video began several years ago with discreet behind-the-scenes work on George Duroy's Czech-based Bel Ami productions, notably
An American in Prague (1997). He was outed by the Hungarian press in the summer of 1999, when his directing career was less than a year old. Despite the inevitable fallout in Hungarian official circles, Korda readily acknowledged his identity as Steve Cadro,
and continued to turn out gay porn without missing a beat. He had never been very deeply closeted. His pseudonym, which simply translated his first name into English and scrambled the letters of an alternate spelling of
Korda, was easily deciphered.
Steve Cadro's best work is offbeat, intense, and emotionally challenging. Some of his ten completed projects necessitated shoots in places as far off the beaten path as
Indonesia. HUNGarians (1998), released in the US by Kristen Bjorn's Sarava Productions, begins with a remarkable sequence set in war-torn Bosnia and partially filmed there at considerable risk. In its February 1999 review,
The Guide called HUNGarians "a
four-act tribute to the Eastern European male body," praising the "verve and authority" of Cadro's direction of sex, and noting that "portions of
HUNGarians are as visually exquisite as video ever gets."
Adult Video News currently lists Cadro's
Loss of Innocence among the top ten VHS and DVD releases in the
US. Volcanoes, which Cadro shot last year in the Canary Islands, has just been released.
Several additional Cadro videos, including an all-male erotic version of
A Midsummer Night's Dream, are due to appear in May. Cadro Films is developing a memorial website: www.cadrofilms.com.
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