Another post from Reine Margot.

Oh, so much has happened in the last few days that it’s hard to focus on one.

Sirwiñakuy, Amy’s first movie, was well received in NY, in fact, she had a grand time there.

Maleficarum was censored at the Cinemateca and it’s causing a big controversy here.

Dead Bud Dreaming is going well, but now we’re taking a break for Carnival.

But I’ll go by parts.

To describe what happened with Sirwiñakuy in New York I only need to quote part of an article that appeared in Filmmaker Magazine:

And our international premiere of Amy Hesketh’s Sirwiñakuy, also felt like a discovery, one which split our audience as much as it purportedly did in its originating Bolivia. One of our crew dismissed it as “a Bolivian 9 1/2 Weeks,” while another wrote on my Facebook page, “The director of Sirwiñakuy, Amy Hesketh is pretty much a visual genius and I hope someone ‘important’ sees her beautiful, soulful work. GREAT!” (I tend to fall in with the latter, though am also a fairly big fan of 9 1/2 Weeks, so would count that as a compliment also.)

Filmmaker Magazine

There you have it. That’s how it went for Amy at the CineKink in New York. We’ll be posting in YouTube a video with after the screening audience reaction and some questions by said audience.

Amy definitely had her shinning moment and well deserved. The movie is very beautiful, original and from the heart.

After the three days of shooting the public flogging and rape scenes for Dead But Dreaming, when she was coming out of an infection she got in our trip to the Lake, she was running on pure adrenaline which kept her going during her five day journey to New York and back. Two of those days she spent on planes and airports.

When she arrived to La Paz she let herself relax and thus she finally got sick. She’s recovering now, taking a nice long break until we resume shooting the movie after carnival is over.

But that was not the only excitment we had these days. As you all know Maleficarum was censored at the Cinemateca and it’s already causing a big national debate here.

Jac received an official letter where they state that Maleficarum has “explicit language” and thus they won’t show it.

Jac responded in an open letter where he mentions that films like The Rasberry Reich, L.A. Zombie, ShortBus, all with explicit content and language were shown there. He states that not showing Maleficarum is either discrimination to a Bolivian film with explicit language and/or content, or that the Cinemateca is going backwards, rather than advancing the culture of Cinema.

The press took the censorpship up and the debate began with this article in the La Prensa a national newspaper. The printed version of the article is a full page spread with two large pictures.

In this article the journalist states many things, I’ll just highlight some points:

Jac Ávila is a pioneer of horror film in Bolivia. Films like Martyr and Tales of a Nightmare made him a polemic director His latest film, Maleficarum confronts difficultiesl (…) the cinemateca refuses to screen the film because of its explicit language.
Debate:

Cinemateca: Maleficarum has explicit language that doesn’t go with our current programming”. “

Ávila: A Cinemateca that respects itself has to be open to a great diversity of films.

The director of the Cinemateca in a conversation in Facebook abstained from making any comments saying “Before paying attention to something you don’t know you should see the film” adding “we’re not authorized to show the film”

La Prensa

That, in short, is what the article says, repeating a lot of what the open letter contains and adding some imaginative comments like Maleficarum was in festivals, when Jac stated that it has a successful distribution in the US and Europe.

But the discussion is now open and there’s already interest in other theaters to show it. We’ll see what happens.

While all this was going on, Veronica completed her participation in Dead But Dreaming and went back to France. We were sad to see her leave us, but very happy with her amazing performance.

Since this movie has the good potential of becoming a series, we’re thinking three films already, she’s planning to come back in September to shoot two movies, the third part of the Dead But Dreaming series and one under the direction of Amy, of course, who has a great role for her, a leading role, in a film that takes place in the 40’s, where Jac will play a Tin Baron and Veronica his beautiful, aristocratic wife.

We’re very excited with all of these happenings. One movie theater here wants to do a week with Jac Avila, showing five films during that week, with talks with the audience and on top of it, they want to screen Sirwiñakuy, for 2 weeks and Maleficarum, for two weeks.

While in another city, another movie house requested our films. We’re negotiating now.

The censorship is working for us. One person, close to Beto, the inquisitor, said to him. Fuck’em, don’t show the films here.

So, that’s it for today. I’m going off for some time but I was eager to report the latest. We’ll have a lot more to say in the near future as we prepare the next part of the shooting. A large part of it will consist on having Mila go through her terrible ordeals.

There’s an interview coming up on SearchMyTrash with Jac about Dead But Dreaming. We’re also preparing two more segments of Amy’s interview on Maleficarum and, finally, her answers to the questions in this forum.

That’s it. … for now…