The New Comes In Full Force

Jac and Dani were busy the end of the week preparing to shoot Crux Extrema II, they will begin production this coming Monday and Mila agreed to appear in a cameo. At the same time arrangements are being made for the theatrical release and festival participation of Amy’s Pygmalion. We haven’t heard from her since she began the production of Rucker this past week. We don’t expect to hear from her until the middle of the month. Rucker is practically a Road Movie, it means that she’s traveling a lot because the location IS the highway.

Because of what happened during the shooting of Monxa Mala, when one principal cast member left the production, the need arose to think again on who’s going to be in Casa de Fieras (Menagerie), the film based on Jekyll and Hyde. One leading actress is Dani, of course, Mila seems to be taken the female leading role on that one. The other De Sade inspired story about to be produced, La Femme De Chambre, will have Dani as the leading actress.

Margot said:Dani goes through a lot of exciting things, she says they are very exciting for her, even if they are very painful, extremely uncomfortable, absolutely medieval, pretty weird, and so on. She gets beaten, whipped, scourged, pricked and beaten and whipped and scourged some more. All of it on top of the wheel’s rim. It’s interesting to see that Jac has Dani in many different positions and situations on the same devilish apparatus of pain. Yes, the Wheel is indeed the perfect ‘apparatus of pain’ – and Dani stretched naked on the rim, exhausted by her torture, yes so obviously expecting more and worse, is one of the most erotic images even in your wonderful films –
Eulalia

That’s exactly what I thought when I first saw that particular shot. It was extremely erotic and moving. Dani’s tortures are not even half way done and she’s already exhausted, hardly conscious, if at all, perhaps anticipating what is to come, which will a lot worse than what happened to her until that moment. That shot was captured in full 2K definition. It’s awesome.

I mentioned before how the old is meeting the new. I also meant that as more films are produced, the difference shows a lot. Gone are the days of analogue video, that, in itself, had its charm. When we captured images back then, the frame size was 350 x 194 pixes. by the time we shot Martyr, in SD, the frame size was 720 x 410. We’re shooting 2k now… and we’ll start 4k soon. That’s huge! And the quality of the image is amazing. And yet, there’s something charming in those images from the past.

@Reine Margot But one that hit the mark for him was Beatrice Cenci, about a young Roman noblewoman who murdered her father, Count Francesco. This young woman was tortured and later beheaded. The title in English baffles me “Conspiracy of Torture”‘ Impeccable taste. English dubbed, and in some cases subbed, copies of these classics can be severely mangled, which is one of the reasons I think they’ve taken a back seat over time in some countries film studies. Of particular annoyance to me is Bava’s ‘Black Sabbath’; the English copy has the tales in the wrong order, and edits combined with dubbing slightly but significantly altered the story, so the whole vision of the film is muddied and less impactful. They were absolutely years ahead of their time in many ways, makeup also, and even some examples that have aged less gracefully still have style to them. I look forward to the new releases, tattoos or no. Should be passable in a modern setting…perhaps.
Diceman

I remember seeing Black Sabbath on TV once, or was it a VHS? It doesn’t matter. It was a nothing like the version that was shown in movie theaters way back. The awful ’edited to fit this screen’ message told the sad story that we were watching half of what the frame was intended to show, not to mention those shots or scenes that were taken out all together. And that’s the sad reality of most of those films, including Conqueror Worm the one with Vincent Price. The VHS version that showed up in rental stores had all the good scenes out! Sad indeed.

Jac didn’t need to see the trailer to go see that one. The poster that appeared back then had women on crosses and some hanging. The closest I could find to the version that appeared in SA is below.

Cuando-Las-Brujas-arden-El-inquisidor-Witchfinder-General-1968-007.jpg

So glad to learn so much more top-shelf Pachamama entertainment is in the pipeline! Extremely satisfied with Monxa Mala & Passion of Isabel!!! Still waiting for Seven Days on the Cross, Part 5, LOL — perhaps a 10 or 15-minute salvage clip, just to ‘close it out’, for a loyal 20-year plus customer? PS: Tell Jac I bought Part 4, twice!
nardnob

The Seven Days On The Cross series was not completed as intended originally because it suffered the effects of the huge changes that came way back in 2003. Jac had completed the four parts of that series and had material for a fifth and final chapter in the story. But a few things happened then. The first, he entered a deal with a Dutch distributor for all of the films we produced until then, the one condition was for him to deliver the film in DVD format, something that was quickly replacing VHS tapes. He dedicated a long time to do exactly that, to convert all the films to DVD. It meant getting a new computer, new applications, DVD burner and, of course, learning the process of preparing and manufacturing DVDs. Once that was accomplished he had to make hundreds of DVDs from each film. It took a while, a loooong while.

While he was doing that he was also working on the post production of Nocturnia and The Death of St Eulalia. And if that wasn’t enough, he moved out of the house where many of those films were shot. Too many changes. So he never got around to finish the series. By 2005 he was working in Bolivia in the NatGeo project, going to festivals with The Death of St Eulalia and he met Amy. The rest is history. All the new productions took center stage and Seven Days On The Cross stayed on the shelves. At one point Mila sat down to learn how to edit and Jac gave her the task to cut Seven Days On The Cross into an hour and a half movie, with an emphasis on the segment that was never released. She worked on that and it appeared that the job was finally done. But there were problems with sound. So it went back to the shelves. Jac is trying again. He has two projects on the editing table, Crux Extrema and Seven Days On The Cross. We’ll see if he fares better now.