The Famous Picture of Camille

There’s a nice story behind the famous and captivating picture of Camille.

It was way back in 1996 and 1997 when life for Jac and Camille was going through changes. Jac had an idea for a movie, The Passion of Maricelli, set in Cuba in colonial times. He thought Camille could play the lead role of Maricelli, a rebellious young woman with a passion for martyrdom. The story involved a scene with a crucifixion. Jac had been working on such scene in his head for a while, doing some tests with me first, and then with Camille. She agreed to work out some rehearsals with that scene in mind, a via crucis ending with a crucifixion. It was meant to just be that, a test of the scene. He began those tests with his VHS camera.

By the beginning of 1997 Jac and Camille had made 10 sessions of those rehearsals. As it was the usual, during those rehearsals Jac also took some stills with his old camera. One of those pictures was the beautiful picture at the heading in this post and which got the following comment recently.

The famous picture of Camille captivates with her beautiful body, the sideways light, her asymmetrical pose and her relaxed youthful face, a still life of art. 

petraherz

The picture was taken at the end of the 10th session in what we now call The Via Crucis of Camille. Jac was finishing the shooting of the last scene of the session, the camera was rolling, and he was so impressed, and so emotionally involved that he had to take his Fujica still camera, with 35 mm camera rolls, yes, those ancient little things, and he took a number of stills while Camille suffered her agony upon the cross.

By this time Jac stopped using his VHS camera and he was using a his professional Sony Umatic video camera and recorder which, used big cassette tapes. The equipment was old, already, the better and newer Sony Betacam was already replacing it at TV stations around the world. That entire equipment, camera and editing console, plus all the gadgets that went with it, had a tag price of over 200,000 dollars.

In comparison Jac’s Sony Umatic used equipment cost a miserable 60,000 USD, It included a broken chair. I always thought he was robbed, but that’s another story. The set up had the camera and the shoulder recorder, yes, the camera needed a recorder. It also consisted of two deck players, one deck player/recorder, the editing console, a sound mix board, a large monitor, speakers and the furniture to hold it all.

When Jac saw the material from the filmed session the next day he was very impressed. He told Camille how amazing the shooting came out, adding, in passing, just as a side note, something which led to a surprising exchange.

Jac: If we made one movie like this, just the two of us, but with the intention of selling it, we could actually make some money

Camille: Really? Why not? Let’s do that

Jac: What?

Camille: Let’s make a movie, a real one.

Jac: Really? Some people will think it’s porn

Camille: So?

Jac: I don’t know

Camille: Let’s do it! We can use the house I showed you where we took the nice pictures.

A short time before, Camille took Jac to see an old house in the city, she mentioned that it was used by some young people to smoke pot, have parties and stuff like that. It was a beautiful, old, broken down house. When they went to see it, Camille made sure Jac took his camera and she also asked a friend of hers to join them, she wanted a photo shoot there. Jac saw the potential of that house, of course, and agreed with Camille that it would be a nice place to make a movie.

A few days after they had the exchange about the possible film, they began to plan its production. They didn’t have a title for it, but it was going to be about a crucifixion. The house itself, in some way or another, triggered the story:

A nice girl looks at an old house, she’s curious, trespasses into it, she loves what she sees, walks about the rooms, all empty, dirty, falling apart. She doesn’t notice someone is in the house, a mysterious man in black who begins to follow her. She stops in the bigger, nicer room, it inspires her, she begins to masturbate when all of a sudden and silently, the man in black walks from behind and hits her, she faints, he drags her to a dark room where he proceeds to torture her.

That film is the now famous Red Feline on The Cross. The title came to Jac when he was editing the film. He told Camille that she looked like a cat with the dark stockings masking her face. She reminded him of Cat Woman. Her red hair gave him the impression that the cat woman was a red cat woman. At the end of that inspiring thought process, he came up with a title. Red Feline On The Cross.

Little did they know that their conversation that day would begin an industry.