Crux Conversatorium 01

The Crux Forum is holding a very interesting conversation where we must put our 2 Quadrans in.

Just found this picture of Dani. She looks so beautiful and evil!!!
Cruxlover24

That’s the look Jac is thinking she should have in a Vampire movie. I believe she was cast in a vampire movie sometime ago, but that film was never made. So her thirst for blood wasn’t satisfied.

Jac is playing with the idea of making his own version of the famous 1872 Gothic novella by Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu Carmilla. It is one of the earliest works of vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) by 25 years. where Mila would be the vampire that invades Dani’s home and turns her into a vampire. Well… that’s an idea in need of development.

Personally, I find Simonne more attractive, but I admit that Dani is also very pretty.
JDArts

All the women working in our films are very beautiful and talented, each with their own personal attractiveness and there’s no competition between them as to who is the most beautiful.

What is important is how they perform their characters, how far they are willing to go, how strong they are when put in extremely uncomfortable situations, sometimes painful, and so on.

Jac casts them in the roles they would be best suited for. Like Simonne in the role of Yahel, Dani as Judith and Mila as Magdalena.

A director has to know the cast very well. A good director will know what character a particular actress will be best suited for.

Any new details about the new films you are working with Mila and Dani? They both together are fantastic!
Cruxlover24

We are working on the CruXbound Series. One of them has Dani as the lead victim role, another will have Mila as the suffering protagonist. In the one with Dani, Mila is the one torturing her. Dani will be Mila’s torturer when Mila’s turn to suffer comes. The other two CruXbound movies have Ligia in one of them, as the protagonist who suffers extreme tortures at the hands of our Director and Simonne in the other, who is subjected to torments worthy of the inquisition.

For what I’ve been reading in this thread there were things that were promised for Seditiosa, and some were disappointed about those promises not kept.
Cruxlover24

Originally, there was an idea proposed by two people who wanted to have a Female Christ movie, there was a basic script and some money involved. Jac accepted the proposal and in consultation with the two new associate producers, he embarked in fundraising, writing the script and preparing the production. There were a good number of things in the original idea that had to be trim down to what was actually possible to do with the budget that was raised. During the campaign some possible scenarios were mentioned, most of which are in the film, some bits did not make it to production for different circumstances.

This kind of situation happens with all productions, regardless of their budgets. It can happen during the script writing, during pre-production, during production and even in post production. Some shots, entire scenes, might end up in the cutting room floor, that’s the expression, for whatever reason. That’s the reality of filmmaking.

For me, Seditiosa is a perfect film. It’s the most faithful and best-constructed female Christ of all the ones I’ve seen. I don’t understand why others found it disappointing?
JDArts

I believe that there’s the tendency of putting one’s own expectations in a movie, any movie. One hopes to see one’s own fantasies at play and it is disappointing when it doesn’t happen that way. It’s better to appreciate a movie for what is there and that’s it. Not compliant about what is not there. That’s a waste of emotions. However, I can understand why a few absent details can affect a person’s expectations negatively.

Only disappointment for me was the fake blood covering the naked bodies on the cross.
Spiros

We don’t use real blood. That would be gross. So we have to use litters and litters of fake blood, which is called Stage Blood, that’s the technical name, and it is generally used in all movies and television series where blood is needed to appear. Either in great quantities or tiny drops running down a nose.

In our case, we purchase a few bottles of Stage Blood, every time someone in our company happens to go to NY.

The fact is that when people are tortured with whips, sometimes they tend to bleed, maybe not all the time, but a lot. So… we make them ladies bleed when they are whipped or a crown of thorns is pressed on their heads.

My boyfriend and I loved the movie, I was not aware of the campaign as I knew about the director after this film. For me was good, it has some issues, but I guess maybe he is new in doing crucifixions. Anyways, we loved the movie!
Cruxlover24

The director is not new to crucifixions. A little research will show that. The first crucifixion he worked on was in a Docu-Drama about Haiti. A young couple are crucified in an sugar cane field. That is his first film which had a premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, the writer Graham Greene was present at the premiere. He invited Jac for drinks at his home in Antibes. That film was released in 1988.

The very famous French film magazine, Cahiers Du Cinema had an amazing review of the film:

Krik? Krak! carries the political documentary into the realm of the fantastic. The story of Haiti’s misery under two generations of Duvaliers is told impressionistically, mingling absolutely extraordinary documents of daily life, (including an interview with Papa Doc himself, and scenes from fiction films), to convey what a straightforward documentary cannot: the continual shifts between levels of reality in Haitian life, some of which are inaccessible to the camera, in particular, the omnipresence of the Voodoo religion.
Bill Khron – Cahiers Du Cinema

After 2 years of traveling from festival to festival with that film, winning awards, getting great reviews and sales to television, Jac began to play with the subject of crucifixions for a film he had in mind where a young woman is crucified. That’s in the early 90s. That’s when Camille appeared in Jac’s life, to become the protagonist of a TV series and to become the first long suffering actress who was crucified again and again and again, gaining experience and sharpening her acting skills.

During the decades that came after, Jac worked on dozens of movies where the main female characters are crucified, including the most recent female crucifixion movie Seditiosa, where three beautiful women suffer the cross after a lengthy walk carrying their patibulum.

There is a discussion of the film itself in the “Seditiosa” thread.
For me, the biggest issues were the complete removal of the promised (during fundraising) dialogue from and between the crucified women, and the unnecessary hair bra on Simonne.
wanttoknowmore

It was discussed before that once the production starts, priorities, plans, ideas, etc. might change. A lot of things can happen during production, particularly in extremely low budget productions, where somethings cannot be done the way they were planned. Even million dollar productions suffer problems during production.

When a day of production starts, sometimes the best plans go down the drain for some unexpected reason, the weather, the location, the cast, strange and negative circumstances, anything can affect the day’s production and decisions have to be taken to solve the problem or problems.

And as far as Simonne’s hair covering her breasts sometimes, well, that’s how long hair tends to behave. Simonne moves her head this way, that way, her hair moves too and sometimes goes over her breasts.

For me, it was beautiful how they whipped them while they were still crucified and tore off their loincloths with whips until they were bloodied and vulnerable.
If there was one thing I would have liked to see, it would have been Yahel/Simonne’s loincloth falling off, leaving her completely naked like her friends (and I’m a huge fan of loincloths).
Otherwise, it’s an excellent movie.
JDArts

Shooting the crucifixion scenes was very, very difficult. It was sunny but cold, very cold. The Crucified Three had to suffer for a very long time without any kind of help while the cameras were rolling. That was difficult enough, but having to suffer the cruel whipping up on their crosses for a very long time was even harder than everything they did before.

The scene had to be completed while the sun was still there. Some things were sacrifice for the good of the scenes. In the case of Simonne, she wasn’t comfortable with having her loincloth completely remove and that’s that. If an actress is not willing to do something, that decision is respected.

wanttoknowmore said: A hair bra is the long hair that covers her chest throughout the film.
Ahh, you were talking about her hair covering her breasts
But it wasn’t in the entire movie, only during the crucifixion.
In the whipping and procession scene, she did show her breasts.
JDArts

During Yahel’s (Simonne) crucifixion, there are plenty of times where her breasts are exposed, depending on how she moves during her agony up there.

Setting up the crosses was a big deal, once the actresses are up there, there’s very little anyone can do. To make any little changes while they are up there would involve a lot of work.

During the testing of the crosses, Jac shot a video of how the scenes would work and look, how the protagonists were going to feel up there, etc. You can see in the video how complicated the entire thing is.

So, to have the crew work like that to fix a little problem, like someone’s hair falling one way or another and covering a nipple is kind of complicated and time consuming and there’s no guarantee that the hair will stay where it was set up for the rest of the shooting of a particular take.