Moving On – The Need To Jump – Red Feline Chronicles

There are times when having a nice walk can be the best way of approaching life, sometimes there’s the need to run, and run fast, we had days like that, specially the time when Jac had to screen Krik? Krak!, his very fist film, at the Cannes Film Festival, and the date was approaching and with only a few days left, he had to have the first copy of the film ready, celluloid copy, of course, to jump in a plane to Portugal, to have it subtitled to French in a very strange subtitling lab where they did not speak English, then take the train to Paris and then to Cannes, with the fresh subtitled copy, and prepare for the Premiere screening of his very first film in the most famous film festival in the world where he shared strange moments with Klaus Kinski. He should tell that story one day.

I think it took three days to accomplish all that. Really. The screening was a success, Graham Greene, the most famous British writer, was Jac’s special guest and they sat together, front row seats, to watch Krik Krak. The film got an amazing review in Cahiers Du Cinema, the most important film magazine in the world. Everything was just amazing. Not bad for a first 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

I said, a few times before, that I’m rescuing some lost posts to return them to our Red Feline Chronicles site. As I engage in this worthy task, I come across some amazing comments I made and some even more amazing comments other people made about our work.

One of those comments is kind of beautiful in many ways:

Actually, what is happening now, the attention Amy and Jac are getting is BECAUSE of the bloody boundaries they are breaking. A jungle scenario, with tons of GIMP, it’s what they are all about. What brought all the attention in the first place was Maleficarum and what is bringing the attention now is Barbazul.

As I was typing this words, Amy was tagged in a post by none other than the director of a famous Hollywood horror film festival, describing her enthusiasm after discovering Amy in Fangoria. Her words:

Amy Hesketh’s Bolivian horror film BARBAZUL (BLUEBEARD) got some coverage in Issue 323 of Fangoria Magazine, and I’m super pleased because I was not aware of her amazing filmmaking career.
Her extensive list of horror-and-historically-inspired films reads like a 1970s Spanish horror film collection, or maybe like the accumulated works of a darker, more sadistic Anna Biller. (…) Like Karen Lam, Catherine Breillat, Lisa Hammer, Anna Biller, and Heidi Lee Douglas, Hesketh is taking fairy tales and retelling them as darker, more sensual tales.

What is very, very nice and intriguing is that these gimpy films are written up about in top magazines.

You can read the entire post here: https://redfeline.com/chronicles/2013/05/21/the-two-part-post-you-were-so-anxiously-waiting-for-part-deux/

Going back in time can be rewarding. It’s easy to forget all that action from that one year, 2013, at a time when it appears there’s not much action.

Amy and Jac won’t try to appeal to the masses. Maleficarum, the big hit, was never conceived as a production for the masses. Neither is Dead But Dreaming, with its lengthy whipping and rape scenes… not to mention all that nudity and blood. As the editor of Fangoria said recently in a facebook post:

Amy Hesketh’s BLUEBEARD is fantastic….full of the same meandering longing and sensuality of the best of Jess Franco, with beautiful languid scenery, creepy and earthy latin flavored music and a great central turn by the Bolivian Al Pacino, Jac Avila, as a romantic psychopath. I am now an Amy Hesketh fan and so should you be. Just a jumping off point…this is very erotic and breezy …again, think sunny daylit Franco or Jean Rollin….cheerful and depraved…

I think Jac and Amy are very happy to be doing what Jess and Jean Rollin did in their time with tons of eroticism and depravity… and GIMP.

Those memories from the past have a way of getting in our collective heads as the team stumbles along for the best part of this year.

We’re moving on, a lot of our time is dedicated to set things up for the future, lining up the priorities, identifying the possible obstacles ahead. Life is full of obstacles of all kinds and the present circumstances, both local and international conditions, affect what we do and what we’re planning to do.

2025 is one of the most difficult years we faced, maybe not as difficult for us as 2005 was, twenty years ago! Time runs fast. That year began with incredible difficulties and ended with amazing outcomes, one of which was Jac’s encounter with Amy to begin a totally new cycle.

We are approaching the middle of June at a vertiginous velocity… and that’s kind of crazy. And we’re entering the middle of the year! That’s crazier!!

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2005 ended in a completely unexpected way. We worked for NatGeo in a project that brought Amy into our team and Jac’s life. The work took a new life, it went into areas that seemed very far before, our production values became far more sophisticated and our reach got wider. By 2013 we were the subject of so many interesting discussions. One of them came to me these days:

Falstaff: Its great to see the leap they are making into the main stream market, but from a purely selfish perspective I miss the production output of the “old days.” Just as an aside, the similarity between all Jac’s beautiful leading ladies kind of reminds me of John Derek, with Ursula Andress, Linda Evans and Bo – each seemingly a younger version of their predecessor – and all amazing. It has been, and continues to be a joy to watch the continuing evolution of the Red Feline Family.

I think Jac prefers a comparison to Roger Vadim. The similarities are striking. There’s the French leading ladies: Brigitte and Carmen, Catherine Denueve and Vero, and of course the North Americans Jane Fonda and Amy. The Red Feline family continues to evolve, however, so there’s always room for more to come.

It’s fascinating to see those pictures together. The eery likeness of the women, particularly that of Veronique and Catharine Denueve.

When Jac met Vero, the first thing that came to his head was the striking resemblance to the famous French actress, famous for Belle De Jour, amongst other great films.

Vero was 17 at the time and yet, there was some maturity in her looks. Later on, three years later, when Jac began to work with her, it was totally obvious that she really looked like Denueve. Vero was just as beautiful.

There are other beautiful women working with Jac now, all of them having an impact in our growing audience, generating new discussions.

As we move on into the new cycle and our work gets a new look and takes on new, open roads, we wonder what surprises are ahead, what new faces, what new unexpected projects. We are facing changes, right now, changes that will be difficult at times, exciting at other times, and all that is keeping us at the edge of our seats.

I can still respond to some of the queries we receive, but I’m sure that it will be more difficult in the near future, maybe even in my next post.

Cruxlover24: You were shooting a new film with Mila and Dani, you were posting some info about this new work.

I clarified in my post the following: The other films we are producing, in the CruXbound Series, only one is complete, CruXbound IV – Sabina, with Simonne. The other three are having a hard time getting done for too many reasons to go over in this post. Maybe in the next one.

One of those CruXbound films is the one with Dani, in the lead role, and Mila as her punisher. For some obscure reason, there were problems after problems after problems, the latest an accident Mila had that kept her at home for three weeks. She’s still recovering and has a lot of personal issues to resolve, all the things she couldn’t do because of that incident. Maybe she’ll be ready to work in the next couple of weeks. Big maybe.

This year began with plans that didn’t work out, lots of them, like a trip Jac was going to take to New York in January, for a few weeks, and couldn’t for reasons I’m not going to discuss. But the preparations for that trip, the work after the trip was cancelled, made things difficult for a while. When he was ready to return to work, Dani had many personal and work issues to resolve, and when she was ready, Mila had problems, and that went in circles … it’s been like that for the best part of the last 5 months.

Which gave Jac, who is not superstitious, reasons to think that maybe the CruXbound project is not meant to be… at all. Maybe it’s better to just let it go and move on to other, more doable things. That’s where he is now.

You can get the film we titled:

Dani Suffers The Rack For Monxa Mala

It’s in our store now on its HD version.