The flogging begins, the crowd counts the strokes, and Amy Hesketh initiates this provocative film in a fashion only she can orchestrate. It’s a superb scene and another cinematic triumph for an actress/director whose performance art we’ve come to take for granted.
The time to make a brief review of the year past has come. As individuals we all had our ups and downs and for each one of us the year had its own meaning, but for the collective us, those who have become known as
Pachamama Films and
Red Feline, the year was sometimes too tense and difficult for many reasons. Too many changes as we had not had in the last 10 years or so. 2016 became a transition year, the kind of time one goes through after a break up, a divorce, or a death in the family, when something drastic has happened and we all need to adapt to the new life. Everyone in our group, family, tribe, whatever you want to call it, went through changes, each individual made decisions that affected the collective. I can truly say that during the year that has gone, our entire structure changed. While Amy remained in the US during the entire year, Jac went off with the NatGeo project, the rest of the group took on different jobs and so on. An era had come to an end and a new one was in its gestation process.
As we enter the new year, we're clearing the field and lining up the projects and deciding who is going to be doing what and when. As the year closed some new possibilities came up some of them have to do with Bea, who in a totally unexpected way, out of the blue, as they say, suggested she could work on projects similar to
Le Marquis De La Croix and
Agent X. That comment took Jac totally by surprise, he had already planned his workload for the year without a torture movie, leaving even
Maleficarum II in the back burner. All that has possibly changed. I say possibly because you never know what will transpire between now, when I'm typing this words, and the end of next week, when the landscape should be clearer.
The year that ends was dominated by the post production of two projects,
JUSTINE and
PYGMALION, the production of the
NatGeo and the release of
JUSTINE. When the highly anticipated film came out, the reactions were very mixed, to say the least. Some love it and some were not very happy with it. However, even with the controversy that followed the release of
JUSTINE, it has become the highest seller film of many years. It is very telling because most of the sales came AFTER the negative reviews were published two months ago.
JUSTINE is hardly a 'flop', as someone said it was.
This is how 2016 looks in sales:
JUSTINE is number ONE with 133.3 points!
Maleficarum - 60.2
Le Marquis De La Croix - 30.2
Barbazul - 19.8
Dead But Dreaming - 18.2
OLALLA - 17.8
Martyr - 17.1
Sirwiñakuy - 15.3
Agent X - 13.8
Romana Crucifixa Est - 7.5
In the overall record of our sales since 1998 the results are very telling too:
Maleficarum is number one with 90.8 points
”Red Feline on the Cross 71.3
Inq 2 - Further Ordeals 42.2
Inq 1 - Red Feline Faces the Inquisition 40.1
JUSTINE37.5!
Dead But Dreaming 30.6
Inq 3 -The Unbearable Tribulations 29.4
Inq 4 - The Execution of the Unrepented 26.8
Agent X 25
Le Marquis De La Croix 22.9
JUSTINE reached the fifth place in only 3 months. Again, hardly a flop. Only
Maleficarum managed to go that high in such a short time. We have 39 movies in the market and all of them sell every month, every year, all of them. Some sell a lot more than others, it is clear, and the high production values movies sell the best by a large margin, three times and even more than the others. I can predict that
JUSTINE will continue going upward this year, that
Maleficarum will keep gaining,
Le Marquis De La Croix will do well, the rest will keep their positions because that's how they've been doing it for the last few years. It's predictable. When an economic crisis hits the world, it hits our sales across the board, it doesn't affect the way the sales go, even if there are less items sold, they sell almost at the same rhythm. We'll see how the new productions will do. And Just to give an idea of how things work, this month, that began a few hours ago, has:
JUSTINE leading the pack,
followed by
Le Marquis De La Croix
and then
The Via Crucis of Camille 1 - 2
Perils of Jane in the Green Inferno 1
Training Jane
Via Crucis of Mila
provostDear Margot, The series you are developing for Bea sounds wonderful and I am sure this board will welcome the previews and initial instalments with nearly as much enthusiasm as they did Justine. To avoid disappointment you might invite suggestions: tableaux are one of the real strengths of Pachamama, and they lend themselves to brief, strong, iconic images....something like short, short stories. Let viewers suggest circumstances and dramatize them, as some do here with borrowed images. I am sure we'll trot out the credit cards when we see the character and quality of the material. The rack is always popular, enhances the appearance of almost any body, admits many ancillary treatments (bastinado, breast and belly work, something under the arms) and we see too little of it around here. Why not start Bea out with a vigorous racking, with all the trimmings? Happy new year.
For the series with Bea Jac has a lot going for him. A great actress willing to go the extra mile, a set that can be transformed to anything he would want, props, many props, lights, really good lights, great cameras, more than one, all of them of high quality. From the times of
Maleficarum to the times of
JUSTINE, our company has grown in technology. The days of analogue video and a couple of patio 500 watts lights are far gone. There are no worries as far as the quality of what they are intending to do. There are ideas too, many. Anyone with a bit of imagination and a taste for the bizarre and painful can come up with ideas on an hourly basis, some might be doable, others might be very good for animation art and some are just unlikely to become a reality no matter how much effort is put into it. So, what will happen in those movies? Right now not even Bea knows. Next week, if everything goes as planned, Bea and Jac will visit the location where the props are stored. They will discuss some of the details of the story, which is not on paper yet, it's, still, only in Jac's head. I believe that is when the process will actually begin. I'm sure that Jac and Bea will play with the props already there, particularly the rack.
Around the same time, in a week or maybe two, the new members site will be ready to roll, it is under construction. You can visit now:
Red Feline Club.
You'll be asked to put a name: Guest and a password: Gimp The name and password will be active for a week or less. Be warned that the content on the site right now is a test. I posted a few of the items we had in our old site to see how the new format will work. It's looking nice and I think when it's all finished it will be a great place to visit. You can post a message on any of the posts there now, let us know what you think. The messages are going to be a good way to make suggestions, share ideas, and so on. Amy thought that it would be a good idea to get a vote on what can happen on a given scene. The club will be for contributors to our work.
