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November 2001
Shooting Midst Shooting
The making of Our Lady of the Assassins
By
Mark McHarry
Cinematographer Rodrigo Lalinde used a prototype high-definition video camera. The resolution is about twice the existing HDTV broadcast standard. Looking closely at a 35mm projected
image in a theater, you notice only less color depth in flesh tones and occasional problems rendering vertical motion. This is the future of cinema, and in his and Schroeder's hands, it looks good.
Using video helped the crew shoot the movie in less than two months, which kept to a minimum their time on the street.
Despite heavy security, the all-Colombian crew (the French production manager fled after a week) received death threats, and two
sicarios on a motorbike robbed the crew's accountant
at gunpoint.
Given the notoriety of Vallejo's book in Medellín, Schroeder went to great lengths to keep things secret. He did not tell the crew about the content until the assistant director confronted him
two days after shooting started, nor did he tell the two lead boys about the other's role, though they figured it out fairly quickly. Schroeder had proposed doing another of Vallejo's books, but the
author talked him into La Virgen de los
Sicarios.
Almost all the young people were recruited from the slums. The director said Anderson Ballesteros (Alexis) committed assaults before and during the shooting, but he's denied this to
reporters. Schroeder said he showed Ballesteros and Juan David Restrepo (Wilmar)
Strawberries and Chocolate and some Fassbinder and Almodovar films in order to get them to relax about the
characters, and Germán Jaramillo (Fernando), a leading stage actor, gave them a month-long workshop.
The two boys have not fared well subsequently. They spent their earnings quickly and one was beaten and left for dead, likely by a right-wing hit squad reacting to the movie. Schroeder
has expressed guilt about this and said he's trying to get one or both out of the country.
| Mark McHarry |
| Mark McHarry keeps an eye on Latin
culture from the Bay Area |
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