Lucifer is a very unique movie. It was filmed with a high-sensitivity circular lens developed by some German company. The technique is called Tondoscope. The entire movie (except for the last 30 seconds or so) has a circular framing instead of a rectangular one, making it a very unusual viewing experience. Because of the high light sensitivity of the lens the entire movie also has an eerie, luminous quality, with the picture appearing more "whitewashed" than in other films.
It was filmed entirely in some bizarre Mexican village near an active volcano so usually there were no outsiders in the village and they found the movie crew a bit annoying although many locals agreed to appear in the movie (apparently only the guy playing Lucifer is a pro actor). Those old-fashioned clothes people wear are also a local specialty as well as the public announcement systems (which according to the director are always yelling stuff and advertising throughout the day, creating an unbearable cacophony...they silenced it because of the filming which the locals also found strange, they were unaccustomed to silence). The story of how this movie was made sounded so interesting that it might deserve a "making of" documentary of its own...
It won the best movie award in Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and rightfully so...very innovative and clever movie which deserves mainstream success.
In fact this movie featured TWO innovative techniques as it also had a 360 degree mirror lens system used in some parts of filming.
Van Den Berghe was also there on the screening and told us how difficult it was to get the sound in place because they couldn't use the usual stereo sound as the picture frame had no "right" or "left"...in fact only in the end of the movie, for about 30 seconds, the standard cinematic frame appears together with the regular stereo sound and indeed it's like entering a different reality. I didn't think about the sound at all when watching it but the difference became clear during the stereo sound segment at the end.
