Camille's head hanged back while I threw away the blindfold. Looking at her I knew I had to take the camera again, to record the moment for posterity, or at least to study it later. I normally become very familiar with a photo subject after I shoot some images. I learn about their faces, their best angles, what makes them look better for the camera. Some subjects are difficult to photograph, including myself. I'm never happy with my pictures with very, very few exceptions.

I was learning about Camille, as I learned about countless others thoughout my career, nothing special about that. But there was a difference this time.

Camille was hanging ver still, swaying a bit as if pushed by the air, her feet were not planted firmly on the floor, the weight of her body was resting on her wrists, that's why she could sway while she stayed still.

They young couple on the cross in the sugar cane field of Cuba, they were cuban actors, could not keep themselves from moving from time to time, reposition their feet, looking for comfort in that very uncomfortable pedestal of wood and pain. Margot, when she hanged from her cross, could hold a position for a long time, but in her case, there was something else. She wanted to, not to impress me with her capacity to resist, as Camille seemed to be doing, but to actually enjoy her suffering for a long time.

I went to get the camera, which was recording the scene, uninterrupted. Took it off the tripod and moved back to Camille, camera in hand, wondering if she would blink.

I had an exclusive, never seen interview of Papa Doc in my film. I was showing it to some Haitian friends in Brooklyn when one of them reacted to Papa Doc, in close up, talking about his government. "Oh my God" my Haitian friend exclaimed, "he blinks!". For years and years people in Haiti believed that Papa Doc wasn't human, that he was a zombie, and thus he could not blink. He declaredd himself Baron Samedi, the keeper of the graves, with power over the living and the dead.

But Camille wasn't a zombie, she was very human and she would have the need to blink at one point, she had to struggle not to. Perhaps she did while I was getting the camera, but once I focus on her, she didn't.

Again I began to explore Camille's body in pain with the lens of my domestic, amateur Sharp VHS video camera, lamenting that we were not in a better set with a better camera to capture the perfection of this moment.

I screened the Haitian film at Cannes three times. Some odd events took place during the screenings. A mysterious warning from one of the ticker takers who were all volunteers. He said he feared for me if I kept showing the movie. A group of Anglo-African filmmakers, all of them tall, a lot taller than me, became my friends at that time and after hearing of the threats, they acted as my body guards during the entire festival.

And I met Francoise and even while I was in bed with her, telling her the story I wrote in Cuba, even then, I had my mind in Hungary, where I would be heading soon after the festival was over to find Margot.