#acertainsacrifice

[nellarw95]

Happy Birthday Madonna 🥳🎂🎈🎁🎉

Veronica Louise Ciccone

August 16,1958

Buon Compleanno 🥳🎂🎈🎁🎉

16 Agosto 1958

[mtwy]

A Certain Sacrifice

USA October 8th 1985

Directed by Stephen Jon Lewicki

Starring

Madonna - Bruna Jeremy Pattnosh - Dashiel Charles Kurtz - Raymond Hall Kate Magill - Susan Porter

Bruna is a deathrocker with a meaningless exsistence and a coven of loyal lovers, her boyfriend Dashiel is a philospher who has traded in the comfort of the suburbs for the grime of New York City.  After Bruna is attacked and raped, her family of lovers seek revenge.

Previously only available through mail order, A Certain Sacrifice saw an official commercial release on video cassette only. 

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Los Angeles Times

USA October 4th 1985

By Dennis Hunt

Here’s some possibly disappointing news for Madonna watchers. Apparently “A Certain Sacrifice,” the movie Madonna starred in five years ago, isn’t the porn flick some have assumed it is.

At least that’s what director Stephen Jon Lewicki said of the movie, which makes its videocassette debut on Virgin Video at $59.95 next week, a week later than scheduled.

“There’s some nudity in it and Madonna is nude briefly,” he said. “It’s not even semi-porn. If anything it’s anti-porn. I think this porn rumor got started because people who haven’t seen it heard she has three sex slaves (in the movie). That excited their imaginations and they’ve been assuming all sorts of things about it.”

Long before she became a pop idol, Madonna, a struggling actress/singer/dancer, starred in this movie and worked as a nude model. All that is coming back to haunt her. Playboy and Penthouse magazines printed some nude photos recently. Then this movie surfaced. A legal effort to keep her name from being used in conjuction with the film ultimately failed.

The film was shot mostly in 1980 but Lewicki worked on it off and on until last year. Its original cost was $20,000 but Lewicki says he has done $60,000 worth of polishing.

Lewicki is currently negotiating a soundtrack deal. But don’t get your hopes up. Madonna does some dancing in this movie but no singing. Without a Madonna vocal performance, Lewicki may have a tough time getting a record deal. “A Certain Sacrifice” has not been released theatrically in this country but Lewicki hopes to change that. It was, however, released in Italian theatres.

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Associated Press

August 3rd 1985

Madonna Loses Movie Suit

NEW YORK (AP) - Rock Star Madonna has failed to keep a producer-director from using her name to promote a film she made as a teen-ager that features her in the nude.

State Supreme Court Justice Ira Gammerman ruled Friday against the singer of hits such as “Like a Virgin” and “Material Girl” and in favor of Stephen Jon Lewicki. The Supreme Court is a trial-level court in New York.

After nude photos of Madonna appeared in Playboy and Penthouse magazines last month, she said she had done nothing to be ashamed of. But she said she feels differently about “A Certain Sacrifice,” an hourlong production Lewicki shot for $20,000 six years ago.

Madonna, whose full name is Madonna Louise Ciccone, said the movie “is a poor-quality, mediocre film. ... My performance was second rate.”

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Los Angeles Times

USA August 1st 1985

MADONNA SUES TO BLOCK RELEASE OF PORNO MOVIE

From United Press International

New York - Rock star Madonna has filed a lawsuit seeking to bar the release of a 5-year-old soft-core pornographic movie in which she stars.

Madonna, in court papers filed Tuesday, said she had signed a release permitting her voice and body to be featured on the film.

But, she said in papers filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, she did not authorize the use of her name in connection with the film.

“A Certain Sacrifice” features Madonna in an orgy scene. She also is seen being raped in a coffee-shop restroom. 

The suit comes less than a month after nude pictures of her appeared in Playboy and Penthouse magazines. Madonna said she had no objection to publication of the photographs, adding that she was “ashamed of nothing.”

In the court suit, however, she argued that if producer Jon Lewicki releases the film with her identified as Madonna, it will damage the image that she has fought to create.

She said it was a poor-quality film with an even poorer plot.

The film was made in 1980 when Madonna was 19. Lewicki said Madonna was paid $100 for her performance.

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A Certain Sacrifice

USA July 1985

NEW YORK “A Certain Sacrifice,” the now notorious experimental art film co-starring Madonna, has been released to home video. The hourlong $20,000 production is available at $49.95, through mail order only, from New York based Cine Cine Productions.

Stephen Jon Lewicki, the film’s producer and director, says that he’s on the verge of signing a U.S distribution deal, and that he already has one in Japan with people who “don’t want their name involved at this point.”

“A Certain Sacrifice” is described by Lewicki as a “new wave, Lower East Side post-punk film” along the lines of Scott and Beth B’s “Vortex” and Susan Seidelman’s “smithereens.” It was shot in Super 8 from September 1979 through June 1981 and finally completed in August 1984. It was written by Lewicki and actor Jeremy Pattnosh, who is top-billed over Madonna.

Madonna was 19 and a brunette when she won the female lead role of Bruna, having answered an ad in an acting trade publication with a handwritten letter detailing her life’s woes and goals.

A self-proclaimed “dodo girl” searching for her “dodo boy,” Bruna is a street urchin character living with a bizarre “family of lovers.” But the Madonna persona, while formative, is readily discernible, especially in her first scene, where she and Pattnosh meet and dance around a sprinkler in Greenwhich Village’s Wasington Square Park.

Other key Madonna scenes include a dance orgy with her lovers, her rape in a coffee shop rest room, and the ritual sacrifice of the rapist. There are few brief instances of partial nudity in the film, which, while crudely made, is not without humor and quality acting.

Lewicki says that “A Certain Sacrifice” was originally intended as an art film with cult appeal, “definitely not porn as some of the press is making it out to be, but sexy, maybe with a PG-13 or mild R rating because of abusive language.” He expects sales of at least 50,000 copies within the next year, and is advertising the product in major rock publications. Besides the film iteself, T-shirts and posters are available, as is an additional “Collector’s Special” tape containing outtakes and interview footage.

As for Madonna’s reaction to the film, Lewicki says that she enjoyed a private screening, objecting only to the use of her full name in the end credits.

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Rolling Stone  February 1985

(Notes Section)

Madonna’s major-screen debut takes place next month in the already mega-hyped Desperately Seeking Susan, but her scantily hyped minor screen career actually began in 1979, when she made an odd little New York underground film entitled, appropriately enough, A Certain Sacrifice. “There was an ad in the trades saying this director needed a sort of quirky, offbeat girl,” said Madonna, “and I was just dancing at the time, and thought, ‘Oh, great, I’m going to be a movie star.’” 

The “quirky girl” turned out to be a quasi dominatrix who has three sex slaves, then a boyfriend. She’s raped - by yet another admirer - and coerces an entire coven of weirdos to avenge the act. Our Material Girl isn’t thoroughly pleased with the results. “it’s long and terribly boring. By the time I got into the middle of the movie, I was throwing temper tantrums, because I didn’t want to be involved. It’s embarrassing for me to watch.” 

Virgin director Stephen Jon Lewicki, however, sees its value as “prehistoric Madonna” and plans to release it soon to clubs and TV, and as a home videocassette. 

Well, it may not be hard-core porn - in fact it’s mostly just weird - but a lot more than the familiar bellybutton is bared.