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Afternoon (Andy Warhol, 1965)
Apr
19
National Hanging Out Day
Fabulous Factory people hanging out. Edie interacts with the camera, the rest looks mostly bored. Image owned by the Warhol Foundation yadda yadda for educational purposes only.
Part of the never-realised #SuperStar-studded The Poor Little Rich Girl Saga, #Warhol's Afternoon documents a day in the life of doomed socialite Edie Sedgwick. Miss Sedgwick and her entourage (Ondine, Dorothy Dean, Arthur Loeb, and Donald Lyons) spend an afternoon at #Edie's place. The superstars, the bored and the beautiful, chat, drink and do drugs.
“Isn’t it wonderful that we can be just friends?”
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Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit [Ways to Strength and Beauty] (Wilhelm Prager + Nicholas Kaufmann, 1925)
Apr
18
National Exercise Day
A young woman with a pageboy cut and a black bathing suit is suspended from a tree with the back of her neck. An instructor, a bald man with a moustache and tan jodhpurs, pushes her as if she's on a swing set. DPs: Eugen Herich, Friedrich Paulmann & Friedrich Weinmann.
Europeans are not too worried about certain things. Having a body for instance is something good. Instead of shame, you take care for it with regular exercise and plenty of fresh air. Preferably both. In Germany this is called #Freikörperkultur, sometimes confused with nudism.
Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit is a display of the human in various stages of exercise and undress. We see sportspeople – including future-Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller and then-movie mountaineer Leni Riefenstahl – world leaders (Rockefeller and Mussolini, though the latter was cut from re-releases) and dancers such as Josephine Baker, Baku Ishii, and the scandalous Anita Berber. The film was mostly aimed at women, who by then were part of the workforce, sitting at desks in modern Metropolises. So modern it was that people were encouraged to complete their Wege-collection of trading cards, which came with their cigarettes. Good thing they're all #outdoors.
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Jerry's Deli [Jerry] (Tom Palazzolo, 1974)
Apr
17
National Stress Awareness Month
Jerry Meyer in his sandwich place, taking orders.
Stressed?‽ Who's got time to be stressed when there's a business to be run!!? Tom Palazzolo's Jerry’s Deli is a great character study of not only a character, but a whole time period inhabited by characters. The titular Jerry is Jerry Meyer, owner and proprietor of a Chicagoan deli that happened to be right next to Palazzolo's film lab. You wanna eat? Now, eat! Wanna order? Whaddaya waiting for?? Order!! Roast beef on rye please.
“On RYE!?!”
– Jerry Meyer
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Supermarkt [Die Stadt, Jane Love / Supermarket] (Roland Klick, 1974)
Apr
16
National Cash Day
A dirty, cut hand attempts to steal a few coins from a dish at a public toilet. DP: Jost Vacano.
Good-for-nothing Willi (Charly Wierzejewski) is in trouble. After yet another run-in with the law, and yet again meeting the wrong people at the wrong time, he falls in love with a destitute street worker (Eva Mattes). Now he really needs #money so he can support himself, her, and her kid. He tries his hand at renting himself out to a rich homosexual (homosexuality was illegal in 1970s W Germany), then moves forward to robbing the money transporter of a local supermarket with his pimp buddy. But as usual, Willi is in trouble.
Shot on location in #Hamburg's red-light district St. Pauli, Supermarkt is gritty, unpleasant and has an authenticity rarely seen in other films of this genre.
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人間蒸発 [Ningen jōhatsu / A Man Vanishes] (Shōhei Imamura, 1967)
Apr
15
Rubber Eraser Day
A man hangs a poster of the vanished Mr Oshima. Shoppers pass by. DP: Kenji Ishiguro.
Jōhatsu, literally “evaporation” is the Japanese term for people disappearing without a trace. Salesman Tadashi Oshima is one of them. Director Shōhei Imamura, together with Oshima's fiancé Yoshie Hayakawa and actor Shigeru Tsuyuguchi created an investigative documentary that looks into this man, his motives, his possible whereabouts, and the others that are gone.
人間蒸発 is a fascinating exploration of aspects of 1960s Japanese society that make jōhatsu distinct from similar phenomena elsewhere.
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Boy on a Dolphin (Jean Negulesco, 1957)
Apr
14
National Dolphin Day
Phaedra (Sophia Loren) posing victoriously on the bow of a sailboat, with the statue, still in its ropes after hoisting it off the ocean floor, behind her. DP: Milton R. Krasner.
Shot on location in Greece, sponge diver Phaedra (Sophia Loren) makes a splash when she finds an ancient statue of a boy on a dolphin, rumoured to bring good luck to her town. Her attempts to sell it to the highest bidder makes not only the bronze but also her the object of desire of an honest archaeologist and an unscrupulous antiques dealer playboy.
“Our paths have crossed and re-crossed: in Dresden, Rotterdam, Florence – wherever the Nazis looted. Raphaels, Rembrandts, even down to a dreary little china pot, which belonged to Madame Pompadour… there was always Captain Jim Calder of the U.S. Army, restoring priceless objects to their rightful owners – a typical middle-class gesture.”
– Victor Parmalee
Boy on a dolphin is not only the title of this movie but also possibly a reference to #Arion, son of the inhabitants of Lesbos (would that make this movie a bit too wild for 1957?), or #Taras, son of Poseidon and Satyrion. According to Greek legend, both mythological characters were saved by #dolphins.
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The Kirlian Witness (Jonathan Sarno, 1978)
Apr
13
International Plant Appreciation Day
Rilla (Nancy Snyder) in a neglected room, the floor's littered with empty food packaging. On a small table in front of her, a ficus hooked up to a polygraph. DP: João Fernandes.
Kirlian photography claims that plants can communicate telepathically. Rilla (Nancy Snyder) delves deep into the science so to interrogate the only witness to her plant-loving sister Laurie's murder, a ficus.
Not to be confused with the inferior alternative cut The Plants are Watching.
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Mighty Joe Young (Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1949)
Apr
12
National Only Child Day
Jill playing the grand piano in a ballgown while suspended high up in the air by Joe. DP: J. Roy Hunt.
Young Jill – played by the tragically doomed Lora Lee Michel – grows up on a ranch in an undisclosed African country (aka “Africa”) with her father. One day, two porters pass her house carrying an orphaned baby #gorilla. Smitten, she wants and gets the ape, names it Joe, and raises it until the simian reaches exceptional size. That's when a couple of showman collecting exotic menagerie for a Hollywood nightclub come across the odd couple. After long consideration and desperate for money, Jill decides to take Joe to the States where the two become an overnight cabaret sensation. But like Kong before him, Joe is not made for the concrete jungle.
“Am I dreamin', or did I just see a gorilla? And a beautiful dame!”
– Max O'Hara
One decade and a Hays Code later, the people who brought the world King Kong (1933) present Mighty Joe Young: more drama, more spectacle, and superior special effects by Marcel Delgado, Ray #Harryhausen and Willis O'Brien et al. A box-office dud ánd Academy Award for Special Effects winner, Mighty Joe Young is now recognised as an #animation classic. In particular the nightclub scenes (keep your eyes peeled for Phil “The Swedish Angel” Olafsson!) are a wonderful display of the magic of #StopMotion.
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Tystnaden [The Silence] (Ingmar Bergman, 1963)
Apr
10
Siblings Day
Sisters Ester (Ingrid Thulin) and Anna (Gunnel Lindblom). Similar as in Bergman's Persona (1966), the women's faces appear to complete each other. DP: Sven Nykvist.
#Sisters Ester and Anna arrive with Anna's son Johan in the small Central European town of Timoka. The country verges on the brink of war. Unwell Ester is confined to her hotel room, Anna roams Timoka's establishments, Johan wanders the hotel corridors.
“You need to watch your step among all the ghosts and memories.”
– Ester
It's hard to watch #Bergman's Tystnaden without #StanleyKubrick's ghosts sidling in. Tystnaden however doesn't need consternation to cause dread. The interaction and lack thereof between the three leads and the few extras translate into something merely tangible and evermore frightful.