Turn on your television on the day* in 1926 John Logie Baird demonstrated the first working TV.

 

An unknown foreign agent manipulates Brazil's radio en television antennas to emit subliminal messages to the oblivious population. Slowly, society descends into violent chaos.

 

O 5º Poder precedes Ray Nelson's story Eight O'Clock in the Morning by one, and John Carpenter's adaptation They Live by 26 years. But what's much more fascinating is this film's place in Brazilian history: right between Professor Baskarán's – hypnotist Carlos Pedregal – televised mass hypnosis experiments from 1958, and the violent coup of 1964.

 

In how far was the population primed for this revolt? And how much, are you?

 

* In reality this was on January 26, 1926.

Poverty: National Poverty in America Awareness Month (USA)

 

Macario, poor and hungry, wishes to eat a whole turkey all by himself on Día de los Muertos. When he finally has the opportunity, he is interrupted three times: by the Devil, by God, and by Death. With one of them, he shares his meal.

Roses for the end of the Wars of the Roses (note: January 18 is when Henry VII married Elizabeth of York in 1486; the wars would continue until June 16 the following year).

“All my life, hold me close to your heart But all else above Hold my love, darling, just hold my love”

– Ella Fitzgerald, All My Life (Sidney D. Mitchell & Sammy Stept), 1936

In one continuous shot, the camera tracks a fence and rose bushes while Ella Fitzgerald's 1936 debut song All My Life is playing.

Wolves for Wolf Moon, the first full moon after Yule.

 

In Livonia, which covers modern day Estonia, the 17^th century was when the werewolf trials reigned.

“Better to be with wolves in the forest, than with people like you!”

Tiina, a young liberated woman taken in by a family of farmers after her mother was put on trial for witchcraft, is accused of hunting with the wolves as a werewolf by her half-sister with whom she shares a lover.

“Right now, I don't know if it's me or the dynamite that doin' all that sweatin'.”

– Jake Sharp

Garnets for January. The garnet is supposed to protect the traveller on his journey, and is named after the pomegranate with which it shares its bloodred colour.

“We sought asylum for our love, but the road led us out to the land of the dead.”

The story of a poet's spiritual journey. The poet, and poems the film is based on is ashough [lover, or travelling musician] Sayat-Nova (b. Harutyun Sayatyan).

Voting, for the Representation of the People Act 1918, UK.

 

Made for the Czechoslovak Pavilion at #Expo67 in #Montréal, Kinoautomat was the world's first interactive film. During nine moments in the story, a moderator would appear on the stage, and ask the audience where the story should go now. Depending on the votes, one of two reels would play.

“The Kinoautomat in the Czechoslovak Pavilion is a guaranteed hit of the World Exposition, and the Czechs should build a monument to the man who conceived the idea, Radúz Činčera.”

– The New Yorker

After its very successful performance at Expo 67, and a one year run in Prague, Kinoautomat was banned by the Czechoslovakian government.

Good, or bad, fortune on the day Wheel of Fortune premiered in 1975.

– How much did you win?

– 500,000 in less than an hour. It's immoral, but no more than anything else. No more than poverty or ugliness.

A Muslim tradition for Muslim-American Heritage Month. In Sufi cosmology, the concept of love, suret-i aşk, the observer of love defines it meaning.

“Study me as much as you like, you will not know me, for I differ in a hundred ways from what you see me to be. Put yourself behind my eyes and see me as I see myself, for I have chosen to dwell in a place you cannot see.”

– Rumi