A wasteful act: Crispus Attucks, (arguably) the first American victim in the American Revolution, dies on March 5^th, 1770.

“She's always happy. She desires nothing, envies no one, is curious about nothing. You can't surprise her. She doesn't notice the humiliations, though they happen to her every day. It all rolls off her back like some waterproof material. Zero ambition. No moral code. Not even a whore's love of money.”

– The Writer

An ambitious but aimless girl – she wants to be loved, and to be a model, a proto-Edie – mills about her day.

 

Sublimely shot, we see Adriana through glass panes, in reflections, in an off-focal plane, in other people's words.

Wild animals for this year's first National Wildlife Day (USA). A second one is on September 4.

“For me, Afrikareise is, in its own genre, the most intense sound film that exists. Sound and images are in synch like in nature (even if it isn’t about the natural sound of something). The sound becomes the acoustic portrait of the visual action.”

– Peter Kubelka, via

Commissioned to film a rich Austrian couple's hunting trip, Kubelka sat on the material for several years before editing it in something more than the sum of its parts.

– Why are we making pancakes?

– Monsieur likes them. Besides, what else is there?

A heist on the date of the 1974 White House helicopter incident.

 

Partying on Fat Tuesday*

– Let's keep this party going till Sunday. – Why Sunday? – The Hindus say the world comes to an end on Sunday. – But, how will we know when it happens? – Graves will gape and the shrouded dead will run gibbering and shrieking in the streets. – Sounds like any other Sunday.

*which isn't until March 4 this year.

A film about friendship for Jennifer Anniston's birthday (1969).

 

1960. Michel is due to leave for Algeria to serve in the Algerian War. Juliette and Liliane are best friends as inseparable as “Filipino almonds”(?). When they meet, the girls decide to join Michel on his final vacation, on Corsica.

A film about teaching on the day of Saint Scholastica, patron saint of Benedictine nuns, education, and convulsive children.

 

Companion piece to Vilgot Sjöman's 491 (1964). An anti-authoritarian teacher who is plagued by nightmares, slowly unravels.

Someone prepares something for the founding of the Boy Scouts of America on February 8, 1910.

“His specs — use them as burning glasses!”

William Golding, Lord of the Flies (1954)

The boys collectively gather firewood to light a beacon, then come up with the idea to light the fire with the help of one of the kid's glasses.

Books, or art, in commemoration of Savonarola's 1497 Florentine falò delle vanità (bonfire of the vanities).

“I used to spend afternoons reading in bed. Tommaso would call and find me there. He could have kissed me. I wouldn't have resisted, out of boredom. But he was satisfied to watch me as I read. All those purposeless books.”

– Lidia

A lavish #CocktailParty in celebration of the launch of a novel is bookended by tragedy, in the loss of a befriended writer and the unraveling of another writer and his wife's marriage.

A wedding on the day of Dorothea of Caesarea, patron saint of horticulture, brewers, brides, florists, gardeners, midwives, newlyweds, and love.