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Sedmi kontinent [Sedmý kontinent / The Seventh Continent] (Dušan Vukotić, 1966)
Aug
12
teevee dinner
A little blond boy on a red tricycle driving past his TV-ish dinner in an empty house. DP: Karol Krška.
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Drak sa vracia [Dragon's Return / The Return of Dragon] (Eduard Grečner, 1968)
Aug
9
Smokey Bear Day
Drak (Radovan Lukavský), a Caucasian man with a rough looking face and an eyepatch over his left eye. The landscape behind him is mere blurs. DP: Vincent Rosinec.
Drak [“dragon” or “devil”] returns to his village. No one understands why he came back, or where he has been. The villagers postulate smugglers and there's other drunk nefarious thoughts, but for sure they know that with the potter, the draught returned. In an unspoken ritual sung in old tongues, the grey women summon the rain. The forest, dry as tinder, has taken the cattle, all there is. Drak knows where the animals went and a deal is struck.
“Don't you recognise me?”
– Drak
Drak sa vracia speaks in mere whispers and smoky greys. The main characters – the #fire, smoke, pottery, and composer Ilja Zeljenka's often silent motif – weave their wordless presence throughout the ancient landscape; that same landscape that carved itself into the locals' being.
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L'œil du malin [The Eye of Evil / The Third Lover] (Claude Chabrol, 1962)
Aug
8
A table covered with a neatly ironed table cloth and on it, several stacks of flat and soup plates, plus silverware and nesting aluminium pans. DP: Jean Rabier.
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Drak sa vracia [Dragon's Return] (Eduard Grečner, 1968)
Aug
6
Eva (Emília Vášáryová) stares into the fire on which a small anthropomorphic cooking vessel is mounted. DP: Vincent Rosinec.
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Os Fuzis [The Guns] (Ruy Guerra, 1964)
Aug
2
A bearded man in white eats from a simple, hand-carved wooden bowl using his hand. In his tangled up hair are small, silver devotional medals. DP: Ricardo Aronovich.
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La ragazza con la pistola [The Girl with a Pistol] (Mario Monicelli, 1968)
Jul
28
Assunta Patanè (Monica Vitti) seated between two dinner tables on a long, padded bench. She's clutching her purse and appears to be waiting for something. On the table to her right a sugar bowl and a branded ashtray. DP: Carlo Di Palma.
“Ah, well, if you love somebody, shoot!”
– Dr. Tom Osborne
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Culloden [The Battle of Culloden] (Peter Watkins, 1964)
Jul
27
Bagpipe Appreciation Day
John Hunt Leigh in Culloden, pìobaireachd “ceòl mór” (litt. piping “great music”). DP: Dick Bush.
Great Highland #bagpipes, or a' phìob mhòr as they're called in Scottish Gaelic, are traditionally played on the battlefield. Peter Watkins' Culloden moves the senseless bloodshed from 1960s Vietnam to the Scottish Highlands of 1746.
“And wherever he went, he took with him his music, his poetry, his language and his children… thus within a century of Culloden, the English and the Scottish lowlanders had made secure forever their religion, their commerce, their culture, their ruling dynasty.”
– narrator
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Festival panafricain d'Alger [The Panafrican Festival in Algiers] (William Klein, 1969)
Jul
26
One Voice Day
Black hands holding each other. In translation the caption reads “Down with colonialism! Down with imperialism!”. DP: William Klein et al.
In typical Western fashion the credits for William Klein's Festival panafricain d'Alger focusses on the French and American participants. After Algeria regained its independence in 1962, it became Africa's – and the #AfricanDiaspora's – centre for postcolonial and liberation moments.
“À bas le colonialisme ! À bas l'imperialisme !”
The 12-day Festival panafricain attracted 5000 people from all over the African continent, as well as liberation fighters from the United States.
