One of the most elaborately recorded “feral child” cases is that of the Wild Boy of Aveyron. In the year 1800, after few fruitless attempts to bound him to civilisation, a young boy left the forests of Saint-Sernin-sur-Rance and settled in. The child's primal appearance and lack of speech labeled him an idiot. However, in the era of Enlightenment, the question of nurture versus nature was a pressing one. Studies on Victor began.

“I'm glad that you came home. Do you understand? This is your home. You're no longer a wild boy, even if you're not yet a man.”

– Dr. Itard

Truffaut explores L'enfant sauvage right when the idea of the noble savage seemed to lock on with counterculture. With #Truffaut as Victor's tutor Itard in front of the camera, directly guiding amateur child actor (and “gipsy”) Cargol, the film not only reimagines Victor's fate, but reenacts Western presumed enlightenment over The Other.

A sickly #GustavMahler (Robert Powell) and his wife Alma (Georgina Hale) dwell on their shared lives while travelling to Vienna by train. Storylines – circular like a journey, rondo like #Mahler's compositions – drift from the ordinary to the grotesque.

“I don't want to imitate nature. I want to capture its very essence. As if all the birds and the beasts die tomorrow and the world became a desert, when people heard my music – they would still know, feel, what nature was.”

– Gustav Mahler

This would be the composer's final tour. A train took him to a Vienna sanatorium where not much later he'd succumb to #pneumonia.

As long as they can remember, jaaniõhtu is when Estonians gather to celebrate midsummer. It started, they'll tell you, 4000 years ago when Kaali appeared. Ever since, come rain or shine, come socialism or capitalism, the people gather and light bonfires in its remembrance. Some sing the songs of the elders, memory willing. Others see this as their moment to shine. As a great musician perhaps. A faithful worker. Or a lover, for jaanipäev; #midsummer night.

“Come, this party is for hard-working people!”

Two boys skip class to catch a movie – Alexander Mackendrick's thematically similar A High Wind in Jamaica (1965) – and end up as members of a violent gang instead. While Matinée has elements of a typical 70s #ComingOfAge movie, the more fascinating element is the role reversal of the two children and the robbers. As the kids are forced to grow up, fast, the criminals live out their childhood fantasy of never having to listen to anyone ever again. And bicker over comics.

 

Robert Rodriguez stated that the fearsome criminals in his El Mariachi (1992) never outgrew their childhood nicknames. I start to suspect that once upon a time, a little boy named Robertiño skipped class and went to the matinee.

“All is falling”

– Bas Jan Ader