settima

1970s

Avere vent'anni [To Be Twenty] (Fernando Di Leo, 1978)

Mar

9

sandwiches

Avere vent'anni (1978)

Lia (Gloria Guida), one of the young, hot and pissed off 20-somethings, enjoys a sandwich with her espadrilles resting on a small restaurant table. Just visible in the background are multiple men on their lunchbreak. DP: Roberto Gerardi.

“I'm young, hot and pissed off!”

– Tina

破戒 [Po jie / Broken Oath] (Chang-hwa Jeong, 1977)

Feb

24

noodles

破戒 (1977)

A large man at an eatery gulps down bowl after bowl of delicious noodles. He's at number seven with bowl eight ready to go. DPs: Tieh Wang & Yung-Lung Wang.

The Whole Shootin' Match (Eagle Pennell, 1978)

Feb

23

dinner with dad

The Whole Shootin' Match (1978)

Father and son at a small messy dinner table in a small kitchen. The dad, Frank (Sonny Carl Davis) is going on about something while the kid, T. Frank (David Weber), licks his finger. DP: Eagle Pennell.

The Kentucky Fried Movie (John Landis, 1977)

Feb

9

popcorn

The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)

A white guy munches popcorn in a seemingly empty movie theatre while an usher, standing right behind him, lights a cigarette. DP: Stephen M. Katz.

“The popcorn you are eating has been pissed in. Film at eleven.”

– newscaster

Space Coast (Ross McElwee + Michel Negroponte, 1979)

Jan

30

Space Coast (1979)

A woman and man eating at a wooden table. It's dark, there's one candle, and the guy wearing Ray-Bans® holding his #beer has got something to say.

Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May, 1976)

Jan

27

milk and cigarettes

Mikey and Nicky (1976)

The titular Mikey and Nicky sharing snacks, smokes, and sips at a tiny fast food table. There are piles of boxes with canned beer behind them. Mikey (Falk) cheesily grins at Nicky (Cassavetes). DPs: Bernie Abramson, Lucien Ballard, Jack Cooperman, Jerry File & Victor J. Kemper.

Touha zvaná Anada [Desire Called Anad / Adrift] (Elmar Klos + Ján Kadár, 1968/1971)

Jan

21

salt

Touha zvaná Anada (1968/1971)

Semi-off screen, an older man with a moustache at a dinner table – many plates, glasses, and foods – reaches for a bowl of salt. DP: Vladimír Novotný.

Ucho [The Ear] (Karel Kachyňa, 1970)

Jan

8

cake

Ucho (1970)

A gold-rimmed plate with a messy piece of cake on its side. Near it two glasses and a bottle of alcohol. DP: Josef Illík.

Umut [Hope] (Yılmaz Güney + Şerif Gören, 1970)

Dec

30

National Resolution Planning Day

Umut (1970)

Hasan (Tuncel Kurtiz) and Cabbar (Yılmaz Güney) planning their next step sitting atop of the pit. DP: Kaya Ererez.

Discussing an elaborate plan on National Resolution Planning Day (USA)

 

Cabbar (Yılmaz Güney), an impoverished, illiterate phaeton driver, loses his already half-dead horse when a rich man crashes into the cart. Now destitute and burdened with feeding his six children, wife and grandmother, Cabbar is offered several ways out. While winning the lottery is not in his stars, his friend Hasan's (Tuncel Kurtiz) and imam Hodja's (Osman Alyanak) wondrous plan to go out into the Kurdish wastelands to dig up an illusive treasure may be his only escape.

“I left forty lira at home, the family is hungry now.”

– Cabbar

Umut is Turkey's early venture into Neorealismo. Banned by the national board of censorship – the display of abject poverty, characters not observing morning prayer etc etc – the film was smuggled out off the country and into Cannes, where its screening urged the Turkish government to reconsider its decision. It's now seen as one of Turkey's most important cinematic masterpieces.

Colloque de chiens (1977)

Monique (Silke Humel, R) spending Christmas Eve in a bar, looking for a way out. She's speaking to an elderly man in an expensive tuxedo. Is this it? DP: Denis Lenoir; still photographer Patrice Morere.

Colloque de chiens (1977)

December 24: the night before Christmas (Christmas Eve)

Colloque de chiens (Raúl Ruiz, 1977)

“Nobody knows why Monique, the cold and dry voiced whore, bears in her eyes the sadness and tiredness of her past.”

Filmed during an actors' strike, Raúl Ruiz's Colloque de chiens consists for the most part of still photographs with mixed in stolen moving footage of unsuspecting bystanders and stray dogs. Told in fotonovela format, we follow the pitiful account of Monique, who as a young girl, learns that her mother is not who she thinks she is. Rejected, she throws herself into a life of vice until she meets Henri, a handsome young television repairman. Together they buy a small café, and are happy for once. But the cyclical nature of life determines her faith.

Raúl Ruiz's work is, like Henri's modus operandi, determined by maps and patterns. Even in the short comically melodramatic breathe of Colloque de chiens, the map has been laid out for Ruiz's later, much more complex narrative.

Colloque opens in a barren landscape. There are the skeletal towers of a nearby city, and the endless barks of abandoned dogs. Obscured by tall reeds, a blown-up photograph of a young man. The face, soft and familiar, a distant memory.

“He wanted to be returned to the world of his childhood and to this woman who was perhaps waiting for him” –Chris Marker, dialogue from La Jetée (1962)
Amongst bare winter bushes a large photo of a friendly, young, familiar looking man. In the background against a grey sky multiple white apartment buildings.

Colloque de chiens (1977)

#Bales2023FilmChallenge #RaúlRuiz #SilkeHumel #EvaSimonet #RobertDarmel #JorgeArriagada #DenisLenoir #PatriceMorere #drama #crime #melodrama #ShortFilm #photography #animals #gender #prostitution #France #1970s ★★★★☆

#todo