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El espíritu de la colmena [The Spirit of the Beehive] (Víctor Erice, 1973)
Aug
30
mushrooms
Little Ana (Ana Torrent) all but disappearing behind a for her almost too large ceramic bowl. DP: Luis Cuadrado.
“If you're not sure a mushroom's good, don't pick it. Because if it's bad, and you eat it, it's your last mushroom and your last everything too.”
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Zupa [Soup] (Zbigniew Rybczyński, 1975)
Aug
27
Crab Soup Day
The husband eating soup. The colours are extremely bright and placed on top of animated black-and-white still photographs created with an optical printer. DP: Zbigniew Rybczyński..
Zbigniew Rybczyński's autobiographical Zupa follows an unnamed couple's faltering monotonous relationship.
Produced by the groundbreaking Se-ma-for Studios in Łódź – you may be familiar with their 1981 Oscar-winning Tango by, again, Rybczyński – the story is told through colourised analogue still #photography and electronic music and sound effects created by PRES's Eugeniusz Rudnik.
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Οι Τεμπέληδες της Εύφορης Κοιλάδας [Oi tembelides tis eforis koiladas / The Idlers of the Fertile Valley] (Nikos Panayotopoulos, 1978)
Aug
21
freebie: World Sleep Day
The maid, father, and two of the sons in a drab, dark green corridor. The men wear burgundy red dressing gowns over their pyjamas and lethargically lean instead of actively sit or stand. The maid wears practical everyday wear and has something to discuss. DP: Andreas Bellis.
Slow cinema of a different kind. We spend long hours in the company of a father (Vasilis Diamantopoulos) and his sons Sakis (George Dialegmenos), Nikos (Dimitris Poulikakos), and Giannis (Nikitas Tsakiroglou). The four of them – rich, bourgeois – have inherited a country villa and the plan is to do nothing for the next seven years. No work, no unnecessary movements. There's #sleep, lots of it. And copious amounts of food prepared by maid Sofia (Olga Karlatos) – she comes with the house; chattels personal – in addition of her body to be consumed by the increasingly idle men.
“Do you want to work? What a nightmarish idea”
Οι Τεμπέληδες της Εύφορης Κοιλάδας is a slow satire, quietly addressing Greek #class struggle through the viewer's observation. Who do we follow? The father, who quickly surrenders to sloth; the sons – young, with their whole lives ahead of them; the maid – never questioning her position and slavishly fulfilling her duties of the flesh, in bed and in the kitchen?
The similarities are there but unlike #MarcoFerreri's La grande bouffe (1973), there's no culmination in decadence. No euphoria to speak of. No grand release either; while the camera roams the mansion, attuned to #Mahler's tone poem Symphony No. 1 [Titan] – our only clue of the passing of time; even the vegetation succumbs to ennui – the story plods on. One of the men gets dressed, to go to work. It's foolish.
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Matinée (Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, 1977)
Aug
19
free candy
Best friends Aarón (Rodolfo Chávez Martínez) and Jorge (Armando Martín) helping out in Aarón's parents' convenience store while helping themselves to a snack or two. DP: Jorge Stahl Jr..
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Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
Aug
19
National Potato Day
Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) eternally peeling potatoes for dinner in this gif from Fondation Chantal Akerman. DP: Babette Mangolte.
Jeanne Dielman routinely prepares meals, cleans the house, mothers her teenage son, and entertains men. Then something breaks and her carefully nurtured practices slowly unravel.
“I could have made mashed potatoes, but we're having that tomorrow.”
– Jeanne Dielman
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Vražda ing. Čerta [The Murder of Mr. Devil / Killing the Devil] (Ester Krumbachová, 1970)
Aug
18
Serendipity Day
Ona (Jiřina Bohdalová) is her wonderful kitchen, smoking two well-deserved cigars. DP: Jiří Macák.
Ester Krumbachová's feminist farce is a delight of many flavours. Ona (Jiřina Bohdalová) is already 40 and in need of a man. She remembers one from her youth, the handsome, slim, and very cultured Eng. Bohouš Čerta (litt. “God the Devil, Engineer”, played by the always great Vladimír Menšík), and knows that the one way to a man's heart is through the stomach.
Her cooking is immaculate. So are her looks and her apartment (all created by one-time director Krumbachová who worked as a costume designer and screenwriter). Unfortunately, her beau has turned boorish and stuffs his face with all but her and the furniture (is that true?). But cooking she can, and wanting she does. So she cooks and cooks and cooks up some more.
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El lugar sin límites [The Place Without Limits] (Arturo Ripstein, 1978)
Aug
13
Gay Uncles Day
Pancho (Gonzalo Vega) watches La Manuela (Roberto Cobo) dance flamenco for him. DP: Miguel Garzón.
Cabaretera, a sub-genre from the Epoca de Oro (the golden epoch of Mexican filmmaking, 1930s—1950s), combines film noir with melodrama and musical numbers. Often set in cabarets (brothels), these films talk about the plight of the prostitute who – not without their pride and dignity – are forced to being the breadwinner in a poverty-stricken community.
The return of Pancho, a hyper-macho trucker, disrupts the family regime. The trucker's attraction to the #flamenco dancing fichera is at odds with his machismo. Him being outed as a maricón (a Mexican slur for homosexual) would be the end of his world.
El lugar remains a groundbreaking film, not only in how it handles taboos like #gender roles and trans- and homosexuality, but also because it highlights how (self) destructive #machismo is in Mexican society.
*Roberto Cobo's La Manuela is transsexual. The term “transvestite” is what's used in the film and typical for its time.
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Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (Martin Scorsese, 1974)
Aug
12
National Garage Sale Day
Tommy (Alfred Lutter III), Harold (Jefferson Burstyn), Alice (Ellen Burstyn) and Bea (Lelia Goldoni) counting out Alice's yard sale earnings. DP: Kent L. Wakeford.
After her husband is gone, Alice (Ellen Burstyn) sells her stuff and the house, picks up her son Tommy (Alfred Lutter III) and embarks on fulfilling her childhood dream of becoming a singer just like Alice Faye.
Tommy: Life is short.
Alice: Yeah, well, so are you.
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Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978)
Aug
7
Alberta Heritage Day
Bill (Richard Gere) and Abby (Brooke Adams) walking through golden fields towards a small pavilion. DP: Néstor Almendros.
Quintessential Americana. Filmed in Canada.
“The sun looks ghostly when there's a mist on a river and everything's quiet. I never knowed it before.”
– Linda
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Manson (Robert Hendrickson + Laurence Merrick, 1973)
Aug
6
American Family Day
A large group of hippies somewhere outside in front of canopy. They appear to be mid-song, posing as if in a stage play. One of them wears a T-shirt with a Christ-like, bearded man on it. On closer inspection, some familiar faces. Captions reads “The Family”. DPs: Jack Beckett & Louie Lawless.
Everything America stood for – God, liberty and justice for all – fell apart in the 60s. A much-loved president and family man killed on live television. Teenagers shipped to a country many never heard of before, only to end up as cannon fodder. Peace loving middleclass white kids from well-to-do families gathering en masse in Haight-Ashbury, collectively fell to bum trips and bouts of gonorrhoea. What America needs is family. Someone who takes you in, understands you, sings you songs and feeds you. An older man with friendly eyes appears on the scene, doing just that.
“These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.”
What the press dubbed The Family was a microcosm of American society; a loose collective of lost kids. Taken in by charismatic peddling pimp #CharlieManson with a steady supply of #LSD and a place to be themselves, rootless kids like Lynette “#Squeaky” Fromme and Paul Watkins were finally part of a family again. The family grew too; besides more lost souls and the occasional Beach Boy visiting Spahn Ranch, babies were born at the Devil's Slide.
Hendrickson and Merrick's Manson offers a candid and by times surreal portrait of a few #MansonFamily members (Squeaky makes out with a riffle, purring about how killing is like having an orgasm while Atkins lays out her plans to murder Frank Sinatra) right in the middle of the spectacle [sic] court-case. It was even nominated for an Oscar – which went to that other charismatic 70s evangelist, Marjoe (1972), while Manson was banned after Fromme's botched assassination attempt on President Gerald Ford in '75 and was lost for decades.
Stylistically inspired by Woodstock (1970) and soundtracked by the Family themselves, Manson remains a fascinating curio in the undying output of #Mansonsploitation movies. However gruesome, the American family is forever cemented in that holy cornerstone of self-immolation.