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破戒 [Po jie / Broken Oath] (Chang-hwa Jeong, 1977)
Feb
24
noodles
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.
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The Whole Shootin' Match (Eagle Pennell, 1978)
Feb
23
dinner with dad
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.
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The Kentucky Fried Movie (John Landis, 1977)
Feb
9
popcorn
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
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Space Coast (Ross McElwee + Michel Negroponte, 1979)
Jan
30
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.
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Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May, 1976)
Jan
27
milk and cigarettes
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.
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Touha zvaná Anada [Desire Called Anad / Adrift] (Elmar Klos + Ján Kadár, 1968/1971)
Jan
21
salt
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.
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Ucho [The Ear] (Karel Kachyňa, 1970)
Jan
8
cake
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.
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Umut [Hope] (Yılmaz Güney + Şerif Gören, 1970)
Dec
30
National Resolution Planning Day
Hasan (Tuncel Kurtiz) and Cabbar (Yılmaz Güney) planning their next step sitting atop of the pit. DP: Kaya Ererez.
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.
viewColloque 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.
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.
#Bales2023FilmChallenge #RaúlRuiz #SilkeHumel #EvaSimonet #RobertDarmel #JorgeArriagada #DenisLenoir #PatriceMorere #drama #crime #melodrama #ShortFilm #photography #animals #gender #prostitution #France #1970s ★★★★☆
#todo
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شكاوى الفلاح الفصيح [El-Fallâh el-fasîh / The Eloquent Peasant] (Chadi Abdel Salam, 1970)
Dec
23
National Farmers Day – India
The peasant (Ahmed Marei) in a stone temple, flanked by scribes. DP: Mustafa Imam.
4000 years ago, Egypt, Middle Kingdom. A peasant, leading his mules past a stream of water, is tricked. With his animals gone, he pleads to the Pharaoh to restore Maʽat, harmony.
“He's a peasant. Without looking into his situation, words are all he has.”
Chadi Abdel Salam is not only this film's director, but also a trained architect, later set and costume designer. His eye wordlessly speaks the passing of time in the smallest of details. The withering of ferns, desert sand staining linen, the Sun merging with skin. At once, the universal presence of the gods becomes visible.
