view
Stroszek (Werner Herzog, 1977)
Sep
9
turkey
“We're in America now.”
– Bruno S.
view
Muhammad Ali, the Greatest [Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee] (William Klein, 1974)
Sep
4
Mouthguard Day
A randomly picked screenshot showing Muhammad Ali fighting George Foreman. Each and every scene of a William Klein film is a photograph. DPs: Étienne Becker, William Klein, Richard Suzuki & Patrice Wyers.
“I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale; Handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail; Only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick; I’m so mean I make medicine sick.”
– Muhammad Ali
view
El espíritu de la colmena [The Spirit of the Beehive] (Víctor Erice, 1973)
Sep
3
National Cinema Day
Ana (Ana Torrent) watching James Whale's Frankenstein (1931). DP: Luis Cuadrado.
One day, in a quiet village, a traveling movie theatre appears. The proprietor has no words for the miracle he brings in on the reels. When it's finally time, and the whole town is crammed into the crumbling impromptu playhouse, and the lights are dimmed, a word of warning. This is the story of Dr. #Frankenstein, it starts.
“Just close your eyes and call him… It's me, Ana… It's me Ana…”
– Teresa
The old folk in the audience remember their first brush with cinema, and life, and death. For sisters Ana (Ana Torrent) and Isabel (Isabel Tellería) it may be their first, and it may as well be real. The creature, Isabel assures her younger sister, is not dead. He's a spirit and you can call for him.
When you're little, everything is a miracle. Milagros is the name the maid answers too. And so does the landscape, the mushrooms, the heart, and the magic of cinema.
view
Le temps d'une chasse [The Time of a Hunt / Once Upon a Hunt] (Francis Mankiewicz, 1972)
Sep
1
National Hotel Employee Day
One of the men following Monique, one of the hotel employees (Luce Guilbeault, simply credited as “La Rousse”, “the redhead”) down the corridor. The young waitress (Frédérique Collin) can be seen in the door opening at the end of the hallway. DP: Michel Brault.
Le temps d'une chasse is the definition of unease. It starts at dawn, when two old friends pick up their buddy Richard (Marcel Sabourin) from the home he shares with his wife and son. The son, the wife insists, comes along. The men have planned a #hunting trip, in a cabin far away from #Montréal, far away from everything, with a beer-filled cooler at hand. The last they need is an underage kid towing along. But the boy comes along, she insists. With a trunk full of Dutch courage and a mouthful of boasting, the men find themselves at a hotel instead of the expected cabins.
“Tomorrow morning we'll get up early.”
Hotel days are short and its nights long and booze-filled, commanding their own temptation and regret.
view
Ciao Manhattan (John Palmer + David Weisman, 1972)
Aug
31
International Overdose Awareness Day
A hollow-eyed Susan Superstar (or Edie Sedgwick, it doesn't matter) getting ready in the morning in one of the 1960s scenes. The cameraman is visible in the many bathroom mirrors. DPs: John Palmer & Kjell Rostad.
28 is no age to die, regardless if your name is Susan Superstar or Edie Sedgwick. But it happened, right during the wrap-up of Ciao Manhattan. Edie was gone, just like that, snuffed like so many of the other #Warhol Superstars. What did remain was footage, so much abandoned footage shot in the 60s when those stars were shining at their brightest. That footage, set in glitzy black-and-white Manhattan, is where Edie and Paul America race around town on amphetamine. Or see a doctor to get shots of some sorts.
“Speed is the ultimate, all-time high. That first rush. Wow! Just that burning, searing, soaring sense of perfection.”
– Susan
They snuff so fast, these bright Superstars.
view
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.”
view
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.
view
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.
view
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..
view
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