A film scene with a bike for World Bicycle Day

 

Jean (Marc Barbé) follows the route of the Tour de France. He sees women, picks them up, takes them out. Claire, infatuated with him, is taken in by his darkness. At night, the cyclists continue the course.

An LGBTQ actor, director, or character over 55 for Honor Our LGBT Elders Day (USA)

“Ich bin meine eigene Frau” (“I am my own woman/wife”)

– Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, in response to her mother's request to settle and get married

The extraordinary life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, Berliner, gender bender, Nazi killer (her own father, with a wooden rolling pin, mind you), prisoner, custodian, museum founder, barmaid, Stasi informer (arguably), den mother to the GDR's LGBT+ youngsters, but most of all, her own woman.

“We broke up on April's fools day, so I took it as a joke. I'm willing to humor her for a month.”

– He Zhiwu, Cop 223

A film set in April.

“We split up on April Fool's Day. So I decided to let the joke run for a month. Every day I buy a can of pineapple with a sell-by date of May 1. May loves pineapple, and May 1 is my birthday. If May hasn't changed her mind by the time I've bought thirty cans, then our love will also expire.”

– He Zhiwu, Cop 223

A World War I film: a day in recognition of the forced deportations and genocide in Armenia, 1915 — 1923.

“Parfois ils disent que nos images sont esthétiques, mais nous disons que les images esthétiques sont des images hautement étiques. Pour nous éthique et esthétique marchent ensemble. Re-filmer signifie re-signifier.”

– Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi in conversation with Daniele Dottorini, 2007 (via)

Re-purposed propaganda reels show citizens – displaced, dehumanised – turned into prisoners of war, and finally into corpses.

Chemistry: Dimitri Mendeleev presented his version of the periodic table on this date in 1869. He claimed to have had a dream in which he envisioned a table in which all the chemical elements were arranged according to their atomic weight (via).

“Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) was a French chemist who gave the first accurate scientific explanation of the mysteries of fire. He also provided the law of conservation of matter which states that matter can be neither created or destroyed.n His work and this film are situated between modern chemistry and alchemy. The film stages a drama of abstraction and theoretical realism. Everyday life seen photo-chemically and musically. The film is a materialist projected-image conversion of matter.”

– Michael Snow, via

The film stock was chemically altered, giving it an dreamlike quality.

A film about communism to commemorate the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact on February 25, 1991

“Alexandre Ivanovitch Medvedkine est le seul cinéaste russe né en 1900. (…) Son énergie, son courage, ses illusions, ses désillusions, ses compromissions, ses bagarres avec les bureaucrates, ses illuminations prophétiques, ses aveuglements, volontaires ou non, son humour indestructible et la lumière déchirante que l’effondrement de l’URSS jette rétrospectivement sur toute sa vie, ce sont ceux de toute une génération, et c’est le portrait de cette génération que j’entends tracer à travers le portrait d’un ami.”

– press kit (via)

A film essay using the life and work of filmmaker Aleksandr Medvedkin to tell the story of communism. Medvedkin traveled the Soviet Union with his Kinopoezd or Cinetrain (also Agit-train), a moving film production train with the sole purpose to create Agitprop while documenting the Five Year Plan.