“At 10 PM, in what will be the last broadcast, Fact or Fiction goes live.”

– David Leigh, the filmmaker

Candles for Diwali*. Today's and tomorrow's theme are virtually interchangeable.

 

When an old crone gives birth to a beautiful baby, a young virgin claims the child as hers. With the Immaculately Conceived wonder put on display – to the child's contemporaries, the court of Cosimo de' Medici attending a reenactment of the events, and us film viewers – He protects the false Virgin from losing her chastity and blurs the walls between staging and gospel.

 

* “Diwali, one of the major religious festivals in Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism, lasting for five days from the 13th day of the dark half of the lunar month Ashvina to the second day of the light half of the lunar month Karttika. The corresponding dates in the Gregorian calendar usually fall in late October and November.” (source).

[Favourite] psychological horror*

“A premonition of a horror film”

– tagline

Real horror is not found in broken dinner plates or corpuscular masses of light. It's in what the mind does with that input, in how those lux morph into human-like shapes. In how gusts of wind becomes larynx-touched voices. Cut up the neatly filed research papers and be left with the whispers of the mind.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for October is horror-themed as opposed to date-based, and is all about favourites. Expect non-horror and films I believe to be relevant instead.

On October 9th, 1972 an exhibition of John and Yoko's art – designed by the Master of the Fluxus movement, George Maciunas and curated by David Ross – opened at the Syracuse Museum of Art in New York. On the same day, an unusual group of John and Yoko's friends, including Ringo Starr, Allen Ginsberg, and Paul Krasner, gathered to celebrate John's birthday.

 

“We wanted the money but we wanted to burn it more.”

– Bill Drummond

Cerulean, or blue: in food or fashion*

“I'm just fine. I have everything here. I have the TV. You can see the whole world”

– the mother

How could I not pick at least one instalment of Kieślowski's Trois couleurs trilogy. Here's blue, the liberté of the tricolor. Blue occurs as the sky to fall through, the room without life, and the cloth that binds.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.