Green for Irish-American Heritage Month (USA).

“He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.”

– caption

For Idus Martiae, the Ides of March, a scene showing the main character's back.

 

Olivier, a carpentry teacher at a youth rehabilitation center, has a new apprentice, 16 year old Francis. Fascinated by the boy and his unspoken backstory, he starts following him around.

“With these shots from the back and the neck, we hope to confront the spectator with a mystery, the impossibility of knowing and seeing. The face and the eyes should not try to express a situation that already sufficiently stirs up the spectator’s interests. This expression would direct, limit or even prevent expectations, whereas the back and the neck allow the spectator to go deeper, like a car driving into the night.”

– Luc Dardenne, via [spoilers]

“The Dardennes' brothers’ camera follows Olivier in his enigmatic, ominous obsession with the boy and almost constantly films him up close and from behind. In the absence of a true gaze, the back turns into a face that speaks but doesn’t explain anything, “a body that becomes a vibrating membrane”, as Jean-Pierre Dardenne so beautifully put it.” (via)

Imaginary animals or food for Theodor “Dr.” Seuss Geisel's birthday (1904).

“I like the settings where the lights and desire cross path. The desire to communicate with the invisibles in the darkness, or in memory, or in the future. It's always related to cinema and we as insects that are drawn to lights.”

– Apichatpong Weerasethakul, via

Villagers in the north of Thailand reported a rare sighting of a male and female Nok Phii, an elusive species of bird that feeds on animals' blood. It is unknown if the sighting was reliable, and if this vampire does, or ever did, exist.

“All I ask is that you step with me into the boundlessness, where constancy, quietude and peace, infinite emptiness reign.”

– János Valuska

Nyatta is not ready to have Jizō take away his big sister Nyāko to Ne-no-kuni, the land of the dead. The kitten grabs his sister's paw, resulting in her soul being ripped in two and leaving Nyāko in a state of limbo. The cats' mother then sends the two off on a mission to buy fried #tofu. Maybe now Nyatta can find a way to put Nyāko's divided soul back together. But first, there's a circus to visit!

 

ねこぢる草 is based on works by mangaka Nekojiru / ねこぢる (1967—1998) whose trademark crudely drawn #cats caused a ripple in Japan's underground #manga circuit. Nyatta and Nyāko continued their surreal adventures by way of widower Yamano Hajime after Nekojiru's tragic suicide in 1998.

In a small train station's waiting room, people #sleep. #Trains in the distance rumble along. #Snow covers footprints crossing nearby tracks and the wooden shed where travellers, strangers, huddle together in their shared fate. Pavel Kostomarov's cinematography and Sergey Loznitsa's direction capture the silence.