“That’s how I will probably die, left like a poor old rag on the battlefield. When you know this is going to happen to you, your body suddenly becomes something terribly precious to you. This flesh, soft and warm is yours; a personal belonging not to be discarded like an awful piece of meat. You find yourself thinking about this, realizing what a wonderful thing your body is, and what an awful and wrong thing it is to maltreat it.”The Diary of an Unknown Soldier (Peter Watkins, 1959)
Jun
14
Army Day
That glance. Any soldier at any time. DP: Peter Watkins.
A [favourite] soldier in film for Army Day (USA). I can not in all seriousness link to any official website in fear of throwing up, so please follow along here
Watkins takes the anonymous slaughter of the masses on the battlefield inside, into the body and mind of a young soldier.
Bolex
“There is no why for my making films. I just liked the twitters of the machine, and since it was an extension of painting for me, I tried it and loved it. In painting I never liked the staid and static, always looked for what would change the source of light and stance, using glitters, glass beads, luminous paint, so the camera was a natural for me to try—but how expensive!”Lights (Marie Menken, 1966)
Dec
1
National Christmas Lights Day
A display of what appear to be red, yellow, green and blue bell-shaped Christmas lights among silhouetted tree branches. DP: Marie Menken.
Christmas lights for National Christmas Lights Day (USA)
It took experimental filmmaker Marie Menken three years to shoot Lights. From midnight until 1 AM, she filmed New York's window displays during the holiday season, using her camera, motion, colour, and available light sources as her paintbrush.
– Marie Menken, c. 1966
Filming at night helped to avoid unwanted interruptions of people and cars, but turned out to be problematic for her hand-cranked #Bolex, which kept stalling in NYC's icy winter nights.
“In terms of sheer entertainment value, I think that it demonstrated that one eccentric genius alone in his garage can rival the best of the Hollywood studios”” Multiple SIDosis (Sid Laverents, 1970)
Mar
27
National Acoustic Soul Day
Clockwise: Sid playing a ukulele, Sid whistling, Sid playing improvised chimes (metal pipes and one cymbal hanging from an overhead microphone stand), Sid blowing a tune on champagne bottles, one metronome. DP: Sid Laverents.
There's a handful of notable amateur films in the National Film Registry. One of them is the Zapruder film, another Sid Laverents' Multiple SIDosis.
– Ross Lipman, UCLA Film & Television Archive restorationist
Sid Laverents was an airplane engineer and former one-man band vaudevillian who in his fifties joined the #SanDiego Amateur Moviemakers Club. One of his best-known outputs, Multiple SIDosis, took him and his 16 mm #Bolex four years and 1,900 feet of celluloid to make. In it, Sid – and a musical troupe made up of many overdubbed versions of himself – performs the popular and insanely catchy tune Nola.
Catch it here.