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Yanco (Servando González + Mohy Quandour, 1961)
Apr
21
Fiddlers Frolic
Juanito (Ricardo Ancona), seen in silhouette, playing his violin in the chinampas. DP: Álex Phillips Jr..
In Mayan worldview, mortals move along the horizontal, gods along the vertical plane. A boy travels both worlds, united by music and wonder.
Juanito, a #Mixquic boy with hypersensitive hearing, finds solace from the hustle of #MexicoCity in the silence of the chinampas – the pre-Hispanic man-made agricultural plots in lake #Xochimilco. There he plays his cardboard fiddle for the nature around him, until the sound from a real violin reaches him. The violinist, an old hermit who lives on one of the chinampas, takes the boy in and teaches him how to master Yanco, his hand-built instrument. When the man dies, the boy goes out at night to be able to play Yanco. In a changing world where the living and the dead used to naturally cross paths, the strings stir different to some.
The #Nahuatl film Yanco is a small cinematic miracle that begs for a beautiful restoration akin to how Govindan Aravindan's കുമ്മാട്ടി [Kummatty] (1979) opened up the world to indigenous filmmaking.
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Il posto [The Job] (Ermanno Olmi, 1961)
Apr
3
World Party Day
Two office workers awkwardly dancing cheek to cheek at the company Christmas party. She's in her finest cocktail dress and pearls, he listlessly wears a mock sheriff's hat. DP: Lamberto Caimi.
To support his family, small-town boy Domenico moves to Milan in the hope to find a job. Eventually he's employed, as a clerk in a drab office replacing a senior worker who died. While the days drag on, only interrupted by coffee shop small talk with fellow teenager Antonietta, the Christmas office #party draws nearer.
“My wife gave me a big kiss this morning. I only get kisses once a month, on payday.”
– Sartori
With the dark absurdity of coming out of fascism and having to run a real-world country with a naive ineptitude – represented by the too-large-borrowed-from-father-suits – and pretence childlike bureaucratic procedures, Olmi's Il posto is a wonderfully sharp observation of postwar Italy.
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Last Summer (Frank Perry, 1969)
Mar
25
Walk In The Sand Day
One of the boys striking a threatening pose with a stick aimed at Sandy (Barbara Hershey aka Barbara Seagull). In the foreground a brooding Rhoda (the fantastic Catherine Burns). DPs: Enrique Bravo & Gerald Hirschfeld.
During a #summer #vacation on #FireIsland, two young men come across Sandy, an attractive young woman with an injured #seagull. While nursing the bird back to life, the relationship between the three deepens. A second girl, the much younger Rhoda (the breathtaking Catherine Burns) is taken in by the trio.
“What are you going to do with the rest of your life? Sit on the shore and watch?”
– Sandy
Set almost entirely on a sunny #beach, Frank Perry's Last Summer may be one of the most claustrophobic films you'll ever watch.
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High School (Frederick Wiseman, 1968)
Mar
11
National Promposal Day
Girls PE class accompanied by last year's hit single, 1910 Fruitgum Company's “Simon Says”. DP: Richard Leiterman.
“I didn't mean to be individualistic.”
– student
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書を捨てよ町へ出よう [Sho o suteyo machi e deyō / Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets] (Shūji Terayama, 1971)
Jan
9
成人の日
Young adults rally in the streets. DP: Masayoshi Sukita.
“What the hell are you doing?”