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

“I have been insatiably drawn to termite and white-elephant art my entire movie-going life. ...white-elephant movies exist outside the bounds of rational criticism as immense and spectacular monuments to their director’s monstrous genius, ego and hubris. Peter Greenaway’s The Baby of Mâcon is such an animal, a multi-level Rocky Horror Picture Show set during a 1659 performance of a fifteenth century morality play, in which our perceptions of spectatorship, identity and construction are unsympathetically challenged and the fourth wall between “real” and “make-believe” continually assaulted. The beauty of the ravishing cinematography, deluxe production design, and a script that suggests the movie is merely “a play with music,” are abrasively juxtaposed with graphic depictions of unspeakably cruel atrocities. Everything and everyone is incriminated in this challenging, ritualistic, and agnostic essay on the Nativity”

– filmmaker Andrew Repasky McElhinney, 2002 (via)

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).

An important list in remembrance of the ratification of the Constitution of the United States on March 1, 1781.

“I have often thought it was very arrogant to suppose you could make a film for anybody but yourself… I like to think of The Falls as my own personal encyclopaedia Greenaway-ensis.”

– Peter Greenaway, via

Ninety-two people, all with a surname starting with f-a-l-l, survive unexpected catastrophes known as VUEs (Violent Unknown Events). These individuals experienced curious ailments, such as mutations of evolving into a bird-like form, speaking new languages, and becoming immortal.

 

This film, a list, describes them all.

A zoo for National Visit The Zoo Day (USA)

“In the land of the legless, the one-legged woman is queen.”