Medium (Jacek Koprowicz, 1985)
Oct
2
A man in an impeccable, light-colored suit. His nose is bleeding. DPs: Jerzy Zieliński & Wit Dąbal.
“Those flowers, take them away;
they’re only funeral decorations.
This is The Fall and this is a drudge nation.
Your decadent sins will wreak discipline.
You puritan, you shook me.
I wash every day.”
Hail the New Puritan (Charles Atlas, 1987)
Sep
22
Fall
As it says on the tin, it's Mark E. Smith of The Fall (via). DP: John Simmons.
The Northern Hemisphere welcomes the autumn equinox
– The Fall, New Puritan (1979), via
A fictional day in the life of choreographer Michael Clark, company, and friends in preparation of the dance piece New Puritans.
“I caused dreams which caused death … this is my crime.”
Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men (David Hinton, 1989)
Sep
14
Patrick Swayze – 2009
Two of the male dancers performing. They're lying on a black-and-white tiled floor. There's a heaviness to their bodies. DP: Nicholas D. Knowland.
Dancing, or Patrick Swayze who passed away on this date in 2009.
– Dennis Nilsen
Dennis Nilsen was a lonesome, closeted gay man in Thatcher's London, whose desperation lead to multiple horrific killings. He'd ritually bathe and dress the bodies, and held on to them for company. Radical dance troupe DV8's interpretation of Nilsen's transgressions explores the horror of the act in suffocating beauty.
“Sex is not to do. Sex is to watch.”
The Year of the Sex Olympics (Michael Elliott, 1968)
Sep
7
ESPN – 1979
The people of a suspiciously 60s looking future critically watch the audience of a reality TV show called The Hungry Angry Show.
Sports watching on TV for ESPN's debut.
– Nat Mender
All that's on TV is pornography and violence. Welcome to the Year of the Sex Olympics.
“He moved over to the window: a smallish, frail figure, the meagreness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the party. His hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended. “
Nineteen Eighty-Four (Rudolph Cartier, 1954)
Aug
18
indigo
Winston Smith (Peter Cushing). We only see his frail looking back with the identifier KZ-6090, and his name SMITH W.
Indigo, in food or fashion*
– George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) (via)
* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.
“Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.”
Blue Remembered Hills (Brian Gibson, 1979)
Jun
16
Youth Day
The children playing in the Forest of Dean. From left to right: Raymond (John Bird), Angela (Helen Mirren), Willie (Colin Welland), and Audrey (Janine Duvitski). DP: Nat Crosby.
A [favourite] child character for Youth Day (ZA)
– narrator, after A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad
A group of children plays. It's sunny and lovely in the Forest of Dean, a day to remember for as long as one lives. The war, the second one, is one of the adults' plays and far away from the children's much simpler life. It seeps through, though. You may run around, imagining being a fighter bomber, putt-putt-putting while you do so. And your uncle, your uncle!, is a parachutist! And maybe your dad is missing and your mum is doing something that involves bed sheets, and the other kids are mean about that. That too. That too is the cruelty of blue remembered hills.
“Our grandfathers always lived on Earth, and we are the first people ever to undertake such a journey. You can be proud that you’re here. Your grandfather, who volunteered to come, was a great man, and we’ve got to do everything to make sure that the Station keeps running.”
Thirteen to Centaurus (Peter Potter, 1965)
May
4
Star Wars Day
Dr Francis (Donald Houston) and Abel (James Hunter). DP: tbd.
Intergalactic travel on Star Wars Day
– Dr Francis (from Thirteen to Centaurus, J.G. Ballard, 1962)
A ship travels the universe, on its way to Centaurus. On board is a group of people, fourteen in total, one of them a teenager named Abel. His recurring nightmare about a glowing disc prompts to sessions with the on-board psychologist, and the only one with knowledge of Earth, Dr Francis.
L'homme à la valise [The Man with the Suitcase] (Chantal Akerman, 1983)
Mar
11
close quarters
Henri (Jeffrey Kime) and the woman (Chantal Akerman) at a claustrophobically small table, each eating their breakfast. The woman has a baguette, a bowl of coffee, and a cigarette. Henri takes up most of the table with a serving tray holding a whole box of Pelletier toast, a plastic milk bottle, and a coffee pot. He's also manspreading. DP: Maurice Perrimond.
Close quarters: US premiere of 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016).
A filmmaker (Akerman) reluctantly hosts a guest (the always imposing Jeffrey Kime) in her already cramped quarters. His increasingly expanding presence in volume, sight and sound are insufferable for the quiet cineast.
“I therefore concluded and decided unhesitatingly, that there are three stars in the heavens moving about Jupiter, as Venus and Mercury round the Sun; which at length was established as clear as daylight by numerous subsequent observations. These observations also established that there are not only three, but four, erratic sidereal bodies performing their revolutions round Jupiter… the revolutions are so swift that an observer may generally get differences of position every hour.”
Operation Ganymed [Helden, verloren im Staub der Sterne] (Rainer Erler, 1977)
Jan
7
moons
Jupiter rising. DP: Wolfgang Grasshoff.
Moons for Galileo Galilei's observation of Jupiter's four largest moons in 1610: Ganymede and Callisto on January 7, and Europa and Io on January 8.
– Galileo Galilei, Sidereus Nuncius (”Starry Messenger”), 1610
A spacecraft named Ganymede II returns back to Earth after its expedition to Jupiter's moons followed by 1500 days stuck in space. The Earth they find, is deserted.
“I think it's really rotten of them to lock you up like this for making love to a boy.”
Die Konsequenz [The Consequence] (Wolfgang Petersen, 1977)
Jun
17
prison grub
Thomas (Ernst Hannawald), the warden's son, and convicted homosexual Martin (Jürgen Prochnow) sharing a mug, a meal, a cell. DP: Jörg-Michael Baldenius.
– Thomas Manzoni