The Black Cat (Harold Hoffman, 1966)
Sep
9
A sad blonde (Robyn Baker) with her perfectly coiffed head on her perfectly set table. DP: Walter Schenk.
Night of the Cobra Woman [Movini's Venom] (Andrew Meyer, 1972)
Sep
7
cereal
A blonde, mud-covered, boyish woman with shoulder-length dead hair (Joy Bang) in a grey kitchen eats Cheerios straight from the box. One of her shoes is on the kitchen counter. DP: Nonong Rasca.
“You know this city's full of hawks? That's a fact. They hang around on the top of the big hotels. And they spot a pigeon in the park. Right down on him.”
On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)
Jul
28
liquor
Edie Doyle (Eva Marie Saint) apprehensively sips liquor with Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) in attendance. DPs: Boris Kaufman & James Wong Howe.
– Terry Malloy
“I can handle big news and little news. And if there's no news, I'll go out and bite a dog.”
Ace in the Hole (Billy Wilder, 1951)
Jul
1
steak
A man dissects his steak with knife and fork at a round table with an oilcloth cover. Prominently in the centre of the table is an square cardboard box with air-holes punched in the lid. It's open and houses a small, live rattlesnake. DP: Charles Lang.
– Charles Tatum
Kontrakt [The Contract] (Krzysztof Zanussi, 1980)
Jun
4
Coca-Cola
Two middle-aged men in discussion with a woman, semi off-screen, holding a drink. There's food covered with a napkin and a wineglass in front of the men. Behind the men, the maid – a tense woman cradling many small Coca-Cola bottles – looks on. DP: Slawomir Idziak.
鴎よ、きらめく海を見たか めぐり逢い [Kamome-yo, kirameku umi o mitaka/meguri ai / Oh Seagull, Have You Seen the Sparkling Ocean? An Encounter] (Kenji Yoshida, 1975)
May
30
Pokkī
A young woman in a red-and-white striped sweater (Yōko Takahashi) leafs through fashion magazines strewn out before her on a grass-green carpeted floor while chewing a Pokkī. On a small stove close to her a fire truck red coffee pot. DP: Kōshirō Ōtsu.
Привързаният балон [Privarzaniyat balon / The Tied-Up Balloon] (Binka Zhelyazkova, 1967)
Mar
17
bread
A boy and young woman (Janet Miteva) riding a donkey. The boy eats a handful while the woman faces downwards. There are several donkeys with riders behind them. DP: Emil Vagenshtain.
“In the land of the legless, the one-legged woman is queen.”
A Zed & Two Noughts [Z+00 / ZOO] (Peter Greenaway, 1985)
Dec
27
Visit The Zoo Day
A zebra in a cage with the word ZOO in large blue lit capitals in the background. In the background a man. All but the lettering is black-and-white. DP: Sacha Vierny.
A zoo for National Visit The Zoo Day (USA)
Pождество обитателей леса [Rozhdestvo obitateley lesa / The Insects' Christmas] (Wladyslaw Starewicz, ca 1912)
Father Christmas makes a Christmas tree for the people of the forest.
Дед Мороз (Ded Moroz, or Old Man Frost) is the Slavic version of Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus. An ornament depicting the old grey climbs down a child's (or doll's) Christmas tree and sets off to the forest where he plants his magic staff to create a Christmas feast for the woodland animals.
The word “animation” means “a bestowing of life“. Like his ancestor in the arts Bernard Palissy and the ancient winter solstice celebration of the return of light that long ago spawned Christmas, Wladyslaw Starewicz's Insects' Christmas breathes life into real but inanimate beetles, dragonflies, and frogs. The illusion is complete as you effortlessly forget they are painstakingly animated.
From me to you, a little Christmas treat
#Bales2023FilmChallenge #WladyslawStarewicz #Russia #fantasy #animation #ShortFilm #Christmas #holidays #StopMotion #insects #animals #1910s ★★★★☆
Colloque de chiens (Raúl Ruiz, 1977)
“Nobody knows why Monique, the cold and dry voiced whore, bears in her eyes the sadness and tiredness of her past.”
Filmed during an actors' strike, Raúl Ruiz's Colloque de chiens consists for the most part of still photographs with mixed in stolen moving footage of unsuspecting bystanders and stray dogs. Told in fotonovela format, we follow the pitiful account of Monique, who as a young girl, learns that her mother is not who she thinks she is. Rejected, she throws herself into a life of vice until she meets Henri, a handsome young television repairman. Together they buy a small café, and are happy for once. But the cyclical nature of life determines her faith.
Raúl Ruiz's work is, like Henri's modus operandi, determined by maps and patterns. Even in the short comically melodramatic breathe of Colloque de chiens, the map has been laid out for Ruiz's later, much more complex narrative.
Colloque opens in a barren landscape. There are the skeletal towers of a nearby city, and the endless barks of abandoned dogs. Obscured by tall reeds, a blown-up photograph of a young man. The face, soft and familiar, a distant memory.
#Bales2023FilmChallenge #RaúlRuiz #SilkeHumel #EvaSimonet #RobertDarmel #JorgeArriagada #DenisLenoir #PatriceMorere #drama #crime #melodrama #ShortFilm #photography #animals #gender #prostitution #France #1970s ★★★★☆
