“No, Wagner! Stay in Hell where you belong!”

– Franz Liszt

“I want to be good, but no one believes me. Is it any wonder I cry?”

– David Holm

Despite Shirley Temple's clear statements of what was going on on set during her child actress days, her output remains wildly popular. Who cannot resist her precocious lines, her cute dimples and baby doll innocence? And tapdancing with ánd befriending a Negro, during the segregation years? Miss Shirley truly was wise beyond her tender age.

 

Shirley Temple was “discovered” at the age of three by then-casting director Charles Lamont and promptly shot to stardom is his satirical Baby Burlesks: short talkies starring toddlers in diapers (a burlesque being a short, humorous skit). The gag was that the kids behaved and spoke like adults, seemingly unaware of being #children.

“This isn’t playtime, kids, it’s work.”

– Charles Lamont, Baby Burlesk director

In the Baby Burlesk Kid 'N' Hollywood, Temple plays a Hollywood hopeful called Morelegs Sweettrick, who gets her break when the star doesn't feel like showing up (kids, right? no discipline).

 

While Kid 'N' Hollywood is relatively innocent, others in the series are much more sexualised (War Babies (1932) stars Temple as prostitute Charmaine) or plain racist (Kid 'in' Africa (1933) with Temple as Madame Cradlebait, bringing civilisation to Black kids portraying fearsome cannibals).

 

I'm not the one to take events from the past out of context and apply modern-day sensibilities to them, and with the advent of #ChildLabor laws for #Hollywood child actors, many of the horrors recalled by Temple and her peers are history. School is mandatory, long hours restricted, and using twins to split the workload is definitely not unheard of.

 

And then I watched teevee, and saw chubby, precocious blondes with dental plates to hide their missing baby teeth, wearing lipstick and baby-dolls, grinding and crooning with no backup in sight. And I remember Miss Temple say:

“Any star can be devoured by human adoration, sparkle by sparkle.”

– Shirley Temple

Capes, cloaks, and mantles are everywhere in Dieterle and Reinhardt's lavishly outfitted A Midsummer Night's Dream. The dreamlike #CostumeDesign by Max Rée and the uncredited Milo Anderson is as much as a personality as #Shakespeare's characters are.

“Now, until the break of day, Through this house each fairy stray…”

– Oberon, Act 5, Scene 1

Any reports of Kenneth Anger's presence as the Changeling Prince are greatly exaggerated.

It's easy… no lazy to put this documentary away as a failed Idi Amin propaganda project. In 1974, German-Swiss Barbet Schroeder, privileged son of a diplomat, already knew more than enough about how to select framing and manipulate timing. The result, Général Idi Amin Dada: Autoportrait, is a prime example of the neo-colonialist gaze.

“You film. Film helicopter.”

– The General explaining a director's one and only task

Amin, clearly not speaking his native language, tries to explain his plans for #Uganda. The camera (Spanish cinematographer) moves in on his gesturing hands, then a jump cut (French editor) to soldiers who – instructed in English – seem unsure of what is asked of them. When (in the copy I watched) people speak in Swahili, no translation is provided and the portrayed are little more than undeveloped, exotic backdrop. Everything seems to be a joke to Schroeder: the air force's MiGs, Amin and his higher-ups joining tribesmen in dance, even the President's children are used to exemplify the stereotype of the overly virile, primitive African male.

 

Amin was, as Schroeder is, a product of Europe's Scramble. With the difference that, although bloody and despicable, Amin's strategy was not to embolden the West's moribund empire.

“Shoulder to shoulder. The land is ours. Tomorrow is ours.”

– sailor

During the tense hours of a solar #eclipse, the locals spend their time in a bar. One litre of vodka is the wager for he who can correctly guess a woman's dress size. Of course, tailor Józef Romanek (Kazimierz Kaczor) doesn't need to guess and that one litre later, finds himself walking through space. When he comes round from his coma, Józef builds an observatory in his house, where the tailor with his home-made telescope dreams of finding an unknown planet, and discovers the world around him.

 

Polish tailor Adam Giedrys is not only the subject of Planeta krawiec, but also served as the film's consultant. For his passion for and devotion to astronomy, Giedrys was the first Pole to receive Lunar soil from #NASA's 1969 Apollo 11 Moon mission.

A ripple went through France in the early months of 1968. It started when the Communist and socialist party joined forces in an attempt to remove President De Gaulle from office. A month later, students at Nanterre (a Parisian university) teamed up with poets, musicians and small leftist groups to discuss class discrimination and political bureaucracy on campus. The meeting was peacefully disassembled but tensions remained. In May, Sorbonne students stood up for Nanterre, by then shut down. Then, police invaded the university and 20 000 stood up against the police.

“Convert all Parisian universities into reception centres for the revolutionary youth of the whole world.”

– student proposal

Somewhere in that crowd were those whose interest went beyond the main spectacle: the toppling of the new ancien regime. A #JeanRouch​ian anthropologist of sorts, artist, photographer and filmmaker William Klein pushes the eye through the masses. But it's also his eye; each frame is a Klein. However, we see not a documentary. Sound is asynchronous. Suddenly, it's night and flames lick the black sky. When bricks fly, frames follow. And then… the end.