Eating hard candy on National Hard Candy Day.

 

Lucio is the class clown, a ne'er-do-well relying on his police-dad's rank and classmates' homework. One of these classmates, a smart little girl, promises him fancy lollipops in exchange for protection. And she has a secret for him too, about the origin of the candy, and the nice man giving her those and other nice things. Under oath, she tells Lucio everything and then promptly disappears. With his friend gone, killed as he later finds out, and an oath weighing on his heart, what can Lucio do when another girl goes missing?

“Only a child can kill the monster.”

– narrator

Cornell Woolrich's haunting tales of childhood lost leaped from Ireland to Argentina. With some similarities with Fritz Lang's M (1931), this fairy-tale feels more oppressive; due to the helplessness of a boy's power in an adult world and his understanding of grown-up responsibilities. A restored version in wider circulation is long overdue.

Speak an Arabic language on UN Arabic Language Day.

“The first section's dead. There's no one left. We lost contact with the second. The third is reorganizing. All that's left is the fourth. It's enough to start over with.”

A boy (Bin Amatsu), helps out his father and stepmother's insurance money scam by pretending to be injured in traffic.

An underdog for National Underdog Day. Underdog Ánimas Trujano is dead set on becoming his town's next mayordomio, the wealthy, respected man in charge of funding one of Oaxaca's major religious festivals. He does find a way, a terrible one, and does get the respect and riches he wishes for. But even with all the money and praise in the world, Ánimas' continuous down his well-trodden path of gambling away the riches bestowed, and cheating on his long-suffering wife.

 

It took me a moment to get comfortable with the casting of Japanese movie legend Toshirō Mifune as the titular important man (also see Noé Murayama in Rodríguez's Los hermanos Del Hierro from 1961, but from that moment on, Ánimas Trujano feels as universal as any great cinematic experience should be.

Pearls worn for National Wear Your Pearls Day. No one said those pearls were to be worn in the obvious place.

Filmed in Alabama: Alabama Day. In what he dubbed “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door”, George Wallace, Alabama governor, blocked Black students from walking into the University so he could uphold his inaugural promise of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”. This prompted a national crisis, resulting in the President issuing Executive Order 11111, making the #NationalGuard step in.

“Come Senators, Congressmen, Please heed the call, Don't stand in the doorway, Don't block up the hall”

– Bob Dylan, The Times They Are a-Changin (1964)

In a then-groundbreaking new documentary format, Robert Drew and associates followed President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy during the crisis. And they filmed everything; from tense phone calls, private discussions, private moments (one of RFK's daughters on the phone with a bemused “Kerry”, Dept. Nicholas Katzenbach), and many, many shots in which nothing – which is everything – is said.

The National Guard shows up: U.S. National Guard Birthday, USA.

A European camera crew follows a diverse group of American minor dissidents – pacifists, feminists, communists – who are given the choice to spend decades in federal prison, or three days in Bear Mountain Punishment Park, chased by National Guardsmen and law enforcement officers. If they manage to capture the American flag, they're free to go.

“America is as psychotic as it is powerful and violence is the only goddamn thing that will command your attention.”

– Defendant Lee Robert Brown

While the washed-out 16mm footage and references to #Nixon may tell you otherwise, Punishment Park remains a gut-punching portrait of a timeless America.

… for keeping the girls away.

 

Someone has bad breath on National 12-hour Fresh Breath Day, USA. “When he shows the 1978 film Always for Pleasure, about the food, music and indigenous culture of New Orleans, [Les Blank] has been known to whip up a pot of red beans and rice in the back of the theatre. [cont. below]

“Can you smell the garlic?”

– Alice Waters. During screenings, the audience would reply with “YES!”

“At presentations […] Blank can occasionally be spied tossing several heads of garlic into a toaster oven so that the aroma wafts over the audience at just the right mouth-watering moment.” (via)

Travel mountains on International Mountain Day. A starving community has come to the agreement that the elders approaching the age of seventy are to be carried up Narayama mountain to die. The day prior to the mountain's festival, sixty-nine year old Orin prepares to leave, carried by her son Tatsuhei.

“This winter… I'm going to the mountain. My mother went to the mountain, as did the mother-in-law of our home. So I have to go too.”

– Orin

In Keisuke Kinoshita's highly stylised 楢山節考, the arguably cruel (and most likely fictional) practice – of 姥捨て [ubasute, abandoning an old woman] – is superbly abstracted. Narration, dramatic lighting, colour filters and very obviously a soundstage underline that what we're watching is not a film, but a kabuki play.

Lit a candle on Worldwide Candle Lighting Day (note: the link contains references of child death).

“Feelings unspoken are unforgettable.”

– Andrei Gorchakov