A theme park*, or in this case, amusement park.

“Just take it from me I'm just as free as any daughter I do what I like Just what I like and how I love it

I'm right here to stay when I'm old and gray I'll be right in my prime Living in the sunlight, loving in the moonlight Having a wonderful time”

– Tiny Tim, Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin' in the Moonlight (Al Sherman & Al Lewis, 1930), from God Bless Tiny Tim (1968)

Tiny Tim is a personal hero of mine. A decade after his mainstream TV debut, Tiny's career had taken a tumble but he still was – God bless him – Tiny Tim, and he performed a two-hour-and-seventeen-minute singing marathon at Luna Park Sydney. Just months after that, tragedy hit the park's Ghost Train ride. A fire, arson as it was determined decades later, killed seven. Fellow Tiny-aficionado and OZ artist Don Lane saw a connection between these two events and spend years cutting and editing the musical marathon, nude drunken interview and disaster footage, and Tiny wandering around a mirror maze into a narrative.

 

Lane passed in 2013 and, in respect of his family's wishes, Street of Dreams remains unfinished.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for December has a few dateless themes. This is one of them.

“It's sort of like a mockery, in a way, of reality, because they think everything is smiles and sweetness and flowers, when there is something bitter to taste. And to pretend there isn't is foolish.”

– Susan

A documentary made by the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo in honour of anarchist Buenaventura Durruti, who was murdered on November 20, 1936.

“Fascism is not to be debated, it is to be destroyed.”

– Buenaventura Durruti

Celebrating Oktoberfest [in September/October] and the Bavarian royals [rip]: a royal character or family*

“The painter takes his time. He doesn't like her dress. He doesn't like her gloves. One day he asks her if she dares pose for him – all in pink. She dares! And the king, enraptured by her pose, offers her a palace!”

– circus master

Maria Dolores Porriz y Montez, Countess von Landsfeld, Lola Montès for short, now a circus attraction, once the mistress to Ludwig I, King of Bavaria. While her fellow circus performers play Lola's former lovers, the ringmaster tells her story.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.

A character who is always on the GO [sic] for World Productivity Day

“I am the great traitor. There must be no other. Anyone who even thinks about deserting this mission will be cut up into 198 pieces. Those pieces will be stamped on until what is left can be used only to paint walls. Whoever takes one grain of corn or one drop of water… more than his ration, will be locked up for 155 years. If I, Aguirre, want the birds to drop dead from the trees… then the birds will drop dead from the trees. I am the wrath of God. The earth I pass will see me and tremble. But whoever follows me and the river, will win untold riches. But whoever deserts…””

– Don Lope de Aguirre

Conquistador Don Lope de Aguirre drives his men deep into the Peruvian jungle, to El Dorado

A killer title track for National Title Track Day (USA)

“The fear in her eyes and the knife in the chest. That's my last memory of my mother. That's why I had to go to prison for four years, even though she survived.”

– opening lines

What stabs you harder in the chest than Klaus Schulze's synth-driven killing spree?

An LGBTQ actor, director, or character over 55 for Honor Our LGBT Elders Day (USA)

“Ich bin meine eigene Frau” (“I am my own woman/wife”)

– Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, in response to her mother's request to settle and get married

The extraordinary life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, Berliner, gender bender, Nazi killer (her own father, with a wooden rolling pin, mind you), prisoner, custodian, museum founder, barmaid, Stasi informer (arguably), den mother to the GDR's LGBT+ youngsters, but most of all, her own woman.

Testosterone! for Top Gun Day (USA)

 

The Ζεϊμπέκικο (Zeibekiko) is a Greek dance, improvised by one man, alone. It's a dance that shows the performer's manliness, both his pride and his sorrows. Out of respect for the dancer, the others sit down, watch, and relate to him.

 

When the police enters the establishment – and this is 1973, the colonels ruled the naton – and interrupt the dancer, his older brother steps in.