view
Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948)
Jun
9
A man in a dark suit has his clenched hand on top of a stack of fancy gilded dinner plates. He's holding a piece of rope, just an ordinary household article. DPs: William V. Skall & Joseph A. Valentine.
“Mr. Cadell got a bad leg in the war for his courage. And you've got your sleeve in the celery, Mr. Phillip.”
– Mrs. Wilson
view
少年 [Shōnen / Boy] (Nagisa Ōshima, 1969)
May
6
view
El chacal de Nahueltoro [Jackal of Nahueltoro] (Miguel Littin, 1969)
May
2
soup
The man (Nelson Villagra) just handed a tin plate to kind Rosa (Shenda Román) for a refill while they talk about his life. DP: Héctor Ríos.
Full title: En cuanto a la infancia, andar, regeneración y muerte de Jorge del Carmen Valenzuela Torres, quien se hace llamar también José del Carmen Valenzuela Torres, Jorge Sandoval Espinoza, José Jorge Castillo Torres, alias el Campano, el Trucha, el Canaca, el Chacal de Nahueltoro.
view
Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut [A Man Escaped] (Robert Bresson, 1956)
May
2
A hand with dirty nails writing on a scrap of paper with a pencil stump. It starts “Mai 2 Ma chère maman, Je suis à la pris[…]“. DP: Léonce-Henri Burel.
“With nothing to do, no news and in terrible solitude, we were 100 unfortunates awaiting our fate. I had no illusions about my own. If I could only escape, run away…”
– Fontaine
view
Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut [A Man Escaped] (Robert Bresson, 1956)
Dec
29
slop
A man's hand holding a spoon at a perpendicular angle. DP: Léonce-Henri Burel.
“Time to empty our slop pails and run a little water over our faces, then back to our cells for the entire day.”
– Fontaine
view
少年 [Shōnen / Boy] (Nagisa Ōshima, 1969)
Dec
17
Freebie: National Insurance Awareness Day
The boy waiting next to a buzy road. DPs: Seizō Sengen & Yasuhiro Yoshioka.
A boy (Bin Amatsu), helps out his father and stepmother's insurance money scam by pretending to be injured in traffic.
view
L'enfant sauvage [The Wild Child] (François Truffaut, 1970)
Nov
14
Young Readers Day
Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron (Jean-Pierre Cargol), reads letters from a board under supervision of Dr. Jean Itard (Truffaut). DP: Néstor Almendros.
One of the most elaborately recorded “feral child” cases is that of the Wild Boy of Aveyron. In the year 1800, after few fruitless attempts to bound him to civilisation, a young boy left the forests of Saint-Sernin-sur-Rance and settled in. The child's primal appearance and lack of speech labeled him an idiot. However, in the era of Enlightenment, the question of nurture versus nature was a pressing one. Studies on Victor began.
“I'm glad that you came home. Do you understand? This is your home. You're no longer a wild boy, even if you're not yet a man.”
– Dr. Itard
Truffaut explores L'enfant sauvage right when the idea of the noble savage seemed to lock on with counterculture. With #Truffaut as Victor's tutor Itard in front of the camera, directly guiding amateur child actor (and “gipsy”) Cargol, the film not only reimagines Victor's fate, but reenacts Western presumed enlightenment over The Other.
view
Mahler (Ken Russell, 1974)
Nov
12
World Pneumonia Day
Gustav (Robert Powell) and Alma (Georgina Hale), both in a three piece suit with top hats. She's in a shadows, wearing a tight, black veil that completely conceals her features. DP: Dick Bush.
A sickly #GustavMahler (Robert Powell) and his wife Alma (Georgina Hale) dwell on their shared lives while travelling to Vienna by train. Storylines – circular like a journey, rondo like #Mahler's compositions – drift from the ordinary to the grotesque.
“I don't want to imitate nature. I want to capture its very essence. As if all the birds and the beasts die tomorrow and the world became a desert, when people heard my music – they would still know, feel, what nature was.”
– Gustav Mahler
This would be the composer's final tour. A train took him to a Vienna sanatorium where not much later he'd succumb to #pneumonia.
view
کلوزآپ ، نمای نزدیک [Klūzāp, nemā-ye nazdīk / Close-Up] (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
Nov
8
Hossain Sabzian as himself. He sits behind a low table holding various refreshments, presented by his host. DP: Ali Reza Zarrindast.
view
U bent mijn moeder (Horst Königstein, 1984)
Sep
21
World Alzheimer's Day
Joop Admiraal in the role of his mother. During the monologue, the actor switches character and props.