Oz artist and Tiny Tim aficionado Martin Sharp explores Tiny's 1979 world record singing attempt at Sydney Luna Park and the devastating Ghost Train Fire a few months later on June 9. Sadly, Sharp never managed to complete his vision. The sole reason Street of Dreams is out there as a rough VHS bootleg is thanks to Tiny's custodian spirit. “I know Mr Sharp believes in me so much — and I praise the Lord for that — and maybe he's made a cult movie which at the very least will survive as a museum piece.”, he said, insisting that Sharp would release a rough cut for the Brighton Festival.

“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 (God Bless Tiny Tim, 1968)

Very much like Mr Tim and a carnival ride ablaze, Street of Dreams is its own beast. Growling, off, unpolished, a blaze – ablaze – out of control. Satanic panic that for once feels truthful, cheery almost. Hallelujah, and God bless Tiny Tim!

A Nikolas or Nicholas for Christmas Eve.

 

The tale of legendary highwayman Nikola Šuhaj from Koločava.

A [favourite] Frankenstein film.

 

One wet, ungenial summer in 1816, lovers Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley, and Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont, visited a dear friend at Villa Diodati. That friend was Lord Byron, exiled and residing in the Swiss villa with his physician Dr John Polidori

“There are no ghosts in daylight. You'll get used to our nights at Diodati. A little indulgence to heighten our existence on this miserable Earth. Nights of the mind, the imagination. Nothing more.”

– Lord Byron

Forced indoors, over the cause of three days they turned to the occult, to laudanum, to stories from the Fantasmagoriana, and the horrors of their own. That summer, Frankenstein saw the light of day.

Mother Teresa's death day: someone assists the poor. A Heimatfilm in reverse and Italowestern in disguise.

“Denn auf den Bergen, ja da ist die Freiheit, denn auf den Bergen ist es doch so schön, dort wo auf grauenhafte Weise der Jennerwein zugrund mußt gehn.”

Jennerwein-Lied, 19^th c.

Jaider, just returned home from the Franco-Prussian War and incapable to find work, turns to poaching to feed himself and his impoverished town. Soon he leads a gang of poachers, who in their turn are hunted by Bavarian soldiers and state-sanctioned hunters. Loosely based on legendary “Jaider” (“hunter”) and poacher Georg Jennerwein.

A teacher for what would have been Christa McAuliffe's birthday.

“Ich mag Männer, bin 30 Jahre alt, von Beruf Lehrer.”

– Frank Ripploh

Frank Ripploh is a sexual ethics and biology teacher by day, and hedonistic gay man and aspiring pornographer by night. When Frank Ripploh, the man, publicly came out in 1978 in the tabloid Stern, he lost his teaching job and did become that filmmaker. Taxi zum Klo – litt. taxi to the john/loo – is his story. A frank pre-AIDS pre-Internet pre-victimhood depiction of male gay culture in West Germany. Maybe raw, possibly misogynist, definitely true to life.