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花樣年華 [Fa yeung nin wah / In the Mood for Love] (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000)
Mar
17
Irish-American Heritage Month
A close-up of a pea-green phone with Mrs. Chan's (Maggie Cheung) hands resting on the receiver. Her dress is a bright green, with an abstract graphic in white. DPs: Christopher Doyle, Pun Leung Kwan & Ping Bin Lee.
“He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.”
– caption
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Blue (Derek Jarman, 1993)
Jul
13
Oxymoron Day
Not a screenshot from the film, but a pure representation of International Klein Blue.
Synchronous to the screening of a film that wasn't, Derek Jarman's Blue was broadcast on radio and television. Those who tuned into the radio could request a special card printed in that most spectral of colours, International Klein Blue, a blue that according to its creator Yves Klein, has “a quality close to pure space” and “immaterial values beyond what can be seen or touched”.
“You say to the boy 'Open your eyes'. When he opens his eyes and sees the light, you make him cry out, saying 'Oh, Blue, come forth! Oh, Blue, arise! Oh, Blue, ascend! Oh, Blue, come in!'.”
– Nigel Terry
Submerged in #blue, seeing through what was left of Jarman's eyes, we live through the artist's life, and love, and loss. When you leave the theatre, put down that card, you're temporarily blinded by the physiological afterimage of a devastating disease. What remains is the voice of a filmmaker who lost his sight.
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Malá morská víla [The Little Mermaid] (Karel Kachyňa, 1976)
Mar
3
National Dress In Blue Day
The little mermaid (Miroslava Safránková) in her wonderful sea-blue dress, puts a coral-red rose in her blue hair. DP: Jaroslav Kučera.
Miroslava Safránková plays Hans Christian Andersen's doomed little mermaid – Malá morská víla in Czech – who falls in love with a mortal and gives up her beautiful voice to be with him. Sadly, the mortal, a prince, doesn't recognize his mute saviour and doesn't return his love.
“The other day I got caught in some fishermen's net. Of course, I had to drown them. I couldn't allow them to touch me, could I?”
– the little mermaid
The wonderful soundtrack is by Zdeněk Liška who also composed music for Ikarie XB 1 (Jindřich Polák, 1963) and Spalovač mrtvol (Juraj Herz, 1969).
