Apples, or dumplings, for National Apple Dumpling Day (USA)

– What are you gonna do with tons of apples? They can't be sold! Ask any apple farmer! They just pile up and rot! – The apple farmers? – No. The apples!

A beautiful, picturesque part of Sweden will become… Deutschneyland! At least, that's the brilliant business plan Herr Volkswagner has. But the local apple farmers – a large family that's half human, half mythological creatures – have no need for an amusement park on their grounds.

On the International Day of Democracy, the word “democracy” is spoken.

“Stop shooting! Stop democracy!”

– Person Nr. 1

The Gestapo arrives to liquidate the inmates of a mental hospital. Then Windisch, plainclothes Nazi, brings them a letter: there's a special commando hiding amidst the 583 patients. Interrogating them slowly pushes Windisch among them.

Chocolate for International Chocolate Day (Milton S. Hershey's birthday)

“In all my years of practice, I've never seen anything so sweet. A rosebud.”

– Dr. Mittelfinger

Miss Canada, winner of the “most virgin” contest, escapes her rich, milk tycoon husband into a world of anarchy, lust, and sugar.

A skyscraper for Skyscraper Day (USA)

 

In the sequel to Rouch's Jaguar (1967), Damouré wants a high rise for his Niger business with “as many floors as he has wives”. He decides to travel to Paris to learn about the construction of such building, and what made Paris to the Paris of today. While there, he gets distracted by the peculiarities of the French natives. Worried about Damouré's increasingly puzzling postcards, his company sends out Lam (Lam Ibrahim Dia) to bring him home.

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.

[A favourite] colour: grey*

 

Approaching the 60s, Mr Hulot finally switches from black-and-white to colour. Suddenly, we see that his suit is a beigeish grey and so is the Arpels' house, that modernist masterpiece designed by Tati. The beloved luddite struggles with hypermodern people and their hypermodern constructs, much alike the future Hulot from Playtime (1967).

– A house like yours must be such a job! – Oh, a leaf! Ah, yes it's a chore. – Admit it, you love it.

In similar absurd fashion, Guadalupe Acedo, cleaning lady, works her way through Rem Koolhaas' Maison à Bordeaux (1998) in Bêka and Lemoine's Koolhaas Houselife (2008). Too steep are the stairs, too leaky everything else. Levelheaded, she does her thing; a small beacon of romantic practicality in a world of absurd efficiency.

 

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

A boys' night out: men having fun on their own*

“Bruno, I've spent the best two days of my life with you… I mean it!”

– Roberto Mariani

Serious law student Roberto (Jean-Louis Trintignant) goes on an accidental road trip with bon vivant Bruno (Vittorio Gassman).

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.