“Thank you for your card and your ice-cream, I love you very much!”

– Edith 'Big Edie' Bouvier Beale, saying goodbye to her birthday party guests

Soul or rhythm and blues for Ben E. King's birthday.

“Let's face it; the future as a Rolling Stone is very uncertain.”

– Brian Jones

While then-manager Oldham's dream of an all-Stones A Clockwork Orange never manifested, there was an attempt to counter The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night (1964). That too, failed. Instead, Charlie became a cinéma vérité roadmovie of the Stones' touring Ireland in 1965. Whitehead's camera is there for Charlie.

A steam locomotive to celebrate the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825, the world's first public railway to use steam locomotives.

 

The Big Freeze of 1963 was one of the coldest winters recorded in British history. It was during this winter that filmmaker Geoffrey Jones was commissioned by British Transport Films to make a documentary about the British Railways Board. With the freeze setting in, Jones ran the footage in preparation of post-production, and was struck by the blackness of the locomotives against the white of the many feet of snow. This smaller experimental project became Snow. Accompanied by a stretched out version of the jazz tune Teen Beat, and BBC Radiophonic Workshop's own Daphne Oram, Snow is an improbable hypnotic trip in an impossible landscape.

The Northern Hemisphere welcomes the autumn equinox

“Those flowers, take them away; they’re only funeral decorations. This is The Fall and this is a drudge nation. Your decadent sins will wreak discipline. You puritan, you shook me. I wash every day.”

– The Fall, New Puritan (1979), via

A fictional day in the life of choreographer Michael Clark, company, and friends in preparation of the dance piece New Puritans.

Television documentary about the nuclear disarmament demonstration at Trafalgar Square on September 17, 1961 (description via aforementioned link in the caption).

 

We watch the final report by Will Roczinski, who sadly died in a car crash while working on a TV documentary about UFOs and the like. A fascinating early “faux footage” film from the BRD. One can only wonder how the average West German processed the fantastic premise.

White, in food or fashion*

“Remember love, remember love Love is what it takes to dream”

– Yoko Ono, Remember Love (1969)

While the press expected the newlyweds' “bed-in” to be a scandalous nude affair, the two lovers showed up all in white – like angels, as John put it. Surrounded by journalists and friends, John and Yoko imaged peace.

 

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

Dita e Verës, a pagan spring celebration from Albania, celebrated in March: a spring scene*

 

The restless anticipation of spring. Iran as it was before and after the 1979 toppling of the Shah. While the snow melts away, the Revolution takes place, and fresh buds appear on the rose bushes. A poem.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related.