“Mr. Everyman explains how to look like a Japanese and thus impress those wild and not very civilized people. Mrs. Everyman replies that for savages, they look remarkably civilized. Meanwhile, Mr. Everyman, seeing more people looking even more Japanese, is reassured. Mrs. Everyman sees soldiers parading in European uniform. She smiles ironically. But now a number of typical Japanese walk into the house. Her irony disappears. And Mr. Everyman is not ashamed to admit… he is mystified.”

– narrator

On October 9th, 1972 an exhibition of John and Yoko's art – designed by the Master of the Fluxus movement, George Maciunas and curated by David Ross – opened at the Syracuse Museum of Art in New York. On the same day, an unusual group of John and Yoko's friends, including Ringo Starr, Allen Ginsberg, and Paul Krasner, gathered to celebrate John's birthday.

 

“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).