“Fantastic! You are a first class dilettante!”

– Kidlat's proud parents

And July 20

“On July 4, 1976 I and my camera toured the state of Colorado with governor Richard D. Lamm, as he traveled in parades with his children, appeared at dinners, lectured, etc. On July 20, I spent the morning in his office in the state capitol and the afternoon with himself and his wife in a television studio, then with Mrs. Lamm greeting guests to the governor’s mansion and finally with Governor Lamm in his office again. These two days of photography took me exactly one year to edit into a film which wove itself thru multiple superimpositions into a study of light and power.”

– Stan Brakhage

Production of the last hot type copy of The New York Times on the night of July 1, 1978. The ETAOIN SHRDLU in the title refers to the accidental string of letters that sometimes would pop up using hot metal typesetting.

 

That Linotype setting, and narration, was provided by Carl Schlesinger. That same old, but now digitally set New York Times, provided a lovely farewell when the man passed. Read it here

Filmmaker Jean Epstein and his cameraman Paul Guichard made their way to the Etna on June 22, 1923. This was merely five days after the eruption started.

“Sicily! The night had a thousand eyes. All sorts of smells shrieked at once. An unfurled coil of wire brought our car, swathed in moonlight as if surrounded by mosquito netting, to a halt. It was hot. Impatient, the drivers broke off singing the most beautiful love song, striking the car with a monkey wrench and insulting Christ and his mother with a blind faith in their efficacy. In front of us: Etna, the great actor who bursts onto the stage two or three times each century, whose tragic extravagances I had arrived to film. An entire side of the mountain was a blazing spectacle. The conflagration reached up to the reddened corners of the sky. From a distance of twenty kilometers, the rumbling at times seemed to be a triumphal reception heard from afar, as if a thousand hands were applauding in an immense ovation.”

– Jean Epstein, Le Cinématographe vu de l’Etna (1926) (via)

“We had never been around such opulence, zillions of dollars being spent every five minutes on this huge, unwieldy thing. It was mind-boggling to us because we had been making films for three hundred dollars, and seeing this incredible waste – that was the worst of Hollywood.”

– pre-blockbuster George Lucas

 

“Love! Love!”

– anonymous poet interrupting Harry Fainlight

“This nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.”

– JFK