Part of the never-realised #SuperStar-studded The Poor Little Rich Girl Saga, #Warhol's Afternoon documents a day in the life of doomed socialite Edie Sedgwick. Miss Sedgwick and her entourage (Ondine, Dorothy Dean, Arthur Loeb, and Donald Lyons) spend an afternoon at #Edie's place. The superstars, the bored and the beautiful, chat, drink and do drugs.

“Isn’t it wonderful that we can be just friends?”

Europeans are not too worried about certain things. Having a body for instance is something good. Instead of shame, you take care for it with regular exercise and plenty of fresh air. Preferably both. In Germany this is called #Freikörperkultur, sometimes confused with nudism.

 

Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit is a display of the human in various stages of exercise and undress. We see sportspeople – including future-Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller and then-movie mountaineer Leni Riefenstahl – world leaders (Rockefeller and Mussolini, though the latter was cut from re-releases) and dancers such as Josephine Baker, Baku Ishii, and the scandalous Anita Berber. The film was mostly aimed at women, who by then were part of the workforce, sitting at desks in modern Metropolises. So modern it was that people were encouraged to complete their Wege-collection of trading cards, which came with their cigarettes. Good thing they're all #outdoors.

Stressed?‽ Who's got time to be stressed when there's a business to be run!!? Tom Palazzolo's Jerry’s Deli is a great character study of not only a character, but a whole time period inhabited by characters. The titular Jerry is Jerry Meyer, owner and proprietor of a Chicagoan deli that happened to be right next to Palazzolo's film lab. You wanna eat? Now, eat! Wanna order? Whaddaya waiting for?? Order!! Roast beef on rye please.

“On RYE!?!”

– Jerry Meyer

Jōhatsu, literally “evaporation” is the Japanese term for people disappearing without a trace. Salesman Tadashi Oshima is one of them. Director Shōhei Imamura, together with Oshima's fiancé Yoshie Hayakawa and actor Shigeru Tsuyuguchi created an investigative documentary that looks into this man, his motives, his possible whereabouts, and the others that are gone.

 

人間蒸発 is a fascinating exploration of aspects of 1960s Japanese society that make jōhatsu distinct from similar phenomena elsewhere.

I took a long time considering what to nominate for today's topic. This is not an easy one. And frankly, barely qualifies as as film.

 

In the 1930s, three films (2 British, 1 American) portrayed Jews in a positive light, as victims of persecution through history. When in 1938 the Novemberpogrome took place in (Nazi-occupied) Germany (the term “Kristallnacht” is a horrible euphemism and I won't use it), media was not unanimously jubilant about it. Understanding that violence is not the way to popular consensus, plans were made to change people's thinking about the Jews, using widely available visual media.

 

In 1939, the faux #documentary Der ewige Jude, directed by the leader of Goebbels' #propaganda film department Fritz Hippler, started production. Scenes shot in Jewish ghettos in occupied Poland were intercut with real, but out-of-context documentary footage, giving it a false sense of authenticity./

“Where rats turn up, they spread diseases and carry extermination into the land. They are cunning, cowardly and cruel, they travel in large packs, exactly the way the Jews infect the races of the world.”

– narrator

A recurring theme in Der ewige Jude is disease. Not merely to suggest “the Jew”'s unclean life and religion, but as a synonym of people as a vermin, a parasite to decent (read: Aryan) society. In a chilling demonstration of the Kuleshov Effect, footage of a large group of #rats coming out of a sewer is followed by a crowd of Jews in the Łódź Ghetto, filmed without their consent or knowledge of where this footage would end up.

Vérités et Mensonges is what it's actually called, but you may know it as F for Fake. Orson Welles and three uncredited fellow conspirators – Gary Graver, Oja Kodar, and François Reichenbach – delve into the world of #art forger Elmyr de Hory by way of his biographer Clifford Irving.

“Back to the old tricks.”

– Orson Welles

Welles et al free-associate with concepts of art, lies, #deception, and #authenticity. #Houdin, Welles, #Picasso and Hughes, hoaxers, hucksters and artists in their own right. And then it's over: this work of art, this sleight of hand, this demonstration of factuality, an exposé.

In a small train station's waiting room, people #sleep. #Trains in the distance rumble along. #Snow covers footprints crossing nearby tracks and the wooden shed where travellers, strangers, huddle together in their shared fate. Pavel Kostomarov's cinematography and Sergey Loznitsa's direction capture the silence.

Frederick Wiseman is the fly-on-the-wall at Northeast High School, filming teenage angst and awkwardness. There's talk of #PromNight, and small dramas when it turns out that above-the-knee is not formal wear thankyouverymuchyounglady. The dance itself is never shown.

“I didn't mean to be individualistic.”

– student

This is High School. I'm glad I never have to set foot in one ever again.

Paris Is Burning is probably best known for its fabulous #ballroom and #vogue​ㅤing scenes but in its heart, it tells the story of #family, of people who found their new ménage where they can live and love without fear and prejudice.

“In the ballroom circuit, it is so obvious that if you have captured the great white way of living, or looking, or dressing, or speaking – you is a marvel.”

– Pepper LaBeija

While you may expect a fierce documentary about #TransRights, or maybe merely a glamorous parade, you will be confronted with the flagrant #racism that made the #BallroomScene so essential for the Black and #Latinx LGBT+ community who founded it. And the tragedy of its demise in the name of pop culture even more heartbreaking.