At night, a small group of prostitutes frequent a local 面薄 / mee pok #restaurant. One of them, Bunny (Michelle Goh), caught the hawker's eye, but she's not interested in the “mee pok” (the “fish ball”, as they call the vendor) (Joe Ng) and besides she has a boyfriend. Then, a car crash. Bunny is left for dead in front of the eatery. He takes her in, preparing endless meals

“Sir John MacDonald, Jacobite captain of cavalry. Aged, frequently intoxicated, described as 'a man of the most limited capacities'.”

– narrator

Not a film you can be prepared for, Padre padrone. The author, Gavino Ledda, hands a stick – that stick – to the actor who plays his part. There we are, in Sardinia, beautiful Sardinia. A boy in class, learning. His father barges in: the boy must attend the sheep, or else. From that moment on we become that boy Gavino. Life's cruel on the island, but his father, his master, is worse. But that's how it is, there's sheep to herd. When Gavino enlist in the army, he encounters a new world. The precise world of electronics, other people, other sounds, the Italian #language. When he returns home, he finds his father a small man.

“Don't laugh at Gavino. Hands on your desks! Today is Gavino's turn. Tomorrow will be yours.”

– father

In a 1977 New York Times article the Taviani's are cited as seeing Gavino in the same light as #Truffaut's L'Enfant sauvage (1970) and #Herzog's Kaspar Hauser (Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle) (1974). However, the Sardinian boy's outsiderness is not caused by estrangement, but an immense loneliness that cannot be put into words. This is why Ledda's newfound language is such an important tool. It's not a stick, or a fist, or a dead snake. It's the foundation of his Home.

– We're out of love potion. What now?

– Take this one, for colic and bunions. What matters is how the bottle looks and how the potion tastes.

It's another school day in rural America when the #NuclearAttack alarm starts ringing. A teacher, instructed to calmly walk the kids home, tries to keep the youngest ones oblivious of the impending doom.

“Ladybug, ladybug, Fly away home”

children's song

While the children walk, talk and sing, this thing up there, in the sky and in the mind, grows bigger.

In the children's film Valahol Európában, a gang of plundering feral orphans hiding out in a ruined castle find an old disillusioned pacifist conductor (Artúr Somlay) who's waiting out the war.

Filmed in Idaho for National Idaho Day (USA)

 

A disaster has struck the future world. A private one, Karen's sister has had an accident. And a global one, one so severe that a Government project is put in place. The Project, located in the #Idaho desert and in different points in time, transfers teenagers 56 years forward so to repopulate the to-be-wiped-out land. Then, without warning or reason, The Project shuts down and the kids strand into a deserted future.

“Esto Perpetua”

– Idaho state motto

Idaho Transfer is, even for early 70s standards, an odd affair. It carries the weight of its time – hippie optimism had died thanks to #Manson, US meddling in Vietnam, the impending #EcoCrisis (we knew, we always did…) – but there too was this optimism for the upcoming millennium. Everything was going to be fine, in The Future. We'll be wiser, no more wars, no more famine, technology will save us. Released just 4 months before the first Oil Shock, Fonda somehow transferred a glimpse of our future.

“If it weren't for bad people, what would you do for a living, Marshal?”

– Doc Holliday