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Decoder (Muscha, 1984)
Jul
7
Milky Ways
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Idaho Transfer (Peter Fonda, 1973)
May
17
National Idaho Day
Teenagers Ronald (Kevin Hearst) and Karen (Kelly Bohanon) sitting next to each other in the desert. Karen, wearing untied shoes and a sleeping bag over her shoulders, looks distraught. DP: Bruce Logan.
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.
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洞 [Dóng / The Hole] (Tsai Ming-liang, 1998)
Mar
22
National Sing It Out Day
The man upstairs and the woman upstairs, both dressed in that perfectly cool, 1960s Chinese style, break out in song in their crumbling apartment block The woman's singing voice is legendary Grace Chang's. DP: Pen-Jung Liao.
In a #plague-ridden Taiwan, it rains relentlessly. The #rain and a #virus forces people to retreat. In Hsiao Kang's crumbling building, a plumber inadvertently punches a hole from his floor to the unnamed woman's below. While she, another victim of the #disease, holes up in her apartment they struck up a strange detached relationship.
Between the endless downpour and frantic #food hoarding, in her heart a #musical sings.
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The Noah (Daniel Bourla, 1975)
Jan
25
Burns Night
Noah (Robert Strauss) singing Auld Lang Syne. DP: Jerry Kalogeratos.
“On old long syne my Jo,
On old long syne,
That thou canst never once reflect,
On old long syne”
– Robert Burns, Auld Lang Syne (1788)