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Macario (Roberto Gavaldón, 1960)
Jan
22
National Poverty in America Awareness Month
Macario (Ignacio López Tarso) passes a Día de los Muertos altar, stacked high with candles, human skulls and bones, and cempasúchil (marigolds), whose fragrant and colour lead the Dead back to their family on this revered day. DP: Gabriel Figueroa.
Macario, poor and hungry, wishes to eat a whole turkey all by himself on Día de los Muertos. When he finally has the opportunity, he is interrupted three times: by the Devil, by God, and by Death. With one of them, he shares his meal.
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Valkoinen peura [The White Reindeer] (Erik Blomberg, 1952)
Dec
21
Yule
Pirita (Mirjami Kuosmanen) in Gákti in front of a prism-like structure with a reindeer skull on top. Antlers stick out in the snow around her. DP: Erik Blomberg.
Pagans for Yule. The reindeer plays an important part in Sámi #animism (1/2).
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Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (Richard Winer + Barry Mahon, 1972)
Dec
20
A bunch of screaming children on top of a red firetruck stand right behind the driver, a stoic person in a pink bunny costume. DPs: William Tobin & Richard Winer.
“What is that? What is that I hear? Where's it coming from? I hear a siren, but I don't see any fire, I don't see any smoke. Whenever there's a siren, it means there's a fire, but I don't see any smoke. That siren. Where is it coming from? Where's that sound coming from?”
– Santa Claus
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Die Puppe [The Doll] (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919)
Dec
16
Stupid Toy Day
The doll (Ossi Oswalda) mischievously sticks out her tongue. DPs: Theodor Sparkuhl & Kurt Waschneck .
A ridiculous toy for Stupid Toy Day.
“She must have one complex mechanism!”
– Lancelot
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Sedmi kontinent [Sedmý kontinent / The Seventh Continent] (Dušan Vukotić, 1966)
Dec
13
Francis Drake's circumnavigation
The first two children to set sail, with Iris Vrus on the right, and possibly Tomislav Pasarić on the left. DP: Karol Krška.
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Иконостасът [Ikonostasat / The Icon Stand] (Christo Christov + Todor Dinov, 1969)
Feb
5
apples
A closeup of woman's hand moving an apple. The black-and-white photography is deliberately out of focus. DP: Atanas Tasev.
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Touha zvaná Anada [Desire Called Anad / Adrift] (Elmar Klos + Ján Kadár, 1968/1971)
Jan
21
salt
Semi-off screen, an older man with a moustache at a dinner table – many plates, glasses, and foods – reaches for a bowl of salt. DP: Vladimír Novotný.
viewРождество обитателей леса (ca 1912)
Various beetles and a grasshopper rejoice around the Christmas tree materialised by Old Man Frost.
December 25: a Santa for #Christmas
Pождество обитателей леса [Rozhdestvo obitateley lesa / The Insects' Christmas] (Wladyslaw Starewicz, ca 1912)
Father Christmas makes a Christmas tree for the people of the forest.
Дед Мороз (Ded Moroz, or Old Man Frost) is the Slavic version of Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus. An ornament depicting the old grey climbs down a child's (or doll's) Christmas tree and sets off to the forest where he plants his magic staff to create a Christmas feast for the woodland animals.
The word “animation” means “a bestowing of life“. Like his ancestor in the arts Bernard Palissy and the ancient winter solstice celebration of the return of light that long ago spawned Christmas, Wladyslaw Starewicz's Insects' Christmas breathes life into real but inanimate beetles, dragonflies, and frogs. The illusion is complete as you effortlessly forget they are painstakingly animated.
From me to you, a little Christmas treat
Director Wladyslaw Starewicz and his daughter Irina (Irene), surrounded by several of his tiny actors. Irina, writer and director in her own right, starred in her father's WW1 short “Liliya Belgii” [“The Lily of Belgium”] (1915).
#Bales2023FilmChallenge #WladyslawStarewicz #Russia #fantasy #animation #ShortFilm #Christmas #holidays #StopMotion #insects #animals #1910s ★★★★☆
#todo
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La Belle et la Bête [Beauty and the Beast] (Jean Cocteau + René Clément, 1946)
Nov
28
Giving Tuesday
The most beautiful flower, a rose, in La Bête's enchanted garden. DP: Henri Alekan.
Just before leaving home for a business trip, a father asks his three daughters what he can bring them as a return gift. The eldest two ask for silly, extravagant things. A monkey! A parrot! The youngest simply wishes the most beautiful flower which the father finds in an enchanted garden, guarded by a terrible beast. And will pay for with his life unless he gives his youngest away to the beast, to die in his place.
– Can such miracles really happen?
– You and I are living proof.
#Cocteau and Clément's La Belle et la Bête is of course based on Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve's fairy-tale, which on its turn was based on the classic myth of Cupid and Psyche.
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Almacita di desolato [Almacita, Soul of Desolato] (Felix de Rooy, 1986)
Oct
5
National Caribbean Civility Day
Desolato's village priestess Solem (Marian Rolle). DP: Ernest R. Dickerson.
