Il pleut sur Santiago [Rain over Santiago] (Helvio Soto, 1975)
Sep
11
1973
Naicho Petrov as Chilean president Salvador Allende. DP: Georges Barsky .
Il pleut sur Santiago [Rain over Santiago] (Helvio Soto, 1975)
Sep
11
1973
Naicho Petrov as Chilean president Salvador Allende. DP: Georges Barsky .
“Pray for me. I forgive the evil done me.”
Procès de Jeanne d'Arc [The Trial of Joan of Arc] (Robert Bresson, 1962)
Aug
17
forgiveness
Jeanne (Florence Delay) bound to the stake. DP: Léonce-Henri Burel.
Holi: someone is forgiven (forgiveness being an important aspect of Holi)*
– Jeanne d'Arc
Jeanne trusts her delusions to forgive the people who brought her to justice.
* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.
“The painter takes his time. He doesn't like her dress. He doesn't like her gloves. One day he asks her if she dares pose for him – all in pink. She dares! And the king, enraptured by her pose, offers her a palace!” Lola Montès (Max Ophüls, 1955)
Aug
14
Bavaria
The crowned royal mistress on display in glorious Eastmancolor (via). DP: Christian Matras.
Celebrating Oktoberfest [in September/October] and the Bavarian royals [rip]: a royal character or family*
– circus master
Maria Dolores Porriz y Montez, Countess von Landsfeld, Lola Montès for short, now a circus attraction, once the mistress to Ludwig I, King of Bavaria. While her fellow circus performers play Lola's former lovers, the ringmaster tells her story.
* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.
“Today is the first day of a life of sacrifice.” 地獄門 [Jigokumon / Gate of Hell] (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953)
Aug
4
orange
The shrine's torii as seen in the film. Vermilion contains mercury, which not only acts as a preservative but is also believed to ward off evil. DP: Kōhei Sugiyama.
Orange: a building or structure*
– Moritoo Endō
Partially filmed near the 厳島神社 (Itsukushima Shrine) with its striking vermilion torii.
Shot on Eastmancolor, relatively cheap and globally available, and influenced by Hollywood colour melodramas of the time, in particularly Rudolph Maté's Mississippi Gambler (1953) (source), and in its turn greatly influenced the implementation of colour in global cinema to come.
Jigokumon won two Academy Awards in 1955, for Best Costume Design and Best Foreign Language Film.
* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.
“I am the great traitor. There must be no other. Anyone who even thinks about deserting this mission will be cut up into 198 pieces. Those pieces will be stamped on until what is left can be used only to paint walls. Whoever takes one grain of corn or one drop of water… more than his ration, will be locked up for 155 years. If I, Aguirre, want the birds to drop dead from the trees… then the birds will drop dead from the trees. I am the wrath of God. The earth I pass will see me and tremble. But whoever follows me and the river, will win untold riches. But whoever deserts…””Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes [Aguirre, the Wrath of God] (Werner Herzog, 1972)
Jun
20
World Productivity Day
Don Lope de Aguirre (Kinski), his eyes focussed. DP: Thomas Mauch.
A character who is always on the GO [sic] for World Productivity Day
– Don Lope de Aguirre
Conquistador Don Lope de Aguirre drives his men deep into the Peruvian jungle, to El Dorado
“That’s how I will probably die, left like a poor old rag on the battlefield. When you know this is going to happen to you, your body suddenly becomes something terribly precious to you. This flesh, soft and warm is yours; a personal belonging not to be discarded like an awful piece of meat. You find yourself thinking about this, realizing what a wonderful thing your body is, and what an awful and wrong thing it is to maltreat it.”The Diary of an Unknown Soldier (Peter Watkins, 1959)
Jun
14
Army Day
That glance. Any soldier at any time. DP: Peter Watkins.
A [favourite] soldier in film for Army Day (USA). I can not in all seriousness link to any official website in fear of throwing up, so please follow along here
Watkins takes the anonymous slaughter of the masses on the battlefield inside, into the body and mind of a young soldier.
“One thing I find appalling is when people who were [Vichy President] Pétain supporters come up to me and tell me what they did for the Resistance. Sometimes it's unreal. “Oh, Mr. Gaspard, if only you knew what we did, what I did for the Resistance.” Go ahead, pal, tell me all about it. I try to stay calm. I'm a salesman, and I want to sell my product. The company doesn't pay me to do politics and pick fights, so sometimes I find myself obliged to listen to a song and dance of some guy who shows me a drawer and gets his wife to confirm that there was indeed a revolver in that drawer during the war, a revolver which he was supposedly ready to use on the Germans. Only he never actually used it. History doesn't lie.” Le chagrin et la pitié [The Sorrow and the Pity] (Marcel Ophüls, 1969)
Jun
5
Sorry I Was on a Boat Day
Two smiling farmers. The interviewer asks “What did you think about?” One of them replies “Surviving. That's it.” Screenshot via. DPs: André Gazut & Jürgen Thieme.
Someone makes an excuse on Sorry I Was on a Boat Day (USA)
– Émile Coulaudon aka Colonel Gaspard, former head of the French Resistance in Auvergne
Marcel Ophüls documents the people of Clermont-Ferrand as the microcosm of Vichy France, part of Europe's only country that happily collaborated with its occupier, Nazi Germany. What were their justifications, their excuses, their motivations? Was it survival, habit, greed? Comfort, conformity, obedience, fear?
And what is yours?
“Soyez réalistes, demandez l'impossible”Grands soirs & petits matins [May Days] (William Klein, 1978)
May
24
1968
Sorbonne students discussing the political situation with an elderly Parisian man. DPs: William Klein & Bernard Lutic.
– May 68 slogan
鬼の詩 [Oni no uta / Song of the Devil] (Tetsutaro Murano, 1975)
Apr
29
Jerry Seinfeld – 1954
Keima Kyo entertaining his audience by hanging numerous clay pipes from his face. DP: Yasuhiro Yoshioka.
A comedian, or set in Brooklyn or NYC, for Jerry Seinfeld's birthday (1954).
Rakugo (落語, litt. “story with a fall”), is a style of Japanese comedy performed while seated. Armed with a few props, the rakugoka recites a comical monologue using pitch and gestures.
A dramatic retelling of the life of rakugoka Katsura Beikyo II. Keima Kyo, a talented rakugoka, is offered apprenticeship from an older successful performer, but refuses. Young and arrogant, he decides to take over the other man's act instead.
“To those who think that all this sounds like science fiction, we point out that yesterday's science fiction is today's fact. The Industrial Revolution has radically altered man's environment and way of life, and it is only to be expected that as technology is increasingly applied to the human body and mind, man himself will be altered as radically as his environment and way of life have been.” Das Netz – Unabomber / LSD / Internet [The Net] (Lutz Dammbeck, 2003)
Apr
27
personal computer mouse – 1981
A mouse in action. Note the stress ball. DPs: James Carman, István Imre & Thomas Plenert.
A computer mouse: the first personal computer mouse debuted on this day in 1981.
– Theodore J. Kaczynski
A Gedankenspiel.
Similar to the way moveable print has accelerated the spread of ideas, the personal computer mouse accelerated the speed of which individualist's ideas can spread. However, like the printing press and unlike the spoken word, the mouse can only point and enhance pre-existing notions, thus neutering any prospect of revolutionary change on an individual level.
In a grotesque snub to nature, the pointing finger has transcended the mouse, detaching our minds from our bodies in one infinite scroll.