A translator for International Translation Day

“This mirror reflected a painting… with words. Chinese idiograms. 'The she-crane calls in the shadow. Her cheek answers.'”

– Alice Campos

Alice, the always fantastically brooding Florinda Bolkan, works as a translator when all of sudden she loses her job and finds herself on the small island of Garma. People tell her she has been there before, recently, but she knows this is not possible.

 

Some English-language posters try to sell Le orme as an action-ridden sci-fi giallo, but oh boy leave that perception behind and you're in for one unsettling treat! Le orme can be placed somewhere between Don't Look Now and that other Alice film, Chabrol's Alice ou la dernière fugue. Drifting and elegant, distant and claustrophobic.

To commemorate the launch (not landing) of the Луна 2 aka the Second Soviet Cosmic Rocket on September 12, 1959, we present The Moon.

 

According to Wikipedia, Luna 2 was the first spacecraft to touch the surface of the Moon, and the first human-made object to make contact with another celestial body. Well, Enrico Novelli went there first…

“Mars Daughter, You are fine. I am loving you and I should like very much to marry you.”

– Aldovin, Terrestrial Astronomer (Aldovin's radiotelegraph to Mars), via

…and what an adventure he had! An Earth gentleman points his telescope at the red planet, only to spot a beautiful Martian princess. He promptly falls in love and lo and behold! it's mutual! That asks for an instantaneous wedding halfway, on the Moon, and nothing can stop them!

We watch the final report by Will Roczinski, who sadly died in a car crash while working on a TV documentary about UFOs and the like. A fascinating early “faux footage” film from the BRD. One can only wonder how the average West German processed the fantastic premise.

A seafaring explorer in commemoration of Ferdinand Magellan's (almost) completed circumnavigation in 1522. The Portuguese Magellan was enlisted by Spain to gain access to the Moluccas' spices and other trading goods by sailing west instead of east, thus avoiding the heavily armed Portuguese and Dutch traders who were plundering Southeast Asia, its peoples and cultures.

“Calypso the lustrous goddess tried to hold me back, deep in her arching caverns, craving me for a husband. So did Circe, holding me just as warmly in her halls, the bewitching queen of Aeaea keen to have me too. But they never won the heart inside me, never. So nothing is as sweet as a man's own country.”

– Homer, Odyssey, ca. 8^th century CE (via)

 

With the war over, Odysseus returns home by sea, a ten year voyage known as the Odyssey

[A favourite] colour: grey*

 

Approaching the 60s, Mr Hulot finally switches from black-and-white to colour. Suddenly, we see that his suit is a beigeish grey and so is the Arpels' house, that modernist masterpiece designed by Tati. The beloved luddite struggles with hypermodern people and their hypermodern constructs, much alike the future Hulot from Playtime (1967).

– A house like yours must be such a job! – Oh, a leaf! Ah, yes it's a chore. – Admit it, you love it.

In similar absurd fashion, Guadalupe Acedo, cleaning lady, works her way through Rem Koolhaas' Maison à Bordeaux (1998) in Bêka and Lemoine's Koolhaas Houselife (2008). Too steep are the stairs, too leaky everything else. Levelheaded, she does her thing; a small beacon of romantic practicality in a world of absurd efficiency.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.