A director from the EU for Europe Day

“Producers are something I can easily do without”

– Fritz Lang

A film in a film, the former directed by Fritz Lang, directed by Godard.

A spiritual theme for the National Day of Prayer (USA)

“Have you ever tried to dress as a priest? Try it, at least once. It's a bit like being a woman. In summer the breeze enters under the genitals. You can go without briefs. Priests are half men and half women.”

– Don Gaetano

Inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, Italy's political leaders, industrialists, bankers, and business leaders gather for a retreat as an atonement for their past crimes of corruption and unethical practices, and to reinforce their power.

Eggs for Easter Sunday.

“The walls of the room seemed to hold stories untold, whispering in the quiet.”

– Doris Lessing, The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)

In a dystopian Britain, D (Julie Christie) survives taking care of a sullen teenage girl, and visiting a mirage behind the walls.

A unicorn for National Unicorn Day (UK)

“and in big, spidery writing, he wrote 'In search of unicorns.' The End”

– quote from “In Search of Unicorns”, written by Susannah York

Cathryn (Susannah York), a children's book author, works on a book called “In Search of Unicorns”. Her desk, and mind, are occupied with images from a obscure diegesis.

A natural phenomenon for this year's March equinox, three supermoons, and the March 25 solar eclipse.

“There was a silence different from all other silences, an ashen light, and then darkness – total stillness. I thought that during an eclipse even our feelings stop. Out of this came part of the idea for L'eclisse.”

– Michelangelo Antonioni talking about experiencing a solar eclipse, possibly the total eclipse of 1961 which showed up in the film Barabbas (1961).

During several moments in the film, the main characters' mannerisms foreshadow the looming solar eclipse.

A favourite film, director, or producer for Luc Besson's birthday (1959).

 

Having only seen three of Delvaux's films, I feel I can safely say his work is hypnotic, but not in the common sense. We see a world through both Delvaux's and his protagonists eyes, and experience their duality as one. This displacement is a recurring theme in Delvaux's work, the work of a man raised in one world and speaking the language of another, both worlds bearing the same name, Belgium.

 

This slow tear is also the theme is his best known film, De man die zijn haar kort liet knippen [The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short] (1965), in which a schoolteacher loses himself after a pupil graduates. When we think we are firmly seated in Delvaux's universe, we fall back, like that moment just before sleep sets in. And again, in his tragically under-seen Belle from 1973. Now it's a poet who finds a woman living in a ramshackle hut in Belgium's peatland, her language an unknown. With only one main speaker, the duality forms in the poet's words, in his attempts to give her root.

 

And so do we, the viewers. We hang on to that root, Delvaux's, only to sink back into our own loss of words.

A favourite non-Hitchcock mystery for National Hitchcock Day (USA)

“You're a foreigner and you're lost.”

Strategy for Bobby Fischer's birthday (1943).

 

People meticulously plan, move, and countermove in response to an invasion.

Imaginary animals or food for Theodor “Dr.” Seuss Geisel's birthday (1904).

“I like the settings where the lights and desire cross path. The desire to communicate with the invisibles in the darkness, or in memory, or in the future. It's always related to cinema and we as insects that are drawn to lights.”

– Apichatpong Weerasethakul, via

Villagers in the north of Thailand reported a rare sighting of a male and female Nok Phii, an elusive species of bird that feeds on animals' blood. It is unknown if the sighting was reliable, and if this vampire does, or ever did, exist.

“When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk.”

– 1 Corinthians 11:20–21, via