“The pickings were poor and not worth the risk.”

– Michel

It's this month's Bales Challenges' dad's VaderJaws' birthday! Celebrating with Vader, or sharks, or churches, or Chvrches. Erm… let's stick to sharks.

 

A strange woman appears in the life of a young man. He falls in love with her, but the fishermen know. She's the wife of a shark killed years ago. And she's out for revenge.

 

Doing Hooptober parallel to Bales. Expect some contamination of the September/October posts.

A teacher for what would have been Christa McAuliffe's birthday.

“Ich mag Männer, bin 30 Jahre alt, von Beruf Lehrer.”

– Frank Ripploh

Frank Ripploh is a sexual ethics and biology teacher by day, and hedonistic gay man and aspiring pornographer by night. When Frank Ripploh, the man, publicly came out in 1978 in the tabloid Stern, he lost his teaching job and did become that filmmaker. Taxi zum Klo – litt. taxi to the john/loo – is his story. A frank pre-AIDS pre-Internet pre-victimhood depiction of male gay culture in West Germany. Maybe raw, possibly misogynist, definitely true to life.

Ramadan [on the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, not mid-August]: someone atones or fasts*

“These people have faith in me, and I have faith in their faith.”

– Swami Ji

Due to a simple misunderstanding, a farmer mistakes tour guide Raju for a holy man. When drought hits the land, the village fool tells the townspeople that Raju, now known as Swami Ji, will fast for twelve days to bring the rain. During his reluctant fast, Raju undergoes a spiritual transformation.

 

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

Cerulean, or blue: in food or fashion*

“I'm just fine. I have everything here. I have the TV. You can see the whole world”

– the mother

How could I not pick at least one instalment of Kieślowski's Trois couleurs trilogy. Here's blue, the liberté of the tricolor. Blue occurs as the sky to fall through, the room without life, and the cloth that binds.

 

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

Celebrating Oktoberfest [in September/October] and the Bavarian royals [rip]: a royal character or family*

“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!”

– 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.

“I know. I know you. I know you very well.”

– Suzanne

Orange: a building or structure*

“Today is the first day of a life of sacrifice.”

– 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.

Red: best use of red in food or fashion*

“She looked at the red shoes, for she thought there was no harm in looking. She put them on, for she thought there was no harm in that either. But then she went to the ball and began dancing. When she tried to turn to the right, the shoes turned to the left. When she wanted to dance up the ballroom, her shoes danced down. They danced down the stairs, into the street, and out through the gate of the town. Dance she did, and dance she must, straight into the dark woods.”

– Hans Christian Andersen, De røde Skoe (1845, tranl. Jean Hersholt, 1949), via

Another one of The Archers' #Technicolor extravaganzas. This time, not to wow the worn-down post-war black-and-white audience, but as an an active storytelling instrument.

 

Built around Hans Christian Andersen's haunting tale De røde Skoe (1845).

 

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