Green: a building or structure*

“That's all the people we've got now. We'll get there somehow.”

Where the old folks' hands push the cart, the green's worn off. That doesn't change anything about its importance. A lifeline, bread, is delivered once a week and with delivered, it means that the carriage is left on the rails, several kilometers away from Zhikharevo, or Township Nr. 3, which in its turn is about 80 km away from Saint Petersburg. It takes the seniors about two hours to get the wagon to their hamlet. We get to witness ten minutes or so. It lasts a lifetime.

 

As of 2002, only three people lived in Zhikharevo. I wonder how the wain comes home now.

 

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

Celebrating Dia de Los Muertos [on November 1 and 2, of course]: a cemetery, coffin, or dead person*

“When we began to compare the typically American, typically European, and typically Russian films, we noticed that they were distinctly different from one another in their construction. We noticed that in a particular sequence of a Russian film there were, say, ten to fifteen splices, ten to fifteen different set-ups. In the European film there might be twenty to thirty such set-ups (one must not forget that this description pertains to the year 1916), while in the American film there would be from eighty, sometimes upward to a hundred, separate shots. The American films took first place in eliciting reactions from the audience; European films took second; and the Russian films, third. We became particularly intrigued by this, but in the beginning we did not understand it.”

– Lev Kuleshov, The Principles of Montage, from The Practice of Film Direction (pp. 183-195) (source)

Director Lev Kuleshov explains what happens when a scene is followed by a reaction shot. Depending on the preceding image, the viewer projects an emotion onto the performer's facial expression. In his most famous montage, made up of existing footage – because property is theft, we see matinee idol Ivan Mosjoukine “react” to a bowl of soup, a little girl in a coffin, and a woman sprawled out on a divan.

 

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

A [favourite] Billy Zane film for his birthday (1966).

“This future of yours Shelmerdine, when it's gonna begin? Today? Or, is it always tomorrow?”

– Orlando

As ordered by Queen Elizabeth I (Quentin Crisp), nobleman Orlando remains young and traverses exotic scenery, civilisations, time, and gender.

In a small train station's waiting room, people #sleep. #Trains in the distance rumble along. #Snow covers footprints crossing nearby tracks and the wooden shed where travellers, strangers, huddle together in their shared fate. Pavel Kostomarov's cinematography and Sergey Loznitsa's direction capture the silence.