Local nightlife: people dancing or at a show*

“Don't know why There's no sun up in the sky Stormy weather Since my man and I ain't together Keeps raining all of the time

Oh, yeah Life is bad Gloom and misery everywhere Stormy weather, stormy weather And I just can get my poor self together Oh, I'm weary all of the time The time, so weary all of the time

When he went away The blues walked in and met me Oh, yeah if he stays away Old rocking chair's gonna get me All I do is pray The Lord will let me Walk in the sun once more

Oh, I can't go on, can't go on, can't go on Everything I have is gone Stormy weather, stormy weather Since my man and I, me and my daddy ain't together Keeps raining all of the time Oh, oh, keeps raining all of the time Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah raining all of the time Stormy stormy Stormy weather Yeah”

– Elisabeth Welch, Stormy Weather (Harold Arlen & Ted Koehler, 1933)

A radiant Goddess (Elisabeth Welch) performs the torch song Stormy Weather. Enchanted sailors dance.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.

A Christmas tree for National Christmas Tree Day (USA)

 

In August 1942, a Mexican-American man with a broken finger was found semiconscious near Sleepy Lagoon, Ca.. By association, a group of young Latinos was put on trial. This spark, mere months after Roosevelt sent thousands of Japanese Americans to concentration camps and fuelled by Cold War paranoia, eventually set off the Zoot Suit Riots.

 

Zoot Suiters or Pachucos and other “outsiders” like African, Italian and Filipino Americans, were viciously attacked by Anglo-American #sailors. Those suits, all that fabric, this colourful extravagance, they cried out, were hampering the war effort.

“Inflammable desires dampened by day under the cold water of consciousness are ignited that night by the libertarian matches of sleep, and burst forth in showers of shimmering incandescence.”

– The Dreamer

The Dreamer, Anger, dreams of a similar violent attack. The sadism is harrowing, filmed with such exquisite eye that it's impossible to look away. Blood finds its way out, pulsating and spurting. Ambiguous glances. A hand, no finger. A young man awakes, is born. The dreamer is still asleep.