El gran calavera [The Great Madcap] (Luis Buñuel, 1949)
May
31

Lobbycard. DP: Ezequiel Carrasco.
El gran calavera [The Great Madcap] (Luis Buñuel, 1949)
May
31

Lobbycard. DP: Ezequiel Carrasco.
The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (Gordon Davidson, 1972)
May
17
1968
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Director Gordon Davidson and the defense attorney (David Spielberg) on set. DP: Haskell Wexler.
“I sit in the subway sometimes, on buses, or the movies, and I look at the people next to me and I think… 'What would you say if I told you I was a witch?'”Bell Book and Candle (Richard Quine, 1958)
Mar
12

Gillian Holroyd (Kim Novak) and her Siamese, Pyewacket. DP: James Wong Howe.
– Queenie
Night Must Fall (Karel Reisz, 1964)
Feb
2
roast
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A man mostly off screen carves meat of some sort. Surely it's symbolic. DP: Freddie Francis.
“So, this month becomes the month of Scrawdyke.”Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs (Stuart Cooper, 1974)
Scrawdyke
2

Malcolm Scrawdyke (John Hurt), disgruntled art student. DP: John Alcott.
– Malcolm Scrawdyke
Balada pro banditu [Ballad for a Bandit] (Vladimír Sís, 1979)
Dec
24
Christmas Eve – Nikolas
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The bandit and his bride. DP: Viktor Růžička.
A Nikolas or Nicholas for Christmas Eve.
The tale of legendary highwayman Nikola Šuhaj from Koločava.
3. November 1918 [Third of November 1918] (Edwin Zbonek, 1965)
Nov
3
1918

A calendar page for November 3, 1918. It's a Sunday. DP: Rudolf Sandtner.
Takes place on November 2 and 3.
September 30, 1955 (James Bridges, 1977)
Sep
30
1955

Jimmy J. (Richard Thomas) in the lobby of his movie theatre, looking at the poster for Elia Kazan's East of Eden (1955). DP: Gordon Willis.
“Today is the first day of a life of sacrifice.” 地獄門 [Jigokumon / Gate of Hell] (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953)
Aug
4
orange

The shrine's torii as seen in the film. Vermilion contains mercury, which not only acts as a preservative but is also believed to ward off evil. DP: Kōhei Sugiyama.
Orange: a building or structure*
– 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.
“You'll go under like all the others.”White Woman (Stuart Walker, 1933)
Aug
1

Horace H. Prin (Laughton) and Judith Denning (Lombard) in a promotional photo. DP: Harry Fischbeck.
– Judith Denning