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La sixième face du pentagone [The Sixth Face of the Pentagon] (Chris Marker + François Reichenbach, 1968)
Oct
21
1967
Armed police seen from the back. In front of him someone holds up a sign that reads WHY WAR. DPs: Tony Daval, Chris Marker & Christian Odasso.
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1943-1997 ['43 – '97] (Ettore Scola, 1997)
Oct
16
1943
The boy (Francesco Cencioni) on the run in a locked down town. DP: Carlo Tafani.
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Smrt si říká Engelchen [Death Is Called Engelchen] (Ján Kadár + Elmar Klos, 1963)
Sep
19
ER – 1994
Pavel (Jan Kačer) recovering face-down in his hospital bed. DP: RudolfMilič.
An emergency room: ER debuts on this date in 1994.
A paralysed Czechoslovak partisan recovering from a shot in the back in an emergency ward, feverishly remembers the events that brought him to that moment. He particularly remembers Engelchen, the SS Sturmbannführer who killed his best friend and massacred the local villagers.
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The War Game (Peter Watkins, 1966)
Sep
16
“In the next world war, I believe that both sides could stop before the ultimate destruction of cities so that both sides could retire for a period of ten years or so of post-attack recuperation, in which world wars four to eight could be prepared.”
– a leading American nuclear strategist
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Hullumeelsus [Безумие / Madness] (Kaljo Kiisk, 1968)
Sep
15
International Day of Democracy
Windisch (Jüri Järvet) pacing, blending in with a white-clad inmate. DP: Anatoliy Zabolotskiy.
“Stop shooting! Stop democracy!”
– Person Nr. 1
The Gestapo arrives to liquidate the inmates of a mental hospital. Then Windisch, plainclothes Nazi, brings them a letter: there's a special commando hiding amidst the 583 patients. Interrogating them slowly pushes Windisch among them.
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И дойде денят [I doyde denyat / And the Day Came] (Georgi Djulgerov, 1973)
Sep
9
1944
Mustafa (Plamen Maslarov) running. DP: Radoslav Spassov.
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Friendship's Death (Peter Wollen, 1987)
Sep
9
1970
Bill Paterson and Tilda Swinton as Sullivan and Friendship. DP: Witold Stok.
“What will happen when your machines become intelligent? When they become autonomous? When they have private thoughts? You humans look down on your machines because they're man-made. They're a product of your skills and labour. They weren't even domesticated like animals were. You see them simply as extensions of yourself, of your own will. I can't accept that. I can't accept subhuman status simply because I'm a machine based on silicon rather than carbon, electronics rather than biology. If I sound fanatical, it's because I've been trapped in a time warp. In a world where the full potential of machines hasn't been guessed at. A world where I have to wear a human disguise to be accepted? I came here too late. It will all end before the computers that already control the fate of the world have reached the point where they wanted to survive.”
– Friendship
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A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell + Emeric Pressburger, 1944)
Aug
27
Alison (Sheila Sim) looking out over the rolling hills of Kent with the Canterbury Cathedral somewhere out there. DP: Erwin Hillier.
“Well, there are more ways than one of getting close to your ancestors. Follow the old road, and as you walk, think of them and of the old England. They climbed Chillingbourne Hill, just as you. They sweated and paused for breath just as you did today. And when you see the bluebells in the spring and the wild thyme, and the broom and the heather, you're only seeing what their eyes saw. You ford the same rivers. The same birds are singing. When you lie flat on your back and rest, and watch the clouds sailing, as I often do, you're so close to those other people, that you can hear the thrumming of the hoofs of their horses, and the sound of the wheels on the road, and their laughter and talk, and the music of the instruments they carried. And when I turn the bend in the road, where they too saw the towers of Canterbury, I feel I've only to turn my head, to see them on the road behind me.”
– Thomas Colpeper, JP
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Estate violenta [Violent Summer] (Valerio Zurlini, 1959)
Jul
25
1943
A large radio on a small pedestal. A perpetual wall calendar next to it reads DOMENICA 25 LUGLIO. DP: Tino Santoni.
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Estate violenta [Violent Summer] (Valerio Zurlini, 1959)
Jul
19
Roberta (Eleonora Rossi Drago) and Carlo (Jean-Louis Trintignant). DP: Tino Santoni.
Characters go on a date, or fall in love*
“It would be thrilling if you were willing,
and if it can never be, pity me,
for you were born to be kissed,
I can’t resist, you are temptation,
and I am yours!”
– Nacio Herb Brown & Arthur Freed, Temptation (1933)
On a beautiful summer day in Rimini, Carlo, the handsome son from a bourgeois home, saves a little girl and becomes infatuated with the girl's mother, a young widow years his senior. Set in July 1943, the events in the outer world (poss. spoilers) and the fate of the two uneven lovers slowly come to their logical conclusion.