#Bales2023FilmChallenge July 31: watermelon on #NationalWatermelonDay

#MarcoFerreri's Dillinger è morto (1969) is a story of food & alienation. #MichelPiccoli's Glauco, bored of his successful career, bored of his beautiful wife, bored of his beautiful house, finds sudden vigour in the act of preparing #food and restoring an item that shouldn't be where it is and with that, essentially recreates #JohnDillinger's escape from Crown Point ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/dillinger-e-morto-1969

#film #cinema #FilMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 1: filmed in Colorado for #ColoradoDay

They've been planning this for months, #CanonCity's #Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility toughest inmates. It's going to happen on December 30, and all men are ready to go. Striking about #CraneWilbur's Canon City (1948) is the usage of some of the actual locations, ánd people, involved in the 1947 #prison break ☞https://write.underworld.fr/settima/canon-city-1948-yf51

#CañonCity #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film @art_film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 3: a Michael for #NationalMichaelDay

Considered one of the earliest positive cinematic depictions of (male) homosexuality, Dreyer's Michael (1924) tells the story of a lonely artist Zoret, his bright young muse and model Michael, and the more mature art critic Switt. Though its mostly suggested, its motif of the spoken and unspoken relationship between the men is definitely one of love ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/michael-1924

#LGBT #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 4: throw a water balloon on #NationalWaterBalloonDay

Roscoe Arbuckle just can't help himself while at the wonderfully hedonistic Oriental Café in his delightful short slapstick His Wife's Mistakes (1916) ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/his-wifes-mistakes-1916

#RoscoeArbuckle #USA #comedy #slapstick #comedy #ShortFilm #SilentFilm #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 5: hungover on #InternationalHangoverDay

After a lovely night out, Norah wakes up with a terrible hangover and a hunch of being a murderess. The Blue Gardenia (1953) is #FritzLang's hard-bitten take on the gruesome Black Dahlia murder case and part of his newspaper noir trilogy together with While the City Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, both from 1956 ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/the-blue-gardenia-1953

#FilmNoir #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 9: a forest fire on #SmokeyBearDay

#EduardGrečner's Drak sa vracia [Dragon's Return] (1968) says all that can be said in mere whispers and smoky greys. The main characters – the fire, smoke, pottery, and composer #IljaZeljenka's often silent motif – weave their wordless presence throughout the ancient landscape; that same landscape that carved itself into the locals' being. ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/drak-sa-vracia-1968

#film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film @art_film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 10: a Mary for #NationalMaryDay

#Zouzou in a double role as (Virgin) Marie and (whore) Marie Magdalène. #PhilippeGarrel's unscripted, drug-fuelled response to the failed revolution of #May68, Le lit de la vierge [The Virgin's Bed] (1969), moves the second coming of a disillusioned Christ (Pierre Clémenti) to the Moroccan desert ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/le-lit-de-la-vierge-1969

#Mai68 #GroupeZanzibar #PierreClémenti #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film @art_film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 11: a #HipHop focussed movie on #HipHopDay

#BramVanSplunteren's obscure 1986 Dutch TV #documentary Big Fun in the Big Town is an essential snapshot of hip hop culture. It captures an optimism and fire elemental to survive Reagan's America and highlights the urge to continue the Black struggle that the Panthers and others set in motion. Happy birthday, #Hiphop. To many powerful years to come! https://write.underworld.fr/0kr3412enu

#film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 12: a garage sale on #NationalGarageSaleDay

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (Martin Scorsese, 1974)

After her husband is gone, Alice (Ellen Burstyn) sells her stuff and the house, picks up her son Tommy and embarks on fulfilling her childhood dream of becoming a singer just like Alice Faye ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/alice-doesnt-live-here-anymore-1974

#MartinScorsese #EllenBurstyn #AlfredLutterIII #KrisKristofferson #HarveyKeitel #JodieFoster #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 13: a gay relative on #GayUnclesDay

In #ArturoRipstein's El lugar sin límites (1978) we follow the plight of La Manuela who dances with her daughter in the brothel run by Madame La Japonesa, her daughter's mother. The return of trucker Pancho disrupts the family regime. His attraction to the transsexual is at odds with his machismo and him being outed as a maricón would be the end ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/el-lugar-sin-limites-1978

#LGBT #film #cinema #FilMastodon #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 14: a bookshop for #LoveYourBookshopDay

Umeko believes to have caught Torio redhanded shoplifting. Torio however is a performance actor and the act of stealing is part of his research. The young people's encounter sets something in motion and they embark on committing crimes in #Tokyo's labyrinthine #Shinjuku neighbourhood. #NagisaŌshima's Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (1969) ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/xin-su-ni-bang-ri-ji-1969

#ArtTheatreGuild #film #cinema #CineMastodon @film @art_film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 15: speak to the moon on #ChantAtTheMoonDay

In William A. O'Connor's Moonland (1926), a little boy and his dog are invited over by the #ManInTheMoon himself. The trip to the Moon is a big adventure for the drowsy duo and they meet peculiar flora, fauna and men, taken straight out of the Great Moon Hoax along the way ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/moonland-1926

#SciFi #SilentFilm #film #cinema #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 16: the main character shows his real self on #NationalAuthenticityDay

Humph, doing this one without spoilers…

Joseph Losey's claustrophobic The Servant (1963), based on the novel by Robin Maugham with a screenplay by Harold #Pinter.

#JosephLosey #RobinMaugham #HaroldPinter #DirkBogarde #SarahMiles #WendyCraig #JamesFox #film #cinema #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 17: neighbours/neighbors on #NeighborNight

Norman McLaren's short #AntiWar live action #animation (aka #pixilation) Neighbours (1952), ft #GrantMunro & #JeanPaulLadouceur. The technique was groundbreaking; even the soundtrack was painted directly onto the film stock!

You can watch this #ShortFilm on the NFB's website https://www.nfb.ca/film/neighbours_voisins/

#NormanMcLaren #film #cinema #CineMastodon @film @art_film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 18: a blind pick for #SerendipityDay

#EsterKrumbachová's feminist farce Vražda ing. Čerta [The Murder of Mr. Devil] (1970) is a delight of many flavours. Ona (Jiřina Bohdalová) is already 40 and wants a man. She remembers one from her youth, the handsome, slim, and very cultured Mr Devil (the great Vladimír Menšík), and knows that the one way to a man's heart is through the stomach ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/vrazda-ing

#CzechNewWave #food #film #cinema #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 19: #potatoes eaten on #NationalPotatoDay

Jeanne Dielman (#DelphineSeyrig) routinely prepares meals, cleans the house, mothers her teenage son (#JanDecorte in his salad days), and sees clients in #ChantalAkerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). Until something breaks and her carefully nurtured practices slowly unravel ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/jeanne-dielman-23-quai-du-commerce-1080-bruxelles-1975

#SlowCinema #film #cinema #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 20: a medical transporter on the #InternationalDayOfMedicalTransporters

The boss' girlfriend falls for an ambulance driver, derailing her man's gang's carefully planned narcotics heist in William J. Hole Jr.'s #noir Hell Bound (1957) ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/hell-bound-1957

#WilliamJHoleJr #JohnRussell #JuneBlair #StuartWhitman #drugs #USA #crime #FilmNoir #1950s #film #cinema #CineMastodon @film

> Do you want to work? What a nightmarish idea.

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 21: freebie: someone is #sleep​ing (March 17 redux)

#NikosPanayotopoulos' The Idlers of the Fertile Valley (1978) is a slow satire, wordlessly adddressing Greek #class struggle. We spend long hours in the company of a father and his sons. The four of them – rich, bourgeois – have inherited a country villa and the plan is to do nothing for the next 7 years ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/oi-tempeledes-tes-euphores-koiladas-1978

#film #cinema #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 22: #folklore on #FolkloreDay

On May 1 an ancient procession goes around #Padstow, #Cornwall. How ancient, no one really knows. Locals may describe it as a pagan fertility rite but even their generational memory draws a blank and no living soul can put an age on it. #AlanLomax's Oss Oss Wee Oss (1953) is probably the best known visual documentation of the #ObbyOss festival ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/oss-oss-wee-oss-1953

#film #cinema #documentary #paganism #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 24: eat a waffle on #NationalWaffleDay

The city of #Liège in #Belgium's Walloon region is grey. The air seems forever stained by the heavy mining that for years made its inhabitants rich and sick. Here lives Rosetta (Jean-Pierre and Luc #Dardenne, 1999) (#ÉmilieDequenne), a young woman trying to keep herself and her alcoholic mother above water with a measly job at a waffle stand > https://write.underworld.fr/settima/rosetta-1999

#film #cinema #CineMastodon @film #waffles

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 25: someone wears another person's clothes on #NationalSecondhandWardrobeDay

#EdWood's Glen or Glenda is not only an utterly unique autobiographic docudrama but also a lovingly composed pamphlet in support of transvestism and transsexualism. It's also pretty unique when it comes to the art of filmmaking. However contagiously enthusiastic, Wood didn't have the skill, weight, or budget to make movies ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/8xjgb9dypr

#LGBT #film #cinema #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 26: a movie that goes the extra mile for #NationalSparkTheWorldDay

Like Rome, #Cleopatra (1963) wasn't built in a day. #JosephLMankiewicz's epic studio breaker took six years to make and, despite it being the highest-grossing film of 1963, didn't break even until 1973. Was it a #flop? A classic flop but a flop nevertheless? 𓃦 https://write.underworld.fr/settima/cleopatra-1963

#ElizabethTaylor #RichardBurton #RexHarrison #film #cinema #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 27: eating #soup on #CrabSoupDay

#ZbigniewRybczyński's autobiographical #animation Zupa [Soup] (1975) follows an unnamed couple's faltering monotonous relationship. Produced by the groundbreaking #SeMaForStudios in #Łódź, the dramatic story is told through colourised, analogue still #photography, and electronic music and sound effects created by PRES's #EugeniuszRudnik ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/zupa-1975

#film #cinema #Poland #CineMastodon @film @art_film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 28: someone listens to the #radio on #RadioCommercialsDay

R… ne répond plus (1981) is Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne's exploration of the airwaves. Some is clearly political. Pirates channel their comrade cats & witches with important messages unheard of in the mainstream media. Others broadcast in languages on the verge of extinction in a world that – forty years ago – was rapidly homogenizing. ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/r-ne-repond-plus-1981

#documentary #film #cinema #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 29: a lemon for #NationalLemonJuiceDay

#GeorgeBlair's The Hypnotic Eye (1960) utilises what's called the #MovieGimmick. You too may laugh at that folly, that parlour trick. But who says #hypnotism isn't real? Who says you never went to see a hypnotism show…? ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/the-hypnotic-eye-1960

#film #cinema #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge Aug 30: grief on #NationalGriefAwarenessDay

Nyatta is not ready to have Jizō take away his big sister Nyāko to the land of the dead. They set off to retrieve her soul.

Adult #anime ねこぢる草 [Cat Soup] (#TatsuoSatô, 2001) is based on works by #Nekojiru whose crudely drawn cats caused a ripple in #Japan's underground #manga circuit (=‐ω‐=) https://write.underworld.fr/settima/nekodirucao-2001

#animation #film #CineMastodon @film @art_film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge August 31: someone ODs on #InternationalOverdoseAwarenessDay

28 is no age to die, regardless if your name is Susan Superstar or #EdieSedgwick. But it happened, right during the wrap-up of filming Ciao Manhattan (#JohnPalmer & #DavidWeisman, 1972). Edie was gone, just like that, snuffed like so many of the other #Warhol #Superstars ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/ciao-manhattan-1972

#film #cinema #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge September 1: hotel employees on #NationalHotelEmployeeDay

#FrancisMankiewicz uneasy Le temps d'une chasse (1972) starts at dawn when two friends pick up their buddy for a hunting trip in remote #Québec. With a trunk full of Dutch courage and a mouthful of boasting, they find themselves in a hotel instead of the expected cabin. The hotel's short days and long drunk nights command its own attractions and regrets > https://write.underworld.fr/settima/le-temps-dune-chasse-1972

#film #cinema #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge September 2: a football stadium on #NationalTailgatingDay

Cremaster 1 (#MatthewBarney, 1996), the second of a 5-part cycle (94—02), is set at the Bronco Stadium in #Boise, #Idaho. We find ourselves quietly poised in an airship high above the field. In it an ethereal woman (#MartiDomination) arranges grapes into patterns. Below on luminous blue AstroTurf, the chorus line follows the same figures ☞ https://write.underworld.fr/settima/cremaster-1-1996

#film #cinema #CineMastodon @film @art_film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge September 3: the main character goes to the cinema on #NationalCinemaDay

When you're young, everything is a miracle. Milagros is the name the maid answers too. And so does the landscape, the mushrooms, the heart, and the magic of cinema. > https://write.underworld.fr/settima/el-espiritu-de-la-colmena-1973

El espíritu de la colmena [The Spirit of the Beehive] (Víctor Erice, 1973)

#VíctorErice #film #cinema #CineMastodon @film

#Bales2023FilmChallenge September 4: a mouthgard for #MouthguardDay

Foreman, Ali, all of them in William Klein's Muhammad Ali, the Greatest [aka Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee] (1974)

#WilliamKlein #MuhammadAli #CassiusClay #GeorgeForeman #MalcolmX #MobutuSeseSeko #sports #politics #documentary #boxing #France #1970s #film #cinema #photography #CineMastodon @film ★★★★½

#Bales2023FilmChallenge September 5: a jury for #JuryRightsDay

“Just you wait, it won't be long, The man in black will soon be here, With his cleaver's blade so true, He'll make mincemeat out of you!”

The jury's out for Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) in Fritz Lang's M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931)

#film #cinema #CineMastodon @film #FritzLang #TheaVonHarbou #EgonJacobsohn #PeterLorre #FilmNoir #SerialKillers #crime #drama #thriller #Germany #1930s

An interesting and completely unplanned overlap with today's #FilmDuJour, Robert Hossein's menacing Le vampire de Düsseldorf (1965). Both are based on real-life serial killer Peter Kürten's doings (plus in M's case, Fritz Haarman and Carl Großmann). #FritzLang met Kürten as part of his research, and cast 25 real criminals as extras for his #film.

#cinemastodon

#Bales2023FilmChallenge September 6: freebie: lipstick (July 29 redux)

Set in 1950s #Calcutta, #SatyajitRay's মহানগর [Mahanagar / The Big City] (1963) is a story of emancipation in a changing society. Arati (#MadhaviMukherjee) is a housewife from a traditionalist family, who – in order to support her relatives' lavish demands – goes out to work as a door-to-door saleswoman. Slowly, she discovers her independence.

#film #cinema #CineMastodon @film