strange and beautiful film of the week 2

Sedmikrasky aka Daisies (dir. Vera Chytilová, 1966)

Delightful document of the short-lived Czech New Wave, in which two thoroughly modern young women embark upon an epic journey of boredom, petty crime, provocation and mockery. A freewheeling romp of extreme montage, sudden shifts, spontaneous installations and special disaffections. Something like the futility of freedom.

let's return to the trees

Lioness by Douglas Ross

joshuas by night

photos from Lost America

strange and beautiful film of the week

Valerie a týden divů (Valerie and Her Week of Wonders) is quite simply one of the most beautiful films ever made and should be seen by all lovers of dreams. Furthermore it is yet another product of that greatest of all years, 1970. Warped Reality has two cues from the original soundtrack, as well as some pleasing samples of the Valerie Project, music inspired by the film. There is a large gallery of screenshots at The Cherry Blossom Girl.

history = remembrance = love

Moving images of teenage resistance fighters during the Warsaw Uprising, 2 September 1944. There is a great movie to be made from this story...

(photos by Jerzy Tomaszewski from Wikimedia)

and I still see their faces...

A few samples from an amazing photographic archive of Polish Jewry before the Shoah.

seasonal citation

"Fall is a great touring show, poetically deceptive, an enormous purple-skinned onion disclosing ever new panoramas under each of its skins. No center can be reached. Behind each wing that is moved and stored away, new and radiant scenes open up, true and alive for a moment, until you realize that they are made of cardboard. All perspectives are painted, and only the smell is authentic, the smell of wilting scenery or theatrical dressing rooms, a pile up of discarded costumes among which you wade endlessly as if through yellow fallen leaves."

Bruno Schulz, "A Second Fall"