Haphazard travels of Comrade Sirman Deville

[niminy-piminy]

now, self-quoting my two posts (from two other different threads — "RIP" and "Last Watched") related to the previous post about RED WESTERN and LEMONADE JOE and ARIZONA WARBLER...
don't be surprises to notice in the clip (with singing LEMONADE JOE) the landscape resembling an abandoned limestone quarry (yes, it is truly a local "Grand Canyon" called "Big America").

Lemonade Joe saying goodbye...
https://letterboxd.com/actor/karel-fiala/

ááááááááááááá

sou fááár tu ju aj méééj
fortunáááj mí tu séééj
mučačíta mi tára koverááá
an maj déééj sej áááj

tu júúú aj mej só fááár
mí tu séééj hóli stááár
an maj véj djú aj séj tu maj valííí
du aj léééj sou géééj

gudbáááj gudbáááj gudbáááááááááj

https://youtu.be/Zm_BreW18hw

and btw. in Bohemia we have also our "Grand Canyon" which is (not colloquially but) officially called "Big America"...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velk%C3%A1_Amerika

Velká Amerika (Big America, Czech Grand Canyon) is a partly flooded, abandoned limestone quarry in the Central Bohemian Region

that's the place we usually shoot our "red westerns".
and next to Big America is another quarry (smaller one) which is (not colloquially but) officially called "Mexico".

[niminy-piminy]

1943 poll viewing No18:
HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (Mary Field, 1943)

for anything and everything "comrade" blame Spain!
in Spain, all this "comrade" thing started!

[niminy-piminy]

1943 poll viewing No19:
THE LIFE HISTORY OF THE ONION (Mary Field, 1943)

https://vimeo.com/38922794

detour viewing:
CIPOLLINO, THE ONION BOY (Boris Dyozhkin, 1961)
https://letterboxd.com/film/cipollino-1961/

https://youtu.be/2mbCnBklU5Q

fruit & vegetable class struggle...

revolting precariat (political prisoners):
Onion Boy (leader of the revolution)
Radish Girl (mistress of the leader of the revolution)
Uncle Pumpkin (victim of the eviction)
Uncle Grapes
Uncle Blueberry
Uncle Pear (intellectual, artist)
Father Onion

servants of the elites:
Lemon Soldiers (army)
Detective Carrot (police)
Mr. Cactus (traitor, only pretends loyalty, sides with the revolution)

elites:
Prince Lemon (dictator)
Countess Cherry (conjoined twins)
Earl Cherry (royal son, sympathetic with the precariat, joins the revolution)
Signor Tomato (persecutor)

[niminy-piminy]

1975 poll No17
HOW THE COSSACKS BOUGHT SALT (Vladimir Dakhno)

https://youtu.be/_WbOKAPYGRQ

[niminy-piminy]

1975 poll No25
PHOTO IS NECESSARY (Yuriy Piskunov) ... with Eng subs

https://youtu.be/iX2QONGNZ3k

[niminy-piminy]

1934 poll No5:
BAZAAR (Mikhail Tsekhanovsky) ... video says 1933, but IMDb/Ltbxd 1934.

https://letterboxd.com/film/bazar-1934/

This brief sequence, titled ‘Bazaar,’ or ‘The Market,’ remains the sole surviving remnant of what would have been the first feature-length Soviet animation film, ‘The Tale of the Priest and of his Workman Balda’.

now, being endowed with Jean Epstein's impressionist quote (mentioned in another thread the other day)...

There are no stories, there never have been stories. There are only situations, having neither head not tail; without beginning, middle or end.

and being familiar with an emphasis on a fragment by Jena-circle of Early German Romanticism...

https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/artic ... a-fragment

An appreciation and practice of the fragment is a feature of all European Romanticism, but it was in early German (or ‘Jena’) Romanticism, and most of all in the work of Friedrich Schlegel, that the concept of ‘the fragment’ was philosophically determined. Indeed, the fragment has been called ‘the central philosophical concept of early German Romanticism’. As both concept and form the (early German Romantic) fragment is at once philosophical and literary. It is the expression of both a philosophical limit and its surpassing, in a form made new by its self-conscious theoretical investiture. To the extent that the Romantic idea of the fragment developed out of a more general fascination with ruins, it is also tied in its origins to the cultural appreciation of archeology and architecture and of all the forms of ancient material and artistic culture that survive as ‘fragments’ of things (manuscripts, vases, pots, and so on) or of those cultures themselves.

... i almost feel like survival of BAZAAR in fragmental form only makes it shine out more than if it would be part of some rational (i.e. debilitating) beginning-middle-end story. this mind-blowing fragment/ruin (boldly popping up as if "out of context") is a serious contender for my 1934 numero uno (highly recommended! true discovery! well-done comrades!).

https://youtu.be/NVSWMWZugis

[niminy-piminy]

1993 poll No17:
GIRL FROM MOUSH (Gariné Torossian)

Girl From Moush is a poetic montage of the artist's journey through her subconscious Armenia. It is not an Armenia based in a reality but one, which appears, like the mythical city of Shangri-La, when ones eyes are closed. A mesh of traditional images 'engraved' in film, with haunting voice-over, and rich colors, music and rhythms that continues long after the film is over. The viewers are engaged and forced through unchartered landscapes of uncertainty and fascination.

https://vimeo.com/296698699

[sally]

me, excited, telling everyone to come watch this:




best film i've seen recently is the bear's wedding. i've absolutely no idea how it got made in 1925 soviet russia, it's absolutely demented and everyone dies at the end, so far so russian, but the proles in the movie aren't shown in any particularly flattering light, in fact they barely even feature - maybe they got away with it by demonstrating the perversions of the decadent aristocracy, but whatever, hooray for this uber-gothic hot mess (they've seen german expressionism, and there's the krazy-chop soviet influence but also think something along the lines of epstein's usher)

plot is bananas - posh wife cheats, husband murders her lover, wife finds the body just as a bear is getting interested in it, it then attacks her, she is so traumatised she goes insane, gives birth to baby boy who grows up to look like ivan mosjoukine's lunatic uncle who believes he's possessed by a bear and goes out on night sprees attacking women...but then meets a posh girl who is....kooky (an idiot) and tries to mend his ways so they get married but on the wedding night.....

available prints are: a long version with subs but unwatchable dreadful quality, commonly circulating; a beautifully crisp, tinted print streaming on the cineteca milano website, but it's only 35 mins long and makes zero sense; or the best compromise - the one below - it's clearly missing footage, unless they intended millisecond length shots and interminable intertitles just to add to the madness, and you need to right-click the player and watch in 0.75 speed, and there's no subs, but even so:

www.culture.ru/movies/15532/medvezhya-s ... nii-shemet

[nrh]

looks like kg has a 1080p subtitled version that runs 1 hr 7 minutes, looks like it might be the subbed version of the copy playing on culture.ru?

[sally]

argh don't tell me that now! well actually it's fine cuz i can't play 1080p files on my old laptop anyway so i reckon i've got a year or so left before that's me buggered for downloading anything ever again. luckily there's still decades worth of ghastly rips on youtube.

yeah it looks like it's the same version (although it's way too fast, you have to watch it in slower speed) but subtitles would have been nice i guess. next time i'll ask! (there's tons & tons of good quality soviet silents on that site i've not seen anywhere else, assuming they've all made it to kg with subtitles)

[niminy-piminy]

Sergei Parajanov. Self-Portrait in Istanbul. 1989.

[niminy-piminy]

2009 poll rewatch:

Ukrainian Literature: Guide for Assholes (Anatoliy Lavrenishyn, Dmytro Kolomoytsev, 2009, 3m)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2144185/

It was a common habit in Soviet schools to draw the intimate organs on all portraits in textbooks.

https://youtu.be/0LyWFDf2Y50

[niminy-piminy]

Сокровища затонувших кораблей (The Treasures of the Sunken Ships), V. Popov, V. Pekar, 1973, 16 min
→ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6052608/

The animation tells about three guys from the Soviet pioneer camp on the Black Sea coast, where the children came for the summer holidays. Children visit the workshop for those who are fascinated by the secrets of the underwater world. There, the guys will learn a lot of new and interesting things. This inspires friends to exploit, and they go to sea on an exploratory ship to search for wrecks that carry treasures, gold and wealth on board. All this is necessary for the boys to help the boy Mwamba and other children from his poor country. The children really wanted to meet the pirates, but their adventures proved to be even more fascinating.

bottom of the Black Sea.
pioneers (juvenile wannabe communists) in a submarine called "Neptune".
they stumble upon a shipwreck.

Seva: "It's clear — a fascist destroyer." (9:14)
Borya: "How do you know that?" (9:18)
Seva: "Read! The fascists marked their destroyers with the letter Z." (9:22)

https://youtu.be/c_ZKVRMpeIs?t=514

[niminy-piminy]

Karen Shakhnazarov → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Shakhnazarov

The opponents of the letter Z must understand that they will not be spared.
It's now serious: concentration camps, re-education, sterilization!

https://twitter.com/IvanetsZalesski/sta ... vIJ4_9C0eg

[sally]

are we definitely sure that's him cuz rischka already pooped on mikhalkov (and i was quite ready to believe that!)

[niminy-piminy]

dilettante encyclopedia already records it for the generations to come as his undeniable claim so i have no reason to believe it no less than 99 percent!

In May 2022, he stated on-air at the national Russian TV station Rossiya 1 that Russians who oppose "letter Z" (the symbol of Putinism) will be put into concentration camps and sterilized, and should not expect to survive.

[niminy-piminy]

1955 poll:

PSYCHIATRY IN RUSSIA (Albert Maysles)

In 1955, Albert Maysles traveled to Russia, 16mm camera in hand. During this trip, he shot what was to become his first film, PSYCHIATRY IN RUSSIA, an unprecedented view into Soviet mental healthcare.

https://youtu.be/15L7G5lOvUk

[niminy-piminy]

old good days of the Soviet Necro Union (that some try to restore)...

1984 poll:
WEREWOLF ORDERLIES (Yevgeny Yufit)

A young sailor gets off a train holding a saw. He walks into a forest which is full of people in white medical coats whose behaviour is absurd and eccentric. The sailor is overcome by the collective madness and obeying the masochistic urge gives himself to be devoured by the werewolf-orderlies.

https://youtu.be/dCfSevZqZ5c

[niminy-piminy]

1960 poll

A cavalcade of cut-out animation featuring Nikita Khrushchev indulging in fart gags and other buffooneries.

a pre-Gilliam Gilliam style animation.

nice ass

https://youtu.be/KHckEr7BS0Y