Via our faithful chronicler, we learn that on this day in 1971, The Point! was first aired as the ABC Movie of the Week. Based on the eponymous sixth studio album by Harry Nilsson (previously), the animated adaptation from director Fred Wolf (also behind Free to Be… You and Me) features the voice talents of Dustin Hoffman, Paul Frees, Mike Lookinland (Bobby Brady) and June Foray and tells the fable of a boy named Oblio, born with a round head and made to wear a pointed cap to hide his “pointless” condition from his pointy-headed peers. After dishonouring the son of a wicked count, Oblio finds himself banished and encounters many strange characters in the Pointless Forest that show him that everything has a purpose, though it may not be obvious at first glance.
Friday 2 February 2024
Wednesday 31 January 2024
nichts der homosexuelle ist pervers, sondern die situation, in der er lebt (11. 308)
Having premiered at the at the Berlin International Film Festival the prior year, Rosa von Praunheim’s It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse But Rather the Society in Which He Lives was broadcast for the first time on the television network Westdeutschen Runk on this day in 1972, the exposure to a wider audience considered emancipatory and resounding globally helped informed the Lesbian and gay rights movements in Germany and the rest of Europe and encouraged individuals, particularly following the liberalisation of Section 175 in 1969 of the German Criminal Code (see previously), to come out of hiding and be seen in a society becoming more tolerant and accepting. Despite criticisms that the film itself was not very good or revelatory (since reappraised for its historical and socio-political influence)—the narrative of a country boy meeting a city boy that in the capital is honest but perhaps not the most ingratiating with promiscuity thwarting attempts to copy the heteronormative lifestyle, though ultimately leading to community activism—it has had an enduring and impactful legacy. Watch the entire film with English subtitles here.
synchronoptica
one year ago: the first McDonald’s in Moscow (1990) plus assorted links to revisit
two years ago: more on the International Geophysical Year, St Geminianus plus more links to enjoy
three years ago: advocating a base-eight system, the Winter Soldier Investigations (1971) plus the first chimpanzee in space (1961)
four years ago: ancient aliens and the Gorn Hegemony, the UK leaves the EU, hidden thread plus Primal Scream (2000)
five years ago: a monument to Scrabble plus division bells
Friday 10 February 2023
smackwater jack (10. 539)
Released on this day in 1971 and featuring tracks “It’s Too Late,” “I Feel the Earth Move,” “You’ve Got a Friend” and “Natural Woman,” the second studio album from Carol King won four Grammy awards and is certified Platinum fourteen times over, making it one of the best-selling and culturally significant recordings of all time. Overall its charting record is only surpassed by Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and King herself held the record for longest time in the ten top for nearly four decades until being succeeded by Adele with 21 in 2017. Cover art features a tapestry that King stitched herself with her cat called Telemachus at her feet.
Tuesday 20 December 2022
and if you want to be free, be free (10. 347)
Premiering on this day in 1971, as our faithful chronicler informs, the romantic black comedy by Hal Ashby and Colin Higgins relates the narrative of Harold Chasen, an adolescent obsessed with the macabre, staging elaborate fake suicides, driving a hearse and attending the funerals of random strangers to the dismay of his wealthy, socialite mother, who goes to great lengths to try to make him more respectable, and Dame Marjorie Chardin, a seventy-nine year old he meets at a funeral mass, who counters his morbid demeanor and teaches him joie de vivre for the first time as their relationship develops into a more intimate one. The film’s soundtrack is provided by Yusuf Stevens. Producer and writer Higgins had expressed an interest later the decade after his work attained cult status after its initial mixed reviews in both a prequel, Grover and Maude wherein Maude learns how to break into cars and fence stolen property and a sequel, Harold’s Story about his life after meeting Maude though neither were pursued though was adapted into a Broadway stage play, a French made-for-tv-movie and a musical version.
Sunday 31 July 2022
so we spin (10. 029)
Published in part at the link, we enjoyed this introduction to the graphic design portfolio of Elinor and Joe Selame in their 1971 data-visualisation (see also here and here) volume that poses the question whether one is a wheel or a cog and demonstrates the discipline’s commitment to limning socio-economic realities and communicating an class and ethnographic truth. Widening inequalities create a thesis and antithesis that can be convey clearly in a family of symbols, which not only project and reflect society, the technique can also help one to understand one’s role within the context of community. More at Print Magazine at the link above.
Monday 20 June 2022
glastonbury fayre
The free four-day concert hosted in Pilton—the second Glastonbury festival, opened on this day in 1971 with the venue of a special Pyramid Stage, a one-tenth scale model of the one at Giza constructed of sheet metal and positioned over a water source discovered with dousing and was documented by filmmakers Nicolas Roeg and David Puttnam—released the following May. Performances included numbers by Melanie, David Bowie, Traffic, Fairport Convention, Tonto’s Expanding Head Band, Mighty Baby and Hawkwind.
Sunday 5 June 2022
but the kettle’s on the boil and we’re so easily called away
Starting a two-week run at the top of the UK charts on this day on 1971, the album Ram, the second by the duo of Paul and Linda McCartney, featured the leading single “Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey,” that song itself reaching number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 and the McCartneys’ first certified Gold post-Beatles. A medley of sound-effects and harmonies, the montage style is reminiscent of Abbey Road and is described by the artists as a musical apology from the younger generation to the older for being impatient and dismissive. I had another look and I had a cup of tea and butter pie.
Monday 2 May 2022
fan mail from a flounder?
Given the MST3K treatment for the first time on this day in 1999 in their tenth season, the surpassing bad 1971 sci-fi horror film also released under the titles ZaAt (the name of the chemical compound), Hydra and Attack of the Swamp Creatures relates the plot of a mad scientist first to transform himself into a catfish-like monster (sort of like the hybrid God-Emperor primate-sandworm) then drug an entire town’s water supply with the same serum to create a community of merpeople. The mad scientist then turns his focus to revenge on his fellow researchers who ridiculed his work.
Sunday 24 April 2022
the snake in the tunnel
Following a referendum in France the day before that admitted the UK, Ireland and Denmark into the Common Market, on this day in 1972 at a summit in Basel the members of the European Economic Community agreed to install an exchange system to limit fluctuations in rates in order that the basket of European currencies would be consistent with the US dollar. With the titular nickname (Schlange im Tunnel, le Serpent monรฉtaire europรฉen), the arrangement was the first attempt to peg the Mark, the Franc and the Pound Sterling to one another that ultimately led to the creation of the euro and was precipitated by the Nixon Shock of the previous year with the repeal of the Bretton Woods system. This coordination, cartel was a method to control appreciation and depreciation and retain relative stability until the following year when the dollar began to float freely and member nations diverged in their response.
Saturday 9 April 2022
jacob and sons
Originally recorded as a children’s pop cantata in 1968 at Cole Court School for Boys and workshopped some more before becoming a full-fledged fixture in the repertoire of musical theatre, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber collaborated with the group The Mixed Bag to produce The Joseph Consortium in 1971, a cross between rock opera and psychedelic kids show (previsioning another parallel composition) that was a retelling of the biblical figure and patriarch of the Book of Genesis, Joseph. Any dream will do.
Friday 14 January 2022
scarabus
Via Weird Universe, we are (formally—as it seems familiar in a way but never knew the artist’s name) introduced to the Belgian writer and animator Gรฉrald Frydman through his 1971 surreal vignette about a town and the bizarre rituals of its inhabitants. Frydman’s short films were jury selectees and winners of the Palme d’Or in 1976 and 1984 and can be viewed at the artist’s channel.
Friday 31 December 2021
3 sutton place
The Burmese diplomat appointed as United Nations Secretary-General after the unexpected death of Dag Hammarskjรถld in 1961 declining overtures for a third-term, U Thant (แแ့်, U being an honorific title and not a first or family name) stepped down on this day in 1971, having facilitated negotiations between Khrushchev and Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, intervened to avoid a chaotic break-up of Congo, overseeing the end of colonial rule for many states in Asia and Africa and was a vocal critic of America’s actions in Vietnam. His successor taking office on 1 January 1972, Kurt Waldheim—in 1986 during some opposition research whilst running for the Austrian presidency (which he won) was revealed to have been a Nazi intelligence officer during World War II—secured the seat accidentally after several rounds of the Security Council conclave failed to produce a winning candidate and three of the four member states with veto power (the USSR backed Waldheim) failed to coordinate their override and abstained instead. After Waldheim left office, incumbency was limited to two terms.
Friday 24 December 2021
als ich vom himmel fiel
Miraculously on this day in 1971, en route from Lima to home in-land in Iquitos after graduation ceremonies, seventeen-year-old Juliane (nรฉe Koepcke) Diller not only lived through a catastrophic airplane crash, the cabin broken up by a lightening strike at altitude and tumbling three-thousand metres from the sky still belted into her seat, which took the lives of ninety-one others (her mother included), as sole survivor, she wandered through the rainforests of Peru alone for eleven days before finding civilisation and medical care for her injuries though wholly ambulatory and only sustaining a broken collar bone and a gash to her arm prone to infection. Somewhat of a wild-child, daughter to a pair of biologists, Koepcke was raised in the jungle and had acquired the skills that helped her to persevere. Scouting for filming locations for Aquirre—the Wrath of God, the 1972 historical epic with Klaus Kinski leading a retinue of conquistadores down the Amazon in search of the legendary seven cities of gold, director Werner Herzog would have also taken that flight, had it not been for a change in his itinerary. Subject of a 1988 documentary, Herzog and Koepcke toured the crash site together. Like her parents, Koepcke also studied biology and continued their research in Peru, specialising ultimately in chiroptology, and presently is the chief library for the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Munich.
Monday 20 December 2021
6x6
you sure have a way with people—well, they’re my species: Harold and Maude at fifty, with soundtrack by Yusuf (Cat) Stevens
lake toilet-brush: the toponymic curse of IKEA product names
๐: a round-up of the Resurrections premier
build back better: US president Joe Biden’s legislative agenda derailed
die hard’s a christmas movie: Eyes Wide Shut (1999) re-evaluated
Friday 17 December 2021
hunky dory
Friday 10 December 2021
nobelfesten
Cancelled for a second year due to the pandemic, normally the Nobel Banquet (previously here and here) is held annually on this day (the anniversary of the death in 1896 of its benefactor, inspired to become a philanthropist after reading a premature obituary of himself that described him as a war profiteer, indeed having amassed his fortune from dynamite), the fรชte hosted in the Blue Hall of the rathaus of Stockholm for 1971 would have included amongst its guests Willy Brandt, chancellor of West Germany, Pavlo Neruda, Chilean poet and diplomat, Simon Kuznets, responsible for turning economics into an empirical, cyclical science, and Gรกbor Dรฉnes, inventory of among other things holography.
Saturday 4 December 2021
smoke on the water
During a show by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention and immortalised by the titular Deep Purple hit (whom were also present to witness the incident, scheduled to record the album Machine Head) on this day in 1971, the venue for the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Swiss city’s casino went up in flames after a fan fired a flare gun. A bootleg recording of Zappa’s performance captures the outbreak and fire alarm as the band and audience fled.
Monday 8 November 2021
sanctuary city
Though the concept of cities of refuge where perpetrators of accidental crimes could claim asylum is ancient and the modern usage seems quite contemporary, the first municipality in the US that passed an ordinance prohibiting city authorities from enforcing rendition for non-violent offences was Berkeley, California, adopting the stance on this day in 1971, inspiring and leading a shift among many polities in North American and Europe to be more welcoming of arriving immigrants and reduce anxiety surrounding deportation and possible family separation.
Saturday 6 November 2021
my mama used to dance for the money they’d throw
The artist’s first solo number one single from the eponymous album Chรฉr (previously), Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves began its two week run at the top of US charts on this day in 1971. With themes of poverty, racism, prostitution and teen-age pregnancy, it was a marked departure from most contemporary easy-listening but proved to be very popular and enduring with positive reviews, cultural inclusion and tribute performances.
Sunday 31 October 2021
schweizer parlamentswahlen 1971
After passing in a national referendum earlier in the year (see also, see previously), women finally secured the right to vote and stand for office in federal elections in Switzerland, exercising their rights for the first time on this day a half a century ago. Lise Girardin (*1921 - †2010) of Geneva was nominated by her party (the Free, Freisinnig Democrats) to be the first female member of the Council of States, der Stรคnderat—the Upper House of the Swiss federal assembly.