Idyllic Stretch Of Childhood Gives Rural Maori Youngsters In New Zealand Freedom To Roam With Their Friends

The Eve of Ivan Kupalo/Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, 1968

“A master of Ukrainian poetic cinema, Yuri Ilyenko gained world-wide acclaim as the cinematographer of Parajanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. As a director, he stands proudly in the anti-realist tradition of Dovzhenko: of his nine films, all but one were banned until last year, when A Spring for the Thirsty stunned SFIFF audiences. The Eve of Ivan Kupalo-based on Gogol’s rendering of a Ukrainian folk tale-is probably Ilyenko’s most inspired and experimental work. The opposite of what one expects from a film taken from peasant mythology, it is neither quaint nor corny, and doesn’t depend on broad acting and hearty singing. Suffused with the earthly pantheism of a half-pagan Christianity, Ilyenko’s film celebrates the unbridled passions of a people linked to nature and the rites of the seasons, to animals and the spirits of the forests. The story-a young peasant’s pact with the evil spirit in order to win the hand of a rich man’s daughter-is a simple parable of the evil power of gold over man. The cinematic treatment is dazzlingly complex, a series of astonishing and inventive images-boldly composed in color Cinemascope-married to an equally ambitious sound montage of music and stylized effects.”

no cringe culture, we XD like men

Marc Chagall, Circus, 1967

The “Queen Esther" of the Tel Aviv Purim Carnival in 1934.

The Jews of Eretz Yisrael used to celebrate heartily at the Purim Adloyada [“until they don’t know”] festival and parade held in Tel Aviv in the 1920s and 30’s.   Purim provides the classic example of a Jewish Holiday:   “They tried to kill us. We survived.  Let’s eat!”

25 endangered languages you need to listen to before they disappear

About 2,500 languages are in danger of becoming extinct according to Unesco, and some of them are spoken by only 30 people. By the turn of the century, it is estimated that at least 50 per cent of the world’s current spoken languages will be extinct. Unesco uses a set of five categories to define how endangered a language is:

I’m posting this because it has sound samples for all the languages listed. 

Madhubala in “Mughal-E-Azam” (1960)

Young Jews next to Egypt’s Pyramids of Giza, 1943. Photo by From The Golden Age of the Jews From Egypt by Levana Zamir.

Parvana and Sulayman

Beatriz Milhazes at the Jewish Museum.

Vaslav Nijinsky and Serge Diaghilev. 1911.

Photo by A. Botkin

(Happy Birthday, Vaslav!)