Opus – Page 207 – Encyclopædia of the sublime

Western Lights

Set sail with a dozen sun-bronzed boys on a field-trip through history in Western Lights, a fascinating documentary originally produced for French television. The boys are students from an experimental school and the assignment is to follow the trail of Christopher Columbus on his journey to the New World. The emphasis is definitely on education, but along the way there's plenty of time for fun, with the usual teen high jinks plus whale watching, snorkeling and good old fashioned skinny dipping.

The Genesis Children

The Genesis Children is a movie in which a priest gathers together a group of boys, both American and European, and takes them to a beach on the Mediterranean Sea. There he has plans to stage a play based on the biblical book of Genesis. Throughout the movie, the boys in question are frequently entirely nude and are shown frolicking in the surf, building shelters, driving a van and climbing up cliffs.

Barnens ö

Barnens ö is a Swedish film. The story is set in Stockholm where 11-year-old Reine is on the verge of puberty and afraid of sexual maturity. He lives in a suburb with his single mother who sends him to a traditional Swedish summer camp (common at the time of the setting and managed by the cities for children in need of visiting the countryside. The title of the film is in reference to an island which is home to many such camps). His mother then vacations on her own, but in fact Reine never goes to the camp, instead exploring the summer city of Stockholm on his own, meeting many strange adults.

Acéphale

Acéphale is both a public review created by Georges Bataille (which numbered five issues, from 1936 to 1939) and a secret and esoteric society formed by Bataille and some other members who had sworn to keep silence.

Willem van Aelst

Willem van Aelst was a Dutch Golden Age artist who specialized in still-life painting with flowers or game.

Facade magazine

Facade magazine was the French equivalent to Andy Warhol's Interview.

The 100,000 dollar bill

The 100,000 dollar bill is a banknote of the United States that was printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing from 1934 to 1935. It was never publicly circulated and was only used for transactions between Federal Reserve Banks. With a face value of 100,000 dollars, it is the highest-denominated piece of paper money ever produced by the United States. The note technically still holds the status of legal tender, but has not seen circulation since the 1960s.

Strangling fig

Perhaps the most famous hemiepiphyte is the towering strangler fig tree which starts life as a tiny seed in the canopy. The roots grow down to the forest floor where they take root and begin to take nutrients from the soil. Gradually the roots wrap around the host tree, widen, and slowly form a lattice-work that surround the host's trunk. The fig's crown grows foliage which soon overshadows the tree. Eventually, the host tree dies leaving the fig with a hollow trunk-which is easily climbed thanks to the many openings in the trunk. Figs are often the only tree species remaining after forest clearing since their knotted and twisted wood is shunned by loggers.

Funny Cars

Funny Car is a type of drag racing vehicle and a specific racing class in organized drag racing. Funny cars are characterized by having tilt-up fiberglass or carbon fiber automotive bodies over a custom-fabricated chassis, giving them an appearance vaguely approximating manufacturers' showroom models.

Jacques Anquetil

Jacques Anquetil was a French road racing cyclist and the first cyclist to win the Tour de France five times, in 1957 and from 1961 to 1964. He stated before the 1961 Tour that he would gain the yellow jersey on day one and wear it all through the tour, a tall order with two previous winners in the field - Charly Gaul and Federico Bahamontes - but he did just that.