Documentary
Walden: Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
Jonas Mekas · 1969
Synopsis
Walden: four years, from 1964 to 1968, seen through the filmmaker's Bolex camera, which records, as a stroller, dinners, weddings and four complete cycles of seasons, in New York, in the industrial wastelands of New Jersey or at Stan Brakhage's in the Rocky Mountains. The film is divided into four parts; intertitles announce or comment on the images, and the soundtrack alternates music, including Chopin, the filmmaker's voice and the sounds of the city. One meets the New York counterculture, from the Velvet Underground in its early days to friends from the avant-garde.
Context
After filming scenes from his daily life for years, the author made the film at the request of the Albright-Knox gallery in Buffalo and gave it the name of Thoreau's book. Shot on 16 mm and in colour, about three hours long, it incorporates short films edited earlier and first appeared under the title Diaries, Notes and Sketches, which the author wanted to give to all his films. The filmmaker says he edited mostly in the camera, reacting in the moment. It is his first major filmed diary, distributed by the Film-Makers' Cooperative of New York.
Who it is for
A three-hour film, in English, without a plot, which is watched like a diary; it is released as a box set with the author's main films.
Prizes and reception
Hailed as a major work of experimental cinema and as the first of its author's great filmed diaries.