Walden (Diaries, Notes and Sketches)
월든 (일기, 노트, 스케치)
- ECO SPIRIT 1: JONAS MEKAS
| Synopsis | “Since 1950 I have been keeping a film diary. I have been walking around with my Bolex and reacting to the immediate reality: situations, friends, New York, seasons of the year. On some days I shot ten frames, on others ten seconds, still on others ten minutes. Or I shot nothing. When one writes diaries, it's a retrospective process: you sit down, you look back at your day, and you write it all down. To keep a film (camera) diary, is to react (with your camera) immediately, now, this instant: either you get it now, or you don't get it at all. To go back and shoot it later, it would mean restaging, be it events or feelings. To get it now, as it happens, demands the total mastery of one's tools (in this case, Bolex): it has to register the reality to which I react and also it has to register my state of feeling (and all the memories) as I react. Which also means, that I had to do all the structuring (editing) right there, during the shooting, in the camera. All footage that you'll see in the WALDEN is exactly as it came out from the camera: there was no way of achieving it in the editing room without destroying its form and content. WALDEN contains material from the years 1964-68, strung together in chronological order. For the soundtrack I used some of the sounds that I collected during the same period: voices, subways, much street noise, bits of Chopin (I am a romantic), and other significant and insignificant sounds.” – Jonas MEKAS |
Director
Jonas MEKAS 요나스 메카스
Jonas was born in 1922 in Lithuania. He was active in the resistance as his country was invaded by Russians and then by Germans, and in 1944 he fled to Vienna with his younger brother Adolfas. Their train was rerouted to Hamburg Germany where they spent the last year of the war as prisoners in a forced labor camp and then four years in displaced persons’ camps in Germany. They could not go home; the iron curtain had fallen across Europe and they could only go west, to America. They settled in New York in late 1949 and began following their dream to become filmmakers. Throughout the 1950s they worked in factories and scraped together money to survive while writing scripts and shooting 16mm films. They also began attending screenings and exhibitions, meeting artists and becoming part of the evolving New York arts scene. Jonas made his first feature film in 1961 and his second in 1963. Then he lost interest in narrative film and started shooting just for himself, inventing the diary style of filmmaking.
| Director | Jonas MEKAS |
| Country | USA |
| Year | 1969 |
| Running Time | 178min |
| Genre | Film Diary |
