Customer Reviews

Walden: Diaries, Notes & Sketches by Jonas Mekas

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Length:: 1:14 Mins

What a brilliant idea to create a "film diary!" Jonas Mekas, a leading figure in experimental films, has painted the perfect picture of 1960s New York using his influential avant-garde filmmaking style. Watching his flickering, 16mm footage is so moving that it will inspire one to create there own personal film diary. If you want to take a glimpse in the day of the life of Jonas Mekas, P. Adams Sitney, Tony Conrad, Stan Brakhage, Carl Th. Dreyer, Timothy Leary, Baba Ram Dass, Gregory Markopoulos, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, Jerome Hill, Barbet Schroeder, Jack Smith, Edie Sedgwick, Nico, Velvet Underground, Ken Jacobs, Hans Richter, Standish D. Lawder, Adolfas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, Jud Yalkut, Peter Kubelka, Michael Snow, Richard Foreman, John Lennon, and Yoko Ono, I suggest watching this moving poetry on screen.

Disc 1 - Reels 1-3
Hey, kids, welcome to the 'sixties avant-garde! If you are an Eastern European intellectual exiled in mid-20th century New York, pursuing your passion for non-narrative art film with a capital ART, and your friends are musicians, poets, painters, and filmmakers, this is what your home movies (diaries, notes, and sketches) look like. It's the view of early-to-mid-'60s NYC from Brakhage Avenue to the intersection of Warhol and Ginsberg. As Mekas warbles in a seemingly impromptu ditty that meanders over part of reel one: "I make home movies, therefore I live. I live, therefore I make home movies. They tell me I should always be searching, but I'm only celebrating what I see. I am searching for nothing. I am ha-a-appyeeee...." Just to warn readers of the official synopsis: Expectations of star-gazing should be kept to a minimum. Yes, you get a fair helping of Dreyer, Brakhage, and others, but to give another example, I counted about two seconds of screen time in its entirety for a radiantly blonde Nico.

Disc 2 - Reels 4-6
Continues through to 1969 with another idyllic visit chez Brakhage, the posh Newport society wedding of Peter Beard and Minnie Cushing, the rather different wedding of filmmaker Shirley Clarke's daughter Wendy, with its mod strobe-lit reception at 80 Wooster Street, a visit to the country cottage and fish pond of Hans Richter, to rural New England during hunting season, to the peace-in of John and Yoko's honeymoon, and, always, always, New York, New York.

The box set comes with a book containing about 140 pages of forewords, introductions, essays, indices, and a lovely annotation of the films. And about 140 more pages of the same stuff in French translation.

This is the kind of thing I can re-watch innumerable times because the experience itself of watching it is foremost, not a story, characters, plot, climax and all that. It's like the auteur theory the camera is the pen and the director the author. Some things I liked in the 6 reels which are around 30 minutes each are the subway sounds, Jonas reading from St. John of the Cross, the feel of the crisp visuals, even when the editing isn't rapid, it gave me the sensation that my eyes are a machine, like a Bolex. The accompanying book is great too, and will in the days and months ahead make the film more enjoyable. If you like the 60's, counter-culture and non-narrative cinema, this is a must. Plus there's nothing intrisically offensive in it. 10 out of 10

Nuda!! Calkiem jak 'home video' majace znaczenie tylko dla operatora kamery. Proby artystycznego zaciecia widac tylko w ujeciach gdzie rezyser trzesie kamera. Obejrzalem tylko disc#1. Odpuszcze ogladanie drugiej czesci.