Saturday, February 16, 2019 at 7pm
Jonas Mekas's Walden: Diaries, Notes, and Sketches

155 Freeman Street, Brooklyn

Walden: Diaries, Notes, and Sketches, Jonas Mekas, 1969, 16mm, 180 mins

"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 Diaries 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 materials from the years 1965-69, 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."

- JM

Reel 1

"New York in spring; Tony Conrad; Bibbie in Central Park; A Wedding; Breakfast in Marseilles; Cassis; Sitney leaves New Haven; Fire on 87th Street; Brakhage crosses Central Park; Carl Th. Dreyer; A trip to Millbrook; Flowers for Marie Menken; Gregory Markopoulos shoots Galaxie; Notes on the Circus."

Reel 2

"Kreeping Kreplachs meet (Ginsberg, Ed Sanders, Tuli, Warhol, Barbara Rubin, etc.) / Hare Krishna walk; autumn scenes; Sitney's Wedding; New Year's Evening in Times Square; Goofing on 42nd Street; Uptown Party; Velvet Underground; Deep of Winter; Naomi visits Ken & Flo Jacobs; Amy stops for Coffee; Coop Directors meet; Dreams of Cocteau; In Central Park; What Leslie saw thru the Coop window; Olmsted Hike."

Reel 3

"Barbara Rubin shoots a movie; Christmas Eve; A visit to Brakhages (Colorado); A Visit to Hans Richter; In Central Park; Peter's Wedding."

Reel 4

"Autumn scenes; Mel's children; A trip to New Jersey; Wendy's Wedding; In Central Park; Skating rink; Winter scenes; Sunday Morning Snowstorm on 8th Avenue; Martha; Anthology Cinema meets; Yoko Ono and John Lennon; Central Park."

FREE

Please note: seating is limited. First-come, first-served. Box office opens at 6:30pm.