Excerpts from Walden : diaries, notes and sketches

The viewer shares in Mekas' daily intimacies with family, friends and lovers as they envelope the screen in pulses of audio-visual stimuli. His world becomes yours, and the immersive nature of the cinema experience is broadened to include an onslaught of perceptual associations derived from the rapid-fire barrage of sound and images. Mekas expounds upon New York City much in the same way that Marcel Proust would focus on a Madeleine cookie as a portal for extended recollections on the passage of time and memory. Two sequences from Jonas Mekas' 3 hour epic reveal prime aspects of his diary filmmaking. The first show us a car trip to New Jersey with friends; the second dives headlong into an audio-visual sensory overload at a wild dance party. Each very basic and direct, the results are haiku-like vivid experiences. 16mm 1.37:1 color sound except end of Reel 5 and beginning of Reel 6; music by Frédéric Chopin, Group Image; with Gideon Bachman, Adolfas Mekas, Jonas Mekas, Hella Hammid, Willard Van Dyke, Shirley Clarke, Wendy Clarke, Marilyn Gottlieb-Roberts, Ed Emswhiller.