Jonas Mekas
In Walden, Mekas “documents his casual visits with other filmmakers, artists, and intellectuals across the changing seasons of 1960s New York… the film’s heightened spontaneity of camera movement and sense of edgy immediacy helped define New American Cinema, while Mekas’ use of a simple diaristic approach fills the film with poetic reflections and charming realism.” Featured luminaries include Allen Ginsburg and Hare Krishna hippies, the Brakhage family, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Timothy Leary, and Edie Sedgwick. Of his films, Mekas writes “Of course, what I faced was the old problem of all artists: to merge Reality and Self, to come up with the third thing.”