A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

The section with Lucia Dlugoszewski is unique. I think she's an exceptional composer and performer.

MacDonald: Walden

is the film of yours I've seen most often. When I first saw it, I was conscious primarily of the diaristic aspects. But, more recently I've been just as aware of the changing film stocks and the different tintings of the black-and-white footage. It now seems simultaneously an exploration of your personal environment

and

of film materials.

Mekas:

Those are all controlled accidents. Some of the stock was used because it was available when I ran out of film. When I was filming the part now entitled "A Visit to Brakhages," I ran out of film, and Stan found some outdated Kodachrome under his bed. It was a very different texture than the surrounding material. Sometimes I ran out of color, so I used black and white. I had no plan to explore film stocks. But once you have all those different stocks, then you begin to structure with color; you pay attention to their qualities. The aspect you notice had also to do with my whole approach to film laboratories. You know how paranoid and careful some filmmakers are about labs. Usually the filmmaker tries to supervise the lab work closely, checking one print and another, refusing prints, switching labs. . . . I don't do that. I consider that whatever happens at the lab is what I want. I don't indicate that they should make this part lighter and that darker. I do my work in the camera, and all I ask from the lab is to make a straight, what's known as "one light" print, with no special timing, no anything. Usually I get results that I like. I have never rejected a print. If something goes really wrong, then of course I indicate on the next print that it should be corrected. I think that I have complete control over my materials; I don't leave anything for the labs to do or undo.

MacDonald:

You must have had a tremendous amount of diary footage by the time you made

Walden

. How did you come to make that particular film?

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Mekas:

The Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo had a special celebrationI don't remember the occasionand they commissioned new works in the fields of music, dance, and film, and maybe some other arts. Film was included at Gerald O'Grady's request; he was the adviser there. I was invited to make a film and given ten months to work on it. I used the material that was easiest for me to put together. The gallery helped to make a print and paid the expenses. The version I screened in Buffalo had sound on tape; it was also slightly shorter than the present version. Later I decided to finish the film and to include some other material.

MacDonald:

For me the strongest reel of the four has always been the first. Several sections from that reel are distributed separately.

Mekas:

Yes,

Cassis, Notes on the Circus, Report from Millbrook,

and

Hare Krishna,

all filmed in 1966.

MacDonald:

It led me to wonder whether you edited it reel by reel or . . .

Mekas:

I worked on the thing as a whole. I put those particular parts into distribution, however, before the rest was finished and before the invitation from Buffalo. Eventually I think I will pull them out of distribution, except for

Cassis

which is different from the version you see in

Walden

and

Report from Millbrook,

which is also different.

MacDonald:

When did you become familiar with Thoreau's

Walden

?

Mekas:

It's one of the books that Peter Beard is obsessed with. During the shooting of

Hallelujah the Hills

he gave me a copy, and when I was editing

Walden,

I always had it around. For a long time I thought that that was the first time I read it. But recently, while retyping my early diaries from 1948, I discovered that I was reading

Walden

then, in German.

MacDonald:

It's sometimes thought of as a book about country living, but Thoreau was living just outside of town. In that sense your use of Central Park as your "Walden Pond" strikes me as particularly appropriate.

Mekas:

Not only Central Park. To me Walden exists throughout the city. You can reduce the city to your own very small world that others may never see. The usual reaction after seeing

Walden

is a question: "Is this New York?" Their New York is ugly buildings and depressing, morbid blocks of concrete and glass. That is not my New York. In my New York there is a lot of nature.

Walden

is made up of bits of memories of what I wanted to see. I eliminated what I didn't want to see.

MacDonald:

Is New York the first big city you've spent a lot of time in?

Mekas:

Yes, the first big

modern

city. All other cities I had been in before coming herecities like Hamburg or Frankfurt or Kasselhad been destroyed in the war. There wasn't very much of the city left.

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MacDonald:

By the time you made

Walden