An old man comes across a fascinating archive, then meets a woman who introduces him to the life of a banker, patron and philanthropist. A moving essay that is part documentary, part film diary.
Social & External
Mathilde
Rezy
Young Gerard
Reminiscences of a trip to Čáslav
Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast-paced and archival in spirit, the film celebrates the avant-garde as its own “nation of cinema,” a vital community existing outside the dominance of commercial film.
This short experimental diary film reveals my struggles with mental illness in my adolescence and queer adulthood while simultaneously reflecting upon my joyous childhood experiences. I investigate when and how my depression began and explain that my relationships with the people I love have supported me through my harder times. The film incorporates footage shot over May and June 2023 and archival home videos. Overall, I aim to resolve my "growing pains" through the medium of diary film and by reconnecting with my younger self.
Two teen boys living in an isolated house in the mountains contemplate their existence while maintaining a video diary of their daily lives.
A young girl turns into an A-List celebrity over night when her private journal is accidently published and becomes a best-seller.
Nanni Moretti recalls in his diary three slice of life stories characterized by a sharply ironic look: in the first one he wanders through a deserted Rome, in the second he visits a reclusive friend on an island, and in the last he has to grapple with an unknown illness.
Sara and Alberto spend their days at home. They look out the window and watch: spring is approaching and the sun is setting later and later. Alberto entertains himself by playing with the light, the shadows and the nooks and crannies they leave on the living room. Sara goes out on the balcony in the evenings and examines the neighborhood with her camera. When they are in bed, they talk about what worries them. About job expectations. About being creative and why keep trying, if someone else has done it before you. About living in confinement, but at the same time, realizing that things haven't changed as much as they seem.
Raphael, Yervant Gianikian's father, survived the Armenian genocide in 1915 in Eastern Turkey. In April 1988, while living in Venice, he sat for his son's camera and read an excerpt from his memoirs, translated from Armenian into Italian.
First part of "La trilogía de las frutas" and the first short film belonging to the "Manifiesto Helsinki" film movement.
It has been a year since Juliette’s sister has passed and she hasn’t been doing so well since that day, but she must learn how to be kind to herself.
For years, together with his partners from the production company O Quadro, he has been betting on cinema as a tool to explore the typical issues of youth. In this film, Evandro Scorsin turns the cameras on himself as he deals with the dilemmas of the passing of time and the imposition of adulthood. In an exercise in autofiction where cinema and life merge, the film is also a cinematic love letter to the beloved masters (especially Nicholas Ray). Coming and going between two countries and times, it records the vertigo of displacement and the reinventions inherent to an immigrant experience.
On January 1st, 1999, Caveh Zahedi started a one-year video diary. The idea was to shoot one minute each day. This is the result.
A short documentary by Jim McBride.
Also known as Walden, Jonas Mekas’s first diary film is a six-reel chronicle of his life in 1960s New York, interweaving moments with family, friends, lovers, and artistic idols. Blending everyday encounters with portraits of the avant-garde art scene, it forms an epic, personal meditation on community, creativity, and the passage of time.
I wasn’t told. I wasn’t told it would be so difficult to live together. To keep a family together. To maintain love and happiness. I wasn’t told, and if someone had told me I wouldn’t have listened. I chose to live with my camera in my hand, filming the trajectory of feelings, from the golden age to the lost paradise, from being born to being reborn.
It compiles more than twenty years of passionately recorded “pictures from life” captured on super 8, that Vukica Djilas shot from 1970 to late 1990s.
A film collage tracing the story of the lives, loves, and deaths within the artistic community surrounding Jonas Mekas.
A diaristic exploration of masculinity after experiencing a schizophrenic breakdown. Static memories recur and dissolve in a search for understanding and quiet liberation.
A passionate foodie loses his beloved hawker stalls to corporate pressure, he reluctantly turns to processed food he calls 'trash' in a moment of deep sorrow and disappointment as he grieves the loss of his favourite food stalls.
A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.