Diaries, Notes, and Sketches

The comings and goings of the late underground filmmaker, Curt McDowell—and the people and activities that came and went along with him—are the themes that run through this existential diary of daily life. McDowell was dying from AIDS-related illnesses during the production of the diary. “An elegy for McDowell, the videowork captures Kuchar’s mournful remembrances of his long-lasting friendship with the young filmmaker. But it also has the inquisitive charm, perverse humor, and quirky candor that places Kuchar’s visual expressions in a gritty niche all their own.”

Over the course of more than fifteen years, Clémenti films a series of intimate diaries, starting from daily encounters. In La deuxième femme, we see Bulle Ogier and Viva, Nico and Tina Aumont, Philippe Garrel and Udo Kier, a performance by Béjart, a piece by Marc’O, concerts by Bob Marley and Patti Smith (not always recognisable)... It’s like a maelstrom of psychedelic images that are passed through a particle accelerator.

This short, started early on into sobriety, finished about nine months in, is a collage of diaries and notes, collected from within addiction and into recovery.

IN THE LAND OF GIANT PYGMIES, a diary of Aurelio Rossi's 1925 trek into the immense Belgian Congo, preserves a long-gone-Colonial-era wonder at natural resources, "primitive" tribes, customs and costumes in Europe's cast African possessions, and implies that the "dark continent" could benefit from the "civilizing" influences of home.

A filmed diary which chronicles two visits to the Olivas, a family of Spanish beekeepers from Salamanca, at the time of the honey harvest, in August and September. Their work and their itinerant life are seen from a friend's point of view.

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.

A letter of love to my past self who discovered himself.

Somewhere between a diary and a filmed letter made while Caroline Champetier was shooting Benoît Jacquot's film L'Intouchable in India.

The director goes to the city of Cuenca in Spain, Castilla-La Mancha for Erasmus. In this process, he records his experiences, days, and trips with a digital handheld camera and Super 8mm. A visual diary of the director is documented by witnessing the 2022 spring period in Spain and Portugal with images.

Filmmaker Jonas Mekas films 160 underground film people over four decades.

The untold state of mind dealing with an incurable disease. One is wondering if there's still a dream to achieve in life. One is running as if this free spirit of mine has never been taken away.

A glimpse of life through movement and memory, negotiating a narrative through images and sounds both personal and found, private and public, recounting four years of the filmmaker's life, relocating from Iran to the US.

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.

An intimate glimpse into 3 years of serene moments, compiling video, polaroids and other things that were lying around when editing.

A short documentary by Jim McBride.

Maria Lang is my very close filmmaker friend who lives in the southern german countryside. We see her gardening and visiting an exhibition of female impressionist painters.

As Janelas Me Diziam Que Os Carros Cor De Lembrança Ainda Percorriam as Movimentadas Ruas do Esquecimento

Through phone call conversations, an aspiring Ilocano filmmaker relates to his mother working in Italy about his dreams and struggles while documenting the invisible betweenness of their language and distance.

Jonas Mekas adjusts to a life in exile in New York in his autobiographical film, shot between 1949 and 1963.

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.