"Since 1950 I have been keeping a film diary [...] On some days I shot ten frames, on others ten seconds, still on others ten minutes. Or I shot nothing. When one writes diaries, it's a retrospective process [...] To keep a film diary, is to react (with your camera) immediately, now, this instant: either you get it now, or you don't get it at all [...] To get it now, as it happens, demands the total mastery of one's tools (in this case, Bolex): it has to register the reality to which I react and also it has to register my state of feeling (and all the memories) as I react. Which also means, that I had to do all the structuring (editing) right there, during the shooting, in the camera [...] For the soundtrack I used some of the sounds that I collected during the same period: voices, subways, much street noise, bits of Chopin (I am a romantic), and other significant and insignificant sounds." (Jonas Mekas)

Jonas Mekas (1922-2019) was born in Lithuania and, with his brother Adolfas, was held captive in a forced labor camp during World War II. He immigrated to New York in the late 1940s. There he became an emblematic figure of the American experimental cinema and the avant-garde scene, making mainly diary films but also founding magazines, collectives and experimental film archives. He was the first director of the famous organization for experimental cinema Anthology Film Archives. Until the end of his life he wrote poetry and published books on cinema, made diaristic cinema with film but also with the new digital media.