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various governments, is totally rotten. This civilization cannot be revolutionized, changed: it has to be
replaced
.
MacDonald:
The titles of
Walden
and your other films have evolved.
Mekas:
Yes.
Walden
was originally titled
Diaries, Notes & Sketches
(
also known as Walden
). But now, since I have many other reels of diary material, there is a confusionat least for the labs. When I was using the title
Diaries, Notes & Sketches: Lost Lost Lost,
they kept writing on the cans
Diaries, Notes & Sketches
and skipping the rest. I had no choice but to rethink the titles. All of my film diaries are
Diaries, Notes & Sketches,
but now I call the individual parts only by their specific names:
Walden, Lost Lost Lost, In Between, Notes for Jerome,
et cetera.
MacDonald:
How does what we see in
In Between
relate to
Walden
in terms of time period?
Mekas:
The
In Between
material is from "in between"
Lost Lost Lost
and
Walden
.
MacDonald:
I had thought of the title as a reference to your situation of being partially rooted here, but still Lithuanian . . .
Mekas:
Yes, that may be true. It's amazing how much one can hide, unconsciously.
MacDonald: Walden
is very involved with traveling, whereas in
In Between
there's more home life. And there's a sense of a relationship with a woman.
Mekas:
I did not want to make
Walden
too long, and there was a certain pace established there. Several of the sequences in
In Between
are much slower. They're not single framed. I did not want to put that material into
Walden
. After finishing
Walden,
I still thought that I would like to use that footage so I collected it and put it into
In Between
.
I made several versions of
In Between,
one of which I put into distribution, then reedited. It was a difficult film to structure because of the Salvador Dali footage, which was very different from the other material. I decided finally to separate that part; I put Dali in his place, so to speak, and I used numbering to break it up a bit. It's now one of my favorite films.
MacDonald:
You mentioned last time that there was a tremendous amount of material collected in the fifties, only a small portion of which was used in
Lost Lost Lost
. Is the same thing true for the sixties?
Mekas:
Maybe a little bit less. In
Lost Lost Lost
I used about one-seventh of the footage I had; in
Walden
and
In Between
I used perhaps a third.
Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania
was shot about one-to-one. I used everything in the film.
MacDonald:
You still have the unused material?
Mekas:
I have it all. I may go back some day and make something else with some of it. Some material is not at all bad. But so far it hasn't