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When one of the pioneers and key figures in the American film avantgarde after World War Two makes a selection from his film diaries, then one doesn’t have to be surprised if the final result is more than four hours long. As well as shots of family and relatives, we also come across a choice selection of filmmakers and film theoreticians who come up directly or indirectly in the Rotterdam 2002 programme such as Hans Richter, Stan Brakhage, Harry Smith, Paul Sharits, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Ernie Gehr, Robert Breer and Nam Jun Paik.Jonas Mekas: ‘My film diaries 19701979: my marriage, children are born, you see them growing up. Footage of daily life, fragments of happiness and beauty, trips to France, Italy, Spain, Austria. Seasons of the year as they pass through New York. Friends, home life, nature, unending search for moments of beauty and celebration of life friendships, feelings, brief moments of happiness, beauty. Nothing extraordinary, nothing special, things that we all experience as we go through our lives. The soundtrack consists of music and sounds recorded mostly during the same period from which the images came. Sometimes I talk into my tape recorder, as I edit these images, now, from a distance of time. The film is also my love poem to New York. It’s the ultimate Dogme movie, before the birth of Dogme.’