The Film Comment Podcast: Diary Films
The work and legacy of the late Jonas Mekas have been on our minds even more than usual, with a recent career retrospective at Film at Lincoln Center and an ongoing exhibit at the Jewish Museum. So, for today’s podcast, Film Comment Editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish wanted to discuss a form of which Mekas was a true master: the Diary Film.
Devika and Clint welcomed John Klacsmann, archivist at Anthology Film Archives, and critic and filmmaker Gina Telaroli for a conversation about films that document their makers’ intimate lives. They discussed Mekas’s kaleidoscopic As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, Ed Pincus’s influential Diaries (1971-1976), and films by Anne Charlotte Robertson and Jim McBride, as well as a the work of a more contemporary diarist: John Wilson, he of the critically acclaimed, eponymous acclaimed HBO show.