Acknowledged as the father of American avant-garde film, Jonas Mekas's contribution to its history extends beyond his filmmaking; born in Lithuania in 1922 and brought to America by the United Nations Refugee Organization in 1949, he soon after founded Film Culture magazine, the Filmmakers' Cooperative and Anthology Film Archives. Without any of these institutions, the series presented here (and the community and recognition that has developed around experimental cinema in the last 55 years) would not have been possible. In Walden, Jonas Mekas's first completed diary film, we get an epic portrait of the New York avant-garde art scene of the 1960s. Material shot between 1964 and 1968, edited in camera and assembled in chronological order, anthologizes personal moments with colleagues and friends Stan Brakhage, Ken Jacobs, Andy Warhol, and others. Moreover, the film is an expression of a philosophy about filmmaking that is simple, generous, and deeply personal: "I'm only celebrating what I see. I make home movies-therefore I live-therefore I make home movies." (JM)