Abstract
In 2011, Jonas Mekas and José Luis Guerín finished their collective film project, Correspondence: Jonas Mekas – J. L. Guerín, a series of ‘film-letters’ between the two contemporary filmmakers. The film starts with Guerín (Letter to Jonas Mekas no. I), and ends, also with Guerín (Letter to Jonas Mekas no. 5). The film includes nine film-letters between the two. The film is interesting, as it is not only a project across time and space – it took three years to complete, and the correspondences sent and received from numerous locations across the globe – but is also that rarest of filmmaking, so close to diary film and first-person cinema, yet with something different waiting to be discovered.
 In this paper I shall discuss the following characteristics in the film correspondence between Guerín and Mekas, in order to give a clearer picture of what exactly is a film-letter:
 1) When is the (real) beginning of film-letters?
 2) The continuity and exchange of the filmed subjects and themes.
 3) The narration: the use of images plus voice-overs in film-letters.
 4) The question of audience.
 
 Article received: December 30, 2017; Article accepted: January 10, 2018; Published online: April 15, 2018; Original scholarly paper
 
 How to cite this article: Lee, Ming-Yu. "Film-Letter: the Beginning, Exchanging and Narration in Jonas Mekas and José Luis Guerín’s Correspondence." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 15 (2018): 127–134. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i15.236
Highlights
In 2011, Jonas Mekas and José Luis Guerín finished their collective film project, Correspondence: Jonas Mekas – J
In this paper I shall discuss the following characteristics of the film correspondence between Guerín and Mekas, in order to give a clearer picture of what is a film-letter in terms of narrative approach and its relation to personal filmmaking
There’s another mode that exists in film-letters, which is that the beginning of the correspondence narrative has to be initiated by someone, whether it is a proposing of a film-letter correspondence between two parties, or it is an actual sending of the first letter as the starting point
Summary
For a correspondence to proceed and continue, there has to be something to ensure that. We see Guerín’s notebook on the table, and on the page there’s the word “FILM” In this first letter, Guerín starts the correspondence by choosing, either on his own or as a means of responding to Mekas, by discussing cinema and life. Near the end of the first letter, he finds his answer on the revolving door in the railway station, with the images of passersby reflected on the glass This cinema life theme is continued in the second letter. In the fifth letter, responds to this sudden change and shows Mekas his footage too Guerín videotapes his friend Nika Bohinc, a film critic killed in the Philippines in 2009, shifting the film-letter’s topic from memory to death. The big letter engraved on Ozu’s tombstone that says “Mu (nothingness)”, gives a closure to the final letter and lends to the ending a feeling of Zen
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