FRAGMENTS OF PARADISE
A FILM ABOUT JONAS MEKAS BY KD DAVISON
“Fragments of Paradise comes close to cinematic heaven”
“Fragments of Paradise is a more than skin-deep overview of the late Mekas’ life, one that feels like a final message from him directly. It’s a tribute to art’s power to connect, even with those who are gone. ”
“Director KD Davison shows great sensitivity with her third feature, in chronicling the personal and artistic journey of this extraordinary figure. She conveys an uplifting oeuvre that catapults viewers beyond the limitations of conventional thinking…”
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
Jonas Mekas’ life and work defies every convenient summation, or categorization. Like his filmography, it is at once fragmented and vast. His film and video diaries alone total around 500 hours.
I spent the pandemic year in hermitage with this sprawling archive. Thousands of hours of raw footage, audio recordings, photos, volumes of written works, diaries, poems, letters, and critical reviews. I let loose the ideas carried into the project and instead, immersed myself in his life and in turn, he emerged in mine.
Something happens when you experience his work this way, in a marathon viewing over the course of eight months. There were times he would speak through the flickering light, turn to camera, as if to me, and declare, “this is a fragment of paradise.”
Others who have spent time in his archive have had similar experiences. It’s the intimacy, the vulnerability shared with his camera... which is to say, with us. We, the audience, experience his diaries as the intimate reflections of a life-long friend.
I have often thought this is how he would prefer his work to be seen, immersive and in its totality, which presents a paradox for narrative, biographical storytelling. Jonas’ diary films are reflections on his own life story. At some point it became clear to me that the most honest way forward was about putting together pieces of the story he had already told. Over time, I decided the addition of traditional interviews could help make Jonas’ work accessible to a wider audience.
Some ardent fans and admirers may desire more biographical facts. Without question, Jonas’ historical role in the American avant-garde merits a film all its own.
However, the themes at the heart of his work, revisited again and again—themes of loss, exile, existential crisis and, yes, the relentless pursuit of beauty—speak to deeper truths.
Like meditation, Jonas’ own work seems to be a kind of path... cinema and poetry as tools to examine and reflect lived experience, the present moment.
This is what I wanted to explore. Art as path and the themes that drove him.
In our present moment, increasingly defined by crisis, loneliness and anxiety, Jonas’ experience of displacement, and his lifelong contemplation of loss, suddenly take on a universal quality.
There is something to be gleaned from his almost religious insistence on the importance of momentary, small, fragile things; his focus on mundane experience as the essence of a happy life.
Fragments of Paradise is itself a fragment, a window onto “some of the beauty” Jonas seems to have found everywhere.
I hope it inspires a new generation to dig deeper into his life and work and perhaps undertake similar investigations, with at least some measure of his obvious delight.
With appreciation,
KD DAVISON
If it’s not uplifting, if it doesn’t pierce the limitations of habitual thinking and illuminate our better selves, what’s the point?
- kd davison
ABOUT
KD Davison is an award-winning director. Her third documentary feature, Fragments of Paradise, won a Lion for Best Documentary on Cinema at the 2022 Venice International Film Festival and a Grand Jury Prize at Doc NYC. In 2020, she directed the film adaptation of Jon Meacham’s, The Soul of America, for Kunhardt Films and HBO, and in 2017, co-directed her first film, Ordinary People, in collaboration with Natalie Johns and Get Lifted Film Co. KD is driven by the belief that storytelling can guide us to a more compassionate view of ourselves and one another.
