Film Diary NYC is now accepting submissions for the 4th edition, which will take place January 2026 in NYC and at satellite venues worldwide. Please visit filmfreeway.com/filmdiary to submit.
FILM DIARY NYC programs experimental, autobiographical films that capture the personal history and daily experiences of the filmmaker. Through an annual festival and ongoing special events, we provide a platform for the most heartfelt but most overlooked cinema: diary films, home movies, and personal documentary.
This book focuses on the unique forms of expression in the diary film and the essay film, especially how authorship of filmmakers can be integrated in the voice-over as a narrative strategy in first-person cinema. The book is divided into two sections: the first section “essays” contains three chapters, and in these chapters I use films of Liu Na’Ou, Hollis Frampton, Jonas Mekas, and José Luis Guerín as cases for filmic textual analyses, to discuss the issues of authorial presence, the voiceover narration, and audiovisual structure.
The story of my hair can be told in two lines. My hair was long and black. It has turned white. It hasn't been cut since 1982, almost thirty years ago. Story of my Hair is a journey, both in space and in time. Anyone looking for truths, whether geographical, scientific or historical, will be disappointed. After looking at real events and real places the film very soon distances itself from them, preferring poetry and fiction. In his own fashion the auteur has combined the story of Samson and Delilah, the journey of those condemned to the death camps, the science of hair and a few thoughts about the meaning and fragility of life.
This film was made with series of images, over 4000, all them integrate a photographic recording that I have been carrying out for the past three years. Without any initial purpose that would circumscribe all these images, this photo diary drifts and accompanies many different circumstances, trips, places and people.
The editing of the film shown here does not resort to any major tricks: no image cutting was carried out - the photos are all here, in chronological sequence - frame speed was manipulated in a 35mm editing table where the mechanic and physical gesture can create a suspension of frame in time, interspersed with other moments in which the progression of the film takes on a syncopate rhythm.
