In a series of five letters to each other, presented in Spanish and English, José Luis Guerín and Jonas Mekas exchange ideas, thoughts, visions and reflections on cinema, realism and life. A trip through Paris, a visit to Henry David Thoreau's hut at Walden Forest, the revisiting of footage in the cutting room, conversations with film critic Nika Bohinc, travels through Krakow, meals shared with friends, fleeting sights from a moving train, observations from the Venice Festival are all woven in highly personal letters that testify to Mekas' principle (also shared by Guerín) that cinema is a reaction to life. Each filmmaker revisits past images, framed by commentaries that offer telling insights into their working methodologies. This is a film about friendship and craft, about poetry and cinema, modes of communicating and fragments of life captured on screen. 'I have a need to tape, for whatever reason', states Mekas, 'I do not know what makes me do it, but I have to do it, I just have to do it'. Correspondence is both a visual trace of this journey and a memorable illustration of Thoreau's dictum that 'the world is but a canvas to our imaginations'.

Maria Delgado