The Light at Walden
Directed by Pablo Frasconi
Visit Film Site: pablofrasconi.net
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“Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary.”
– Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
“I was so deeply moved that I re-read the work [Civil Disobedience] several times. This was my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. The teachings of Thoreau came alive in our civil rights movement…whether expressed in a sit-in at lunch counters, a freedom ride into Mississippi, a peaceful protest in Albany, Georgia, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, these are outgrowths of Thoreau’s insistence that no moral man can patiently adjust to injustice.” – Dr. Martin Luther King
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“What is the use of having a nice house without a decent planet to put it on?”
For two years, 1845-47, Henry David Thoreau lived alone, frugally, in a cabin that he built with his own hands near Walden Pond, Massachusetts. He is best known for his penetrating observations of man and nature, especially Walden, on his pursuit of a more deliberate and sustainable life in the woods, and, Civil Disobedience, on how to create a more responsible democracy.
The principles of Civil Disobedience have been applied with profound results by Gandhi in South Africa and India, by Dr. King in the U.S. Civil Rights movement, in the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and in recent peaceful protests around the world.
The Light at Walden, a full-length documentary by award-winning filmmaker Pablo Frasconi, will blend Thoreau’s writings, filmed observations of nature at Walden Pond, and interviews with writers, environmentalists, and activists.
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Pablo Frasconi, a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, left the U.S. for Canada and designed and built a cabin (much like Thoreau’s) on an island in Nova Scotia. He returned to the U.S. in 1976, and since, has received 18 national and regional grants and fellowships for film production, including from the National Endowment for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Film Institute. His films: Survival of a Small City, Towards The Memory of a Revolution, and The Woodcuts of Antonio Frasconi have been broadcast on PBS and distributed by the Museum of Modern Art, The American Federation of Arts and Filmmakers’ Library. They are in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, the Virginia Museum of Arts, and hundreds of institutions and libraries. The Longing, interpreting the poetry of Teresa de Avila, premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in 2008. He has also worked on productions for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Weston Woods Studios. He teaches production workshops, experimental film, and how to originate and develop ideas for film at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
“Pablo Frasconi will bring the philosophy of Thoreau alive with a poetic freshness that rings true.” – Dr. Cesar Diaz-Carrera, President of the Institute for the Development of Creativity, and Professor of Political Science (Public Leadership), University of Madrid.
Production update: initial funding from the Park Foundation; expected release in Fall 2013.
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