Letter to a Long Lost Friend

The processes of memory bringing forth, after. American Retreat. “An image I can live with.” The arc and shadow of time. We are presented with an image of trees which slowly fades to black. As it fades, quick luminous close-ups of branches with, and then without, leaves emanates from the darkness. We travel from the midst of a situation (not seeing the trees for the forest) to memory’s preoccupation with condensed luminous details. Finally it is only the details which we keep with us; the original situation fades into the past. On the soundtrack we hear a man reading from a diary about touring through northern Italy; the things he sees, the people he meets, and the details which will be the only record of his passage when he looks back on his experience.