1000 Journals (2007) User Reviews

what a brilliant doku

[chris-4153 · 9/10 · 20 February 2008]

I saw 1000 Journals during the Berlin Film Festival at the special Matinée Screening. The opening speech was given by the festivals director himself Dieter Kosslick. Since this film didn't screen in the official competition Kosslicks attendance was special indeed and somewhat of a honor for the films director and producer Andrea Kreuzhage. What fascinated me most were the emotional moments captured during the dozents of interviews of the journal artists around the world. Very intelligent and creative the cutting. Getting this patchwork of interviews and fact materials from 20 something locations all over the world together and producing such exciting to watch 90 Minutes dokumantary shows the professional skills of the films helmer Andrea Kreuzhage. An absolute visual and also creative highlight is the stunning and innovative title artwork. A must see doku not only for the still growing 1000 Journals project community.

Dear Journal, here's an inside look of 1000 Journals. It was pretty interesting.

[ironhorse_iv · 8/10 · 31 August 2014]

Dear Journal, Jackpot! The movie shows some pure example of great creativity. I was deeply entertaining. Directed by Andrea Kreuzhage, the movie follows on what happen to the worldwide travels of 1000 blank journals, sent out into the world by San Francisco graphic artist, Brian Singer AKA 'Some Guy" in 2000 as a community programs, hoping that the pages would be filled by millions from all walks of life and return to him as soon as possible. Despite this sense of community, there are no rules, and no one really monitors these journals and their movements. Only 1 of the journals (number 526) has returned, since 2006, as of the time of the filming of this documentary in 2003. The movie fascinated hunt down, 999 of the missing books, and found some. Then, they talk to the current owners about their experience in putting stories of collaborative art with all the tears, joys and stories intact, all together. The film travels and interviews participants all over; from Australia, to Singapore, to Croatia, to France, to Finland, and many more. Most of the talking heads were pretty clever on their journal entries. Some of the artwork showcase in the documentary are haunting and beautiful as hell. Some of them show moods ranging from very open and happy, depress and shy, and just silly and upsetting. You really get the sense of cultural, moods and beliefs that each person, brings to the program. The movie shows the power, art has on a person. For example: there are those that has a personal connection to the books, because people that they knew wrote in the book, before they died. Others keep the journal to themselves for selfish reasons due to the beauty that the book that it holds. Then the movie showcase the the negatively side of art, where people would destroy other people artwork due to disagreement of their viewpoints by drawing or pasting something over the previous artist works. Then others wouldn't understand what the other person went through, and just crudity bully or degrade a previous writer's life stories. The movie showcase, both the creativity collaborate side that art can bring to the world, but also the hatred that it can bring. That's what I love about this documentary; its show both sides of human nature and how "art is meant to provoke feeling". If you can't provoke feeling, then it wouldn't be art. You really get a sense of history, how people felt at the time, as the movie talks about how some of the diaries end up with witnesses to 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks, soldiers of the 2003 Iraq War, and survivors of 2005's Hurricane Katrina, disaster. Even not very information history is gather from odd places like bar meetings, bathrooms stalls, and phone booths. There are still some faults about the film. Despite traveling all over the world, from San Francisco to where ever, the journals isn't nearly as appealing visually as it is in terms of sheer human interest. Having look at a few. Most of the journals are disappointment hard to read. The movie have people speaking on film about journals that were a bit hard to listen to. The reason for that, is because the person, the documentary decide to interview, can only speak in broken English. Sub-titles would be great to have. Another thing is that most of the journals, they did show in the film were just a bunch of doodles and alright artwork. There wasn't a lot of many interesting stories or diary entries, there. I felt a little more interesting diary entries would make the film, a little bit more appealing that if they could found more. As of this writing, 900 of the books are still supposedly missing. With the limited journals, they made an 88 minute film seem very interesting. Not only that, but the producers also create a San Francisco Museum of Modern Art exhibit out of the small selection of books since found and even another scratch book have been produced to help grow the project even more. Overall: The movie is very entertaining, had good interviews, well shot. You'll find yourself, watching the sheer brilliance of human nature, personalities and experiences at work. This film is worth the wait.

If this doesn't restore your faith, nothing will!

[Gondorff4 · 10/10 · 5 November 2007]

This compelling documentary details the ingenious, yet relatively simple idea of a global message in a bottle. In 2001, a San Francisco man who goes by the name of SomeGuy launched 1,000 empty journals out into the world. The instructions were simple, contribute what you want to the journal, after two weeks try to pass it on to someone else, when the journal is full, the last person sends it back. This created a phenomenon on line and around the world as people who were aware of the journals, scrambled to find one of them to put their art, their hopes, their dreams, their thoughts into it for the world to see. Indeed, this is a global participation art project that turns on our simple desire to communicate and be heard. The film explores what happened to some of the journals, profiles countless people who have contributed to them and where some of them are now. That only a few have found their way back to SomeGuy merely underscores the delightful idea that almost all of them are still out there, somewhere as people put in their two cents. This is a wonderful film that will restore your faith in the global community, the art of communication and the communication of art.