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More Shoes came out of a time in my life when I was lost. I'd finished college and landed in a series of go-nowhere jobs. My grand plans of making movies had so far fizzled. I was looking for inspiration. Then I came across a quote from Werner Herzog, who said that would-be filmmakers should skip film school. Instead, he said, you should make a journey of 5,000 kilometers alone, on foot, "let's say from Madrid to Kiev." "While you are walking," said Herzog, "you would learn much more about filmmaking and what it truly involves than you ever would sitting in a classroom. Your experiences would be the very opposite of academic knowledge, for academia is the death of cinema." I decided to test Herzog's idea. In March of 2006 I began the long walk from Madrid to Kiev. I carried basic essentials, a tent and a sleeping bag, notebooks, and some camera gear. The walk brought me through Spain, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Poland, and the Ukraine. I arrived in Kiev on 30 August 2006, nearly six months after I had started. I edited the tapes I shot during the walk into a film called More Shoes. The film is my personal account of the places I saw and the people I met, and how the experience made me face something more than my own artistic fate: it made confront the hugeness of the world and my place in it. For the rest of 2010, you can watch the entirety of More Shoes on the main page of this website for free. I am proud of this film and want all who would find value in it to be able to see it. On this site I also documented my adventures through journal entries and photographs, written and posted once a week as I walked. The journal entries are still there. I funded the project through the generous donations of my Fellow Travelers, hundreds of people who contributed money to my journey. In exchange, I sent them postcards from my route and put their names in the end credits of More Shoes. I thank you for my visit to this site and hope you find something of value here. I always welcome comments or feedback, by email at leekazimir@madridtokiev.com. As ever, |
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- - - all writing, photographs, & video � Lee Kazimir. all rights reserved. |
