Leonard Cohen at Mt Baldy Zen Center - screenshot
Rare Opportunity To View High Quality Documentary Of Leonard Cohen During His Zen Retreat
Ongoing readers may recall Leonard Cohen Recites “Too Old”, a post published 2-3 months ago, which featured an excerpt from Armelle Brusq’s Spring 1996 Documentary focused on Cohen’s retreat to the Mt Baldy Zen Center.
Yesterday, my routine daily search for material by or about Leonard Cohen was rewarded by the discovery that a high quality copy of the entire Armelle Brusq Spring 1996 Documentary had been uploaded the preceding day to YouTube (even now, the various videos in this sequence have been viewed only 20-40 times). For anyone with even a modest interest in Cohen’s career, this is a must-see video (and one somewhat difficult to find in the past).
The Armelle Brusq Film
The following description was included in the previous post and is repeated here for reader convenience:
The Armelle Brusq documentary shot in Spring 1996, about Leonard Cohen’s experience at Mt Baldy 1 from which the clip is taken is described in LeonardCohenFiles. Excerpts follow:
Armelle Brusq is a young French artist living in Paris. She filmed this 52 min documentary in Spring 1996 on Mt. Baldy and in Los Angeles using a customized camera. The Norwegian television was the first to show it (on March 15, 1997), and later many other TV channels followed.
Leonard Cohen commented from the Mt Baldy Zen Center, his home at that time: The monks up here think it’s pretty good. Roshi said to her: “You great artist”
The film describes the daily routines of the Zen monks at the Zen Center of Mt. Baldy: waking up early (2:30 or 3:00 am), marching together to the ceremonies, meditating, making food and eating. We see Cohen working in the kitchen and helping his dear friend and teacher Joshu Sasaki Roshi (90 years at the time of shooting); later he drives with Roshi to another Zen Center (Rinzai Ji) in Los Angeles.
Leonard Cohen on computer at Mt Baldy Zen Center - screenshot
Cohen’s cabin with his Technics KN 3000 synthesizer and computers are shown, and he sings his new song A thousand kisses deep. He also recites three unpublished poems, two telling about Roshi (one titled Roshi at 89) . The third was titled Too Old.
The camera also visits the office of Stranger Management: Cohen demonstrates his archives (lots of boxes full of notebooks, he shows a poster of his first book Let Us Compare Mythologies and a painting made by Suzanne, the mother of his children). Later a studio session is going on, he is working with Raffi Hakopian (violin) and Leanne Ungar (his sound engineer). Afterwards Cohen and Brusq dine at Canter’s.
In this documentary Cohen tells about his life, his memories, why he lives at the Zen Center. He suggests that some kind of a circle has been closed and now he can do something else (see footnote)
The film ends with (I was) Never Any Good (at loving you), a new song written for his next album. He goes to his car and listens to a demo sung by Billy Valentine.
Leonard Cohen sprinting at Mt Baldy Zen Center - screenshot
The Videos
The film has been divided into six videos because YouTube restricts a single video to a duration of 10 minutes.
Leonard Cohen – Portrét – Portrait – 1996 1/6
Video from TheDANA48
Leonard Cohen – Portrét – Portrait – 1996 2/6
Video from TheDANA48
Leonard Cohen – Portrét – Portrait – 1996 3/6
Video from TheDANA48
Leonard Cohen – Portrét – Portrait – 1996 4/6
Video from TheDANA48
Leonard Cohen – Portrét – Portrait – 1996 5/6
Video from TheDANA48
Leonard Cohen – Portrét – Portrait – 1996 6/6
Video from TheDANA48
- This documentary is referenced under several names, the most complete of which seems to be “Leonard Cohen. Spring 1996. A portrait in time by Armelle Brusq” [↩]
Leonard Cohen on Mount Baldy « Thoughtcat // Feb 13, 2010 at 4:29 am
[...] all come up in the related videos bar when watched on YouTube, otherwise they are all embedded in this post about the documentary on the ace Cohen site [...]
L.Cohen is the man