Movie profile

The Light at Walden

Thoreau and a war resister's journey

THE LIGHT AT WALDEN is a visual poem shot at Walden Pond, Massachusetts, interweaving pieces of Thoreau's texts and a war resister's personal journey on a wilderness island in Canada. The filmmaker, as a young man during the U.S. / Vietnam War, attempts to follow Thoreau's principles: building a cabin and living sustainably in the woods, "to front only the essential facts of life." This is one story among the nearly 125,000 war resisters in Canada.

Directed by Pablo Frasconi