We had to establish our distribution networks, we had to create our own republic within a republic of commercial cinemas.
Jonas Mekas
On September 28th, 1960, in New York twenty-three independent filmmakers joined together to form a free and open organization of the New American Cinema: the Group. They stood against dead principles of “morally corrupt, esthetically obsolete, thematically superficial, temperamentally boring” pretentious official cinema, and Hollywood system in particular. Concerned with Man, they believed cinema is a personal expression, rejecting any interference of producers, distributors and investors into the process of filmmaking itself. Film censorship and licensing were unacceptable for the members of the New American Cinema Group. Reorganizing methods of film investment, searching for new forms of financing free film industry, they abolished the Budget Myth, showing low budgets give freedom from stars, studios, and producers. They established their own cooperative distribution center, joined by movie houses pledging to exhibit their films. The idea of American East Coast own film festival as a meeting place for the New Cinema from all over the world aimed at presenting the best of Italian, French, Polish, Russian, Japanese cinema and modern films and currents such as English Free Cinema, French Nouvelle Vague completely unknown in the US. Among a new generation of American filmmakers were listed Lionel Rogosin, John Cassavetes, Alfred Leslie, Robert Frank, Edward Bland, Bert Stern and the Sanders brothers.
It's in my nature that when I see something I like, I want to exchange it. I want others to see it. I want my friends to see it <…> Then these films started disintegrating. Some people wanted to see them in other cities. But nobody wanted to distribute them. And so they were not available in these other places. So I had to establish a film distribution centre, a filmmakers cooperative. Then I had friends who wanted to say something about those films and they had nowhere to say these things. So I had to start a Film Culture magazine. Then the next step was with the films of the thirties and forties. The avant-garde. That period. They were disappearing. Disintegrating. We had to preserve them. We had to start some quality film archive in order to preserve these films.
Jonas Mekas
The First Statement of the New American Cinema Group was published in 1960 in Film Culture magazine[1] founded, 1954, and edited by Jonas Mekas. Excerpt from it says: “As they [colleagues in France, Italy, Russia, Poland, Еngland], we had enough of the Big Lie in life and the arts. As they, we are not only for the new cinema: we are also for the New Man. As they, we are for art, but not at the expense of life. We don’t want false, polished , slick films – we prefer them rough, unpolished, but alive…” In the editor introduction to the first issue of Film Culture Mekas stresses the interdependence between a film-maker and a film-goer, the participance of the latter. Reviewing John Cassavetes’ Shadows[2], Mekas points out: “It [Shadows persuasiveness] proves that we can make our films now and by ourselves”. New American Cinema Group was a new model of distribution and exhibition of independent film. The Group became the Film-makers' Cooperative in 1962. Not much time later San Francisco Canyon Cinema group and The London Co-op were based on the New York Film-makers’ Coop model.
Let's record the dying century and the birth of another man… Let's surround the earth with our cameras, hand in hand, lovingly; our camera is our third eye that will lead us out and through … Nothing should be left unshown or unseen, dirty or clean: Let us see and go further, out of the swamps and into the sun.
Jonas Mekas, Movie Journal
Since 1958 and for the following 18 years Jonas Mekas was the Village Voice[3] film critic writing for its Movie Journal column. I had to pull out, to hold, to protect all the beautiful things that I saw happening in the cinema and that were either butchered or ignored by my colleague writers and by the public.
Jonas Mekas, introduction to Movie Journal: The Rise of a New American Cinema, 1959–1971
Jonas Mekas, P. Adams Sitney, and Jerome Hill co-founded the Film-makers’ Cinematheque, which was later transformed into Antology Film Archives. The Filmmakers' Cinémathèque had two theaters. One was totally open and permissive, at 80 Wooster Street, which was Fluxus Soho Cooperative organized by George Maciunas. The other one, very selective, followed the Essential Cinema list. The Essential Cinema Repertory was conceived as a continuous process of selecting and reviewing the field. A Film Selection Committee - James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney - should have met once a year and review the field. They made suggestions about what should be re-seen, included, and what different areas to cover. Not only independent and avant-garde but also commercial cinema. The priority however was the independents, the avant-garde. The rest of the field was postponed for the future. In the late 60’s the excitement about the independent cinema was present not only in New York and San Francisco. Around '67 or '68 Jonas Mekas, as the Filmmakers' Cinémathèque director, and P. Adams Sitney were being attacked by numerous demands from various learning institutions asking for examples of avant-garde and independent cinema. Already existing writing on the avant-garde and independents generated a need of seeing its examples. The Essential Cinema list, accepted by universities, museums and galleries, helped to establish the avant-garde as an important part of cinema. Keep showing that repertory was supposed to be the main function of Anthology Film Archives later. Making of the list was abandoned around ’73 or ’74.
It is for this art and from this art that I (we) speak to you.
Jonas Mekas, Anthology Film Archives manifesto
The Anthology has become a museum dedicated to an independent and avant-garde film as an art form, to its preservation, study and exhibition. Its guiding principles are that a great film must be seen many times; that the film print must be the best possible; and that the viewing conditions must be optimal. The Archives moved to its present building at 2nd Street and 2nd Avenue as the film collection was expanding and they needed space for library and silence for screenings, which was in lack at full of families and children Soho Coop. The new building was adapted to house two motion picture theaters, so needed reference library, a film preservation department, offices, and a gallery.
Jonas Mekas started with a Beat-inspired narrative film Guns of the Trees, 1961, followed by a documentary the Brig, 1963, showing a play about prison brutality in the Marine Corps, performed at the Living Theater, a diary-film[4] as Walden aka Diaries, Notes, Sketches, 1969. Referring to Mekas’ films, as well as those of Andy Warhol, is appropriate using term subjective documentary[5]. They turned to imagery of people and culture in innovative ways, to develop film language to communicate about the microcultures they lived in. They managed to establish new forms of cultural production outside the film industry. … I knew the history of cinema very, very well. I have seen every film that has opened, every one no matter what kind of film. So when I saw Andy Warhol's Sleep I knew that it was not like anything else. And I had to defend it and point it out to everybody: this is something new and different and exciting. Because of my knowledge of cinema I knew the value of it.
Jonas Mekas
Today he calls himself a filmer emphasizing his entrancement by the process of filming the surrounding reality. Editing, which Mekas considers as eliminating, can take place years later after the filming was done, as in an elegy Zefiro Torna aka Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas, 1992, covering over 30 years of artists life. Lost Lost Lostwhich concerns the first ten Mekas’ New York years, was edited in 1976 which is thirty years after the earliest footage was collected. When filming Jonas mekas always deals with the present moment and life is continuing. What interests him are the moments of joy and celebration when people get together, being together, especially with his friends and family. The innocence of children, before they get corrupted and enter maturity is another theme significant for Mekas. He is interested in certain areas of human life as daily life and all those unnoticeable activities, everyday miracles, “little moments of Paradise”.
Mekas' images flutter rapidly, they appear in fragments, superimposed on each other, and alternate with passing glimpses. He uses a “glimpse” in his film work as a basic structural device. The shots are single-frame and of rapidly varying exposure, shutter speed, focus and different time-length - some last minutes, others only seconds. Each film is composed of tied together short scenes, united with music or Mekas' narration. These scenes are punctuated by typewriter intertitles which remind more of photo album captions, which make Mekas’ films operate as photo albums – “at the Film-maker's Coop”, “Sunday in Central Park”. It’s difficult to follow what happens in Mekas’ films as they are free of any narration and suspense. They are not intended to bring any visual pleasure and are impossible to gaze at.
The randomness and improvisatory nature of filming passes the test with Mekas’ memory when editing. Mekas' films are his memories that he wants and needs to share with other people. As Genevieve Yue says: “To watch a Mekas film is to experience the intimacy of his life he is sharing with you”.
[These images] are not much different from what you have seen or experienced. There is no big difference, no essential difference between you and me.
Jonas Mekas in As I Was Moving Ahead...
He prefers one part of filmed material to another because it’s significant and memorable for him.They play as if through the lens of memory, so the viewer feels like he is starting to remember something, even if he or she has never seen it.
Whereas a logical, sequential order benefits the viewer, the non-chronological order is closer to the actual experience of remembering, where everything from the past occurs in the same instant: more an impression than a story.
Genevieve Yue
Mekas fully participates in his scenes with his portable “third eye” – 16-mm Bolex camera - he doesn’t distance himself from his “subjects”. He stays totally involved in what is happening even with his tripod-free Bolex (free camera held in hands is also that much important for French “school” of Nouvelle Vague). He talks off-camera, shakes it when he laughs, turns it around to film himself. Mekas’ amateur, not professional aesthetic, is on purpose. Technical imperfections of camera movement and framing carry Mekas' reaction in that very moment. Life can’t be staged, editing is done within the camera, only elimination is postponed for the later.
So much celebrated in As I Was Moving Ahead… tender marriage was falling apart by the time the film was cut together. Mekas pieces together his memories, overviewing his life, after something is gone, when only traces of it remain. The voice heard in his films belongs to a man tying his memories together years later.
Silence, sleeplessness and loneliness exist in his films in intertitles, black or blank spaces, which interrupt scenes full of joy, happiness and excitement. These dark moments tell us about absence, “show” us what isn't seen, what isn’t there.
He attended countless number of weddings, births, and friends gatherings, and became a home movie-maker of the avant garde. Frequent protagonists of Mekas films are Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, etc.
My camera allowed me to participate in the life that took place around me.
Jonas Mekas
Talking on Bob Dylan’s films in one of the interviews Jonas Mekas reveals his concept of authorship in the cinema, which coincides with “the policy of authors” proclaimed by Francois Truffaut:
They were collages. A little bit confusing. They were ok. You see, he never really did it all himself. He always had someone with him. And those others, they always had some avant-garde pretensions. So they always make pretentious avant-garde films. If he had done everything himself they would have been more innocent, more like him. But there was always somebody interfering, doing editing, camera and everything. So they are not totally Bob Dylan.
In Lost Lost Lost Mekas describes a scene at a film seminar at Flaherty where he and Ken Jacobs were denied entry. This first instance of rejecting recognition of Mekas' signature style at the established film community of Flaherty proves the emergence of a distinctive way of seeing.
The footage of Zefiro Torna or Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas (1992) rarely depicts Maciunas' illness, but is mainly “focused” on his vitality and humour at Fluxevents and performances. At the end of the film plays Zefiro Torna madrigal by Monteverdi, Maciunas' favorite composer. And as the music plays Maciunas on a hospital bed is smiling for the first and only time.
This Side of Paradise (1999), shows summer portraits of Jackie Kennedy's and Lee Radziwill's children when Mekas was teaching them about cinema during the period marked by the death of John F. Kennedy.
In Lithuania, where Mekas originally comes from, he is known more as a poet. His poetry is mostly in Lithuanian. Recently, the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center was established in Vilnius where exhibitions will focus on art and film collections by Mekas and his friend and artistic collaborator George Maciunas, founder of the Fluxus art movement. Opening in late 2007, the Center will house an extensive avant-garde film archive and library and has plans to build a Fluxus Research Institute.
Curator, writer and filmmaker Jonas Mekas is the godfather of the New American Cinema, independent, avant-garde, and underground filmmaking at the same time. He helped to shape the public image of avant-garde filmmaking in America and profoundly influenced its self-identity as well as the look from the outer side - he organised the New American Cinema Expositions program, which toured Europe and South America during the years 1964–1967.
