--THE NEW YORKER JANUARY (6 s 19 7 S *0V P K O F1 LES*' ALL POCKETS OPEN NE rainy spring afternoon in filmmakers usually lack funds and have 1967, and to make do with what's nearest at O P. Adams Sitney were standing hand-has featured male and female under a canopy on Lexington Avenue nudity and rather variegated sex. Al- discussing their-summer plans. Mekas though it is undoubtedly true that the was going to take a number of Ameri- underground cinema served as a sort can underground films on a tour of of distant early warning of the sexual European cities, starting in June. Sit- revolution in other areas, the wide- ney, a Yale senior and a film theorist, spread tendency to view the movement would come over later to relieve him, as virtually synonymous with pornog- and they were trying to decide where raphy is far from accurate. The fact is they should meet. On an impulse, Me- that the underground's most significant kas suggested the Spanish town of achievements have very little to do with Avila, birthplace of St. Theresa, whose subject matter ; they reflect, rather, a autobiography he had recently been thorough reinvestigation and opening reading. "The moment I said the word up of the film medium itself. The 'Avi!a,' " Mekas recalls, "two fresh largely abstract collage films of Robert roses appeared on the sidewalk at our Breer ; the animations of Stan Van- feet. They just appeared there, and the DerBeek and Harry Smith ; the "di- next moment an old man-a bum- rect-cinema" documentaries of Richard also appeared, as though out of no- Leacock, Don Pennebaker, and David where, picked up the roses, and placed and Albert Maysles; the incredibly them on the steps of a church next complex image-making of Stan Brak- door, saying, `These belong here.' " hage and Peter Kubelka ; and the new Mekas and Sitney decided on the spot "structural" films of Michael Snow, to adopt St. Theresa as the patron saint Hollis Frampton, Ken Jacobs, and oth- of the underground cinema. "From ers have all been concerned at some then on, whenever problems began to level with the visual nature of film seem overwhelming, we called on her and the nature of seeing. In their con- for help," Mekas says. "And it always centration on materials and processes, seemed to work-except for getting a rather than on content, these film- license from :he city to show our films. makers have taken the path of con- Even St. Theresa couldn't quite man- temporary artists in other fields, and age that." parallels between their work and re- Careful hagiologists will surely point cent art history are often noted. Brak- 3 -1--c 4 s. out that Mekas seems to have got his hage's camera, which becomes an ex- saints mixed-it is St. Theresa of Li- tension of his own emotions and sensi- sieux (1873-97) who manifests her Jonas Mekas bilities, is frequently compared to the presence with roses, not St. Theresa of Action painting of Jackson Pollock. Avi!a (1515-82) . But for Mekas, who highly personal, idiosyncratic film diary Structural cinema seems clearly related is himself often referred to as the that may well become one of the more to Minimal Art, and presents many of patron saint of the underground cine- influential styles of the seventies. "His the same difficulties for the uninitiated ma, it must have been a relief to shift film brought something really viewer. Peter Kubelka, who is Aus- the burden of sanctity a bit. Being a fresh and new," Ken Jacobs, a leading trian, and , who is not, saint has its drawbacks, and there have 'film innovator of the sixties, said the have both made movies reduced to the been many times when Mekas- has other day. "Now Jonas has to be four basic elements of cinema-light, wished he could get out from under the thought of as a major artist, in addition darkness, sound,- silence-which is demands and frustrations of his role as to everything else he's done." rather a long way from pornography standard-bearer for the New American Underground, or experimental, or (Conrad's film "The Flicker" report- Cinema-which he named and whose independent cinema-nobody really edly can cause an epileptic seizure in leading champion, polemicist, and or- . likes any of the terms applied to it-is, one out of every fifteen thousand view- ganizer he has been for the last ten roughly speaking, the cinema that exists ers), and some West Coast devotees of years-so that he could devote more outside commercial distribution chan- "expanded cinema" are currently work- time to his own filmmaking. For nels, and it consists of films of various ing with computers, videotape, and Mekas is a filmmaker, too, and one lengths whose distinguishing charac- other techniques that do away entirely whose work is increasingly admired teristic is that their authors look upon with such'old-fashioned matters as film by his peers in the movement. In them as works of art rather than and movie cameras. "Diaries, Notes, and Sketches," finished sources of entertainment. The under- Most of these developments go more in 1969, and in the more recent "Rem- ground cinema has taken many forms or less unnoticed by the average movie iniscences of a journey to Lithuania," during the last decade. Some of the critic, who has all he can do to keep up Mekas, now fifty years old, has achieved films have been notable primarily for with commercial films, and the critics :' what many of his colleagues regard as their subject matter, which in certain who do pay regular attention to the , a breakthrough into a new form-a cases-perhaps because underground underground are not overly admiring Copr. 1973 The New Yorker Magazine, Inc .

its works. Andrew Sarris, who the organization has four hundred and oddly lyrical style that marks his ear- of and writes film criticism for the Village fifty active members, only a few of lier "Diaries, Notes, and Sketches" Voice and other organs, differs sharply whom make a living from rentals that serves uncannily to suggest his own constant with his old friend and fellow Voice paid for their films. Similar coopera- personality: the camera is in Mekas on the underground's tives, modelled on the New York motion, darting here and there, notic- columnist de- importance. "I find the commercial original, have been established in other ing every sort of detail, sometimes more adventurous today than cities, from San Francisco to Ann liberately out of focus, often at frame- cinema min- the underground," Sarris said recently. Arbor. In every case, the major audi- by-frame speeds that telescope not just a visual medium. ence for their films is found in colleges utes of action into quick-flashing, "Film is At first, it Take away narrative and psychological and universities, hundreds of which almost subliminal images. interest, and what do you have? Simply now offer credit courses in film history is difficult to look at the film ; the de- on the eye are dizzying. an optical experience, which to my or technique, and fifty-one of which mands made mind isn't enough. Besides offer degrees in film. It is But after twenty minutes or so one which there is the time element often enough remarked that grows accustomed to the camera move- accept it a legit- to consider. Films can't function the undergraduates who in ment and begins to as in the same sense as painting or former times might have been imately expressive, personal style. We sculpture, because the viewing writing poems or novels are are seeing Semeniskiai through Jonas experience is entirely different- now making films, but the Mekas's eyes-seeing the tiny farm ten minutes of experimental- movement seems to have sur- village and the fields of his youth, film viewing can begin to seem vived even this. Mekas's cur- the farmhouse in which he grew up, pretty agonizing." To Mekas rent activity is. serving as direc- his eighty-seven-year-old -mother (still and his colleagues, this sort of talk for (with P. Adams Sitney as assistant drawing water from the well, cooking, simply indicates the blindness of Es- director) of , picking berries, digging potatoes), the and one sister who never tablished Movie Critics. which its founders describe as "the first three brothers Whatever their feelings about the film museum exclusively devoted to the left Lithuania, the uncle who advised underground, though, critics and film- film as an art." In an austerely de- Jonas and Adolfas to "go West and see makers agree that its development and signed ninety-seat theatre in the old the world," and, occasionally, Jonas spectacular growth since 1960 are due Astor Library building, on Lafayette himself, a lean, ascetic-looking man in large part to the efforts of Jonas Street, students, filmmakers, and other with a self-mocking smile and alert Mekas. , whom Mekas acolytes of the new cinema sit in hushed eyes. Much of the time, the sound track considers the most important filmmaker silence to watch what Anthology's is synchronized with the scenes being in America, states flatly that without film-selection committee (two of whose shown. There is a lot of singing-Me- Mekas's help and encouragement at five members happen to be Jonas Me- kas remarks at one point, "Whenever least a third of his films would never kas and P. Adams Sitney) considers to more than one Lithuanian get together, have been made, and many other film- be the "essential" films in the history of they sing"-and the sweet, mournful makers could say the same thing. the medium-from the pioneer experi- folk songs become one of the themes of "Jonas has many pockets," Brakhage ments of the Lumieres and Melies, the film. From time to time, Mekas's said recently, "and all of them are through the masterworks of Griffith, voice is heard "over," commenting and open." Mekas has tirelessly championed von Stroheim, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, reflecting on these scenes. The voice is the cause of the independent filmmaker Dreyer, Bresson, and other narrative- quiet and halting (Mekas still speaks in his weekly column in the Village film directors, up to the generally plot- English with a strong accent), and the Voice, in the more abstruse pages of less-film poems of Brakhage, Kenneth undertone is profoundly nostalgic . Ac- , the somewhat irregular Anger, , and, cording to Adolfas, the trip was an in- journal that he founded in 1955 and for that matter, Jonas Mekas. tensely emotional experience for his still edits, and through every other pub- brother, who broke down and wept lic and private channel he has been " REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNEY TO several times when he was called on able to find. He has kept many a film- LITHUANIA," Mekas's diary to say something before a gathering. maker going with timely sums of mon- film, was shown at the New York Film Adolfas, three years younger than Jo- ey raised by one means or another Festival last fall. It records the visit that nas and completely at home in Ameri- (out of thin air, it often seemed), while . Mekas and his younger brother, Adol- ca, apparently was not subject to the his own film projects often went fas, made in the summer of 1971 to same emotions. But for Jonas the trip begging. His long struggle to est iblish the Lithuanian village of Semeniskiai, seemed to confirm his long-standing a permanent showcase in New York where they were born and brought up, suspicion that he has not yet found any where independent filmmakers could and which they had not seen since place of his own in the world. screen their work has brought him into they left it, twenty-seven years before. Semeniskiai, which is in northeastern bitter conflict with censors, police, arid, Adolfas, who is also a filmmaker, nat- Lithuania, not far from the Latvian cq licensing authorities-the bitterest urally brought back his own cinematic border, had about twenty families living being his arrest in 1964 on the charge record of the trip, and it was shown to- in it when Mekas (the family name is df showing an obscene film (Jack gether with Jonas's at the Film Festi- pronounced "Mekass") was born there Smith's ""), which val. Although many of the same scenes, in 1922, and the population has grown resulted in a six-month suspended jail people, and incidents occur in both only slightly since then. The nearest sentence. And it is thanks in large part accounts, the two films could hardly town, Birzai, is sixteen miles away. to Mekas that the underground cinema have seemed more dissimilar in tone Like their three older brothers before is no longer underground. In 1962, he and feeling. Adolfas's, like most of his them, Jonas and Adolfas worked in served as midwife to the Film-Makers' work, is a comedy,, full of visual jokes the fields and took care of the livestock Cooperative, a library and a distribution shot in a more or less traditional from May to October. Some years, agency for avant-garde films, now sit- manner. Jonas's, by contrast, is shot they were needed all winter on the uated at 175 Lexington Avenue ; today and edited in the jumpy, staccato, yet farm, too, and had to stay out of school. By the time Jonas graduated be tubercular, and Jonas (after narrow- was devoted to the work of refugees from the local grade school and went ly escaping one German Army recruit- like him, and he managed to write and off to attend the Gymnasium in Birzai, ing patrol by putting on women's publish five books of his own during. he was seventeen, and the school au-.. clothes) had bribed a local doctor to this period-two collections of fairy thorities told him that he was too old to sign a certificate stating that he indeed tales, two of short stories, and his first enroll in the first-year class. Instead of did have t.b. and was unfit for military volume of poems, "The Idylls of Seme- going home, he spent the winter in service. The boys' uncle counselled, niskiai." He wrote only in Lithuanian. Birzai tutoring himself, made up five them to go West. He was the Protes- The poems are so deeply rooted in the years' schoolwork in five months, and tant pastor of Birzai and also something particular texture of this language (one the following spring passed the entrance, of an intellectual-he had been edu- of the oldest of the Indo-European examinations for the sixth-year class. cated in Switzerland, knew Oswald family, with no Slavic roots) that That was in 1940, the year' the Red Spengler, and owned a library that Mekas does not believe they could be Army crossed the border and pro- gave Jonas his real education . The pas- translated into English. A Lithuanian claimed Lithuania a Soviet Socialist tor even managed to secure forged critic has described them as having little Republic. By the time Jonas graduated papers for tle boys, giving them per- in common with most pastoral verse : from the Gymnasium, in 1942, the mission to study at the University of "They show instead a hard country Russians had been driven out and the Vienna. They left Semeniskiai one landscape, whose beauty is an expres- country was under German occupation . night in July, 1944. The train they sion of the courage and patience of the Mekas's interests had always been boarded was suppqsed to go to Vienna, people who live in it." Jonas thought literary. He read everything he could but somewhere along the route it was of himself primarily as a poet; Adolfas get his hands on, and he wrote poetry attached to a train carrying Russian and hoped to write for the stage. Both and fiery critical articles on literary Polish war prisoners to German slave- brothers had been strongly influenced, subjects. All five Mekas brothers wrote labor camps. The Mekas brothers however, by a book called "Drama- poetry, as a matter of fact-a family ended up in a labor camp at Elmshorn, turgy of Film," which Jonas found in trait that Adolfas attributes to their a suburb of Hamburg, where their a bookshop in Heidelberg once when mother's delightful habit of improvising forged papers were of no help what- they went there to hear Karl Jaspers songs all day while she went about her ever. lecture. "It was not a great book, but household duties-but Jonas was ob- After seven months in the Elmshorn after reading it we both started writ- viously the most talented, and his pub- camp, they decided to make a break for ing film scripts," Jonas has said. "The lished poems soon attracted attention it. Hamburg was under constant Allied fact was we felt lost in those D .P. in literary circles. After graduating bombing at the time, and the German camps, where hardly anybody spoke from the Gymnasium, he took a job armies were in retreat on all fronts. our language. When I read that as literary editor of Birzai's weekly Taking advantage of the general con- book, I realized that cinema was the newspaper. Early in January, 1943, fusion, Jonas and Adolfas simply tongue in which we could reach every- he moved to the larger town of Pane- walked out of camp one night and body." vezys, to become assistant editor of a headed north. Their plan was to cross By 1949, the camps were starting literary weekly there. into Denmark and then take a boat to to close down. The Mekas brothers He and Adolfas also, Sweden, and they nearly made it. At had no desire to go back behind the started publishing a the Danish border, though, they were Iron Curtain, but neither were they clandestine anti-Nazi caught by the German military police eager to emigrate to the United States. newspaper, cutting the and thrown into a train headed back America's image was already some- stencils on an old type- -,to _Hamburg. They escaped again be- what tarnished in European intellectual writer, which they hid fore the train moved out, and man- circles, and several D .P. friends of in a woodshed near the aged to jump into a truck full of war theirs who had gone to the States had family home in Seme- refugees. That evening, local farmers sent back unfavorable reports. The niskiai. One day, the came into the refugee camp looking Mekases' first idea was to go to Israel typewriter was stolen. for experienced farm workers, and the and start a film industry. "We'd had The Mekas brothers Mekas brothers volunteered. They a romantic education," Adolfas 'has realized that it would were hired on the spot by a German said. "We remembered Byron, and turn up sooner or later, couple who lived near Flensburg we thought, `Here is a new nation- and that the police and who needed help so badly-all the we'll go and help build it!"' But would have no trouble local men being away in the Army- Israel had no quota for non-Jewish tracing it to them . At that no questions were ever asked. "We Lithuanians, and they were turned the time, bands of anti- stayed there long enough to do the down by the immigration authorities. Nazi partisans were spring sowing," Jonas says. "We didn't Their next thought was to go to Egypt operating in the woods know the war had ended until two and walk to Israel, but the Egyptians near Semeniskiai, but weeks afterward ." turned them down, too. Then, as they nobody in the family For the next five years, Jonas were weighing the relative merits of thought that Jonas and Adolfas were displaced persons . becoming merchant seamen or Canadi- could go into hiding They lived in D .P. camps in south- an woodcutters, they were unexpected- with them. "Jonas was ern Germany and went to college-- ly provided with papers and passage to always the weak broth- to Johannes Gutenberg University, Chicago, arranged for them through er, the sickly one," in , and later to the University the International Refugee Organiza- Adolfas recalls. "As a of Tiibingen-taking philosophy and tion by a former D .P. who had emi- child, he wasn't ex- literature courses free of charge, under grated a few months before. They pected to live." For the auspices of UNESCO . Jonas also sailed from Hamburg the follow- years, their parents edited a Lithuanian literary magazine ing week, and landed in New York feared that Jonas might called Zvdgsniai (Glimpses), which on a cold, gray November morning in

1949. then the main outlet for tellectual : he admired the neorealism of "We went to Times Square that avant-garde and experi- Rossellini and De Sica, read Camus, evening," Jonas wrote in his diary. "I mental films of all kinds. and took part, along with Julian Beck will never forget the impact which hit What came to be and and others, in the us upon emerging from the subway, known as the second film earliest protest demonstrations against right smack into the very middle of a avant-garde was in full the war in Vietnam. Too many of the sea of Neon Lights. And in the middle flower at that time. The avant-garde films of that period struck of the sky, there was the moon. But I first avant-garde, which him as outdated, watered-down ver- wasn't sure if it was real or'not. . . . had emerged in Paris dur- sions of European Surrealism. Mekas The moon had no longer a reality of ing the nineteen-twenties made a film in which he parodied the its own ; it was a prop in a huge set and gave birth to such various avant-garde styles, but he didn't of New York." Instead of taking a works as Jean Cocteau's like the results, and it has never been train to Chicago (where their friend, "The Blood of a Poet," shown. In 1955, though, ~in the third as they learned some years later, Luis Bunhuel's and Salva- issue of Film Culture, which he had had arranged for them to work in dor Dali's "An Andalu- founded earlier in the year, he gave a bakery), they took the subway to sian Dog," and the Rene vent to his adverse opinions in an article Brooklyn. Some other friends from Clair=Francis Picabia called "The in the D .P . camps put them up until they "Entr'acte," had guttered America." found a room of their own, on South out during the Depres- It is typical of Mekas that he has Third .Street, in the Williamsburg sec- sion. The development of never tried to explain away the argu- tion, on the block where highly versatile 16-mm. ments he advanced in this article, most once lived. film equipment during of which he later recanted entirely. In' the Second World War it he said that the majority of avant- T took the Mekas brothers nearly a helped to launch a new garde films not only "suffer from a year to master English . "Before we wave of American inde- markedly adolescent character" but are came,I I could read Hemingway with pendents, first on the West "shallow and incomprehensible," lack- the help of a dictionary," Adolfas re- Coast and later in New ing in artistic discipline, narrow in calls, "but when we got here I found York. The goddess and range, repetitious, poorly photographed, out that people don't speak that way." catalyst of this second loosely constructed, devoid of any . avant-garde was Maya Life in the D.P. camps had given them moral dimension, and seriously marred practical experience in a number of Deren, a Russian-born, by "the conspiracy of homosexuality trades, though, and they had no trou- Smith College-educated, becoming one of the most per- girl, whose fourteen-min- that is ble finding jobs. Jonas worked in fac- sistent and most shocking characteristics tories, in a plumbing-supply company, ute film "Meshes of the of American film poetry today." The and on the docks ; he ironed clothes in Afternoon, while echo- article, understandably' caused a stir. a tailor shop and got to know Man- ing to some extent the psy- Willard Maas spat in Mekas's face at hattan as a messenger for the Graphic chological Surrealism of the premiere of Maas's new film, photography studios, on West Twenty- the pre-1930 European "Narcissus." called up second Street. Adolfas's first job was in avant-garde, nevertheless Stan Brakhage-of whose work Mekas a small shop making plastic wallets- struck a new, personal, and poetic had written that it "seems to be the he was paid twelve dollars for a twelve- note. Maya Deren had returned to best expression of all the virtues and hour day. Both brothers had kept diaries New York from Los Angeles in the sins of the American film poem to- since they were children, and they con- mid-forties and made herself the center day"-and said that they should sue. tinued to do so-in English, to help of a group of independent filmmakers, She thought that the article was libel- them learn the language. They also; who would meet-along with free lous, and felt sure they would be able to continued writing poetry and fiction. spirits from the other arts-at her clear enough in damages to pay their But filmmaking was rapidly becoming apartment, on Morton Street. She also filming costs for a year or so-the pub- the master passion of both of them. wrote and lectured, organized screen- lisher of Film Culture, she reasoned, Within three weeks of their arrival, ings in New York and elsewhere, university stu- must have access to considerable finan- Jonas had borrowed three hundred proselytized college and cial backing. dollars, bought a 16-mm. , a9d dents, and established a Creative Film talents Film Culture's backing at that point, begun shooting footage for a docu- Foundation, to help promising and for many years thereafter, was mentary on the Williamsburg section. get their films shot and printed. She beautiful woman actually no more substantial than Jo- some of which appears in the intro-- was, in addition, a nas's weekly salary at the Graphic ductory scenes of his "Reminiscences ', and a student of voodoo, who had learned in Haiti to perform certain studios. The Mekas brothers, who had of a journey to Lithuania." They took moved from Brooklyn to a fifteen-dol- jobs that would let them off in time magic rites. Willard Maas, a fellow- in- lar-a-month apartment on Orchard to attend the five-thirty screenings filmmaker, claimed that she once Street, on 's lower East at the , and voked her occult powers while he was they went as often as possible to the shooting a film and caused the entire Side, had rounded up a list of film- New York Film Society, in Green- production to collapse in ruins. makers and their friends as "sponsors" wich Village, where they had seen Jonas Mekas had reservations about of the new journal, to be published the films of Maya Deren, along with "every two months for the advance- "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" on understand- their second evening in New York. those of , James ment of a more profound From 1950 on, Jonas was also a Broughton, Kenneth Anger, and other ing of the aesthetic and social aspects of habitue of , the film society luminaries of the second avant-garde. the motion pictures," but none of the whose programs, given in a succession His own inclinations 'then were still sponsors had much -money to dispense, of theatres from 1947 to 1963, were largely those of a postwar European in- and in order to print the first issue the Mekases enlisted the good will of a have a regular film column. Tallmer of our arts, toward new themes, a new Lithuanian branch of the Franciscan said, "Nobody wants to write it. Why sensibility." Brothers in Brooklyn, who ran their don't you?" Mekas's first column ap- In the summer of 1960, having own printing shop. The first issue ap- peared in the next issue. scraped together enough money to peared in January, 1955, with a pic- From the outset, his column was buy some out-of-date film stock, Mekas ture of Orson Welles on its cover. Its called "Movie journal," and a journal and de Laurot themselves began work appearance was celebrated by a party at is what it has most closely resembled- on a feature-length film, from a script the Waldorf-Astoria, which a friend opinionated and not infrequently didac- by Mekas, called "Guns of the Trees." in the Foreign Press Association had tic. The Mekas column has delighted Mekas described the film as an "at- managed to arrange at no cost to the some readers, infuriated others, and tempt to portray the inside of a genera- Mekases. But there was no money aft- drawn more mail-most of it unfavor- tion, its subtle feelings, thoughts, and erward Franciscan to pay the Brothers, able-than any other department in the attitudes." There is no plot to speak and a different printer had to be found Voice. Readers have attacked -Mekas's of. The generation is summarized by for the second issue. The Mekases "flabbergastingly irresponsible reviews," two urban couples, one of them couldn't pay him, white, either. While ,they his "truly monumental vulgarity," his middle-class, and weighed down by were preparing the third issue, un- "new depths of pretentiousness." One thoughts of suicide (played by daunted by the threat Adolfas of lawsuits by of them accused him of never liking Mekas and Frances Stillman, Jonas's their creditors, Harry Gantt showed up. "ANY movie that caw over $6.37 to girlfriend at the time), the other black, Harry Gantt was a free lance in the produce ." Maya Desac, now a close poor, and better adjusted (played by magazine-publishing business who had friend, wrote in to say that "even when Ben Carruthers, the star of "Shadows," an interest in the arts. "He just came Mekas is wrong he is wrong about the and Argus Juillard, Carruthers" girl- around one day and said he believed in right things and for the right reasons." friend) . A good many scenes take place what we were doing, and asked us to For the first"year or so, Mekas tried to on the bleak outskirts of the city, and let him handle our printing," Adolfas deal with Hollywood films and foreign there is a lot of wordless staring into says. "Harry has handled it ever since, films as well as the $6.37 avant-garde, space. At intervals, the sound track is although he's never made any money but this was clearly impossible ; accord- taken over by reading out of us. It used to cost about twelve ingly, in 1960, he prevailed on Tall- his own poems. The film lasts an hour or fifteen hundred dollars to put out an mer to hire Andrew Sarris, a young and a quarter, and it is pretty heavy issue, and there were never enough sub- contributor to Film Culture, who even- going. scriptions or and a lot our own ads, of tually took over the reviewing of the Its somewhat sepulchral tone may be money went into it. Sometimes Harry commercial films, while Mekas turned due in part to the ordeal involved in would carry us for four or five issues- all his own energy and attention to making it. The Mekas brothers, who up ten thousand dollars He's to . been what he was now calling the New had moved from Orchard Street to the savior of us all." American Cinema. As it happened, two West 109th Street and then downtown As Film Culture evolved from a recent independent . films had given again, to East Thirteenth Street, were bimonthly to a monthly to the "unpe- Mekas great hope for the future. John living during this period on about thirty riodical" that it is today (there was Cassavetes' "Shadows," shot in New cents a day. They ate rice, tea; and once an interval of almost two years York in 1958 for fifteen thousand dol- lard,- plus an occasional potato stolen between issues), its content and point lars; with much of its action and dia- from the local Safeway market. Relief of view also changed. The early issues logue improvised by Cassavetes and the arrived of the most unexpected sort- dealt with cinema in general-Euro- actors, seemed to Mekas a real break- tinned pate, caviar, truffles, boar's pean and American commercial films as tliiough into a new area of narrative tongue, and the like. A fellow-Lithu- well as the avant-garde-and the in- filmmaking. The second film was en- anian named George Maciunas; who tellectual tone of the magazine was de- tirely different-a plotless, absurd, had gone into the fancy-food importing termined largely by Mekas's . friend often hilarious spoof that was the first business, was passing on his samples. Edouard de Laurot, a heavy thinker cinematic realization of the Beat spirit. But cash was desperately short. Every and a Marxist critic. "During the early Called "Pull My Daisy," it was made spare penny went into buying film. fifties, I was very much influenced by in the spring of 1959 by a friend of Sheldon Rochlin, the cameraman, by the rather doctrinaire Marxism of de Jack Kerouac's named Alfred Leslie agreeing to cut his hair got his father Laurot," Mekas said recently. "But and a Swiss photographer named to buy a five-hundred-dollar participa- then I decided that there were loo . Its action, such as it is, tion. The equipment kept breaking many people attacking the independent takes place in Leslie's loft, and the cast down, and the filmmakers kept being filmmaker and that I would take the consists of Leslie's and Kerouac's evicted by irate property owners just defender's position." Willard Maas,`. friends-Allen Ginsberg, Gregory as they were about to shoot a scene.' Maya Deren, and the others welcomed ' .; Corso, David Amram, Peter Orlovsky, "It's unbelievable what 'we went his conversion. They had even greater Larry Rivers, Richard Bellamy, and through," Adolfas recalled not longi reason to welcome it in the fall of the professional actress Delphine Seyrig, ago. "We were arrested three times 1958, when Mekas began his weekly who would be seen to somewhat better for filming without a permit." Mekas movie column in . advantage two years later in Alain Res- himself was never happy about the fin- The Voice was only three years old at nais's "Last Year at Marienbad ." In ished film. - He regretted having made the time . It had been running an oc- 1959, Film Culture's first annual In- de Laurot its assistant director, because casional piece on film, and one day dependent Film Award went to "Shad- de Laurot's ideas turned out to be en- Mekas, who was then writing a month- ows," and in 1960 its second went to tirely opposed to his. De Laurot want- ly movie review for a little magazine "Pull My Daisy." The latter film, ed to direct the actors at every turn, called Intro Bulletin, went in to see Mekas wrote in the Voice, pointed new while Mekas sought to draw from Jerry Tallmer, the Voice's associate directions-"new ways out of the fro- them the spontaneous "truth" of their editor, and asked why the paper didn't zen officialdom and midcentury senility own reactions. Many scenes were nev-

er shot, because they would have cost film and power. His greatest talent is on principle to provide any, sort of too much. "It's very clear by now, th, to make people-some people-believe whole film is a failure," Mekas wrote guidance for its customers, who were that he is what he is not." Cinema 16 thus obliged to rely on brief and often in his diary during the final editing, in went out of business in 1963, partly April, 1961 . "Guns of the Trees" nev- fanciful catalogue descriptions sent in because of television and rising business with each film by its maker. At the ertheless won the first prize at the costs and partly, one can assume, be- Charles Second International Free Cinema Theatre, devotees grew accus- cause of the Film-Makers' Coopera- tomed to sitting through two hours of Festival at Porretta Terme, Italy, tive. Vogel went on to become co- relative in- 1962, edging out other entries misery for every ten minutes of founder (with Richard Roud) and filmic revelation. Mekas's rigidly non- from sixteen countries (among them director of the New York Film Festi- Truffaut's "Jules and .Jim"), and selective policy alienated more than a val, but relations between him and few viewers, but Mekas, who sometimes it was shown commercially here and Mekas have been rather strained for appeared abroad. to like everything he saw, re- some time. mained unshakably convinced that only For Mekas and the twenty or thirty The basic policy of the Film-Mak- in such an other independent filmmakers in New uncritical climate could the ers' Cooperative was that no film tender shoots of the new film art find York at this time, the big problem was would be rejected, for any reason. sustenance. Cinema distribution. Most of them had had was learning to While Cinema 16 had been oriented talk a new language, as he never tired their films shown and distributed in at least partway toward its audience, of the past by Cinema the very informing his readers in the Voice, 16, the Coop intended to serve no one but and these early babblings successful film society formed in 1947 were a neces- the filmmaker. Anybody who had ever sary part of the process. "Even the by Amos and Marcia Vogel. Cinema made a film could send it in and have it mistakes, the out-of-focus shots, the a wide variety of films- 16 handled listed in the Cooperative's catalogue, shaky shots, the unsure steps, the hesi- educational, political, foreign, avant- filmmaker. shown at weekly for rental at a fee set by the tant movements, the overexposed and garde-which were The arrangement was nonexclusive : underexposed are screenings in a succession of theatres bits part of the vo- no contracts were involved, and film- cabulary," he wrote. "The doors to and were also available for rent. For encouraged to seek out been virtually the only makers were the spontaneous are opening; the foul years, it had additional means of distribution as well. air of stale and respectable profession- outlet for the avant-garde filmmaker. The rental income went directly to the alism is oozing out." Before the Co- Vogel exercised his own aesthetic judg- minus twenty-five per cent films he filmmaker, operative was a year old, however, ment as to which avant-garde taken out to help pay the Cooperative's some of its more established members would handle, though, and the inde- operating costs. The Cooperative dis- whom were had started to drift away. These ero- pendents-nearly all of tributed films to art theatres, film so- sions were offset to some extent by the (and still are) both chronically broke cieties, universities, and other outlets, convinced of their success of Adolfas Mekas's film "Hal- and unshakably and started regular weekly screenings lelujah the Hills," a spirited feature- talent-tended to chafe at this. In of Cooperative members' films at the decision not to screen length comedy that both Mekas broth- 1961, Vogel's Charles Theatre, at Twelfth ers worked on through much of 1963. a film by Stan Brakhage called "An- Street and Avenue B, around Directed by Adolfas Night" brought on a from his ticipation of the the corner from the Mekas own script, and filmed by crisis. Although Cinema 16 had shown apartment. Although decisions Ed Emshwiller, the acknowl- previous practically all of Brakhage's were nominally in the hands of edged technical genius of the films, "Anticipation of the Night"- a seven-man board of directors, independent-film movement, an attempt to visualize the world as it -the -galvanizing figure and prin- "Hallelujah" was described might look through the eyes of a new- cipal architect of all these ac- by the London film journal born baby truck Vogel as an artistic tivities was Mekas, who spent Sight & Sound as "one of the failure . He did accept it for distribution most of his time at the Coopera- most completely American through Cinema 16's rental service, tive's small, :cluttered, fourth films ever made," and its but he declined to inflict what he con- floor office at 414 Park Avenue South. anarchic humor and youthful sidered bad art on an audience, and By then, he had quit his job at the high spirits pleased many American soon afterward, largely as a result of Graphic studios (where he had risen critics as well. Although "Hallelujah this refusal, Mekas and a number of, from messenger boy to darkroom tech- the Hills" earned back most of the his colleagues decided to form their nician), and was getting along on his twenty-five thousand dollars it cost to own distribution agency. This was the ten-dollar-per-column salary at the Vil- make, investors were not falling over beginning of the Film-Makers' Co- lage Voice, plus eighteen dollars a each other in a rush to back inde- formally estab- operative, which was v week for two days' work at an off- pendent films by the Mekas brothers lished early in 1962 . set-printing studio. Neither then nor or anyone else, and the costs of ad- Looking back on the schism, VogO later did he get any salary from the vertising, promotion, and commercial thinks that Mekas simply used the Film-Makers' Cooperative, which was distribution were far in excess of what Brakhage issue as a means to his own chronically short of cash anyway. the Film-Makers' Cooperative could ends. "I had known Jonas for years," The Cooperative's first catalogue afford ; Mekas frequently had to dig Vogel said last spring. "My wife al- listed twenty-seven filmmakers in vari- into his own meagre funds to square ways used to let him in free to Cinema ous categories, and fifty-six films, cov- things. Quite clearly, the "new wave" 16 screenings, because he had no money ering almost every aspect of the avant- of American feature films that Mekas and was so obviously in love with film. garde cinema, that were available for and others had prophesied was not But there are really two Jonases-one rental. Some were quite literally "home gathering much momentum, and this very dedicated, the other a Machiavel- movies," made by amateurs who had realization led to one of the major lian maneuverer, a history rewriter, an little more to offer than their own un- turning points in Mekas's career. From attempted pope, He has two passions: focussed egos. The Cooperative refused now on, Mekas decided, he would de- vote himself more and more exclusively Creatures" and others in this genre- audience,. and , having to the true "underground" (Stan Van- Ken Jacobs' and Bob Fleischner's secured an alternate power line, started DerBeek had coined the term in 1959) "Blonde Cobra," 's "The to project the men on his face. The -to the defiantly noncommercial cin- Queen of Sheba Meets the. Atom current was again cut off, and in the ema of the extreme avant-garde. Man"-struck him as the forerunners darkness and confusion the Belgians of a cinema revolution more far-reach- regained control of the projection T this point in the early sixties, a ing than anything that had gone .be-o booth. A new group of - fore : "a turn from the New York Sitney took the underground films makers was doing its best to subvert the realist school . . . toward a cinema of on a tour of European cities after that, still emergent sexual revolution. As disengagement and new freedom." In- while Mekas returned home to arrange Mekas had noted with disapproval in voking the shades of Baudelaire and for the New York premiere of "Flam- his early Film Culture essly, homosex- Rimbaud, he described the world of ing Creatures ." Since 1960, Mekas had ual themes had permeated the films of these films as "a world of flowers of been arranging irregular screenings of Gregory Markopoulos, . Kenneth An- evil, of illuminations, of torn and tor- underground films at various movie ger, and other members of the second tured flesh ; a poetry which is at once theatres in and around Greenwich Vil- avant-garde. By 1960, however, sev- beautiful and terrible, good and evil, lage. Nobody had yet suggested that eral young New York filmmakers were delicate and dirty:' Mekas believed- these films ought to be licensed, as turning out pictures that were far more that these films must be seen, and he commercial films were, but a contagion "deviant" than anything seen before, in was ready to take the risk of showing of censorship had recently begun to a chaotic style that often parodied them. He was ready, in fact, for a manifest itself--some people thought the most exotic Grade B Hollywood cause eelebre. it had to do with the expected influx features of the nineteen-forties-in The opportunity soon arose. Thd of visitors to the 1964 New York particular, the films of the stupefying Third International Experimenta World's Fair-and a number of the- Knokke-le-Zoute Maria Montez. Ken Jacobs, one of the Film Competition at atres and coffeehouses had been dosed originators of the new style, has said Belgium, a sort of avant-garde festival, down. Although Mekas tried to cir- that he was inspired mainly by a film had invited Mekas to be one of its cumvent the problem by listing the ex- that the Surrealist artist Joseph Cornell judges. Mekas went over in Decem- hibitor of "Flaming Creatures" as the had made in 1939 by cutting most of ber, 1963, accompanied by P. Adams Love-and-Kisses-to-Censors Film So- the footage out of a studio romance set Sitney and Barbara Rubin, an intensely ciety and charging twenty-five cents somewhere east of Suez ; in Cornell's militant girl whom Mekas had hired for a membership card in lieu of ad- truncated version, the heroine is for- to work at the Cooperative and who mission, he fully expected trouble. ever shrinking in terror or nervously had recently shot a film, "Christmas Actually, "Flaming Creatures" ran waiting for something to happen. Me- on Earth," that exceeded even "Flam- for three successive Mondays at the kas himself found money to print a film ing Creatures" in sexual explicitness. Gramercy Arts Theatre early in 1964 by Jack Smith, a remarkable young They took along a selection of under- without incident. But then, on Feb- man from Columbus, Ohio, who ground films to show at the festival, in- ruary 15th, the police came and issued starred in many underground films cluding Anger's "Scorpio Rising," a summons to the theatre owner, who of the period. Smith's film, his first to Markopoulos's "Twice a Man," Rice's immediately terminated all under- be released, was the forty-five-minute "Chumlum," Brakhage's "Dog Star ground-film screenings there. Mekas opus "Flaming Creatures ." It was shot Man" and "Window Water Baby transferred his operations to the New on out-of-date stock, on the roof of an . _Moving," Breer's "Pat's Birthday," Bowery Theatre, on St. Marks Place, abandoned building in the East Village, and Smith's "Flaming Creatures." where "Flaming Creatures" was shown for a total cost of about three hundred The other judges drew the line at on the night of March 3rd-shown for dollars, and it soon managed to derange "Flaming Creatures," declaring it un- thirty minutes, that is, at which point a surprising number of senses, cinematic fit for public screening in the festival the police rose up and arrested every- and otherwise. To the tune of scratchy theatre. Mekas withdrew from the body in sight and confiscated the film recordings of "Amapola" and other jury in angry protest, and some of the and all the projection equipment they pseudo-Latin rhythms, fantastically American filmmakers demanded (un- could lay their hands on. Mekas and draped beings, male and female (al-, successfully) to have their films with- the others spent the night in jail, and though one is often unsure which is drawn as well. Mekas and his associ- were released on bail the next after- which), commingle in settings of~.Span- ates remained in Knokke-le-Zoute, noon. A week later, Mekas was ar- ish and Arabian decor (the two _great however, and-gave a private screening rested again, for showing Jean Genet's exotic styles of Maria Montez Jea- of "Flaming Creatures" in .their hotel homosexual film "Un Chant d'Amour" tures), parade their genitalia before the suite, where it was seen by Jean-Luc at the tiny Writers' Stage, on East camera, and eventually indulge in%a Godard,, Agn%s Varda, Roman Po- Fourth Street, and spent another night ridiculous orgy that seems to coincide lanski, and other leading European in jail. The Genet case was later with an earthquake. After seeing the cineastes. The case had hit the Euro- dropped on a technicality, after letters film at a private screening, Mekas, the pean papers by this time, and interest in support of the film and of Mekas had man who had once denounced "the in the film was building up. On the last been written by Jean-Paul Sartre, conspiracy of homosexuality," reported day of the festival, Mekas and Barbara Simone de Beauvoir, Christiane Roche- to his Voice readers that "Flaming Rubin invaded the projection booth, fort, and other European intellectuals, Creatures" was a great film, "a most overwhelmed the projectionist, and but Mekas drew a six-month suspended luxurious outpouring of imagination, of started to show "Flaming Creatures." sentence for "Flaming Creatures." imagery, of poetry, of movie artistry- Theatre personnel quickly cut off their The case was appealed all the way to comparable only to the work of the power source and sought to eject them. the Supreme Court, which voted by. a greatest, lice von Sternberg ." At this point, the Belgian Minister of narrow margin not to hear it. One kidding. "Flaming justice appeared onstage to calm the of Mekas was not the justices recorded in favor pf hear- ing it was , and his vote was corded." It was at this stage that Me- figure. The most sensational discovery subsequently interpreted by his political kas began to evolve his personal film of the period, though, was Andy War- enemies as signifying that he was in style, with its quick cutting between hol. A highly successful advertising ' favor of dirty movies. images, short bursts of speeded-up ac- artist who was just breaking into the There is no doubt but that the Me- tion, jerky camera movements, super- New York art world, Warhol started kas arrest and the floods of attendant impositions made by winding the film in the summer of 1963 to make publicity created a new situation for the back and exposing it again, and single- films-or anti-films, as some people independent filmmaker. The public, frame shots. His intention was "to called them. "Kiss," primarily a series which had been largely oblivious of the break down the image into single of closeups of the filmmaker Naomi underground's existence, assumed' that frames, into the smallest film note, and Levine kissing various companions ; "underground" was synonymous with then to restructure that image, that "Sleep," a six-hour film of a man dirty pictures, and this naturally irked a tree, and to introduce myself into it by sleeping ; "Haircut," thirty-three min- lot of avant-garde filmmakers. Also, a means of pace, rhythm, colors-to in- utes of a man having his hair cut; lot of them complained bitterly that Me- troduce my own state of being in- "Eat," forty-five minutes of artist Rob- kas was pushing Jack Smith and a few directly." And he wanted to do all this ert Indiana eating a mushroom ; and. others and neglecting the rest. Mekas "in the camera"-not later, in the edit- other flowerings of the early Warhol had no leisure for private quarrels. In ing process. cinema were shown first by Mekas at addition to fighting the ".Flaming Crea- the Gramercy Arts Theatre, where tures" case through the courts, inveigh- HE crackdown on unlicensed film they excited a good deal of strenuous ing against censorship in the Voice and showings in the spring of 1964 controversy. Warhol's static, deliber- elsewhere ("Works of art are above Tdrove the underground temporarily ately boring films, his habit of turning obscenity and pornography"), dealing underground in fact as well as in name . the camera-- on someone and letting it with distributors and would-be under- For the next few months, the Film- run, seemed like a slap in the face to ground impresarios, overseeing the Co- Makers' Cooperative office on Park filmmakers like Brakhage and Mar- operative, putting out Film Culture, Avenue South was the meeting place kopoulos-a crude attack on the whole financing the exposition of under- of embattled filmmakers, who came idea that cinema could be used to por- ground films that P. Adams Sitney and there to discuss strategy, to fight among tray the inner consciousness. Mekas Barbara Rubin were taking around themselves, to screen their work, and nonetheless proclaimed him a genius. Europe (and trying to make peace sometimes to eat and sleep-although "I think that is the between Sitney and Rubin, who were the Cooperative's paid secretary, Leslie most revolutionary of all filmmakers at cross-purposes much of the time), Trumbull, frowned on that. Trumbull working today," he wrote in the Voice. finding money for destitute filmmakers was working valiantly to bring some "He is opening to filmmakers a com- like Jack Smith and Ron Rice. and order and efficiency into the Coop's pletely new and inexhaustible field of looking for another theatre to show business affairs, which no one else had cinema reality. . . . What to some still films in, he was trying in spare mo- been able to do. His first act on being looks like actionless nonsense, with the ments to make his own films. A few hired, in 1964, was to rule the long shift of our consciousness which is tak- days before the "Flaming Creatures" sofa in the office out of bounds for ing place will become an endless variety arrest, Mekas had filmed the Living sleeping, thereby discouraging itinerant and an endless excitement." Ready, as Theatre production of Kenneth filmmakers, homeless poets, and hang- always, to help a fellow-filmmaker, Brown's play "The Brig," a powerful ers-on of all kinds from using the room Mekas served as cameraman on "Em- indictment of Marine brutality ; he was as a crash pad. (He also decreed that pire," Warhol's eight-hour character so strongly impressed by the play that the Coop would no longer spend study of the Empire State Building, he decided to film it as a series of real, money that it did not have-a blow to which was shot in one long sequence rather than simulated, events, and he some filmmakers but rather a boon to in July, 1964. "If all people could sit was so successful in this that the film Mekas, who had been in the habit of and watch the Empire State Building won the documentary award at the making up deficits out of his own for eight hours and meditate upon it," 1965 . He made pocket.) During the post-crackdown Mekas told his readers, "there would be several other short films in 1964, but period, though, Mekas himself fre- no more wars, no hate, no terror-. he had time to edit few of them. Car- quently bedded down under the film- there would be happiness regained upon rying his Bolex around with him every- cutting table in the office, too weary or earth." It was the sort of column that where, he shot whatever struc~ his too busy to go home. Funds were drew a lot of mail. fancy-friends' weddings, the circus, shorter than ever, with nothing coming Those who saw a good deal of Tiny Tim, sunrise over the city, Sal- in from New York screenings. In spite Mekas then often wondered how he vador Dali shampooing an automobile, of such hardships, the period was an ex- could maintain his unflagging enthusi- Timothy Leary in his Millbrook rk- ceptionally productive one for inde- asm. He continued to live like an an- treat. At Some point during the early pendent filmmakers. Shortly before chorite, on one meal a day, and he wore sixties, it had occurred to him that what the "Flaming Creatures" bust, Mekas the same corduroy suit the year round. he was really doing was writing a diary had introduced the public to the ex- Filmmakers badgered him incessantly with his camera. "One of my big prob- traordinary films of George and Mike for funds, assuming that his income lems, though, was that when I looked Kuchar, teen-age prodigies from the from lectures, writings, and film rent- at the footage later and saw a tree or Bronx, whose Loews-haunted adoles- als was considerably larger than their a snowstorm or something like that, cence gave birth to such extravaganzas own, but Mekas's yearly earnings' from there was nothing left of what it had as "I Was a Teen Age Rumpot" and all sources never exceeded a thousand meant to me when I filmed it," he "Hold Me While I'm Naked." Bruce dollars. The truth is that not even said recently. "In reality, I 'was looking Baillie and several other West Coast his friends knew him terribly well. In at that tree or snowstorm with all the filmmakers sent their work to the Co- that society of straining and perturbed memories that I brought to it, but my operative office, and so did Harry talents, of self-conscious poetes maudits memories and attitudes were not re- Smith, a somewhat legendary older and initiates of the drug culture, Me- kas s apparent lack of competitive ego decided to call the changing programs stars, along with Naomi Le- and his refusal to take himself too seri- of new films that they screened--usu- vine, Taylor Meaa, Frances ously made it easy for the others to ally once a week and often at mid- Francine, and "Mario Mon- take him for granted. His generosity night-in various movie theatres tez" (who appeared in was unfailing. Jack Smith's "Normal around town. "Flaming Creatures" as Love," Barbara Rubin's "Christmas "One of the great things about "Dolores Flores," the Spanish on Earth," Ron Rice's "The Queen of Jonas," Andrew Sarris remarked not dancer) . But if Warhol can Sheba Meets the Atom Man," and long ago, "is that he has never suc- have appropriated Markopoulos's films It would be said to several of Gregory cumbed to the sin of despair." the mock-Hollywood, camp style of were shot with Mekas's Bolex. "I owe have been relatively easy to do so many Smith, Jacobs, and Rice, he used it everything to Jonas," Barbara Rubin times in the next four years, during different and more disconcerting me making films. Cinematheque (named in for has said. "He started which the ends. "Flaming Creatures" looks curi- He gave me film, which he couldn't homage to Henri Langlois's film the- ously innocent today-a spoof of "for- really afford for himself. He lent me atre and library in Paris) lost money another. bidden" eroticism and a parody of por- his camera-everything. And I guess at one temporary house after rather than the real thing. gave him, back enough-we the New Yorker The- nography, none of us It opened at The famous Warhol `tstare," on the didn't recognize his humanity." Unlike atre, at Broadway and West Eighty- camera's American 1964 ; other hand-the unblinking Adolfas, who married an eighth Street, in November, voyeuristic eye, which draws from his girl in 1965 and withdrew somewhat moved a month later to the Maidman, per- the underground Street ; then to narcissistic non-actors the sort of from the activities of on West Forty-second sonal revelations that one does not ex- to make more or less conventional film the City Hall Cinema, at 170 Nassau no pect to see on the screen or anywhere comedies, Jonas Mekas has shown Street; then to the Astor Place Play- means innocent, and is up a menage. He is and then else-is by no interest in setting house, on Lafayette Street; Warhol's in- women-Adolfas once said near Sixth sometimes pretty scary. attracted to to the 41st Street Theatre, stant fame and his reputation for turn- he couldn't remember a time when his Avenue, where it settled down for a "it ing out a film a week piqued a number brother was not in love, although relatively long stay of eighteen months. them ques- a pair of eyes seen on a trouble with the of filmmakers. Very few of could be just There was no more tioned his importance, however, and moving train"-but since Adolfas's police-word of* the sexual revolution alone . "He at even those doubts evaporated when marriage Jonas has lived was spreading fast-but attendance Chelsea Girls" opened, in Sep- balanced person," according to was rarely large enough "The is a the screenings tember, 1966, at the 41st Street The- Barbara Rubin, "even though he does to cover the costs. Mekas estimated that not lead a balanced life. He has de- ranged between four hun- atre. the deficits Asked once why "The Chelsea himself absolutely to cinema. I a thousand dollars a month, voted dred and Girls" was a work of art, Warhol think his being European makes a dif- which he had to make up somehow. He insouciance, always more intellec- the telephone replied, with characteristic ference. He was spent a lot of his time on "Well, first of all, it was made by an tual, more concentrated, less chaotic trying to raise money. The foundations come of us. Jonas was always grants to the artist, and, second, that would than the rest seemed loath to make out art." More verbal enthusiasts the one who held things together." underground cinema-though Mekas as in saw it as "quite possibly the first. mas- Mekas admits to being a fanatic learned in 1966, to his annoyance, that has many ways, but, unlike most fanatics, received a Rockefeller terpiece from a generation that someone had learned to handle the medium of film he has never been too rigid to bend book about under- __grant to write a casually as an artist used to handle with the wind and alter his strategy. ground filmmakers. In spite of increas- as dreamed the European fact that paint" (Brian O'Doherty), and as "a For years, he ing publicity, in spite of the gran- intellectual's dream of using art to Avenue advertising agencies tragic film," full of "classical Madison deur" and "the terror and hardness" of change society. He marched against regularly rented Coop films and in- the Vietnam war, and made films that techniques into tele- our age (Jonas Mekas) . "The Chelsea corporated their consists of twelve separate epi- set out to expose the corruption of vision commercials (collage animation, Girls" bourgeois society. Then, around 1964, a dozen sodes that were said to take place in dif- single-frame cutting to cram Hotel. his outlook underwent a change. As he, images into a few seconds of ferent rooms of the Chelsea different References to specific rooms were de- put it, "Instead of marching and shout- air time), in spite of the sixties' taste leted when it was pointed out that the ing against things I didn't like,-J' de- for avant-gardism in general, there enough money for what hotel might well sue-an understand- cided to try to construct something was never able reaction in view of the depicted go- new, outside the system." Forcing the drug- "free" cinema, and many ings on, which include simulated legal issue of censorship with "Flaming Mekas called taking, homosexual and lesbian behav- Creatures" had done no real good, he free cineastes remained more or less now felt"the laws will change only destitute. The perpetual dissensions and ior, and a climactic hysterical fit of ag- when people change, and underground feuds among the filmmakers added to gression on the part of a man who cinema will not get anything from go- Mekas's problems, and a.good deal of claims to be the pope. Largely because ing to the public." What independent the unrest centered on Andy War- of the remarkable screen presence of filmmakers really needed was an op- hol. His early, static films had given Warhol's freakish performers, who are portunity to show their films unmo- way to movies with scripts-improbable seen mostly in extreme closeups that lested by censors, nervous theatre own- and highly impromptu scripts, to be eliminate the background entirely (one ers, or the profit motive, and from sure-and with performers, who were critic has detected a resemblance here 1964 on Mekas directed most of his in many cases the same people who had to Caravaggio's portraits), the film has , energy toward this end. The result earlier appeared in the films of Jack an intermittently gripping fascination' was the Film-Makers' Cinematheque, Smith and Ken Jacobs. Jack Smith that makes its running time of more which is what Mekas and his friends himself became one of the Warhol than three hours almost bearable . (It would have run twice as long if War- considerably higher than those Mekas What with the distribution "sharks" hol had not decided to screen the epi- was used to coping with. Mekas and moving their skin flicks into the art- sodes two at a time, side by put all the income from film houses, Mekas estimated that the side on a split screen.) The their own films into the Center, and average audience for true underground film is neither pornographic spent more and more of their time in a film art in the foreseeable future would nor, by current standards, frantic search for outside support. Elia be from thirty to fifty people per particularly racy, and its ap- Kazan co-signed a six-thousand-dollar screening. As it happened, George peal to the general public re- bank loan for them, and Otto Premin- Maciunas, Mekas's Lithuanian friend- mains something of a mys- ger gave the Center five thousand dol- an entrepreneur seemingly undaunted tery. Following its initial run lars. Ironically, though, the general re- by the failure of one business venture at the 41st Street Theatre, it moved laxation of censorship that had come after another-had recently founded into a commercial theatre uptown and about since the "Flaming Creatures" what he called the Fluxhouse Coopera-' Variety would say, the un- became, as scandals (and which many people at- tive, whose aim was to, provide low- derground cinema's first boffo smash. tributed in part to the impassioned anti- cost housing for artists in the area The success of "The Chelsea Girls" censorship battles of Mekas and a few south of Houston Street now referred gave great impetus to certain ideas that others) now seemed to be working to as SoHo. With a twenty-thousand- Mekas .and others had never quite re- against the film underground. Several dollar grant from a foundation, Ma-~ linquished. Earlier in the year, Mekas, theatres that had agreed to book the ciunas had bought an old loft building Shirley Clarke, and had Center's films had subsequently become at 80 Wooster Street and was in the' established a separate branch of the outlets for the "sexploitation" movies process of renovating it. Mekas got to- Film-Makers' Cooperative, to distribute that were starting to flood the market. gether enough money to put down a- films, like "The Chelsea Girls," that (Some theatre owners thought they deposit on the ground floor and base- thought might a wider they appeal to were getting such movies when they ment of 80 Wooster Street, and in the. public than the Coop's regular custom- booked underground film art, which summer of 1967 he and several other ers The Film-Makers' Distribution . led to cruel surprises on all sides.) The filmmakers threw themselves into the Center, as they called it, set up shop in freer moral climate of the middle and herculean job of turning the groundi the Cooperative's office, raised some late sixties had also opened the way to floor into a small theatre. They had,; money, and embarked on a campaign nudity, explicit sex, and relaxed lan- as usual, no money to start with,' to establish a network of small art the- guage in the commercial cinema, some and although they did most of the, atres in different cities which would of whose flashier young directors bor- work themselves, the bills mounted book feature-length films by Markopou- rowed copiously from the un- alarmingly. "I am on guerrilla war- los, Warhol, Robert Downey, Adolfas derground's technical and fare now," Mekas wrote in his diary., Mekas, , and several conceptual bag of tricks. He spent his days scrounging others, in addition to the three initi- (Hand-held-camera work, for small sums-"anything ators. For a time, it looked as though such as that which marked goes, almost the skirmish tactics, underground might be, going to the foxhunt scenes of Tony dollar by dollar." This was surface with a notable splash. Coopera- Richardson's "Tom Jones," the year that were more he and Sitney tive rentals booming, as and was becoming all the rage.) saw the two roses on the more film departments were established The commercial cinema was sidewalk and parts enlisted the aid at universities and colleges in all increasingly innovative, while of St. Theresa of Avila, and, of the country, and the contributions to the underground seemed to by one miracle or another, film art of Mekas and his colleagues have lost energy and direc the new Cinematheque were receiving recognition. man- increasing tion. Around the Film-Makers' Co- aged to open to the public (The Philadelphia College of Art operative office, moreover, there were that December. The follow- honored Mekas in for June, 1966, his several members who disapproved of ing spring, its accumulated debts were "devotion, passion, and selfless dedica- spending money on ventures that paid off in full with the help of a the timely tion to rediscovery of the newest stained the purity of noncommercial forty-thousand-dollar grant from the art.") In September, moreover, the cinema, and who tended to think that Ford Foundation-the first foundation fourth annual New York Film Festival any fund-raising efforts should be di- money Mekas ever received. gave official and substantial recognition rected toward the realization of their The Cinematheque was open, but it to the underground with a Special own projects. Stan Brakhage, who had was operating without a license independent from Events series devoted to quit the Coop and then thought better the Department of filmmaking. The Film-Makers' Dis- of it, told Shirley Clarke that she was Buildings. Mekas had applied for trihutio i Center hired additional offic4 one, nothing more than a commercial film- and lie now found himself in a laby- workers just to handle the bookings of'' maker. Brakhage spoke bitterly against rinth familiar to New York property "The Chelsea Girls ." the Center, and -by the end of 1967 owners. A series of building inspectors, But then, as sometimes happens in Mekas himself was beginning to doubt arrived, followed by a police captain. such cases, Warhol decided that he the wisdom of the enterprise. "They all indicated that they would could do better distributing his own In the midst of all these uncertain- appreciate a few bucks," Mekas wrote films. He withdrew them from the ties, moreover, Mekas was forced to in his journal. "I said no, so they Center, and the Center reverted al- close down the Cinematheque at the laughed and wrote out another sum- most immediately from a money-mak- 41st Street Theatre, because increased mons." As a result, the new theatre ing to a money-losing operation. What rentals had made the screenings un- never did get its license, and the screen with the costs of promotion and dis- profitable. He had by no means given ings there ended six months after they tribution already contracted for sev- in up the idea of the Cinematheque, had begun. The Cinematheque became. eral cities, moreover, the losses were however-perhaps in a smaller version. a vagabond once more-there were screenings at the Methodist Church on HE Film-Makers' Distribution minute late for one of Anthology's: West Fourth Street, at the Bleecker Center had failed and the Cine- three daily screenings is to be denied Street Cinema, at the Elgin, at the Tmatheque was fading, but, astonishingly entrance by Mrs. Eugenia Mitchell, the Gotham Art, at the Jewish Museum enough, money had become available polite but adamant ticket-taker ; Ku-. on Tuesday evenings, and, for one un- for another Mekas project-a film belka himself once blocked a particular-' easy month, at the Gallery of Modern "academy," dedicated to showing, in ly insistent latecomer by resorting to Art-the last an arrangement that repertory, the highest achievements of karate, in which he holds a black belt. Mekas abruptly terminated because, as avant-garde film. Mekas had started Criticism has also been directed against he explained in a letter to the Gallery, thinking about it in 1961, and in 1968 Anthology's policy of showing foreign attempts had been made to censor some the Film Art Fund-set up by Mekas's films without subtitles (which two-dollar admission distract of the films, the old friend and fellow-filmmaker Je- the eye), and, of course, nearly every-: charge was too high for "serious film rome Hill and by Allan Masur, a law- body has some complaint about building itself, the the se- . students," and "the yer with a special interest in the arts- lection of films. Most of the complaints- tradition of bad art in the galleries, came into being for the primary pur- are directed at Mekas, and bad atmos- as usual, al- exudes a very stifling pose of financing "the first film muse- though his is only one voice of five on phere not suitable for presentation o~ um exclusively devoted to the film as the selection committee, whose- orig-, any living art." It was a bleak peri-f an art," to be known as Anthology inal members (six then) were Mekas, od, all things considered. The Film-, Film Archives. The Film Art Fund Brakhage, Kubelka, Sitney, the West Makers' Distribution Center kept sink-, worked out a contract for Anthology Coast filmmaker James Broughton, ing deeper and deeper into debt, and to operate as an li- and the critic Ken debts might Kelman. The comm Mekas was afraid that its brary and theatre -within Joseph Papp's mittee deliberated for two years on the eventually overwhelm the Cooperative: Public Theatre, on Lafayette Street, in stocking of the Anthology, Clarke and a few oth- and for a as well. Shirley the old Astor Library building. The time-until Brakhage the Center could hold resigned, and a: ers argued that if Fund also raised three hundred and simple majority vote was substituted for out just a little longer it would show a sixty thousand dollars for the construc- unanimous rulings-it thought. otherwise, looked as though profit. But Mekas tion of Anthology's theatre, a ninety- it could never agree on anything. The and in the spring of 1970, with a city seat temple of cinematic art, designed list now runs to auction off both to two hundred and marshal threatening by the Austrian filmmaker Peter Ku- thirty-one films (plus fifty-two more the Center's and the Coop's property belka, which opened in December, voted in but not judgment by a theatre owner yet acquired) . They to settle a 1970. Kubelka, who is also a curator of are shown in a repeating cycle that who had not been paid, he closed the Osterreichisches Filmmuseum, in takes about six When the Center went out weeks to complete, so it down. Vienna, had wanted for years to con- that anyone who wants to absorb what of business, its debts totalled close to struct a theatre that would eliminate the committee thousand dollars. Mekas made considers "the heights of eighty every, distraction to the eye and ear and the art of cinema" from 1899 to 1971 himself personally and legally respon- permit total concentration on the can sible for the entire sum, this being the do so in a couple of months of as- screen. He came close to achieving this siduous viewing. Although the list is only way he could insure that the Coop goal at Anthology, where each seat is a would not sink as well. "So now I have weighted rather heavily toward the kind of isolated viewing booth, with various avant-garde to eat this sopp, and it doesn't taste like movements, with blinders on each side and a canopy a great deal of Brakhage, Markopou- it's really good cooking," he wrote in a overhead, and where the black Cooperative's los, Anger, and other current heroes,, memo mailed to all the . _walls and ceiling, black car- it does members. "It stinks, in fact. I wish you include such early Hollywood pets, black velvet upholstery, classics as Griffith's "Intolerance" and a good summer." and complete absence of light- Chaplin's By means of arduous negotiation, "The Gold Rush," ing save what is reflected from together with representative Mekas was able to get his creditors to the screen make it necessary eighty to about samplings of the great Rus- reduce their claims from for the faithful to reach their sian, European, 'forty thousand dollars, which he agreed and Japanese seats by a process of grope and films. The total absence of to pay off in monthly installments. stumble. the confusions o films by Godard, Truffaut, Somehow, during all Although many find the Antonioni, 1968, he had managed to edit twenty Fellini, Hawks, viewing experience at Anthology novel Hitchcock, and other much hours of his own film footage into the and pleasant, there has been consider- of "Diaries, Notes, and admired contemporary narra- three hours able criticism of Kubelka's black box. tive-film Sketches," which earned him pear- directors greatly an- Comedy falls flat there, it is said, be- noys some critics, and the failure to ly seven thousand dollars-most 6I it cause there is so little sense of shared a single showing on German include such independents as Shirley from laughter. has called it "au- Clarke, Ed television. Every cent went to reduce Emshwiiller, and even Stan thoritarian cinema," which forces the VanDerBeek, the man who gave the the debt, as did his fees from lectures viewer to sit, look, and listen in a Ku- and writings. As of this moment, he underground cinema its name, has belka-prescribed manner. Other critics greatly miffed some filmmakers. Ac- has brought the amount still owed down have suggested that the theatre was de- to about eight thousand, and his refusal cording to Mekas, none of these ex- signed specifically for one ,film-Ku- clusions is to be looked upon as final. to complain, or even to discuss what belka's own "Arnulf Rainer," a six- is still a decidedly lonely effort, has Mekas himself is strong on certain and-a-half-minute imageless, visually films by Hawks and Hitchcock and added considerably to his reputation and aurally stentorian hymn to cine- Godard (late Godard), which he plans for saintliness. ma's four basic elements of light, dark- to propose at one or another of the se- ness, sound, and silence. To arrive one lection committee's twice-annual meet-

ings. The co:a iittce is still "in the his dark, Spartan room at the Chelsea are there, along with Allen Ginsberg, process of emergence," he says. No Hotel, bookshelves and desks divide the Timothy Leary, John Lennon and clear guidelines exist as yet, for exam- space into separate areas for his sep- , and dozens of others whose ple, in the matter of film comedies, arate jobs-Anthology business, Film lives Mekas has touched. And the New many of which seem to consist of Culture, "Movie journal," and so on. York that they inhabited is there, too, treacly stories with a few great comic He is currently under great pressure to there with its dingy lofts and streets and cafe- moments. The fact that are so secure new financing for Anthology. terias, its peace marches few contemporary narrative films re- and Hare He still looks at dozens of new films Krishna singers, and its great escape flects the committee's feeling that nar- each week and ministers to the ever- hatch Central rative filmmaking is the area most heav- of Park. But the me- critical needs of independent filmmak- dium through which we see these peo- ily compromised by the taint of com- ers, who troop in and out of the An- desire to avoid ple and scenes is the camera eye that mercialism. In their thology office at all hours. (Filmmakers has become, after ten years of practice current fashions, Mekas says, "we feel are heavy users of Anthology's Xerox and experiment, a living extension of it's better to underinclude than to over- machine .) Occasionally, he asks him- Mekas's unique sensibility. Each shot, include." self why the hell he doesn't just quit each motion of the camera, each sound It strikes some of his colleagues as and concentrate on making his own on the sound track (snatches of Cho- ironic that Mekas, whe was often criti- films. for his "permissive- pin, street noises, Mekas narrating) is cized in the past "I'm not too clear about it even yet," suffused with the presence of an "au- ness" in showing any film by any film- he said, in a reflective mood not long teur" maker, should now be run- whom we come to know more ago. "Maybe I did what I did-ac intimately, perhaps, during the film's° ning such a rigorously selec- complished what I accom- tive archive. Mekas worries three hours than anyone has ever, plished-only because of my known him in person, and whose com- about this himself. He wants indecision among a number pany wears extremely well. Up to now, to revive the now defunct of things. Maybe that's part Cinematheque by devoting a Mekas has been known principally for of my character. I always his untiring efforts on behalf of other period of several days be- think, Oh, I'm wasting my film tween each Anthology rep- artists. It would be a fine irony if time. These last months, I his own "Diaries, Notes, and Sketches" ertory cycle to the showing am thinking that very much. should of new films, and he is currently trying turn out to be, as some people And my films are sitting already proclaim, the supreme achieve- to raise money for this purpose. In gen- there in the hotel-hours and hours ment of the New eral, though, he feels that the need for American Cinema. of footage waiting to be edited. But Discussing the film the other day, his Cinematheque is no longer as press- I will come to them sooner or later- Mekas conceded ing as it used to be. New York now has that its point of view some week when I do nothing else. was deeply and sometimes unwittingly the Millennium Film Workshop and There will be two other volumes of personal. Time and again throughout Film Forum, which regularly screen my film diaries, the first one taking in work by independent spirits, and the film, for example, we see New new the period of the fifties and sixties- York under a blanket of snow. "I both the Whitney Museum and the Brooklyn and Orchard Street, Bar- thought Museum Modern Art have pro- I was shooting New York .as of bara Rubin and Allen Ginsberg and it is," Mekas said, "but when I looked grams devoted to the low-budget all those people, the Women Strike for avant-garde. (Willard Van Dyke, di- at the film I realized that my New Peace, all those early protest marches. York was a fantasy-that it does not rector of the film department at the .Lhave much footage on that. The sec- really have much MOHIA's so snow. I was shoot- Modern, said recently that ond volume will go from 1969 to the ing my memories Tuesday-afternoon "Cineprobe" was . Winter memories present, whenever that happens to be." are very special to me. At home, ev- "really a response to the activities of In Lithuania today, Mekas is con- erybody worked Jonas at his various cinematheques.") outside._, in the sum- sidered one of the most important liv- mer, but in the winter we all sat to- "Part of the early battle has been ing poets. His collected poems (four long ago. "Films gether in rooms, and so the memories won," Mekas said not volumes in all) were published in his of my childhood are now are more readily accepted as an very much of the homeland for the first time in 1971, winters . In my `Diaries,' this city of art form on a formal basis. What's and quickly sold out. He is not a pro- the ten years is steel and concrete becomes like a happened during last lific poet-he may think about a poem Walden, with trees and birds, the sea- .that a whole new range of possibilities for a year or more before he writes it in cinema has opened up, and this, I sons very noticeable. What my `Diaries' down-and he feels he could never contain is maybe what I . would like think, is one of the main achievements write poetry in any language except New York of the so-called underground." to be." Lithuanian. But it seems likely that the After a pause, he added, "And, you qualities that distinguish him as a poet know, during the period when I was HEN Anthology opened its also mark his filmmaking, with its more shooting the Wdoors, in December, 1970, Me- `Diaries' I felt very much or less international language. His that New York was city. kas said that he would give two years of my On my "Diaries, Notes, and Sketches," in fact, way back to New York from some- his life to getting it started, after which may be one of the most authentically withdraw work on his own where else, I felt that I was coming he would to poetic films ever made, as well as one home-that my real roots were . films. His friends have heard him say here of the most personal. Barbara Rubin But now I'm not so sure anymore. I this often enough in the past, and no- has called the film "a summary of ev- body really believes he will do anything feel now that I haven't found my real erybody's trip in that whole period," roots-that I have no place., I keep of the sort. Mekas never seems to shed and, in a sense, it can be seen as a responsibilities ; he simply compart- looking ahead and wondering." marvellously inclusive home movie of -CALVIN TomKINS mentalizes them. In his cluttered office the underground-film movement. The adjoining the Anthology theatre and in filmmakers who were Mekas's friends