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Home , Amos Vogel, Cinema 16, Film Culture, Flaming Creatures, Gregory Markopoulos, Jonas Mekas

Text & Interview by Aaron Rose / Portrait by Terry Richardson / images courtesy the artist SPECIAL THANKS TO BENN NORTHOVER

It is only very infrequently in life that a person has the opportunity to sit down with an icon. I can count on one hand the number of times it has “Artists shouldn’t happened for me. For years and years, while I was living in , I would go see at Anthology Archives. For those who have never waste a single heard of it, Anthology is a small theatre on the corner of Second Ave and Second Street in the East Village. However, during the time that I was drop of their frequenting the theatre I didn’t really realize its history—it was just one of those places I went because the movies were cool. Later on however, lives fighting the through a conversation with filmmaker Harmony Korine, I got more of the back story on the place and the man who founded it, . If this old: we should is your first introduction to Mekas, you’re in for a real treat. Not only has he been involved in the community for over 50 years, continue and he has continued, even today, to place himself at the forefront of cinema culture. With someone like Jonas Mekas, it’s almost impossible to know concentrate on where to start. He is now 87 years old, which means that before I was even an embryo, he had already changed the cultural landscape of our times. the creation of That said, it is impossible to list all of Mekas’ accomplisments in one magazine article, so here is a brief history… the new, because In 1944, Jonas Mekas and his brother, Adolfas, were taken by the Nazis and imprisoned in a forced labor camp in Nazi Germany for eight months. the old will die After the War, he studied philosophy at the University of Mainz from 1946-48 and at the end of 1949, he emigrated with his brother to the U.S., by itself.” settling in Williamsburg, . Two weeks after his arrival, Mekas borrowed the money to buy his first Bolex 16-mm camera and began to – Jonas Mekas record moments of his life. Around the same time he discovered avant- garde film at venues such as ’s pioneering , and (Diaries, 1972) in 1953 began organizing his own screenings of films by underground filmmakers. He has since become one of the leading figures of American his friend and artistic collaborator , founder of the art avant-garde filmmaking or the “New American Cinema,” as he dubbed it in movement. The Center houses an extensive avant-garde film archive and library, the late 1950s. In 1954, he became editor in chief of magazine, and has plans to build a Fluxus Research Institute. Most recently, his work was a self-published film journal that he started with his brother. In 1958 he featured at the 51st Venice Biennial and was the focus of a major retrospective began writing his now infamous “Movie Journal” column for the Village PS1/MoMA Contemporary Art Center in New York. An exhibition of his work Voice. At the beginning of the , the New York film underground will open at the Serpentine Gallery, London in 2010. was coming into full flower and in 1962 he co-founded the Film-Makers’ … and that’s just part of the story. Through his various creative ventures Cooperative, which organized many legendary screenings of the time. In throughout the years Jonas Mekas has been intimately involved with the careers 1964, Mekas was arrested on obscenity charges for screening Jack Smith’s of filmmakers such as , , Jack Smith, Robert Frank controversial film,. He launched a campaign against and . He hosted some of the first New York performances by the the censorship board, which convinced him of the importance of an outlet Velvet Underground and has been personal friends with cultural icons such for more responsive to the filmmakers themselves. as , , Salvador Dali, , Jackie Onassis and To serve this need, he opened the Filmmakers’ Cinematheque, which many, many more. Unfortunately, to go into any more depth here would be eventually grew into Archives. Anthology is now one of the almost impossible. There is, however, a book about his life, To Free The Cinema world’s largest and most important repositories of avant-garde films. (Princeton University Press), that I highly recommend to anyone who wants to As a filmmaker, his own output ranges from narrative films like Guns of look deeper. Hopefully now you understand why it was so exciting (an such an the Trees (1961) to experimental essays (The Brig, 1963) to “diaries” such honor!) for me to sit down with him. The following interview was conducted as Walden (1969); Lost, Lost, Lost (1975); Reminiscences of a Voyage over lunch at a small French bistro, just around the corner from Anthology to (1972); Zefiro Torna (1992); and As I Was Moving Ahead, Film Archives in the East Village. Over a bottle of red wine and much laughter, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2001). His films have been Mekas reflected on his life, his art, the future of film and his motivations screened extensively at festivals and museums around the world. In 2007, for spearheading so many incredible creative ventures. To bring it all full- Mekas was honored at the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s award circle, the preceding evening we had both attended the New York premiere of ceremony for his significant contribution to American film culture. That Harmony Korine’s new film Trash Humpers, perhaps one of the most amazing same year, the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center was established in , experimental features to be released in years. The future of film looked very Lithuania. Exhibitions there focus on art and film collections by Mekas and bright to us that day.

Portrait of Jonas, 1963

RVCA/ANPQUARTERLY | 54 RVCAANPQ.COM | 55 Aaron Rose: Your biography states that you moved to New York AR: Were you and your brother already making films at in 1949. the time? Jonas Mekas: Not exactly moved. I was moved!! I came as a displaced JM: No. We were interested. I was interested, but you know I could only person after almost five years of living in displaced persons’ camps in write, make notes, read about it. There was no money in the displaced postwar Europe. I was brought here as part of the United Nations Refugee persons’ camps. We were fed by refugee organizations. Organization on an army ship together with 3,000 others. This was after the AR: What inspired you to pick up a camera? second World War. When they brought the refugees to America they had JM: Seeing films!! It was contagious. The same as writing poetry or music… places for living prepared for us, and jobs. I was actually supposed to go to it’s always the music that inspires you to be a musician. The same goes Chicago… not to New York actually. My original destination was Chicago. here seeing films. Most of the time, the films we were seeing in postwar AR: So you arrived in New York, but then you went to Chicago? Europe were bad. They were brought over to entertain the army. What JM: I arrived in New York with my brother. We stepped out of the ship and we discovered here in New York at the Museum of … like the we looked at New York and we said to each other, “We are in New York! It classics of the cinema from the twenties, thirties and the avant garde. You would be stupid to go to Chicago!” So we never went to Chicago. We could not see any of that there! I mean, the closest to something that one stayed here. could say was interesting was John Huston’s Treasure of Sierra Madre. AR: Was that illegal? That was the first time I remember thinking, “Hey! Look! Maybe something JM: No! No! If you could survive you could stay. There in Chicago, they had can be done in cinema.” arranged a job for us in a bakery, you know, guaranteed. But here we had AR: Just out of curiousity. How did two brothers—two­­ displaced nothing. We had to find a job. But we took that chance and we fell in love refugees from Europe—find the Museum of Modern Art? with New York. I consider that New York saved my sanity. JM: ! AR: Can you describe your feelings about the city when you AR: Really?!! arrived here? JM: Yes. We bought the newspaper and we discovered that they were JM: We stepped out that evening into Times Square. We looked around screening the next evening at a place called The New York , and we did not know what was real and what was unreal. We thought we which was run by a man named Rudolf Arnheim, who was a very well saw the moon, but we were not sure if it was the real moon. It was like a known art historian, and also by the great film buff Herman Weinberg. huge opera set. It was incredible! It was incredible. The program for that evening was a double bill. It was Jean Epstein’s The AR: Where exactly did you arrive from when you came to Fall of the House of Usher, one of the great avant garde classics, and also New York? playing was The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. They used to screen films, I think JM: From Germany… it was postwar Germany. it was on 18th Street between 6th and 7th avenues. So that was what we saw! AR: Oh so it was a totally different experience!! Then, after that, for the next three years or so, we did not miss a single JM: You could not even compare it! It was like a . After a whole film screening at MoMA, we did not miss a single theatre opening, any film decade of war and then postwar misery… opening, ballet, music…

Jonas’ mother, from Reminisces of a Journey to Lithuania, 1971-2, color film stills; To New York With Love, 2001, Color Film Stills

(opposite) Walden, 1969, film stills

AR: It’s almost as if you guys were addicted… to build a lab. We were just walking around with our army JM: No! We were dry sponges! We were dry sponges because jackets! We did not even have money to buy new clothes. there was nothing in postwar Europe. There was nothing AR: … and this was the 1950s? under the Soviet occupation and the German occupation JM: Yes. We arrived in New York on October 30, 1949. In where we grew up. There was nothing! It was forbidden, three weeks from now we will be celebrating our 60th year in even. It was forbidden to read the French literature… it New York. was forbidden! So we came here like dry sponges and we AR: What kinds of films were you watching in the sucked everything into ourselves. That would be the closest 1950s? Who were your favorite filmmakers/films? comparison to ourselves. We were sponges. Indiscriminately JM: We went to all of them! Whatever was shown. almost. You know, you don’t know. You take everything in… AR: You didn’t have favorites? garbage and everything. JM: No. How could we have favorites if we weren’t familiar AR: Yeah, like you just had to see it! See it! See It! with what there was? We had read the names like Orson JM: Yes. Welles or Cocteau, but we had seen nothing! Two or three AR: What were you doing for work at that time? years later it was a different story, though, because we began JM: We were not choosy. We took whatever job there was. publishing Film Culture magazine. Jobs were available very easily. My first job was at the AR: What inspired you to start a magazine? You Castro bed factory in Queens making beds. We had no real didn’t have magazine experience… specialty… no special talents. JM: I did have experience. When I was 12 years old and in AR: When did you first pick up a camera? primary school I was already mimeographing a little four- JM: About two weeks later. We borrowed some money from page newspaper for the school. I was also editing it. Then, a family that lived in the same displaced persons’ camp as us when I was 18, I became the technical editor of the local in Kassel, Germany. We were very friendly. They had come weekly newspaper. Then in the displaced persons’ camps I before us and they already had jobs and had made some was the editor of the daily bulletin for the people in the camp. money. So we borrowed some money and we put a deposit I was also publishing and editing a literary magazine. My life on our forst Bolex camera. This was about two weeks after we from childhood is in publishing and writing. came to New York. That was the beginning of my diary. AR: I had no idea! That makes perfect sense. AR: Were you actually trying to make “movies” JM: But that was not the reason why myself and my brother at that time or was this more about just taking decided to publish Film Culture. The reason was that we snapshots of your new life? had made friends already. Many friends that were running JM: No! No! We had already written several scripts. We were around with cameras that we were meeting at the screenings practicing with our Bolex, just trying to master it. We had at the Museum of Modern Art and at Cinema 16. There were scripts for narrative films, and for documentaries. The first several places where young, film-interested people usually film that we wanted to do was a poetic documentary about met. You would see them. I was not a student of The New what it feels like to be a displaced person. Later, some of that School or NYU, but I used to sneak into the film classes footage was used in my film, Lost, Lost, Lost. where I met people who became some of the best known AR: Wow! So you held on to all that footage? avant garde filmmakers. People like , JM: I still have it. Though I’ve now used up four Bolexes. , etc. In England there was a magazine, Actualy, really, five of them. One Bolex lasts seven years Sight and Sound, already. In France there was Cahiers du or something. Cinema just beginning and there was another magazine AR: Did you process your own film? called Cinema, and there was actually another one in JM: No! We could not process our film. We had no money England called Sequence. But here in New York there was

RVCA/ANPQUARTERLY | 56 RVCAANPQ.COM | 57 nothing. We wanted to exchange. We wanted to discuss. We AR: Did you consider yourself an artist at this point? like Michael Moore is doing now… he knows what he is going after. He has an idea of what he’s needed a platform so that we could begin to present and to JM: No and I don’t consider myself an artist at this point now. searching for and he finds it or he invents or whatever. I never know. I film real life. I have no discuss our ideas and exchange our ideas. There was nothing AR: Really? I was wondering that because sometimes script. I don’t know what will come in the next moment. I don’t know if I will film anything today here. There was this miserable little publication called Films it is difficult to be both an artist and a critic. or not. I always have my camera… it is always with me and then suddenly I feel, “This is it… I have in Review, a very conservative monthly, and there was the JM: No. I was still working in factories at that point and in to film!” I want to tape this. I want to have a record of this. I need it. It’s some kind of an obsession. Hollywood Film Quarterly that used to come out like once a 1953 I began to work in a photo studio. That’s how I managed I never know what I’m filming. It’s unpredictable and I guess what I film is motivated by some year, but for us there was nothing. So it was emptiness and it to pay for Film Culture. memories. I don’t know. I never know the reasons why I want to film this or that scene. was because of that emptiness that we decided that if nobody AR: So even though you were making films you didn’t AR: So it’s just something you feel inside? There’s never any thought about what you was doing it we had to. So we started to publish Film Culture. consider yourself a filmmaker? would like to make of the footage at all? AR: Did you consider the European magazines to be JM: No. I was just filming. I’m doing the same thing now. Now JM: It’s unpredictable. I mean, so much of what we do is determined by the first ten years of part of the same family as you? I’m just taping. I’ve always done many things simultaneously. our life that you never know. Maybe in front of me at this moment there is maybe something, JM: Not exactly. They were mostly devoted to the commercial I worked whatever job I could get for money, I was organizing some detail that provokes some memory. Maybe some color or some movement that connects to cinema. Our friends were not in commercial cinema. screenings. Already in ’53 I was curating screenings at Gallery somewhere with some movement or color or some detail that happened when I was maybe three We needed a magazine that would be open for both the East, which was right here around the corner from where we years old? I feel it and I have to film. Something is touched by what’s happening that has touched, commercial cinema and the new, independent filmmakers, are sitting now, on Avenue A and 1st Street. jumped, connected with that moment or memory somewhere in the past and it makes me want to the avant garde filmmakers… because we ended up in the AR: So you were curating underground screenings in film. I don’t resist those moments. I just follow it. avant garde film and literary community. The Beat Generation the East Village in 1953? AR: Did that take a long time to cultivate? was coming in. There was excitement. Very soon after there JM: Yes. Avant garde screenings. JM: When I look back at my footage it’s almost the same from the very beginning. Only at the were the happenings theatre, the action painting, Abstract AR: You didn’t waste any time!! beginning I was caught in a net of professional filmmaking. Rules like, “Don’t move your camera, … everything was coming in! Coming in! There JM: No. The difference when I say that I’m just filming… that stay there, stay there…” or like with light, “You need lighting… you should light it up” or things was like an electricity in the air! There was intensity and that I’m not a filmmaker is this: You see, to make a film, those who like close-ups and long shots… the whole vocabulary of the conventional cinema. The same thing was not in Sight and Sound. Not in Cahiers du Cinema. It was make films—filmmakers—they have scripts and then they happens with musicians. Like with jazz musicians, when one first learns to play, one has certain something else. So we felt that we needed a film magazine that illustrate those scripts with actors, etc. and it’s all controlled. teachers one admires and it takes time to escape them and to find what’s real for you. What you was a little bit younger and in a different spirit. That’s how You know what you are going after, the scene is described yourself are all about. You eventually free yourself from all the teachers, all the musicians or poets Film Culture came to exist. there. Even if it’s a documentary in a cinéma vérité style, or that you admire and you permit yourself to come out with that which is really unique and your

Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol and Michel Auder, mid-1960s; Scenes from the life of Andy Warhol, 1965-1982/1991, color film stills; Andy Warhol at Invisible Cinema screening.

(opposite) Allen Ginsberg, from Walden, 1969, color film stills; JackieO nasis, from This Side of Paradise, 1999, color film stills; JonasM ekas & Salvador Dali, from Walden, 1969, color film stills

RVCA/ANPQUARTERLY | 58 RVCAANPQ.COM | 59 own. It took me, I would say, to master my Bolex and to escape at least those critics and all those attacks. So that was my function, to try to help Esquire magazine, a very positive review and that was mainly because of Jack Kerouac’s maybe ten years. those very fragile new developments. narration. That write-up took it into a different category. It took it out of the avant garde. AR: Going back to your early work as a critic. Did you AR: What were the attacks? Was it being discounted Also, Pauline Kael from the New York Times liked ’s Scorpio Rising very have a particular approach to criticism? Did you have any as garbage? much—that was another film that had made public inroads already. That was because there role models? JM: Every commercial writer or reviewer dismissed us as amateurs! was something there thematically and also a loose narrative in that film. But that was about JM: No. Again, I had to invent myself. I can’t remember who said it, but They said we did not know what we were doing, that we were just it until Andy Warhol came into the picture. someone said, “Oh Jonas is not really a film critic, he is a diarist.” And babbling. They said our cameras were shaking, our images were AR: Many times when something belongs to a small core group of people and that is right! Because I was not criticizing films. I was writing about only shaking, there is no story or who cares about it… this is amateur’s work. then becomes accepted, there is division within the ranks. Were there critics those films, reviewing only those films, in my columns which I liked. That is continuing even today! of this attention amongst the core filmmakers of the avant garde? There were maybe only two or three times that I wrote about films that AR: I know you were involved in early screenings of films like JM: I think everybody… painters, musicians, poets, filmmakers—there was a community I did not like and I regret that I did that. I wrote only about the films ’ Shadows and Robert Frank’s Pull My Daisy. between 1955 and 1965 where everyone was helping each other. You could see everyone in that I liked. It was the same with Film Culture magazine—we only wrote These films were released at the apex of the Beat Generation the same places from downtown to midtown. The splits and fights came a little bit later. about those filmmakers that we admired and liked. and were big media events at the time. Was this the first time Some filmmakers clashed and some of them did not talk to each other for years, but those AR: So it was possibly just another extension of your diaries? that you saw what was considered “underground” filmmaking clashes came later. They came once some recognition came. It was not about money. Some JM: Yes. Also, I was dealing with an area of journalism in motion finally becoming mainstream? filmmakers attacked Andy Warhol because his films were being discussed more than theirs. pictures that was not touched by anybody else. They all wrote about JM: Not mainstream… but it became more visible. Mainstream maybe Even though most of the discussions of Andy’s films were about how the writers did not public cinema or commercial cinema. With the exception of a few in certain New York or San Francisco circles, but on a very limited level. like them. They would say, “What is this? Is this a joke? This is not cinema!” But nobody occasional articles, no one was writing about the avant garde or the They did not play in 100 theatres or anything. Not even in ten theatres! was writing about little avant garde films which were perfect and beautiful, because they , as it was called then. So there was nobody for me It opened in New York and San Francisco, but usually those films were were not controversial. There was a controversy in Andy’s work, so he got a lot of press. to follow. screened in film societies, university screenings, etc. I wouldn’t call it AR: Warhol came into the underground film scene a bit late in the AR: In your opinion, what elements need to be included in a mainstream. But still those films were easier to accept than say Stan game, right? film for it to be considered avant garde? Brakhage’s . JM: The first films of avant garde persuasion that he saw, he saw at my screenings at JM: There is no formula. No real description. One only has to go to the AR: Do you think that was simply because the format of those 414 Park Avenue South between 28th and 29th streets. In January of 1962 it became the dictionary and look it up. The avant garde is always the front line in any particular films was more narrative-driven? Filmmakers Cooperative headquarters. That’s when the co-op was created and that’s field. In science, in music, where somebody just comes in, moving ahead JM: Yes. Both films were narratives. Semi-abstract narratives, but where I lived. As soon as the Filmmakers Co-Op was created, filmmakers used to come into some totally unknown area, the future… and doing something still narratives. There are protagonists, there was a loose kind of almost every evening and screen their films to each other. That’s where Andy used to come not so much that people aren’t used to, but going maybe to different story line in both Shadows and Pull My Daisy. The people involved and sit on the floor—there were no chairs. That’s where he met Jack Smith, and Taylor content, using different techniques, different technology. That’s the in them were also known… Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, etc. They Meade, and a lot of other filmmakers, and saw their work. After that he decided to make avant garde area to me. That’s where usually it’s all very fragile, and were not celebrities then, maybe now they are, but in 1958 they were his own films. on the front line is where usually most of the bullets hit you. Most of not celebrities. Jack Kerouac had to die to become a celebrity and AR: Were you involved with the Factory scene? Did you go there? the attacks are directed against the front line. Against the avant garde. Allen Ginsberg managed to live long enough to eventually become a JM: Occasionally yes. But I was too busy. I brought the Factory people into the It’s that area that I felt needed somebody who would defend it from all celebrity. They were respected though. Pull My Daisy was covered in Cinemateque because all of the early Warhol films were premiered at the Filmmakers Cinematheque that I was running. So they were always there. Sometimes, though, the first screening of one of Andy’s films, after it was just made, would be at the Factory, so I would go there. AR: Many of your own films from the 1960s period include luminaries like Warhol, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Allen Ginsberg and basically a who’s who of the art-intellectual scene in New York at the time. However, they are shot almost like home movies. As you were filming these people, was there a point when you said to yourself, “I’m a diarist. I’m making diaries!!” or were you sometimes thinking in terms of constructed narratives? JM: No. I never knew what I would do with that material. For example, for my film, Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol, I had the footage but I did not do anything with it until Andy was already dead. The Centre Pompidou in Paris were preparing his first retrospecive. They contacted me and asked if I had some footage of Andy that they could show at the same time. I said, “Sure I have it!” So that occasion gave me reason to collect some of the footage and that is how it was finished. Most of my films were finished that way. My last film, As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, was made for a festival in Avignon, France. The theme of that festival was beauty, so they asked if I could make something for them. It was the same with Walden. That film originated in 1968 when the Albright Knox Gallery in Buffalo decided to have an arts festival representing music, theatre, poetry, and somebody suggested film. Somebody decided that the film component should be me. So they called me and asked if I could make something special for the occasion. I said, “Of course!” So that’s how Walden originated. AR: How did begin? What is its purpose? JM: The same like everything else! I’ve never done anything unless there was a need for it. By 1968, there was already a large body of work… what are now known as the American Avant Garde classics. A body of classics was by then already there. It was established! But, filmmakers very often are very careless about their materials. Some they keep the originals at home, or some they placed them with labs, which later, as in the case of Jack Smith, he took the original negative of Flaming Creatures to a lab and then forgot which lab! It was discovered much later. So there was a need to not only, okay, this is even more complicated. The body of work was there, but in 1960 maybe there were 15 universities that had film departments. Maya Deren was traveling around the country showing her films, but there were only like a dozen of these universities that she could go to. Around 1967, when the American Film Institute issued their first list of universities and colleges and high schools that had film departments the number had grown to like 1,200!! That’s a huge jump in one decade. Almost all of these courses dealt with commercial film and the established history of cinema and classics. But, because there was also so much discussion of avant garde film in these courses, they also wanted to show some examples. They had seen nothing. So where did they go? “Oh… there is Jonas in New York! He runs the Cinemateque.” So I used to get all those calls and I could not deal with them anymore. So I prepared a list that I would send to one, recommending this or that film, maybe some Brakhage… but then I would say to myself, “Which Brakhage? There are over 100 films of Brakhage… maybe this one would be good?” I did not want to be responsible for this all by myself. So the idea came about to create a little committee of filmmakers and film historians—curators from the East Coast, West Coast, and Europe—to make a film selection committee. We spent four years selecting. Looking and looking and arguing and discussing and we selected the beginning collection which contained 300 titles. That became the basis of Anthology Film Archives. We said, why don’t we screen these? If anyone in any university wants to show something they can take any film from this list. AR: How did you work it out with the filmmakers? Was there a rental agreement in place? How did you finance all of this? Jonas Mekas, Yoko Ono & John Lennon at Invisible JM: Yes… actually we had an incredible sponsor. Jerome Hill was his name. He was a Cinema screening; John &Yoko, from Happy musician, a painter and a filmmaker. He won the academy award for a documentary he Birthday to John, 1995, color film stills made about Albert Schweitzer. A beautiful little film. He was also a neighbor of Scott (opposite) Filmmakers’ Cooperative Union Poster, Mid-1960s; Poster for The Brig, 1964; Jonas Mekas with Yoko Ono and John Lennon, June 9, 1971

RVCA/ANPQUARTERLY | 60 RVCAANPQ.COM | 61 Fitzgerald. So he sponsored Anthology Film Archives to build a special AR: It’s almost like a celluloid emergency room… theatre in the Public Shakespeare Theatre on Lafayette Street. It was a JM: Yes. So decisions are made based on what is an emergency and what special theatre that was designed by [avant garde filmmaker] Peter Kubelka is important and what is less important at the time. We know we cannot that was known as the Invisible Cinema, where if you are sitting in the seat in preserve them all right now. the theatre, you could only see the screen. You could not see your neighbor, AR: You would need a factory to do that. you could not see the person in front of you or to the back. You were isolated JM: Not necessarily a factory, but money. completely with the film. Jerome Hill also sponsored the acquisition of the AR: Let’s talk a bit more about your work… prints that we now have at Anthology. But, as we began, we wanted to find JM: Well now I am working in video and installations and I’m completely the best prints and with this we discovered that the originals of many of these somewhere else. Not what we’ve been discussing. That’s my past. films were fading, crumbling, collapsed. The filmmakers were not taking AR: How do you see the future of film? good care of them! Some did not even know where the originals were! So on JM: Well I wouldn’t call it the future of film. I would say the future of the one occasion, we tried to find the originals of a film by Adam Flaherty called motion picture because now it’s not film. Also, now we have computers and The Man of Aran, and we chased it all over the world! His family did not other technologies. The future? Well, it will just continue! It’s very, very know where it was. Then we discovered it was right here in New York on 57th active. It will continue into the future as everything else will continue. I mean Street. So we had to go immediately into film preservation. Now, our film technology is changing. You can make a movie now with your telephone. preservation program has preserved hundreds and hundreds of films. The But we are still dealing with motion pictures. With the art and with the American Film Preservation Society, run by Martin Scorsese, is very medium of motion pictures. No matter what they call it. Of couse technology helpful also. determines the look or the visual texture. Like we say in painting… the texture

AR: Do people propose films to you and then you decide what of watercolor is different from the texture of oils. So a different medium John &Yoko Bed-In, to preserve? or a different technology produces a different kind of image. One kind of from Happy Birthday JM: We have to decide and it is difficult. Because now, at Anthology, we image is produced from 8mm film, a different kind of image by 16mm, one to John, 1995, color film stills; Summer have maybe about 60,000 titles. Most of our titles fall into the category of from 35mm and 70mm, etc., etc. What you can do with 8mm, you cannot Manifesto, 2008, color the independents, the avant gardes. When film labs began closing, switching do with 16mm. What you can do with 16mm, you cannot do with 70mm. film stills to video, they abandoned film. We saved them, by dragging materials from And… what you can do with your telephone, you cannot do with any of these! (opposite) film labs, sometimes from the dumpsters in the street. The money initially That also determines and influences the subject matter. The technology very To New York With was totally unavailable for film preservation. As time went on, now more and much determines the subject matter and the style of what is produced. New Love, 2001, Color Film more people are understanding that film is fragile and that film has to be technology allows us to go into completely different areas of daily life. We Stills; Oona, from As I was Moving Ahead protected and safe. So now more money is available, but still it is very limited. can go into any place. It’s like the dream of Salvador Dali that eventually the Occasionally I Saw JM: I suppose indirectly what I do could fall into that category, but I’m not a rebel So let’s say we have $10,000, that means we can preserve only maybe two or camera will be in your head. Brief Glimpses of by nature. I consider myself a farmer. Actually, once, Vincent Canby of The New three little films with this. So we have to look at what are the priorities. What AR: You are indeed the quintessential iconoclast. You have always Beauty, 2000, color film York Times wrote, “Oh Jonas does everything with a farmer’s shrewdness.” So I’m stills; Jonas Mekas on is really important to preserve? What is really crumbling and needs to be championed the underdog. In all of your experience in all these 1st Avenue, photo by actually practical, down to earth. If something is not done and needs to be done, immediately protected? years what have been the pros and cons of living life this way? Benn Northover then I feel I should help it to happen. If the filmmakers are making films and they want people to see them… or if the distributors refuse to take them because they think these are just some amateur works, then a distribution center is needed to be created. That’s why Filmmakers Cooperative was created. It was from this necessity. Film Culture magazine was created from the same necessity. There was no other place to write or exchange ideas, so we needed a magazine. Then for screenings, that’s why I started Filmmakers Cinemateque. There was no place for us to screen our films in New York. It’s the same with Anthology! Nobody was preserving the films. We have to preserve them. Necessity! Necessity! Why do anything if there is no necessity? Or sometimes an inner necessity. You write or you compose or play or you sing because you must sing, you must play, you must write poetry, you must make films! There is an inner necessity. AR: So you were never trying to fight anything. You were just filling needs where you saw them? JM: No, never fighting. I just do what has to be done. I cannot see the work of my friends that I admire disappear. Or, if I see something that I like I want others to see it. I have to exchange! I cannot even look at the sunset by myself! I need friends! I do everything for friends… for friendship.

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