“There is no way to break the petrified film traditions, except that the official film mechanisms have completely collapsed.” said in 1959 Jonas MekasWe should recognize him because he was born on the 23rd anniversary of his 100th year and, of course, preached by example. Revolutionary critic, poet, visionary supporter, daring exhibitor, ‘vlogger’ even before this profession and above all godfather of underground cinemaFor 70 years, he has worked tirelessly to support, preserve and expand the aesthetic possibilities of the moving image through 60 films and an audiovisual. movie diaryit covers the falseness, insensitivity and lack of style of the themes (…), which he invented as a reaction to, in his own words, “official cinema” (…), morally corrupt, aesthetically outdated, thematically superficial, temperamentally boring (…).
From the mid-1960s he became a catalyst for artistic experimentation from his Manhattan apartment. Velvet Underground he rehearsed there; Actually, it was Mekas who got in touch. Lou Reed with Andy Warhol, who later produced the band’s debut album. Salvador Dalí visited the venue shortly before starring in Mekas’ film ‘Salvador Dalí at work’, in which he coated a model with shaving cream. The contact list was bottomless. Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were friends and occasionally collaborators. jackie kennedy He commissioned her to teach cinema lessons by teaching film to his children. And he was the first person. John Lennon Y yoko ono They called when the couple moved to New York in 1976. The night he arrived, the artist said to him, “John wants an espresso, do you know a good place in New York that’s open at this hour?” she seems to ask.
Poet in his native Lithuania
Before that, Mekas was a famous poet in his youth. Lithuania native, author of 20 published books. While fleeing the country in 1944, his train was stopped by the Nazis and sent with him. his brother Adolphas To a labor camp, which they escaped eight months later to hide on a farm near the Danish border. After the war, they lived in refugee camps for almost four years until 1949, when they were able to travel to New York under UN auspices. Years later, he said, “I was 27 and needed to make up for all the time I lost, so I started absorbing it all.” “I’m hungry for culture, for encouragement.” After collecting the necessary money to buy bolex cameraHe began to document his new life.
In 1954 the brothers founded Film Culture magazinequickly became a cornerstone for the exchange of ideas and information about the emerging avant-garde cinema, and was also passionately devoted to sponsoring. ‘Village Voice’ four years later he became the first film critic for the New York newspaper. “I had to protect all the good things I saw in the cinema that were murdered or ignored by my fellow writers and the public.” His mission got him into more than one problem; for example in 1964 arrested twice a week on charges of obscenityafter showing successively Jack Smith’s ‘Flaming Creatures’ (1963) and Jean Genet’s ‘Un chant d’amour’ (1950).
“He was at the forefront of many things and stands out among them for his informative spirit and militancy that nurtured the spirit of brotherhood among filmmakers,” says the producer. isaki lacuesta; Proof of these qualities is the Anthology Film Archives, which Mekas co-founded in 1970 and today has the largest experimental film library in the world. “Never been dogmatic”, adds the director of “Between two waters” (2018) and “One year, one night” (2022). “In ‘underground’ cinema this happens as in ‘mainstream’, which tends to be very closed to genres, but it has always encouraged maximum diversity.”
Capture moments, not narratives
Mekas was reluctant to see himself as a filmmaker, preferring to use the camera to capture seemingly small moments rather than create narratives. He filmed incessantly both snapshots of the ‘underground’ scene and his own life, and doing so for a long time eased the pain of exile. “There’s nothing artistic about what I’m doing, because it’s a necessity,” he said. The film that brought him international recognition, “cell” (1964), set in a military prison and Grand Jury Prize at Venice Film Festivalbut reached its creative fullness a few years later, first with ‘Walden’ (1979), a whirlwind of images of people and places interspersed with bursts of music and noise, screen-printed text, and voiceovers; and above all ‘Memories from Lithuania trip’ (1972), considered his masterpiece, is a harrowing visit to the town where he was born and to a camp in Hamburg, where he was imprisoned, among other places. He continued to produce literally until the end of his days; His last feature film ‘Venus’ was released months later. His death in January 2019 at the age of 96.
great effect
Mekas’ influence on later American cinema is extremely difficult to quantify, as his work has had a great influence on writers whose work is considered pioneering. John Waters and Jim Jarmusch; A significant part of American cinema somehow drinks from it, although most of its representatives are not aware of it. “Even a blockbuster fantasy-terror movie like ‘Monstrooso’ (2008) wouldn’t exist without Mekas,” he says. Carlos Reviriego, programming director of the Spanish Film Librarysees it also as a precursor to the culture of selfies and ‘stories’ we live in. “As early as the ’60s, in a conversation with Pier Paolo Pasolini, Mekas predicted the audiovisual ecosystem of today,” Reviriego recalls. “He predicted that we would all have a camera, a third eye, and that everything, absolutely anything, could be filmed.”
“When you start making trades filmed diaries it was an almost non-existent form that he pioneered, but today people regularly record their lives, arrange visual and autobiographical albums, even if they do not intend to create an artistic work with it”, finally, teacher and programmer Gonzalo de Lucas. “So new audiences now connect with his work much more easily, understand it better and appreciate his style, his creative gestures, the way he expresses his experience in the way he sees it through cinema.”