The name Jonas Mekas often drowns among the world’s big names of film industry, both in Europe and the United States. Only few know his significant role in the development of avant-garde cinema. Mekas is a true recorder. With his 16-mm Bolex camera, this 88-year old director has turned his celluloid rolls into artifacts of United States’ development of cultural history.

Jurnal Footage cherishes Mekas’ few monumental works, herewith presented to you from various sources and also from Mahardika Yudha’s notes when he met the man himself at the 2007 Tampere International Film Festival, Finland. Feel free to download the films. With all due respect we remind you not to use them for commercial screenings.

Happy Birthday to John (1972)

16 mm, 24 minutes

An audio and visual record of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s exhibition on October 9, 1972, at Syracuse Museum of Art, curated by David Ross, director of Whitney Museum, New York. The exhibition was initiated by the father of the Fluxus movement, George Maciunas. The record features John and Yoko’s friends, among them: Ringo Starr, Allen Ginsberg, and also others, celebrating John’s birthday.

In Happy Birthday to John, we will hear songs improvised by John, Yoko, Ringo, and friends. It is the only known record of John’s birthday sing-alongs. Aside than birthday songs, the film also records as its backsound John’s comment on his own film, a home movie he recorded on 8-mm tape.

Walden - Diaries Notes and Sketches (1964)

Features Jonas Mekas, P. Adams Sitney, Tony Conrad, Stan Brakhage, Carl Th. Dreyer, Timothy Leary, Baba Ram Dass, Gregory Markopoulos, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, Jerome Hill, Barbet Schroeder, Jack Smith, Edie Sedgwick, Nico, Velvet Underground, Ken Jacobs, Hans Richter, Standish D. Lawder, Adolfas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, Jud Yalkut, Peter Kubelka, Michael Snow, Richard Foreman, John Lennon, and Yoko Ono.

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Jonas Mekas writes of Walden:

“Since 1950 I’ve made film diaries. I’ve walked with my Bolex and interact with reality: on situations, friendship, New York city, about the season. Sometimes I record ten frames, at sometimes ten seconds long, at other times, ten minutes. I record the unnecessary… Walden consists of record materials from 1964-1968 in chronological order.”

In the beginning of 1960, Jonas Mekas initiated an independent film community known by the name Group. Among them are Robert Frank and Peter Bogdanovich. The Group radically oppose “official cinema”. As mentioned in their manifesto: “We don’t want rosy films—we want them the color of blood.”

Mekas’ films are like visual meditation archiving New York’s cultural history in its two and a half century of age, viewed from the eyes of an immigrant well detached from mainstream point of view.

Hare Krisna (1966) 5 menit 3 detik

Recorded on November 5, 1966 in New York. Appeared in the record Srila Prabhupada, Barbars Rubin, Phil Corner, and others.

In Hare Krishna Mekas embraced audience’s experience of reality with familiar visuals, disorienting images in scattered visual language. Indeed questions will arise from those familiar elements. How did Mekas connect those experiences? Do we feel closer to Mekas’ narratives through its story deconstruction or do we, instead, ignore the things we see?

Jonas Mekas once said, “Now I have a group of friends and a new bar… Wine, women, and songs keep me alive… Oh, yes, dancing, too.”

Few years ago Mekas switched from Bolex to video camera. Each time he makes film, he is always accompanied by Accordion, his beloved cat. Recently he discovered the experience of using iPod. With these technologies at hand, he curates downloadable videos from classic works from directors such as Martin Scorsese, John Waters, Jim Jarmusch, and Abel Ferrara.

Zefiro Torna or Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas (1992)

16 mm, 34 minutes

In Zefiro Torna, Mekas reviews his diaries during the times he was with his fellow Lithuanian immigrant, George Maciunas. At the time, Maciunas’ health declined drastically each day. Despite this condition, fragments of the film do not picture Maciunas’ illness, but shows instead his enthusiasm and humor upon his appearances in Fluxus events. Mekas tells of Maciunas’ favorite composer, Monteverdi. At the end of the film, his voice fades, replaced by Monteverdi’s short verses on love, “Zefiro Torna”. During screening, Maciunas is seen lying on a hospital bed. He smiled.

Scenes from Allen's Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit (1997)

16 mm, 67 minutes

Mahardika Yudha’s Notes on Jonas Mekas at Tampere International Film Festival

Who is he? + Who am I? = The miracle of cinema! That’s my conclusion. I was stunned to see Jonas Mekas standing before me on the opening night. Not because I admire him but more of a confusion for not knowing this seemingly important octogenarian. This old man, who drank large amount of white wine, was surrounded by Tampere Film Festival’s high officials. He was so friendly that he turned and—upon catching my watching eyes—smiled at me. I threw back a smile in puzzlement, was he smiling at me or was it at someone else? It was a cautionary reaction to duck from the comedic disaster of being mistaken. Twice he smiled, I smiled back twice as well, staring with rolling eyes like an object in Marcel Duchamp’s Anémic Cinéma, owing to the many glasses of free-flow red wine.

Images of city life viewed from a window reaching to a bright, white forest covered with snow intertwined in a path leading to the venue where a Soumi tradition took place: skinny-dipping in an icy lake then head to sauna and back dipping again, repeatedly. According to Finnish people, it’s health-enhancing, but I guess not to me and Jonas Mekas who arrived late with his documentation crew who records all his activities. To us, it’s pretty eerie. In a glass room from which one can look through the darkness of the icy lake, I sat next to him. He already grabbed himself a bottle of beer. In taking an example from the older generation, I grabbed myself one as well. If he repeatedly grabs bottles and bottles of beer, then why shouldn’t I?

Conversation started after both of us drank several bottles.

“Why don’t you bathe?” this Freddy Kruger look-alike finally broke the ice.

“I’m not feeling well.”

My answer surprised him, the wrinkles on his forehead told me. Right after, our conversation flowed with no clear comprehension to what each other was saying. Who knew what he and I said. This constant misunderstanding between us made him laugh all the time, thanks to my poor English. Our honest misunderstanding ended with introductions, “Jonas” and “Mahardika Yudha”.

An end of conversation I finally understood.

About Jonas Mekas

Jonas Mekas was born in 1922 in Semeniskiai, Lithuania. He currently lives and works in New York. In 1944, Jonas and his brother, Adolfas, were arrested by Nazi followers and were placed in a forced-labor camp in German for eight months. Post-war, he studied philosophy in the University of Mainz from 1946 to 1948. At the end of 1949 he migrated to the United States with his brother and stayed in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. Two weeks after his arrival to the country, he lent some money to buy his first 16-mm Bolex. With this camera he then began to record his life. He discovered avant-garde genre at different places such as Amos Vogel’s, who pioneered the 16-mm cinema. He started to present his films in 1953.

Jonas Mekas has become a significant figure in American avant-garde, frequently referred as “New American Cinema” at the end of 1950s. He was the editor-in-chief of Film Culture (1954). In 1958, he started to write his film journals, “Movie Journal”, as a column in Village Voice. In 1962, he co-founded Film-Makers’ Cooperative (FMC), followed by Filmmaker’s Cinematheque in 1964 which then evolved to Anthology Film Archives (AFA). AFA was one of the largest and most important archive of avant-garde films. He was the curator for The Jewish Museum from 1968 to 1971. He married Holis Melton in 1974 and acquired two children, Oona and Sebastian. In New York, his acquaintances extend widely from musicians, artists, contemporary thinkers as well as activists. He befriends Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, John Cassavetes, Salvador Dali, Miles Davis, Robert Frank, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Henri Langlois, John Lennon, Norman Mailer, Nico, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, and many other world thinkers who later become part of his life.

Jonas Mekas produced narrative films such as Guns of the Trees (1961) and also documentaries such as The Brig (1963). There are also film diaries such as Walden (1969); Lost, Lost, Lost (1975); Reminiscence of a Voyage Lithuania (1972); Zefiro Torna (1992); and As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2001) which were screened in numerous festivals and major museums across the globe.

Several years ago, Brooklyn Academy of Music and the American Museum of the Moving Image screened Letters from Greenpoint and the Mead Gallery at Warwick University in England, and also at Monash University Museum of Art and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne. In 2002, Jonas participated in the largest art exhibition, Documenta 11. On May 2006, The Directors Guild of America presented honorary award to Anthology Film Archives for its dedication to preserve cinema as language of art. Mekas has also received an award from Los Angeles Film Critics Association for his contribution to American film and culture. Recently, Jonas Mekas Visual Art Center (JMVAC) is established in Vilnius, Lithuania. This institution focuses on art development and and Jonas Mekas’ film collection. JMVAC was built in cooperation with George Maciunas, co-founder of Fluxus art movement. Officially opened in 2007, JMVAC will serve as archive center and library of avant-garde films. In the future, JMVAC will transform into Fluxus Research Institute.

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