JONAS MEKAS
THE MAJOR WORKS
(six DVD Boxset PAL
interzone), public price: 79.95 euros
English, French and
Lithuanian subtitles
DVD single titles,
public price: 19.90 euros each
Co-edition:
Potemkine, Re:Voir and Agnès B DVD
Distribution
Belgium, France, Spain, Switzerland: Potemkine
Distribution the
rest of the world: Re:Voir
In addition the following five titles by Jonas Mekas are forthcoming
from Re:Voir:
Guns of the Trees (1962) - Sixties Quartet (Andy Warhol, John and Yoko, George Maciunas, Kennedy)
(1964-1999)
- Scenes from Allen's Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit (Allen
Ginsberg) (1997) - Letter from Greenpoint (2004) - Sleepless Nights Stories (2011)
Jonas Mekas - Six-DVD Box Set: The Major Works:
The Brig (1964) - Walden (1969) - Reminiscences of a Jouney to Lithuania (1972) - Lost Lost Lost (1976) -
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000) - Short Film Works
This box brings
together the key works of Jonas Mekas, one of the most prolific avant-garde
film artists and an acclaimed poet. Born in Lithuania in 1922, chased west by
Soviet and Nazi forces, Mekas and his brother spent four years in German
displaced persons' camps before arriving in New York in 1949 where they started
shooting 16mm films on exile, military domination and poetic freedom. Jonas
developed his diary style of filmmaking while busying himself as a film critic,
programmer, organizer and distributor.
LOST LOST LOST
(DVD PAL interzone)
19,90 euros
16mm, 1976, color and
black & white, 178'
"These six reels
of my film diaries come from the years 1949-1963. They begin with my arrival in
New York in November 1949. The first and second reels deal with my life as a
Young Poet and a Displaced Person in Brooklyn. It shows the Lithuanian
immigrant community, their attempts to adapt themselves to a new land and their
tragic efforts to regain independence for their native country. It shows my own
frustrations and anxieties and the decision to leave Brooklyn and move to
Manhattan. Reel three and reel four deal with my life in Manhattan on Orchard
Street and East 13th St. First contacts with New York poetry and filmmaking
communities. Robert Frank shooting The Sin of Jesus. LeRoy Jones, Ginsberg,
Frank O'Hara reading at The Living Theatre. Documentation of the political
protests of the late fifties and early sixties. First World Strike for Peace.
Vigil in Times Square. Women for Peace. Air Raid protests. Reel five includes
Rabbit Shit Haikus, a series of Haikus filmed in Vermont; scenes at the
Film-Maker's Cooperative; filming Hallelujah the Hills; scenes of New York
City. Reel six contains a trip to Flaherty Seminar, a visit to the seashore in
Stony Brook; a portrait of Tiny Tim; opening of Twice a Man; excursions to the
countryside seen from two different views; that of my own and that of Ken
Jacobs whose footage is incorporated into this reel.
The period I am dealing
with in these six reels was a period of desperation, of attempts to desperately
grow roots into the new ground, to create new memories. In these six painful
reels I tried to indicate how it feels to be in exile, how I felt in those
years. These reels carry the title Lost Lost Lost, the title of a film myself
and my brother wanted to make in 1949, and it indicates the mood we were in, in
those years. It describes the mood of a Displaced Person who hasn't yet
forgotten the native country but hasn't gained a new one. The sixth reel is a
transitional reel where we begin to see some relaxation, where I begin to find
moments of happiness. New life begins. What happens later, you'll have to see
the next installment of reels ..."
- Jonas Mekas
THE BRIG
(DVD PAL interzone)
19,90 euros
16mm, 1964, black &
white, 65'
"I went to see The
Brig, the play, the night it closed. The Becks were told to shut down and get
out. The performance, by this time, was so precisely acted that it moved with
the inevitability of life itself. As I watched it I thought: Suppose this was a
real brig; suppose I was a newsreel reporter; suppose I got permission from the
U.S. Marine Corps to go into one of their brigs and film the goings-on: What a
document one could bring to the eyes of humanity! The way The Brig was being
played now, it was a real brig, as far as I was concerned. This idea took
possession of my mind and my senses so thoroughly that I walked out of the
play. I didn't want to know anything about what would happen next in the play;
I wanted to see it with my camera. I had to film it."
-- Jonas Mekas
REMINISCENCES OF A
JOURNEY TO LITHUANIA
(DVD PAL interzone)
19,90 euros
16mm, 1972, color, 82'
After a twenty-seven
year absence, Adolfas and his brother Jonas returned to their birthplace in
Lithuania. They had left Lithuania as young men, destined for a German labor
camp. Now they came home for a visit, Adolfas with his wife, the singer Pola
Chapelle.
"The film consists
of three parts.
The first part is made
up of footage I shot with my first Bolex, during my first years in America,
mostly from 1950-1953. It shows me and my brother Adolfas, how we looked in
those days; miscellaneous footage of immigrants in Brooklyn, picnicking,
dancing, singing; the streets of Williamsburg.
The second part was
shot in August 1971, in Lithuania. Almost all of the footage comes from
Semeniskiai, the village I was born in. You see the old house, my mother (born
1887), all the brothers, goofing, celebrating our homecoming. You don't really
see how Lithuania is today: you see it only through the memories of a Displaced
Person back home for the first time in twenty-five years.
The third part begins
with a parenthesis in Elmshorn, a suburb of Hamburg, where we spent a year in a
forced labor camp during the war. After the parenthesis closes, we are in
Vienna where I see some of my best friends - Peter Kubelka, Hermann Nitsch,
Annette Michelson, Ken Jacobs. The film ends with the burning of the Vienna
fruit market, August, 1971.
The soundtrack: For
most of the film I speak of myself as a "displaced person," about my
relationship to Home, Memory, Culture, Roots, Childhood. There are also a few
Lithuanian songs sung by all the Mekas brothers." - Jonas Mekas
WALDEN: DIARIES, NOTES,
AND SKETCHES
(DVD PAL interzone)
19,90 euros
16mm, 1969, color, 180'
"Since 1950 I have
been keeping a film diary. I have been walking around with my Bolex and
reacting to the immediate reality: situations, friends, New York, seasons of
the year. On some days I shot ten frames, on others ten seconds, still on
others ten minutes. Or I shot nothing. When one writes diaries, it's a
retrospective process: you sit down, you look back at your day, and you write
it all down. To keep a film (camera) diary, is to react (with your camera)
immediately, now, this instant: either you get it now, or you don't get it at
all. To go back and shoot it later, it would mean restaging, be it events or
feelings. To get it now, as it happens, demands the total mastery of one's
tools (in this case, Bolex): it has to register the reality to which I react
and also it has to register my state of feeling (and all the memories) as I
react. Which also means, that I had to do all the structuring (editing) right
there, during the shooting, in the camera. All footage that you'll see in the
Diaries is exactly as it came out from the camera: there was no way of
achieving it in the editing room without destroying its form and content.
Walden contains
materials from the years 1965-69, strung together in chronological order. For
the soundtrack I used some of the sounds that I collected during the same
period: voices, subways, much street noise, bits of Chopin (I am a romantic),
and other significant and insignificant sounds."
-- Jonas Mekas
AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD
OCCASIONALLY I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY
(DVD PAL interzone) 19,90
euros
16mm, 2000, color, 288'
"As I Was Moving
Ahead... is a record of subtle feelings, emotions, daily joys of people as
recorded in the voices, faces and small everyday activities of people I have
met, or lived with, or observed -- something that I have been recording for
many years. This, as opposed to the spectacular, entertaining, sensational,
dramatic activities which dominate much of the contemporary film-making.
"Now, all this has
to do with my understanding and belief of what acts really affect the positive
changes in man, society, humanity. I am interested in recording the subtle,
almost invisible acts, experiences, feelings, as opposed to the tough, harsh,
loud, violent activities and political actions, and especially, political
systems of our time. As a film-maker, I am taking a stand for the politics that
have been practiced by some of the artists of my generation who believe that
more essential, positive contributions to the upholding and furthering of the
best in humanity, have been made, say, by John Cage or Albert Camus, and not by
the great political figures of the 20th century.
The film is not
conceived as a documentary film, however. It follows a tradition established by
modern film poets. I am interested in intensifying the fleeting moments of
reality by a personal way of filming and structuring my material. A lot of
importance is being given to color, movement, rhythm and structure -- all very
essential to the subject matter I am pursuing. I have spent many years
developing and perfecting a way of catching the immediacy without interfering
with it, without destroying it. I believe that some of the content that I am
trying to record with my camera and share with others, can be caught only very
indirectly though the intensity of personal involvement."
-- Jonas Mekas
SHORT FILM WORKS
(DVD PAL interzone)
19,90 euros
Cassis (1966, 4 min.)
Notes on the Circus
(1966, 12 min.)
Hare Krishna (1966, 4
min.)
Report from Millbrook
(1965-66, 12 min.)
Time and Fortune
Vietnam Newsreel (1968, 4 min.)
Travel Songs (1967-81,
25 min.)
Quartet Number One
(1991, 8 min.)
Imperfect Three-Image
Films (1995, 6 min.)
Song of Avignon (1998,
5 min.)
Mozart, Wien &
Elvis (2000, 3 min.)
Williamsburg
(1949-2002, 15 min.)
This compilation of
short film works brings together Jonas Mekas' many forms of expression
throughout his career. At times funny, subversive, provocative, ironic, and
fundamentally free, this panorama also shows us the sharp eye and acerbic wit
that makes Jonas Mekas more than a filmmaker: a lover of life and people that
he embraces with his camera, whose montages sing of eternity.
