Play by Kenneth H. Brown. Staged by Judith Malina and Julian Beck at the Living Theatre, New York. Photographed and filmically conceived by Jonas Mekas. Editing by Adolfas Mekas. "Unrelieved by one whit of lightness or compassion, this harrowing screen exercise depicts the methodical, round-the-clock fiendishness inflicted on 10 prisoners by three guards, all of it apparently in the line of duty." - The New York Times
"Part drama, part polemic, with shock-wave sound and a nightmare air that suggests Kafka with a Kodak, the movie does exactly what it sets out to do - seizes the audience by the shirtfront and slams it around from wall to wall for one grueling day in a Marine Corps lockup." - Time magazine
"When leaving this film, one promises never to see it again. For it seems impossible to watch such a spectacle twice. The film is hard like a nut, and the only thing to do is crush it, without ever asking if this nut is a symbol of the universe. The Mekas brothers are no longer the gentle poets that we thought they were: they are two wild Indians drying scalps." - Cahiers du Cinema, Paris
Award: Venice Documentary Festival, 1964
Exhibition: London Film Festival, 1964; NY Film Festival, 1964.
1964, 16mm, b&w/so, 68m, $135
A small port in South of France, a lighthouse, the sea, shot from just before the sunrise until just after the sunset, all day long, frame by frame, a frame or two every second or every few minutes.
1966, 16mm, color/so, 4.5m, $20
Ringling Bros., filmed in three sessions (three-ring circus), with no post-editing of opticals, five rolls strung together as they came out of a camera. Jim Kweskin's Jug Band prepared the soundtrack. Film can also be watched with soundtrack turned off (if you're a "purist" which I'm not).
1966, 16mm, color/so, 13m, $40
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 Manburg, where we spent a year in a forced labor camp during the war. After the parenthesis closes, we are in Vienna where we 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.
1971-1972, 16mm, color/so, 82m, $135
October 9, 1972 an exhibition of John Lennon/Yoko Ono's art, designed by the Father of Fluxus movement, George Maciunas, opened at the Syracuse Museum of Art (curated by David Ross, presently director of the Whitney Museum). Same day an unusual group of John's and Yoko's friends, including Ringo, Allen Ginsberg and many others gathered to celebrate John's birthday. This film is a visual and audio record of that event.
We hear a series of improvised songs, sung by John, Ringo, Yoko Ono, and their friends,--not a clean studio recording, but as a birthday singing, free and happy. This is the only recording of that event.
There are other images that are included in the film that develops like a "music video": the John & Yoko party at Klein's /their agent/ June 12, 1971; August 1972 at the Madison Square Garden; the Central Park Vigil on the day John was shot; and some other rare footage that I have taken on different occasions of John and Yoko.
The soundtrack, besides the unique recording of the Birthday Party singing, contains John's comments on his own film-making, his "home movies" he did on 8mm. The most catchy song, sung in an improvised manner, in the film, is the Attica Blues. The drummer for the last part of the film is Dalius Naujolaitis.
1972, 16mm, color/so, 24m, $75
Music: Velvet Underground, recorded in 1966. Opening segment taped at the Dom at the public performance with Nico. End section: Mass for Andy Warhol at St. Patrick's Cathedral. The film is made up of my film diaries related to Andy Warhol from the years 1965-1982. Locations are New York and Montauk: The Factory, house of George Maciunas, village gate, psychiatrist's convention, home of Stephen Shore, Warhol Estate, Montauk, etc. The "cast" includes Lou Reed, Nico, Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, Ed Sanders, Barbara Rubin, Tuli Kupferberg, Peter Orlovsky, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, George Maciunas, Vincent Friemont, Henry Geldzahler, Paul Morrissey, Karen Lerner, Jay Lerner, Peter Beard, John Kennedy Jr., Lee Radziwill, Tina Radziwill, Anthony Radziwill, D'Allessandro, Caroline Kennedy, Mick Jagger, Jade Jagger and many others.
Completed in June, 1990.
1965-1982, 16mm, color/so, 36m, $110
Music by Wagner and Hermann Nitsch. Voice by Jean Houston.
One hundred and sixty portraits or rather appearances, sketches and glimpses of avant-garde, independent filmmakers and film activists between 1955 and 1996. Why BIRTH OF A NATION? Because the film independents IS a nation in itself. We are surrounded by commercial cinema Nation same way as the indigenous people of the United States or of any other country are surrounded by the Ruling Powers. We are the invisible, but essential nation of cinema. We are the cinema.
List of filmmakers and related friends and film activists who appear in the film, in order of appearance:
P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Ken Kelman, Hollis Melton, Ken Jacobs, Larry Jordan, Florence Jacobs, Harry Smith, Henri Langlois, Annette Michelson, Gerald O'Grady, Hollis Frampton, Sidney Peterson, James Broughton, Joel Singer, Stephen Dwoskin, Dore O., Wener Nekes, Kenneth Anger, Andrew Noren, Jacques Ledoux, Ed Emshwiller, Saul Levine, Larry Gottheim, Pascale Dauman, Ray Wisniewski, Taylor Mead, Michael Snow, Ricky Leacock, Stan Brakhage, Jane Brakhage, Barry Gerson, Willard Van Dyke, John Whitney, Pola Chapelle, Morris Engel, Stan Vanderbeek, Amy Greenfield, Bruce Baillie, Chantal Akerman, Sally Dixon, Will Hindle, Michael Stuart, Robert Creeley, Friede Bartlett, Scott Bartlett, Jud Yalkut, Adolfas Mekas, Callie Angell, Charles Levine, Bhob Stewart, Nelly Kaplan, Claudia Weil, Annabel Nicholson, Birgit Hein, Piero Heliczer, Peter Gidal, Kurt Kren, Wilhelm Hein, Malcolm Le Grice, Carmen Vigil, Bill Brand, Regina Cornwell, Akiko Iimura, Taka Iimura, David Crosswaite, Gill Eatherley, Amy Taubin, Tom Chomont, Peter Weibel, Carla Liss, Robert Huot, Guy Fihman, Claudine Eizykman, David Curtis, Barbara Rubin, Kenji Kanesaka, Anna Karina, Leo Dratfield, Gregory Markopoulos, Robert Beavers, Robert Kramer, Pamela Badyk, Cecille Starr, Jerome Hill, Donald Richie, Fred Halsted, David Wise, Sheldon Renan, James Blue, Ernie Gehr, Richard Foreman, Robert Polidori, Leni Riefenstahl, Amalie Rothschild, Lillian Kiesler, Shigeko Kubota, Jerry Tartaglia, Dan Talbot, Louis Marcorelles, Michel Auder, Dwight MacDonald, Viva, Leslie Trumbull, Kit Carson, Paul Shrader, Shirley Clarke, Bosley Crowther, Dimitri Devyatkin, Ulrich Gregor, Sheldon Rochlin, LaMonte Young, Robert Gardner, Vlada Petric, John du Cane, William Raban, Tony Conrad, George Maciunas, Alberto Cavalcanti, Jim McBride, Peter Bogdanovich, Gideon Bachmann, Christiane Rochefort, Jerry Jofen, Rosa von Praunheim, Hans Richter, Roberto Rossellini, Lionel Rogosin, Robert Haller, Storm De Hirsch, Marcel Hanoun, Jerry Hiler, Bruce Conner, Myrel Glick, Paul Sharits, Barbara Schwartz, Lewis Jacobs, Ian Barna, Carolee Schneemann, Anthony McCall, Diego Cortez, Leslie Trumbell, Adolfo Arieta, Louis Brigante, Coleen Fitzgibbon, Stewart Sherman, Charles Chaplin, Len Lye, Tati, Allen Ginsberg, Valie Export, Hermann Nitsch, Andy Warhol, Jack Smith, Analena Wibom, Robert Breer and Raimund Abraham.
1997, 16mm, color/so, 85m, $150
"In the midst of his rapture of remembering, Mekas remains carefully attuned to his viewer. He keeps a running commentary on the images that float by, reminding us constantly of the viewing experience. It is a kind of diary, less about the film's subjects and more about filmmaking itself. Mekas speaks to his viewer almost plaintively, as if wishing to reveal all: 'You expect to find out more about the protagonist, who is me. All I want to tell you, it's all here. I am in every image in this film. I am in every frame in this film.'
[...]"Peter Kubelka once said of his friend, “Jonas has realised that, whatever paradise there is, it should be here and now. Loving care is a key to it.” (21) As I Was Moving Ahead is a loving portrait of Mekas' early family life, a song of beauty and a testament to the possibility of Paradise. Appropriately, Mekas concludes the film in song, accompanied by his tireless accordion:
I do not know where I am, and going to, where I am coming from. I have seen some beauty. Glimpses of beauty and happiness. Yes, la beauté. And it is still beautiful in my memory. And it is real, as real as this film.
-Genevieve Yue, Senses of Cinema
2000, 16mm, color/so, 320m, $400