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how one experiences it. The film is "dedicated to LUMIÈRE," dramatizing Mekas's rejection of conventional theatrical narrative and its highly determined rhetoric, in favor of what he perceived as a return to cinematic basics and origins.
Since 1968, Mekas has completed a series of films that articulate the style and approach of
Walden
.
Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania
(1972) chronicles his first visit to Lithuania since 1944, framing his dramatic reunion with family with imagery shot soon after he arrived in the United States, andafter a "parenthesis" during which he and Adolfas visit the site of the forced labor camp near Hamburgwith then-recent imagery of his new "art-family," Peter Kubelka, Annette Michelson, Ken and Flo Jacobs. Mekas's loss of a homeland and his subsequent discovery of an "aesthetic homeland" where he could again live creatively within a community is also the theme of
Lost Lost Lost
(1975, two hours, fifty-eight minutes). The beautiful opening reels focus on the early years in the United States, particularly Mekas's involvement with the displaced Lithuanian community in Brooklyn. The middle pair of reels recall the first, lonely years in Manhattan; and the final two reels document his discovery of a world of friends and fellow artists who ultimately allow him to emerge, reborn, as a personal filmmaker and "warrior" for film art: in the final reel Mekas, Ken and Flo Jacobs, and Tony Conrad invade the Flaherty Film Seminar in Vermont on behalf of the New American Cinema.
In Between
(1978) presents imagery and sound recorded from 1964 to 1968, but not included in
Walden
.
Notes for Jerome
(1978) recounts Mekas's visits with filmmaker/friend Jerome Hill (
Albert Schweitzer
[1957],
Film Portrait
[1970]), whose inheritance has been a major source of support for Anthology Film Archives and other organizations devoted to independent film.
Paradise Not Yet Lost
(
a/k/a Oona's Third Year
) (1979) focuses on 1977, the third year of Mekas's first child, Oona.
He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life
(1985) chronicles the years 19691984, by means of 124 brief sketches: "portraits of people I have spent time with [including Hans Richter, Roberto Rossellini, Marcel Hanoun, Henri Langlois, Alberto Cavalcanti, Kenneth Anger, the Kuchar brothers, Robert Breer, Hollis Frampton, John Lennon, Jackie Onassis, the Kennedy children, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, and George Maciunas], places, seasons of the year, weather," as Mekas explains in the Film-makers' Cooperative Catalogue, No. 7. Other films document performances by the Living Theater (
Street Songs,
filmed in 1966, completed 1983), by Erick Hawkins and Lucia Dlugoszewski (
Erick Hawkins: Excerpts from "Here and Now with Watchers"/Lucia Dlugoszewski Performs,
filmed in 1963, completed 1983), and by Kenneth King and Phoebe Neville (
Cup/Saucer/Two Dancers/Radio,
filmed
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in 1965, completed 1983). Mekas's most recent film is
Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol
(1990).
I spoke with Mekas in December 1982 and January 1983. I had decided in advance to focus on his filmmaking, rather than on his activities as organizer, editor, writer, and administrator.
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MacDonald:
Though
Lost Lost Lost
wasn't finished until 1975, it has the earliest footage I've seen in any of your films.
Mekas:
The earliest footage in that film comes from late 1949.
Lost Lost Lost
was edited in 1975 because I couldn't deal with it until then. I couldn't figure out how to edit the early footage.
MacDonald:
When you were recording that material, were you just putting it onto reels and storing it?
Mekas:
I had prepared a short film from that footage in late 1950. It was about twenty minutes long and was called
Grand Street
. Grand Street is one of the main streets in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, populated mainly by immigrants, where we spent a lot of time. Around 1960 I took that film apart. It doesn't exist anymore. Otherwise, I didn't do anything with that footage. Occasionally I looked at it, thinking how I would edit it. I could not make up my mind what to eliminate and what to leave in. But in 1975 it was much easier.
MacDonald:
Is that opening passage in
Lost Lost Lost,
where you and Adolfas are fooling around with the Bolex, really your first experience with a camera?
Mekas:
What you see there is our very first footage, shot on Lorimer Street, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
MacDonald:
Were you involved at all with film before you got to this country?
Mekas:
The end of the war found us in Germany. Two shabby, naive Lithuanian boys, just out of forced labor camp. We spent four years in various displaced persons campsFlensburg, Hamburg, Wiesbaden, Kassel, et ceterafirst in the British zone, then in the American zone. There was nothing to do and a lot of time. What we could do was read, write, and go to movies. Movies were shown in the camps free, by the American army. Whatever money we could get we spent on books, or we went into town and saw the postwar German productions. Later, when we went to study at the University of Mainz, which was in the French zonewe commuted from Wiesbadenwe saw a lot of French films.
The movies that really got us interested in film were not the French
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productions, but the postwar, neorealistic German films. They are not known herefilms by Helmut Käutner, Josef V. Baky, Wolfgang Liebeneiner, and others. The only way they could make films after the war in Germany was by shooting on actual locations. The war had ended, but the realities were still all around. Though the stories were fictional and melodramatic, their visual texture was drab reality, the same as in the postwar Italian films.
Then we started reading the literature on film, and we began writing scripts. What caused us to write our first script was a filmI do not remember the title or who made it, but it was about displaced persons. We thought it was so melodramatic and had so little understanding of what life in postwar Europe was like that we got very mad and decided we should make a film. My brother wrote a script. Nothing ever was done with it. We had no means, we had no contacts, we were two zeroes.