{"id":4186,"date":"2017-09-21T08:30:53","date_gmt":"2017-09-21T07:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/?p=4186"},"modified":"2017-10-08T13:25:38","modified_gmt":"2017-10-08T12:25:38","slug":"jonas-mekas-i-am-like-the-last-leaf-of-a-big-tree-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/?p=4186","title":{"rendered":"Jonas Mekas. I am like the Last leaf of A Big Tree 3\/4"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.villagevoice.com\/2017\/09\/21\/im-like-the-last-leaf-of-a-big-tree-a-conversation-with-jonas-mekas\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-4187\" src=\"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/FOB_MEKUS_Jonas-with-Camera.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/FOB_MEKUS_Jonas-with-Camera.jpg 1200w, http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/FOB_MEKUS_Jonas-with-Camera-300x169.jpg 300w, http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/FOB_MEKUS_Jonas-with-Camera-768x432.jpg 768w, http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/FOB_MEKUS_Jonas-with-Camera-640x360.jpg 640w, http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/FOB_MEKUS_Jonas-with-Camera-150x84.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nMekas in his element, 2014 ZKM&nbsp;| Karlsruhe, exhibition: Jonas Mekas. <em>365 Day Project<\/em><\/p>\n<p>by Bilge Ebiri. \u201cI\u2019m Like the Last Leaf of A Big Tree\u201d: A Conversation with Jonas Mekas\u2028. He was the Voice\u2019s first film critic and a revolutionary figure in independent cinema. Now 94, he&rsquo;s still making movies, publishing books, and has big plans for Anthology Film Archives.<br \/>\nSeptember 21, 2017 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.villagevoice.com\/2017\/09\/21\/im-like-the-last-leaf-of-a-big-tree-a-conversation-with-jonas-mekas\/\">The Village Voice<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.villagevoice.com\/\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;:<\/span>\u201cYou were here before the beginning, and you\u2019re still here, after the end. \u201d\u00a0I\u2019m paraphrasing\u00a0Citizen Kane, but the line seems apt for my conversation with Jonas Mekas \u2014 the 94-year-old filmmaker, artist, critic, poet, photographer, cinema owner, and all-around underground impresario who transformed film criticism, filmmaking, and exhibition throughout the 1960s and \u201970s. Born in Lithuania, Mekas first came to New York in 1949 as a refugee; he had been imprisoned by the Nazis, then found himself stateless after the Soviets invaded. Plunging himself into the underground film scene, he became<em> the\u00a0Village Voice<\/em>\u2019s first full-time film critic in 1958, and continued to write his \u201cMovie Journal\u201d column until 1975, fervently championing independent and experimental cinema. (Before that, he had co-founded\u00a0Film Culture\u00a0magazine, where Andrew Sarris, later also a\u00a0Voice\u00a0film critic, published his crucially influential essay on the auteur theory.)<br \/>\nMekas didn\u2019t just write about movies. He made them, he showed them, and it would be fair to say he lived them. Much of his prolific cinematic output was built around footage of his everyday life. (Start with his masterpieces \u2014\u00a0<em>Walden<\/em>, from 1969;\u00a0<em>Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania<\/em>, from 1972;\u00a0Lost, Lost, Lost, from 1975; and\u00a0<em>As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Glimpses of Beauty<\/em>, from 2000. The first three are available online on Fandor.) By founding the Film-Makers\u2019 Cooperative and the Film-Makers\u2019 Cinematheque in the 1960s, he made it possible for underground filmmakers to bypass traditional distribution schemes. The Cinematheque eventually grew into <a href=\"http:\/\/anthologyfilmarchives.org\/\"><em>Anthology Film Archives<\/em><\/a>, which continues to be one of New York\u2019s essential screening venues.<br \/>\nBut the past tense doesn\u2019t fit Mekas. He still makes films; he still writes, teaches, programs, and champions. This man who worked with Andy Warhol and John Lennon and Lou Reed and Maya Deren might be the least nostalgic person I\u2019ve ever encountered. And he remains more excited than discouraged by what he sees in the world \u2014 even when he\u2019s perplexed by it.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: There\u2019s a hilarious story in your new book\u00a0<em>A Dance With Fred Astaire<\/em>, about the first issue of\u00a0Film Culture\u00a0and some Franciscan monks.<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: I had no money, but we felt there was a need for a publication on cinema. We had to do it. And we also believed that maybe it [would] sell enough to pay the bill for the first issue. So, we persuaded these Franciscan monks who had a printing shop on Willoughby Street in Brooklyn to print it, and we would pay them back in a month or two after the magazine came out. But there were no sales. And the monks sued us! We said, \u201cMonks, you people of God, how can you do that to us?\u201d But they took us to court, and you know where the court was? It is the present home of Anthology Film Archives. Corner of Second Avenue and 2nd Street, which was the local courthouse. And I still have that summons. [Laughs] When that courthouse closed, we purchased it and it became Anthology Film Archives. It\u2019s a courthouse in which Jacob Javits worked, in which Harvey Keitel had his first job, as a court stenographer. When we had the premiere of\u00a0Ulysses\u2019 Gaze, Keitel walks into Anthology and he\u00a0panics. I said, \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d He said, \u201cThese bad memories. I worked here as a courthouse stenographer. It was horrible. The most horrible job I ever had!\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: How did you first start writing for <em>the\u00a0Village Voice<\/em>?<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: It was a new, young paper, and a lot was happening. There was already a lot of coverage of what was going on in poetry readings, galleries, presented freshly with new sensibilities, but there was no coverage of cinema. And of course theater was already covered by Jerry Tallmer. I asked Jerry, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you cover cinema?\u201d I was already publishing\u00a0<span style=\"color: #00ccff;\"><em>Film Culture<\/em><\/span>, so I was very much involved in the whole movie scene \u2014 not Hollywood, but independent. He said, \u201cOh, we have nobody here, you want to do it?\u201d I said, \u201cSure, I will do it.\u201d This was in late \u201958, but a lot was already happening in France \u2014 the nouvelle vague was already moving in. I tried to deal with all the aspects for two or three years. Then I said, \u201cThis is too much. Too much is happening.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: Is that when you brought in Andrew Sarris?<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: He was studying journalism at Columbia University. His closest friend was Eugene Archer. When the first issue of\u00a0<em>Film Culture<\/em>\u00a0came out, one of the teachers, Roger Tilton, who was also a filmmaker, said, \u201cOh, you must need more writers. I have two guys. One has just demolished Eisenstein\u2019s\u00a0Potemkin, and the other just demolished\u00a0Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.\u201d I said, \u201cI want them!\u201d And that was Eugene Archer and Andrew Sarris. They became part of\u00a0Film Culture. That was in \u201954, \u201955. So in 1960, when I needed to bring in somebody to help me, I immediately talked to Andrew Sarris.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: When you were working as a critic, were you able to make a living at it?<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: Not for a number of years. I think I got four dollars or something a week. By 1965, 1967, I think I got a hundred and some. It still wasn\u2019t very much, but I could pay the rent. But writing about films was a necessity. It had to be done. It\u2019s not for money.\u00a0Film Culture, from the beginning to the end, nobody was paid.<br \/>\nSo many of us today think of the 1950s and \u201960s as a period when one could make art and still survive in New York, but reading your pieces from that time, it\u2019s clear that it was a real struggle, for writers and artists and filmmakers. People like Ron Rice were starving to death.<br \/>\nYes, yes. No filmmaker survived, including me, from the work. Even [Stan] Brakhage, when he was alive. Most of the filmmakers were teaching somewhere. I worked as a cameraman in Graphics Studios. It\u2019s a photo studio where we did the international edition of\u00a0Life\u00a0magazine. I did still-camera work.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: What I love about reading your reviews from the sixties is that, even though you and Sarris were friends and colleagues, you weren\u2019t afraid to call him out in your reviews.<br \/>\n<\/span>Jonas Mekas&nbsp;: Yeah, because we argued every evening, beginning with our first meeting. [Laughs]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: When people talk about that period of film criticism, they usually divide the world into Pauline Kael vs. Sarris. But you presented a third alternative, advocating not just for certain films and filmmakers, but for a specific form and distribution system of filmmaking.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Jonas Mekas&nbsp;: I bypassed, so to speak, yes. Like what we did in other areas. The creation of the Filmmakers\u2019 Cooperative, we created an alternative possibility for showing films, and we bypassed all the commercial outlets and networks and created our own. The same with the creation of\u00a0<em>Film Culture\u00a0magazine<\/em>, or <em>Filmmakers\u2019 Cinematheque<\/em>, or <em>Anthology Film Archives<\/em> now. <span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\">I keep repeating this, but the cinema, like any other art, is like a big tree with many, many branches.<\/span> Some are bigger, some are smaller, but all of them are important, and the smallest ones sometimes are more important than the big ones \u2014 because they catch the light, the sun, they feed the big lump of the tree. So the function of <em>Anthology Film Archives<\/em>, as it was that of the Filmmakers\u2019 Cinematheque, is to help and protect those little branches of the big tree.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: As you know, the print edition of <em>the\u00a0Village Voice<\/em>\u00a0is ending.<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: Yes. No big surprise, knowing how many other publications are [doing so]. It\u2019s the new normal. Because <em>the\u00a0Voice<\/em>\u00a0already had changed. I think that the biggest changes began when Clay Felker took over [in 1974].\u2026<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: Is that when you left?<br \/>\n<\/span>Jonas Mekas&nbsp;: A year or two later. I never attended the editorial meetings, but Andrew Sarris went. He liked to have his say. And he said that at every meeting, whenever Felker would say, \u201cWhat do we need this \u2018Movie Journal\u2019 for? Who is interested in this independent cinema?\u201d Sarris would defend it. At some point, I said, \u201cI don\u2019t want you to defend me. I will just say goodbye.\u201d And there were other reasons.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: Because you were becoming more\u00a0involved in Anthology?<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: Very involved. In fundraising, trying to fix the building. And in \u201977 there were several other publications writing about the independent cinema. I was not the only one anymore. I also think that a reviewer\u2019s responsibility in whatever area they work should be to see everything. And I could not do that. Anthology needed me too much.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: When you first started Anthology Film Archives, did you think it would be a quick process?<br \/>\n<\/span>Jonas Mekas&nbsp;: I thought it would be faster. <span style=\"color: #00ccff;\"><em>Anthology<\/em><\/span> originally opened at The Public Theater, on 425 Lafayette. But when our main sponsor, Jerome Hill, died two years later, the contract was not extended. So we moved to 80 Wooster St. Our library was growing, the film collection was growing, the filmmakers were dying \u2013 we ended up with collections from estates. I had to look for a bigger space, and then noticed that this building was still there, a shell, because everything was ripped out \u2014 every piece of metal. For $50,000 I bought that building. But we needed money to fix it. Thanks to Agnes Martin, we had the beginning monies to start working. Then came Black Monday, and the markets crashed. It took years, but we re-opened to the public in late \u201888 and beginning of \u201889. Ten years.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: Tell me about the expansions you\u2019re now planning for <em>Anthology<\/em>.<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: Don\u2019t call it an \u201cexpansion.\u201d It\u2019s a\u00a0completion. We opened in unfinished form, because a library was always in the plans, and a caf\u00e9 was always in the plans. <span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\">I wanted to make it like a complete museum<\/span>. We have accumulated so much documentation, paper materials, books. The basement is loaded with boxes, and in storage we have boxes and boxes of materials that must be displayed and made available to all the many students and scholars, researchers coming. Books, publications, periodicals, photographs, documentation on individual filmmakers, film societies. It goes back to the \u201940s.<br \/>\nIn the original plans that the architect Raimund Abraham designed, the library and caf\u00e9 were there. [But after ten years] I got tired of raising money. So I said, \u201cWhy don\u2019t we open just as we are, and we\u2019ll do everything later.\u201d But now that future, that \u201clater,\u201d is now. The budget is $12 million. We have about half of it. We had an art auction; we raised $2 million in March. Maja Hoffmann matched it with $2 million; her pledge is to match up to $3 million. And we have applied to the New York State Council in Albany for $2 million. Now we need the film industry to come and help us. Where are they? They want to use us, but they don\u2019t want to help us. Most of the support is coming from the artists, but where are the commercial filmmakers? After all, I\u2019m building the library of cinema, and it\u2019s not only for the avant-garde.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: The commercial cinema borrows from the avant-garde all the time, yet they rarely support the avant-garde.<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: Not that they borrow. The so-called avant-garde expands technology and the language of cinema, which then becomes part of the vocabulary in general. Digital would not exist if there had not been home movies, and an interest in 16 and 8mm, interest [in the idea] that cinema would become part of everybody\u2019s home daily life. That necessity, that interest, that\u00a0desire\u00a0eventually led to these changing technologies. Hollywood did not need 8mm or 16mm or digital; they just wanted everybody to go to their big movies. <span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\">Digital came from the home movie, from the independents, from the personal cinema. Now digital technology is being used to make money again.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: As a filmmaker, how did you develop your style of single-frame exposure, or undercranking the Bolex?<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: I used it, but you can find it already in the \u201920s, the accelerations. In the area for non-narrative cinema it came very much through Robert Breer, and Marie Menken, and Peter Kubelka \u2014 the single individual frame as the basis of cinema. I just discovered that the Bolex camera is very suitable for single framing and changing exposure, underexposing, overexposing, speeding up. But it was already part of the cinematic language. I did not invent it.<br \/>\nIt helped me to condense reality, and to put my feeling of the moment into what I was filming. I compare it with somebody who plays a musical instrument, like saxophone. Your feelings translate into your fingers and how you play it. The same with a movie and my Bolex. My temperament I put into it, guided by the many possibilities \u2014 to speed up, to overexpose, the single frame \u2014 all connected directly with my feelings. Same with a painter and brush \u2014 which way you move the brush, what you do, you do it all with no thinking. Because you cannot think, \u201cNow I will go right, now left.\u201d No, you have to have mastered your instrument well enough that you do it with no thinking.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: You\u2019ve always called yourself a \u201cfilmer\u201d instead of a filmmaker.<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: Yes, because to be a filmmaker you have to have a purpose, an idea of what film you want to make. And I have no ideas and no purpose. <span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\">I\u2019m just filming<\/span>.\u00a0I never know what I\u2019m going to film.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: Do you feel like the image is losing its power at all today?<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: The images are there; maybe our attitudes are different. The reasons why some images don\u2019t work, maybe they\u2019re overused. OK, we had Malevich and that was 105 years ago, and when you go to museums, galleries, you still see Malevich, de Kooning, or Pollock, or a few others. It\u2019s variations, variations, and so of course by repetition it loses meaning until somebody comes with something really fresh.<br \/>\nOr something shocking. <span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\">I was thinking of the refugee situation<\/span> \u2014 for example, the photograph of the young Kurdish boy washed up on shore in Turkey, which seized the world\u2019s attention.<br \/>\nThere have been many, many other\u00a0images. Of course, it\u2019s a very sad and dramatic image. In the world we have so much cruelty that we have become immune to certain aspects of cruelty and sadness and misery \u2014 we don\u2019t react to it until something like that sums it up in a much more intense, condensed manner. <span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\">Certain images sum up certain situations<\/span> \u2014 like, you know, the guy with the flower in front of the tank.<br \/>\nPeople who are there, they go through it. But to us, it\u2019s, you know, a newspaper headline. And maybe that\u2019s good in a way, because otherwise we would be all trembling and end up in mental hospitals, thinking all the time about how the bombs are falling. I knew a young woman once who was so concerned with what was happening in the Vietnam War that she began imagining that she heard the bombs explode in Vietnam. And from that sensitivity, she ended up in an insane asylum. At the same time, of course we have to be concerned and we have to know about it, and help how we can.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: As a displaced person, as a refugee at the end of World War II, you were in the middle of some of these tragedies.<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: I went through it, so I know. I can imagine what they are going through, though in a different way. And it\u2019s worse than what we went through after the Second World War, because we had the United Nations. We had <span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\">UNRRA<\/span> [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration]. They fed us, they took care of all the displaced-person camps, and they would come with the trucks and planes and deliver food, and nobody stopped them. You cannot do that today. Now, it\u2019s a very tragic and sad situation.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: In\u00a0<em>Reminiscences of a Journey to\u00a0Lithuania<\/em>, you say you still feel like a\u00a0displaced person.<br \/>\n<\/span>Jonas Mekas&nbsp;: I was still very much at the time. It was \u201971.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: Do you still feel that way?<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: No, no, I\u2019m completely somewhere else. I was somewhere else already when I visited Lithuania. I was looking back, remembering. There were some people at the time who were asking me, \u201cWhere do you come from?\u201d So I told them: \u201cOK, I will show you some details of my life, of where I come from, and what was still left.\u201d Because in \u201971, Lithuania was already very much incorporated in the Soviet Union on every level, but there were leftovers of the previous centuries and decades \u2014 and that\u2019s what I filmed, with some glimpses of what was there now.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: Did your experiences as a displaced person feed your desire to film everything, to chronicle all the details of your life and the people you came across?<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: <span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\">Already from my childhood, I was recording life around me. When I could not write, I used to make drawings. When I learned to write, I began writing down. And when the camera became available, I began taking still pictures. And when I could buy a movie camera, I began filming. Of course, when I was six and seven, I was still in Lithuania, and it was nice and peaceful, and neither Germans nor Soviets were there, but the need was there already. So I was not displaced. I was there, roaming and happy and very much rooted in that reality. Same as I\u2019m rooted now here. I have no interest in the past. I\u2019m only concerned with the present moment, with what\u2019s happening. The past, I would like to wipe it all out. All the horrors that the world is going through today because of the memory of the past. All their nationalisms, all their religious fanaticisms are from those memories.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: But your films are often about memory.<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: <span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\">No! No! No! My films are about the present moment. You cannot film a memory. But yeah, how I film is affected by what I am made of \u2014 from the moment when I was born, I was made by every moment, every second I lived, and already even generations before were in me already. Otherwise, how would I learn to speak or anything? So, I\u2019m like a last leaf of a big, big tree that goes, you know, centuries and centuries back. So that whatever I do and say, how I film, is affected by what I am. But what I film is\u00a0now\u00a0\u2014 not a second before, not a second that will come, but what is now, the present moment. And that is not memory.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: Your new book\u00a0<em>A Dance With Fred Astaire<\/em>\u00a0is a little like a memoir.<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: One could say it\u2019s an autobiography in the form of anecdotes, or part of an autobiography \u2014 just a fragment of my life. I have met a lot of people in my life. But the relationship was always a working relationship. I\u2019m not one who admires somebody and wants to meet them. I\u2019m too busy. If you look through the book, there are so many big, well-known people, and one then thinks, \u201cOh, that\u2019s name-dropping.\u201d No, these are all people I was working with. My life somewhere touched their lives or their lives touched my life. <span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\">Today you meet on a website, not in caf\u00e9s<\/span>. <span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\">And maybe the number of communities now is much wider. OK, we had in the \u201960s, like one hundred filmmakers. Now we have ten thousand, or millions. So, the communities were not so big back then.<\/span><br \/>\nWe recently celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the release of\u00a0The Velvet Underground and Nico. You were there back then, with Lou Reed and Warhol and Nico, and so many others, helping come up with all these crazy ideas, like <span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\"><em>the Exploding Plastic Inevitable<\/em><\/span>. Do you think it\u2019s possible to have that kind of give-and-take today?<br \/>\nIt takes the emergence of certain personalities during certain periods, and around those personalities there is energy that is created like a heart of the hurricane. And then, you know, of course there was Warhol. But we don\u2019t have such hurricane hearts within Manhattan now. I don\u2019t see it. I\u2019m not putting it down, but I just don\u2019t see it. Maybe I\u2019m looking in the wrong place. Is there another world that I am kept somehow out? [Laughs] Sometimes I\u2019m dreaming that I\u2019m missing something because I have no access to that world. The Velvet Underground attracted those who were 17 and those who were 27 and those who were 37. They all flocked. There was one platform \u2014 one. Now, maybe there are several. The digital age, I still don\u2019t have full understanding of how it all works. And I don\u2019t think we have, any of us.\u2028But you see, one thing that sort of keeps\u2026not\u00a0bothering\u00a0me, but coming into my mind, is that we should not look at this situation as good or bad. That\u2019s just what it is. It\u2019s easier to say, \u201cIt\u2019s bad.\u201d But it\u2019s maybe good that we have this period, because then it will jump into something else.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: You never seem discouraged by this stuff.<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: I think it\u2019s just chaos between transitions, between some basic technologies. OK, technology has gone ahead of us. We are not ready for it in our minds. <span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\">Humanity is lagging behind technology<\/span>. I hope that we will somehow catch up.<br \/>\nBut that\u2019s of course why the politicians are able to manipulate humanity and our impulses. When we watch Rachel Maddow and see what the Russians did\u2026.\u201cOh, really? And we knew nothing about it?\u201d There was another world about which we had no idea at all.<br \/>\nYou have to read the current Nobel Prize winner [Svetlana] Alexievich and see how a political system can change the people and how people become helpless and they just do what they\u2019re told. But eventually that system collapses, and the people come back. If you read history, you see that those horrible periods always pass. <span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\">I think we must be in that transitional period where so many horrible things are happening, and then we will emerge on the other side.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: Is it because you lived through so much early on that you\u2019re so optimistic about these things?<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: Yes, I believe in the human spirit, the mind. And the world was not invented by humans. We are its products. Maybe we will not survive, but nature will survive.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: You\u2019re 94 years old. How do you keep so busy?<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: What else is there to do? You just keep working. I don\u2019t go to the beaches. I don\u2019t like oceans. I don\u2019t like to sit and have small talk. <span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\">I have nothing, so I have time. I write; I make my movies; I read. I just reread practically all of Cervantes \u2014 not just\u00a0Don Quixote, but his other novels.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: What\u2019s your average day like? Are you a routine guy?<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: I don\u2019t. After my day passes, I feel like I have done nothing. [Laughs] Right now, I\u2019m taking inventory of my life. Because the place in which I live is a little bit expensive, and I have no income really anymore. Nobody buys my work. So, I have to move to a cheaper place.<span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\"> I have to move a lot of stuff into storage<\/span>. So, I have to decide what I have to really keep, what I really need in my work, and what I don\u2019t need.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: What keeps you going?<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: This glass of wine keeps me going.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\">Bilge Ebiri&nbsp;: What else besides wine?<\/span><br \/>\nJonas Mekas&nbsp;: The whole history of human development. All the poets, all the saints, all the people that are in my library, that produce the best dreams of humanity. I\u2019m part of it, and I cannot betray it. So, I have to be with them. I cannot be with the politicians. I am with the dreamers of humanity.<\/p>\n<p>More:<a href=\"https:\/\/www.villagevoice.com\/tag\/jonas-mekas\/\"> Jonas Mekas<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Mekas in his element, 2014 ZKM&nbsp;| Karlsruhe, exhibition: Jonas Mekas. 365 Day Project by Bilge Ebiri. \u201cI\u2019m Like the Last Leaf of A Big Tree\u201d: A Conversation with Jonas Mekas\u2028. He was the Voice\u2019s first film critic and a revolutionary figure in independent cinema. Now 94, he&rsquo;s still making movies, publishing books, and has &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/?p=4186\" class=\"more-link\">Continuer la lecture de <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Jonas Mekas. I am like the Last leaf of A Big Tree 3\/4<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,6,59,44,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-contemporain","category-artiste","category-documenta","category-everyday-life","category-reader"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4186"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4312,"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4186\/revisions\/4312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lantb.net\/figure\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}