Jonas Mekas, a poetry to American New Cinema,

New York Underground Art Films, the New and the

Old and the Slowness of Living

Jules Cook
2021

1804234

Film Production – FFIP6009

8197 words
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. New York Underground Cinema

i. The Underground Scenes of New York

ii. Fluxus and Slow Cinema

II. Jonas Mekas, an Autobiographical Testimony of the Past

i. Life in Exile in Mid-Century New York

ii. Autobiographical Diaristic Documentary

iii. Documentary, a Spectacle

iv. Temporality and Après Coups

v. A Stylistic Autobiography

III. Poetry, Poetry, Poetry, Poetry

i. Exploration of Film Linguistics

ii. Poetry on Film

iii. The ‘Self’ as an Illusion

IV. Bibliography

V. Iconography

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Mekas, Mekas, Mekas,
To do art and to do poetry. To make cinema and to make art. The eclectic journey of one man’s
life into a stylised cinema of a certain focused genre: the diaristic autobiography. Jonas Mekas
is one of the pioneers of the American Underground Cinema scene, or even, the Underground
Cinema at large. Originated from Lithuania, he represents American immigrants in cinema
and in art. Founder of the Anthology Film Archive in New York, his specialty being the
recollection of old footage and assembling it, including his own which represents decades of
video.

In a society that is based on image and representation, what does it mean to be looking into
one’s personal (movie) diary of the past? How are the mediums of consumption representative
of the type of Cinema we are consuming? And how does the autobiographical film represent
oneself, or rather, one’s attempt to represent themselves? To answer these questions, we will
have to analyse Mekas’s cinema as well as the artistic and historical context of film
consumption from the last half-century.

In this essay we will explore Jonas Mekas’s Cinema in depth by analysing the intellectual,
historical and social context of the production of which his films were made. Then we will
dissect his persona and the genre of home movies and autobiographical cinema. We will
explore the genre of autobiographical diaries through Mekas and explain why it represents a
psychoanalytic tool for the screen. And lastly, we will see how Mekas brings his own vision to
the screen and how he exploits the genre in his own poetic style.

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PART I: NEW YORK UNDERGROUND CINEMA

The Underground Scenes of New York

In the late fifties, cinema was democratized, with the arrival of cheaper film camera technology,
advertised for the mass market. 16mm and 8mm cameras were made very popular in
households leading to the prominent production of so called: “home movies”. They depict for
the most part domestic footage, or travel videos. At the opposition of mainstream movies,
“home movies” were made for a more private audience, meant to be seen by family and friends,
made to give to more people, the thrill and experience of seeing themselves on screen for the
first time. Mekas on the other hand exploits the new medium to reflect on his existence. The
usage of such a modest and ‘homey’ medium makes his work so identifiable, yet so hard to
grasp. Indeed, unlike usual home movies, Mekas approaches very deep subjects of reflection
exposing very intimate thoughts. Underground cinema comes from there, in that sense. Artists
became more likely to broaden their material in the medium of the moving image in large part
due to a lowering of cost.

Maya Deren’s “Meshes of the Afternoon” is a notable short film illustrating the arrival of this
new film genre. Her experimental approach to mute narrative, inspired many young film
makers in the following decades. With a rotational camera and a non-linear storytelling, she
embodies American Avant Garde Cinema. Comparable in importance as painting became to
explore new genres that couldn’t be explored through the arrival of photography in the early
twentieth century, with the birth of abstraction and surrealism. It was important for cinema to
explore, in an experimental way, the sense of the art, after its mass commercialisation that came
from mainstream cinema and the Hollywood industrial complex. This new kind of cinema was
never targeted for the masses, as much as it was available for all. Films like Maya Deren’s were
showcased in small eccentric arthouse cinemas, attracting certain social groups such as:
intellectuals, artists, the bourgeoisie etc… It goes to say that Avant Garde cinema has (always)
been anti Hollywood, or at the very least, went against the mainstream. As a matter of fact, the
productions were quite small, often requiring non-professional actors and were for the most
part, films of shorter lengths.

With regards to avant-garde cinema, we say ‘Wave’ to describe the phenomenon of films
emerging in the mid-century because it comes in waves of influence, travelling from country

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to country, traversing back and forth seeding new ideas, new themes and new techniques. Some
say it originated in Europe, or more specifically in France with the ‘nouvelle vague’ represented
by Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Resnais and many more, reinventing cinema in a new fashion.
And like that, the wave hits Germany (German New Cinema from the sixties to the eighties),
Czechoslovakia (Czech New Wave from the sixties), Britain (British New Wave, from the late
fifties) with a more neorealistic approach like in Italy, and even in Greece (Greek new wave,
from the late fifties), all coming forth with revolutionary forms of filmmaking, giving the art
form a new definition.

The US, home of (mainstream) cinema, could not have missed the effect of that big European
wave of course, however, the country has had a heavier criticism towards the movement than
any other country on the subject. The American audience isn’t used to this ‘semi-Marxist’,
anarchist form of filming. (Here comes an important word) And it isn’t part of (post-colonial)
American “culture”. American culture has been, and still is, a culture of consumerism and
capital. So of course, investing in a cinema that will be more profitable (that is to say to please
the masses) is the only interest of producers and big investors…

It goes to say that American New Cinema is a countercultural movement. This obsession over
counterculture and underground groups (cults almost) becomes more and more emergent in big
cities, like New York specifically. In Kenneth Anger’s “Scorpio Rising” (1964) – a film that
has been acclaimed by Jonas Mekas, mentioning it multiple times in “Movie Journal”
describing the film as one of the most representative of counterculture: “It has a strange
fascination, this world that so many of us do not know” (Mekas; 1963:109) – profiles a
homosexual Nazi biker cult (speaking of counterculture!). A need for representation for
minority groups is thus becoming more and more prominent as for Mekas himself represents
American immigration culture.

New American Cinema means new cinema. In 1962 Jonas Mekas founds the New American
Cinema group giving many new upcoming filmmakers and videographers of that time, support
and a platform of distribution and exhibition. In his report from that year, Jonas notes he will
make a bi-monthly bulletin indicating what films are in production and in need of support.

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 Fluxus and Slow Cinema

Later, in the seventies, the American city

sees a shift of genre to the underground
cinema. The arrival of slow cinema is
synonymous of a slow philosophy, “a
slowness of living”, per se. Cinema and
art in general embrace contemplation and
the spiritual journey around work and the
artistic process. Yoko Ono and John
Lennon’s ‘Bed-ins’ for peace in Vietnam
in 1969, are reflective of this artistic
process, this new artistic way of thinking
and expressing. For two weeks they let
people pass by their hotel rooms as they
exhibit themselves, in bed, waiting
patiently for peace. Even Jonas Mekas’s
camera could not have missed such a spectacle. He included the footage in his film “Walden”
(1969), figuring other iconic figures of the New York seventies artistic scene like Andy Warhol
and the Velvet Underground. “Promote living art, anti-art, promote non art reality to be
grasped by all peoples […].” As is it written in the Fluxus manifesto in 1963 by Georges
Maciunas including the definition of flux “act of following: a continuous moving on or passing
by, as of a following stream”. Can we define Mekas’s film diaries as the flux of his life?

Nam June Paik is a video artist representative of the Fluxus movement. Creator of many video
installation, some representing a television with cables and magnets attached around it,
distorting the image projected by the television itself, creating a new televised experience. Paik
writes “Real people, real underground fighters are all here in Mekas’s films. Anybody can have
good ideas; anybody can do it for three years. But he had the patience…patience…and
rewardless patience… forty years equals 120,000 days with a heavy Bolex […] only the old
European culture’s outfit could have done this. I envy him” (Paik; 1992:285). Nam June Paik?
Afraid of Jonas Mekas? So is titled the text he writes in David E. James collections of essays
and texts about Jonas Mekas and the film Underground. Paik is a genius of digital art,

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transforming the old into the new, synonymous with fast fashion and the fast flux of
information. Mekas, on the other hand is a genius of celluloid, transforming the new into
something newer, representing the so-called “slowness of living” with a contemplative eye.
Mekas is thus, in a fashion Paik’s antagonist, or vice versa. In this excerpt, he outlines the
patience of Mekas, the colossal artistic process that nobody sees in the editing room, going
through reel after reel, of footage recollected (by himself). This artistic process is synonym to
the whole Fluxus movement itself.

So, if slow art is fundamentally the art of contemplation, and the exhibition of the idea over the
final product, what is slow cinema?

“While classical narrative pairs away anything that isn’t going to contribute to the forward
movement of the film, slow cinema kind of does the opposite, […] It’s like a wilful wasting of
time, things take too long, they last too long.” (Balsom; 2012)

This particularity of the mid-century - emerging from neorealism and the consciousness of
mass consumption culture - is known to have extremely stretched shots, slow paced editing
(almost non-existent in a sense), minimal dialogue, steady shots etc… In order to clash with
the culture of massive consumption, artists had to make their imprint evident, a way of making
films that the movie making machine (Hollywood) wouldn’t be able to produce. Lengthy shots
represent or highlight the hard work of the filmmaker that is so often neglected. Robert Bresson
(“The Trial of Joan of Arc”), Chantal Akerman (“Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce,
1080 Bruxelles”), and even Michelangelo Antonioni (“L’Eclisse”), all produced films from that
principle of craftsmanship. They were all European, however had a great influence on
American Art, and Film Art and vice versa. For example, Andy Warhol’s interest in that new
approach of cinema was inevitable. It pushed him to create “Sleep” (1964) showing John
Giorno - Warhol’s lover at the time - sleeping for five hours and twenty minutes. The film
created such an uproar from the audience at the time, triggering the American public to
question: What really is cinema? Are lengthy shots highlighting the filmmaker’s hard work, or
is it a clever and twisted way to avoid it?

Assembling cuts arbitrarily and calling it art or a film might be one procedure to make one’s
way into the film industry, but can we call this cinematic genre as Marcel Duchamp calls his
artwork “ready-made”, are they in essence lazy? There are plenty ways in which we can answer

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this question. First of all: what does it mean to be lazy. Has our society overcome the
consciousness of people as people rather as capital and potential source of income? As
mentioned before, slow cinema is in itself a political stance standing up in a way to a capitalistic
society that values outcome rather than artistic and cultural impact. A slow movie will
contribute to those last two, indeed, the more the shot will be long the more emotions are
infused. Then, the action of making art and conceptualizing the ideals is by itself anything but
‘lazy’, the reflective process that goes under it, is never neglected and always presented as a
centre piece of the artwork rather than the actual artwork itself, we will discuss later about
Fluxus and the showcase of the artistic process as a substitute to the art piece.

“Strange things have been going on lately at the Filmmakers’ Showcase. Anti-filmmakers are
taking over. […] Is Andy Warhol really making movies, or is he playing a joke on us? – this
is the talk of the town. To show a man sleeping, in his movie? […] If this is not cinema then
what is it?” (Mekas; 1963:109)

Later on, Mekas participated in the filming of “Empire” (1964) which is an eight-hour film
depicting the Empire State Building from three, to three in the morning. What does this signify?
Audiences demanded ticket refunds and left the theatres within a few minutes after the mere
start of the films. According to French film critic André Bazin – firm believer in slow cinema
– the longer the length (or ‘durée’) of a shot, the better the audience will actively respond to
the narrative, in a deeper sense that transcends words (dialogue) and actions. In other words,
the dilation of time will require a form of effort. On the other hand, British film critic Nick
James believes that slow cinema is a fancy way of saying lazy cinema to some extent. He

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believes that ‘slow cinema’ filmmakers use this etiquette to passively avoid political debates.
This bipolarity of opinions is singular to that controversial topic: must a film entertain, have a
message/to be political, in order to be, well, a film? Isn’t, no politics, a politic in itself?

One way to disagree with Nick James’s argument that slow cinema lacks political engagement
is by looking at the role of the viewer, the audience. This Bazinian labour is something that has
been:

“[…] Mystified and whose value capitalism conceals from our view. How, then are we to
measure the expenditure and the quality of labour when we do not know what labour looks
like? Is labour’s true value recognizable to us? Is labour exactly figurable to us at this
historical juncture? At the very least, it seems that when we attempt to describe either the
work of spectators or their laziness, we must take care to ask whether we might be enacting a
particular late-capitalist ideological myopia that removes certain kinds of labour view and
refigure them as apolitical.” (Schoonover; 2012:67)

In other words, labour of watching isn’t quantifiable which relates in a sense to one of the
schools of Marxism, which observes that the capital is all about quantifiable work, and work
that needs to be rewarded. By doing work, or visual labour, in a way that isn’t remunerated
could be considered, by itself, anti-capitalist. Time would be the quantification of labour, and
by stretching it as so, Warhol demands his audience an inhumane amount of work by watching
his five or eight-hours of video, thus criticising implicitly capitalism’s views of labour.

“The restlessness or contemplation induced by art cinemas characteristic fallow time draws
attention to the activity of watching and ennobles a forbearing but unbedazzled spectatorship.”
(Schoonover). Art Cinema (slow cinema) has here an unmissable effect on the spectator.
Following this idea, all spectators are under the same effect of ‘visual work’, giving the
audience a legitimate importance (to the point of view of the artist), however the perception of
time is entirely subjective in my view… One’s elongated and tiresome film can be another’s
appreciative representation of contemplation. Perception of Bazin’s so called ‘duration’ can
thus depend on the subject watching it.

We can take for example, the movements of realism and Italian neorealism cinema to illustrate
this effect, and their relationship with time. One of the key tools of those movements, are

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verisimilitude, an approach to ‘resemble life’, how characters speak, and how they act. It would
only be just to say that time is also an aspect that can be explored in a realistic way. Bazin
highlights that realism’s “meticulous and perceptive choice of authentic and significant detail”
is one of the most faithful way to depict time “in chunks” (Schoonover; 2012:70).

Additionally, a new phenomenon appears in this half century: cinema has entered the exhibition
(screen). The purpose of cinema has been redesigned to fit to artwork exhibitions. Celluloid is
specifically a very palpable medium that can be altered, reshaped and worked on, like a canvas.
Artists and videographers such as Robert Breer, Stan Brakhage, Ed Emshwiller or Peter
Kubelka all see the potential in the exploitation of the celluloid as a blank canvas, rather than
a blank page. “[The issue is no longer how to] distinguish mediums from each other or different
uses of a medium within a given state of technological development (as in the relation between
cinema and artists’ films in the 1960s).” (Michael Newman; Balsom 2013:73).

The cinematic experience is done, at the cinema. Barthes puts it well by saying: “[Letting
oneself be] Fascinated twice over, by the image in its surroundings as if I had two bodies at
the same time: a narcissistic body which gazes, lost, into the engulfing mirror, and a perverse
body, ready to fetishize not only the image but precisely what exceeds it: the texture of the
sound, the Hall, the darkness, the obscure mass in the other bodies, the rays of light.” (Barthes;
De Luca; 2016:56). There is, for him, a form of participation from the audience in the
mentioned cinematic experience… The viewer’s role is, for Barthes, to identify to the Bazinian
plastics (explained later in film linguistics) and situate oneself onto the visuals presented. Then
it is to give an interpretation of the art by engaging cognitively to the deeper meaning of the
film. We can go further and say that the spectatorship can be deemed as a collective experience
(only if it is conscious). Hanich writes so as to explain such an awareness can contribute to a
full-fledged yet different cinematic experience. The Cinema of exhibition has been seen as a
separate experience for instance. A film like ‘Lost, Lost, Lost’, that stands for three hours long,
may be seen as suitable for the exhibition screen. The audience is free to watch snippets as well
as stand along other strangers to watch the whole of the artwork. Some may find meditations
(as Erika Balsom puts it) in moving in this new architectural space. It feels at times (in our
modern age, with new nomadic filmic experiences: mobile screens) like entering a separate,
liminal space, where the audience isn’t tied by the conventions of theatrical cinema but has a
paradoxical freedom over what they see. The boundaries between art and cinema are thus
blurred, where does art cinema start and when does it end?

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Intuitively we can ask ourselves: where does Mekas’s film diaries fall, between all those
approaches to time (or Bazinian ‘durée’) on film? Would it be that Jonas Mekas’s films
originated from a technical revolution in the medium(s) of art(s) and the cinematic genre? And
what pushed him to create films from the underground in opposition to the upper ground
(mainstream)?

PART II: JONAS MEKAS, AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL TESTIMONY OF THE PAST

After having presented the context in which Mekas produced his films, showing how he was
influenced by the ongoing artistic currents, we will focus this segment on his personality, as
well as his style of cinema.

Life in Exile in Mid-Century New York

After arriving in New York, along with his brother Adolfas, Jonas was confronted with the
birth of many new film genres. Indeed, the film industry in New York, from the late fifties, has
emancipated itself. The multitude of new genres and sub-genres of cinema pushed him and his
brother to start the film culture magazine in 1954. On top of his own magazine, Mekas wrote
many columns in village voices where he expressed freely, his thoughts and critiques of
contemporary cinema (more particularly, art and underground cinema) that were later all
published in a book called “Movie Journal”. He also made movies of his own, which will be
the main focus of this essay. He explored all genres: fiction, like “Guns of Trees” (1961) or
“The Brig” (1964), but the most prominent ones were his film diaries “Lost, Lost, Lost” (1976)
or even “Reminiscence of a journey to Lithuania” (1972).

In a quiet tone, with the sound of his own voice narrating the footage he collected over the
years/decades, of scenes of the streets, of his friends, his family, his memory, he succeeds to
create his own style of filmmaking.

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His exile didn’t just influence his life, but it also influenced his art. Indeed, French philosopher
Gilles Deleuze refers to Franz Kafka’s work as ‘minor, literature’ due to his particular use of
language (by mixing dialects), and the politicality of that aspect in a sense… ‘minor’ literature
also evokes belonging to a minority, in which that, as well as Kafka, Mekas belongs to. ‘Minor’,
like minority groups, like languages often spoken by a specific group of people. In his essay
“A Foreigner in One’s Own Tongue”, Igor Krstić lifts the question whether or not we could
talk about “minor cinema” when it comes to Jonas Mekas. Indeed, in his films Mekas highlights
the social struggle and loneliness of living in a big American city as an immigrant.

Furthermore, if the camera can only film what is exterior, the condition of the foreigner is the
impossible settling. If his existence is only dictated by the fact of not belonging; it can however
interpret the exterior world, appropriate it and paint his own landscape. His instrument of
showing that, is original, unlike any other documents of exile. Indeed, his films belong
someplace between film and literature. In sum, a more diaristic approach of filmmaking. One
may even wonder if diaristic film making is one of the best art mediums to cope with exile and
unfamiliar landscapes. David Perlov, an Israeli filmmaker born in Rio de Janeiro, tells the story
of his journey back to Israel, the country he is originated from. Unlike “Reminiscence of a
Journey to Lithuania”, which portrays Mekas’ arrival to his own country, meeting with his
family again after a long time in New York, “In Jerusalem” tells more the story of the
filmmaker’s proximity to a place he has been only a few times. “[Perlov] works with a more
literal diarist approach, with no evident conflict or closure in the structuring of their personal
accounts. Mekas [has a different approach], consistently filming and editing movies that

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record his daily activities for more than fifty years as such Mekas offers an impressive
perspective on the strengths and weaknesses of the diary format in cinema” (Cuevas; 2006;55).

Autobiographical Diaristic Documentary

Mekas often shows himself or chooses to include footage of himself in the edit. It puts a face
to that solemn figure of the narrator, but it also reminds us of the autobiographical aspect of
the film. We not only see through Jonas’ eyes (quite literally), but we hear his thoughts, we
follow him in his life, like the main character of a movie. To the philosopher Michel Foucault,
“we can regard the sub-genre of the autobiographical documentary from a media historically
perspective as a transitory phenomenon, since it appears as one among many other:
technologies of the self” (1980). Indeed, Mekas’s motto is “I make home movies, therefore I
live” referring one hand to Descartes Cogito Ergo Sum (“I think therefore I am”), and on the
other implying that his movies dictate, his life (his living), and how we, as an audience perceive
him, peeking into his publicly personal documents.

According to the philosopher Derrida “if classical philosophers usually avoid autobiography,
it is because they think it’s indecent. That is, a philosopher should no speak of himself as an
empirical being and this ‘impoliteness’, or this ‘politeness’ is philosophy itself, in principle.
So, if we want to break this philosophical axiom, according to which a philosopher should not

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present himself or give into autobiography, then we have to be indecent to some extent” (2002).
And that is what Mekas does, to some extent he liberates himself from his own thoughts,
through his camera and voice over. Fundamentally, the autobiographical documentary gives us
a subjective knowledge of the filmmaker in a three-dimensional way: by entering his body (the
camera), his voice (voice over), and his mind (narration, and the writing). Catherine Russel
mentions the omnipresence in the genre of “three voices: the speaker, the seer and the seen.
They are what generates the richness and diversity of the autobiographical documentary”
(Dowmunt, 2013:264). It is the mere fact that he touches almost all aspects of the production
of the film gives us a more complete view of his universe. Elizabeth Bruss supports that belief;
however, she thinks that among that film genre there are two sub-groups: those who put the
spotlight on the person filmed and those who put it on the ones filming. For Tony Dowmunt,
there is a middle ground between those two categories that Bruss pointed out. Indeed, Jonas
Mekas, for example, he is himself part of the exposé of his life. His brief appearances allude
that he is not alone at that moment, that a friend of a stranger might have participated by holding
the camera, participated in, what became later: the movie’s narrative. By holding the camera,
they are holding his life, and giving their own eye to the oeuvre, contributing to the image we
get of Mekas. This interaction between Mekas and his environment changes the narrative in
that direction.

Jonas Mekas not only proposes a creative approach to autobiographical cinema but proposes
also an interesting piece for anthology. His interest in collecting such things, keeping a physical
record of films, is made quite apparent in the process of making “Lost, Lost, Lost”. He collected
and kept 16mm footage he took himself from the early fifties, until he started editing, in the
mid-seventies. In the early seventies he founds the Anthology Film Archive monument, that
even to this day exhibits and preserves archives of thousands of films and videos made by
‘auteurs’ from that movement. “Anthology is a monument to the artform(s) he spent decades
practicing, promoting and preserving and its influence extends far beyond the modest corner
of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village where it resides.” (Sterritt; 2019:736). This year as part of
the second anniversary of Mekas’ death in 2019, the Anthology Film Archives monument is
organizing screenings of Jonas Mekas’ work, preserved within the institution itself.

From another viewpoint, this gaze into the past and the recollection of life’s mundane memories
makes for a great archive for anthology (for one). But it is also a way to map the footage filmed
in a historical and social context. We can however see this so-called archive footage as

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memory, as when we follow the rules of subjectivity, the footage is only the point of view of
the person holding the camera… Can we really call it history? Or rather a piece of memory
from a person (who existed at that time). “There is a tendency that we assume historical images
to be authentic and that we know the past by re seeing it” (Nichols; Isserow; 2020:105).

Documentary, a Spectacle

Here comes the age-old piece of debate that braises film scholar’s opinions: Is documentary
film recording reality. In that sense, Mekas only shows parts of his life he experienced.
Nonetheless, there are subtilities that could make us think that he is, to all intents and purposes,
not filming the truth of reality:

“Even the documentary is a fiction film because of the law requiring that every film buy
materials of expression (moving images and sounds), unrealises what it represents,
transforming it into a spectacle. In other words what the spectator sees is not the thing in
itself but its virtual double. The real event is fictionalised, and it is channelled through
structures of representation. All films are fictional in this sense, while the fiction film is
doubly so: it is unreal because it represents the fiction and because of the way in which it
represents the fiction (using images of objects and of actors).” (Balsom; 2013:159)

Balsom lifts the question of what replica represents and how is it any different than the original
art. A copy film is disingenuous and untruthful compared to the original film. To that rule
Mekas’s films represent a fiction as the snippets are taken out of context (out of the reels he
shot them from), thus creating a narrative dishonest to reality itself. A copy of a life’s work,
condensed in a few hours, Mekas’s cinema is representative of the abridged, a ‘compilation’ of
a sort. This condensed type of compilation film also makes an exemplary subject to
psychoanalysis, as it shows (quite literally) the life of a man, shifting through the ages.

Temporality and Après Coups

“The term ‘après coups’ marks up a particularly French rereading of Freud's concept or
afterwardness (après coups) the technical use of the term nachträglichkeit was first used in
Freud's case history of the ‘Wolf Man’. Freud notes that the period of time during which the
effects were deferred is very greatly diminished” (Isserow; 2020:101)

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The abstract term après coups is indeed from French (after-hit) derived by philosopher Jean
Laplanche from the German nachträglichkeit: after/ carrying (Freud). There are many ways to
exploit this word, however we will focus on only one definition for this section, that is
Mulvey’s definition of après coups in compilation film: “As a result from the process of
reassembling, the old into the new, all compilation films have a double time structure, all
consist of pre-existing material, which is then reassembled into a new film” (Isserow; Mulvey;
2020:104). That way, the contribution of psychoanalysis to cinema is plausible, in ways that
don’t only affect the spectator, but also the creator. In his years of psychoanalysis, Freud
explored the human psyche and its response to trauma. If we define trauma as a resurging
memory rather than the painful experience (from the past), we can say that the act of editing
archive (documentary/ autobiographical) footage is the exploration of the creator’s life (from
a different perspective) and the exploitation of trauma in that sense. Mekas does that in his
films, the collection of all those years of capturing memories, for in the end, to be utilised (by
him).

This particular act, and artistic style per se, could be investigated in a psychoanalytical way. Is
the modification of the perception of the past affecting our memory? Creating the new with the
old. That is indeed the main focal exercise Mekas is subject to. “The return is always itself a
reworking, a movement of recuperation and renewal, in that case to a documentary poetics
from which Mekas never entirely retreated” (Isserow; Renov; 2020:108). In other words,
Renov’s return can be seen as the artistic process itself. Does Mekas use this artistic process
as a cathartic experience to reminisce his past self (“the good old times”) and detach himself
from his present self? His films are indeed, in part, executed in a way that repeats times similar
to the psychoanalytic notion of temporality found in the unconscious (Isserow; 2020:100).
Then, this artistic process can be seen as a journey into memory, and it’s forgotten secrets.
Especially since Mekas revisits the lens as he saw it at that time, there is a sense of après coups
and the special perspective Mekas has after having envisioned the reels years after being
filmed. This perspective is built throughout the years with new experiences and an
accumulation of events.

Mekas plays with temporality. He manipulates time frames and mixes them together so that we
have no accurate depiction of the timeline of occurring events. Through multiple interviews,
Mekas affirms that his editing style is arbitrary and chaotic, like the brush of an abstract painter.

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It, in a way, echoes the French New Wave’s new technological advancement of the jump cut
(Godard). This edit follows the laws of this unconscious mind as the process involves no real
thought of operation whatsoever (the unconscious mind comprises mental processes that are
inaccessible to consciousness, but that influence judgments, feelings, or behaviour). As an
example, Mekas, in “Reminiscence of a Journey to Lithuania” comes forward with the idea of
a depiction of his travel back to his home country, however, we only see Mekas’s Lithuania
(his family, his house and all the tangible things that surrounds him). He makes the portrait of
his mother above anyone else (we can ascertain it through the long sequences where we see
Mekas’s mother cook). Although they come out as snippets of memories in the final edit, we
can imagine Mekas back in New York editing the footage years later, missing his mother. In
essence, the behaviour of arbitrary editing is no other than a profound look into the artist’s
psyche. Yes, autobiographical cinema isn’t only a portraiture of the self (outside) but also into
the depths of the author’s mind (inside). Mekas, however, has a more stylistic take on the
traditional autobiography.

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A Stylistic Autobiography

“When you do not have any film, you pretend you do and keep shooting, still looking through
the lens. The final aim is not the transcendence of the camera but rather the identification of
the human subject with the apparatus, nor even is the eye and necessary participant for
Mekas himself often shoots from waist level or otherwise without looking through the
viewfinder.” (David E. James; 1992:158).

This affirmation made by James confirms yet another view of how we can perceive Mekas’s
reflection on the self through his autobiography(ies). James suggests that the camera is external
to Mekas, thus having no bias points of view whatsoever. It is just a mere tool, and not an
extension of the self. Like the pen (caméra-stylo) is the tool to the writer. “The disembodied
voice of the narrator finds its image and often ponderous soundtrack finds a lighter counterpart
in Mekas’s own countenance and figure. He is alternatively a ham and a passive subject
running around playfully and sitting serenely engaged in staring back at the camera eye”
(Keller; 1992:94). Keller indeed believes that Mekas is only putting up a show for the audience,
a spectacle. His actions are far from genuine and constitute acting out, even the most mundane
actions, in front of his camera. There is nonetheless a dislocation of what we see (the camera
eye) and what we hear (the voice pen). Assuredly, Mekas’s voice acts as an extension of his
writing, to a diaristic level.

“Lost, Lost, Lost” moves, according to Keller, in a graceful way between anthropological
archive and epistolary poetic diary entries. “The process (one cannot call it plot) of Lost, Lost,
Lost is the slow acceptance of a new state of being. It is a diary of transition and reconciliation.
Its power stems from the discreet balance it strikes between alienation and intimacy.” (Keller;
1992:88). This ambivalence of genres is in one part defining Mekas’s aesthetics of cinema. A
cinema of recycling footage of non-film, of event-lessness life, and transforming it into an
extraordinary piece of poetic prose.

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Many suggest that the motivation for making a memoire work of any sort (such as
autobiographies and/or diaries) like Mekas does throughout his life, is in fact the desire to
reconcile with the past. It is both a representation of one’s life, and the interpretation of their
own childhoods. As Keller propounds “We all lose childhoods and can all find traces of them
in the present” (Keller; 19992:91). Mekas indeed gives a sense of ‘revisiting’ memorable
places and dwells on them as the voice over shifts onto a poetic style. This further demonstrates
in a way the pain of the immigrant, within a foreign and adoptive land. Places seem familiar,
yet not enough to feel a deep connection, hence the poetry. Poetry, being seen as the only way
to establish a connection between those places, and the poet.

“De Kooning: there is no way of looking at a work of art by itself, it's not self-evident - it needs
a history, it needs a lot of talking about, it's part of a whole man’s life.” (Mekas 1960b, 6
August). In a way this statement is also applicable to Mekas himself. The contextualization of
his arrival to America and his many years existing among many other artists of that time, his
many years working as a film critic, all indicate, underline, and define his work as a whole.

Critics are known for having strong opinions. Mekas had some sort of political engagement.
Withal the fact that he affirmed many times not to be biased, he had a legitimate incline to
leftists’ beliefs (for the most part of his life). Although the context being, coming from a
communist Lithuania, he affirms that “You don’t have to be a communist to be anti-capitalist,
[…] it is enough to be a poet.” (Mekas; Diaries, 30 March 1960). This belief was frowned upon
by the authorities, who saw the filmmaker as ‘an enemy of the state’ or as spreading anti-
patriarchal ideas (like any other liberal, or anti-capitalists at the time, in a climate of a cold war

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between two major idea states). Elsewhere, Mekas’s work has been convicted multiple times.
His camera confiscated by the authorities, film reels stripped out from their spools, even his
film “Guns of Trees” (1961) has been censored. This guerrilla style of filmmaking (filming
against all forms of authority) has indeed sparked the fascination of many underground groups
(of artists) and of generations to come, with the thriving documentary style of diary filmmaking
alongside the arrival of digitalization.

To conclude, Jonas Mekas is the laborious effort of keeping, preserving and reminiscing art
and art movies. It is also the hominess presentation of film, an informal yet artistic way to
present an autobiographical work. It is most of all the dreadful feeling of not belonging, as an
immigrant representing a city with a history and culture of immigration that can be seen and
psychoanalytically dissected through years of practice (and recorded documents). But Mekas’s
artform surpasses the linguistics of traditional cinema.

PART III: POETRY, POETRY, POETRY, POETRY

Turning now to Mekas’s complex filmic structure, using film grammar and the concept of film
linguistics as a tool to dissecting it, to understand and explain it. Furthermore, exploring the
poetry infused into Mekas’s voice overs.

Exploration of Film Linguistics

Film language is a term appropriated by André Bazin in his “What is Cinema?” (1967). He
distinguishes two key elements to what constitutes the film’s language: the plastics, which are
fundamentally, what we see and hear. Per se, the production design, the actors, hair, makeup,
the music etc... And the montage, the way it is all put together. In a narrative film, Bazin sees
four ways montage can proceed. It can be “invisible”, in a neutral way that isn’t perceptible to
the oblivious audience. A film can have a parallel montage, telling two narratives
simultaneously, jumping from one to the other at arbitrary times throughout the film, like
Griffith’s Citizen Kane for example. Montage by acceleration is a montage that creates the
illusion of speed through the rapid succession of shots. And finally, montage by attraction, it
could be defined as “the reinforcing the meaning of an image by the association with another
image not necessarily part of the same episode.” (Bazin; 1967:25). We are indeed familiar with

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the Kuleshov effect demonstrating the effects of montage by attraction with acuity in the
1920’s.

“Lost, Lost, Lost”, being a potpourri of footage collected over the years, has an original
montage. Every cut represents a separation between each period when he filmed the footage,
sometimes jumping back and forth in the linear timeline of events. It is thus fair to say that
Mekas explores film language beyond the boundaries of montage and plastics affirmed by
Bazin, reenforcing an idea of ‘minor cinema’ mentioned previously. An assemblage of a
multitude of techniques of film language like a polyglot, hybrid oeuvre, representative of
Kafka’s ‘minor literature’.

The deconstructiveness of space and time that he plays with during the editing process, gives
the finishing product a fragmented style, a complex thematic structure and a persistent
repetitiveness. This particular style of cinema is an allegory to the non-linear-ness of our
thoughts. They are only a random set of images that play in our heads, in a hazardous order.
Mekas affirms that he went about and filmed whatever was happening, that his personal style
of cinema has no ‘plan’ (Jasinskaite; 2020:168).

“Writing, is a structural absence that cannot be accommodated within the illusionistic

universality of full and present meaning.” (Derrida)

Montage could be seen as a form of writing; I am writing that sentence right now to express a
thought. Montage, in that sense, could be seen as an opportunity, or an extension of film
language. This, ‘cinécriture’ would be this awareness to the construction of the film. Moreover,
autobiographical cinema blurs the lines between the literary genre and the cinematic one. “The
author with a pen, the autobiographical auteur with an (often handled) camera pen.” (Krstić;
2017:104) The mastering of an artistic medium through the said plastics and montage aspects
of film language, and the expression of a narrative (one’s life) and certain abstract concept can
be seen as literary indeed. But is there a medium of expression that transcends ‘écriture’ or
‘cinécriture’? As Derrida mentioned, writing is restrained by its streamline-ness. The only way
to liberate from this linearity, is speech.

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Poetry on Film

Speech constitutes a big part of Jonas Mekas’s work. In Lost, he uses voice over that
complements the visual plastics, adding some pseudo-narrative elements. His special use of
language seems improvised at moments, like a spontaneous stream of thoughts. This stream
actively makes what Mekas is saying, more interesting and captivating. His long pauses
between words makes us yearn for what he is going to say next. When the narration frees itself
from the dictation of a script and the limitations of mise-en-scène: “those pure moments appear
most readily in the ‘natural’ action of bodies, which in turn lend the screen image its unique
presence, its immediacy, and allow it to emanate a palpable sense of duration” (Schoonover;
2012:69). To put it in other words, those long pauses are what constitutes the engagement of
the audience: the duration (or ‘durée’) mentioned previously, and they can be visual, and it can
be sonorous.

We can read in between those pauses. As much as they constitute ‘nothing’ they have great
meaning and importance in Mekas’s work. Those pauses can remind us of spoken poetry, to
which the feel of each word is accentuated. This particular voice over (being the one of Jonas
himself), with this eastern European accent, make the pauses like a moment of thought where
Jonas remembers his home country, and the words he is saying that are not his, and this pain
of the foreigner, of the impossible special attachment to a place.

However, at times, Mekas uses the tool of photography to tell us “this reminds me of home” as
he strolls around the American City. The familiar-ness of some natural landscapes reminds him
of his rural Lithuania. In parts of Lost, Mekas cites and sings poems, and haikus, and his
anaphoric style of writing, which all emphasize on the contemplativeness nature of his cinema.
Can we look at a landscape and not write poetry?

A Haiku is a traditional Japanese poetic structure, generally contemplating on nature and the
seasons made popular especially in the United States in the twentieth century. “The Haiku
comes close to my work in a way” affirms Mekas. We can indeed notice that contemplation,
and the condensation to a few words to express deeper feelings, are synonyms of Mekas’s
films.

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Often in his work, we find Mekas drifting his attention and his lens along with it, towards
bucolic landscapes. Among the urban territory, the Diarist chooses to focus on the smallest bits
of nature, growing in the corners, that illuminate the city. By doing so, he shares a vision of the
world that is very romantic and driven by idealisation of certain aspects of the city. He directly
borrows the name “Walden”, from Thoreau’s “Walden or Life in the Woods” which is a mid-
nineteenth century novel that depictures a character detaching himself from the modern world
and materialism. In a paradoxical way, Mekas chooses to live in the city. He thus uses his
diaries as a way of daydream, of escapism from the city and the agony of the quotidian in a
Romantic manner. Maybe it is a way for Mekas to recall his memories from (a more rural)
Lithuania?

His repetitions of semiotics are equally powerful: in his adopted English, he repeats a word of
something that nature evokes in him, as by repeating the word itself he is trying to make sense
out of it. Paradoxically though, the more the word is repeated, the less meaning it has and the
more it resembles a sound rather than a word. Subsequently, Mekas, not only gives us the
experience of what it feels like to feel foreign, in a tongue that doesn’t belong to us, but he also
gives us a glimpse into his mind, his stream of consciousness. The figure of repetition in
literature, is usually employed to point out the severe importance of an element. However,
Mekas employs it in an unorthodox way: “rabbit shit, rabbit shit rabbit shit” he goes… Does
he have any political engagement when he films a single piece of ‘rabbit shit’ on the middle of
the road? His intentions are for us, as an audience, to reflect (like him) on that piece of ‘rabbit
shit’ and try to give it meaning. The mere title of “Lost, Lost, Lost”, explicitly indicates the
sorrows, and ways to find himself, Jonas… It suggests the feeling of not belonging somewhere,
it is in essence: “an essay on loneliness, alienation and exilic anxieties in a foreign country.”
(Krstić; 2017:111).
In one way, it encapsulates Jonas’s feeling of not belonging to this new landscape. But likewise,
it puts him in the centre of the narrative.

The ‘Self’ as an Illusion

Opposed to European cinema, American cinema and American culture even, can be very self-
centric. By comparing other European autobiographical documentaries like ‘Beaches of
Agnes’ by Agnes Varda, to Mekas’s film diaries, we can see that Varda’s film gravitates more
towards her environment (of her life in general, and the ‘beaches’) rather than her person.

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Mekas, on the other hand, presents us an exploration of self: What does it mean to be Jonas, a
Lithuanian immigrant, in New York, from the fifties to the seventies?
As Mekas is the subject of the film Lost, it makes him by default the ‘main character of the
story’. We see his personal life, most intimate, and the less intimate: “[Autobiography/Diaries]
is a practice of inscription from which the domain of the subject and the one of the world
surrounding him are mutually consecutive.” (Renov; 2004). That idea of self is further explored
by Mekas. In the editing room he has control and an accurate retrospective of some glimpses
into his past life. The footage we are seeing in Lost is not the intention that Mekas had when
he started filming his diary. The spiritual and intellectual journey Mekas has gone through over
the years has helped, and participated directly, on the final product. Which brings us back to
the principles of Fluxus (that value the process over the finished work). This makes us ask
ourselves: who is the real author of Lost? Is it Mekas in the editing studio or young Mekas
filming his New York adventures?

In his later film “As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally, I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty”
(2000), Mekas acknowledges that he is not proclaiming to film “reality”: “I may not even be
filming the reality of life. I may just be filming my memories. I don’t care.” This deep reflection
on subjectivity first interprets memory, and its non-chronological fragmentation, but then plays
on the narrative of his films: his perception of the world is his only, what we see in his films
are only a glimpse, a mere second of it compared to its longevity and broadness of experiences
and knowledge.

Furthermore, visible subjectivity and the degree of intimacy we acquire from seeing exactly
what Jonas sees at that precise moment in time is a far greater experience than, per se, a written
autobiographical document. “Video provides a degree of proximity and intimacy that enables
this spatialisation of the body. Instead of transcendental subject of vision, these videos enact
the details of a particularized, partialized subjectivity.” (Russel; 1999). To help us visualise
this idea we can ask ourselves: why did Mekas chose to film this at that moment in time? There
is no answer to that, but, as things go, it is only a manifestation of Jonas’s consciousness (that
decides what to film).

Mekas? But which Mekas? The fluidity of ‘self’ and the non-linearity of identity is thus
explored in Mekas’s films in a way that he presents himself as a shiftable being rather than an

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immutable entity moving through space and time. And he does so through the retro-activeness
of the voice over, acting upon the main narrative (his life).

CONCLUSION

But Mekas is much more than Mekas. Influenced and influencer of the New York Underground
film scene. In a context of a City in which many artistic and intellectual developments are
taking place, Mekas finds himself surrounded by many authors and emerging concepts of new
cinemas. We have explored the impact of Slow Cinema and the practice as a new language, a
new way of translating films (reels) to the theatres (cinematic screen). Concepts merge like
artistic disciplines; this flexibility is shown through Fluxus and the New Waves of the sixties,
that both have a desire to make a rupture: from society’s expectations and from the mainstream.
Mekas’s movies have furthermore been heavily influenced by his immigrant experience. He
shows in his films the reality (or the landscape) of an immigrant living in New York (from the
fifties onward) in a socio-economical context. Through these ‘foreigner’s eyes’ Mekas shows
parts of the city that aren’t perceivable by natives, an admiration for the common, an admiration
for the western world transmitted through the screen and made possible by years of
documenting and recording. All of this archival work creates an accurate depiction of the
spatiotemporal context thus by its definition: anthological. Mekas extends his vision through
writing, or rather speaking, in his peculiar Eastern European accent he develops themes
explored in his life and utilises them in a poetic manner. His use of language is artful, in his
speech, but also in his films, as he explores a style of filmmaking like no other (unlike the
mainstream codes). He indeed breaks all cinematic linguistic norms creating a unique path and
makes use of this to explore the self, him-self.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY
(in order of apparition in text)

FILMOGRAPHY

Lost, Lost, Lost (1976) Directed by Jonas Mekas [DVD] United States of America: Re:Voir.

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) Directed by Maya Deren [DVD] United States of America:
British Film Institute.

Scorpio Rising (1963) Directed by Kenneth Anger [DVD] United States of America:
Fantoma Films.

Walden (1968) Directed by Jonas Mekas [DVD] United States of America: Re:voir Video.

The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962) Directed by Robert Bresson [DVD] France: Artificial Eye.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) Directed by Chantal

Akerman [DVD] Belgium : Cineart.

L’Ecclisse (1962) Directed by Michaelangelo Antonioni [DVD] Italy: Optimum Home

Entertainment.

Sleep (1964) Directed by Andy Warhol [DVD] United States of America: Studio Vista.

Empire (1964) Directed by Andy Warhol [DVD] United States of America: Rarovideo.

Guns of Trees (1961) Directed by Jonas Mekas [DVD] United States of America: Re-voir.

The Brig (1964) Directed by Jonas Mekas [DVD] United States of America: Re-voir.

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Reminiscence of a journey to Lithuania (1972) Directed by Jonas Mekas [DVD] United
States of America: Re-voir.

In Jerusalem (1963) Directed by David Perlov [DVD] Israel: Online (Vimeo).

Beaches of Agnes (2008) Directed by Agnès Varda [DVD] France: Artificial Eye.

Citizen Kane (1941) Directed by Orson Welles [DVD] United States of America: BFI.

As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally, I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000) Directed by
Jonas Mekas [DVD] United States of America: Re-voir.

DOCUMENTS

Anthology Film Archives (date: uknown) http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/about/history

(accessed on 23/03/2021)

Derrida: On The Private Lives of Philosophers (2010)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bay7Wh8D-HM (accessed on 23/03/2021)

Bed-In - John Lennon & Yoko Ono 1969 (date: unknown)

http://jonasmekas.com/40/film_html5.php?film=11 (accessed on 23/03/2021)

Erika Balsom and Slow Cinema (2012)

https://carletonfilmsociety.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/erika-bolsom-and-slow-cinema/
(accessed on 23/03/2021)

Fluxus Manifesto – George Maciunas 1963 (date: unknown)

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/127947 (accessed on 23/03/2021)

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BOOKS, ARTICLE AND ESSAYS

Jonas Mekas (1972) [BOOK] Movie Journal: The Rise of a New American Cinema, 1959-
1971. New York: Collier Books.

David E. James (1992) [BOOK] To Free the Cinema: Jonas Mekas and the New York
Underground. Princeton, N.J: Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Karl Schoonover (2013) [ARTICLE] Wastrels of Time: Slow Cinema's Laboring Body, the
Political Spectator, and the Queer. Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media: Vol. 53:
Iss. 1, Article 6.

Erica Balsom (2013) [BOOK] Exhibiting cinema in contemporary art. Amsterdam:

Amsterdam University Press.

Tiago de Luca (2016) [ARTICLE] Slow Time, Visible Cinema: Duration, Experience, and
Spectatorship. Cinema Journal; Lawrence Vol. 56, Iss. 1, (Fall 2016): 23-42.

Igor Krstić (2017) [ARTICLE] A foreigner in one’s own tongue: Jonas Mekas, minor cinema
and the philosophy of autobiographical documentary. New Cinemas: Journal of
Contemporary Film, Volume 15, Number 1, March 2017, pp. 97-117.

André Bazin (1967) [BOOK] What is Cinema?. London: University of California Press.

Efrén Cuavas (2006) [ARTICLE] The Immigrant Experience in Jonas Mekas’s Diary Films:
A Chronotopic Analysis. Biography; Honolulu Vol. 29, Iss. 1, (Winter): 54-72, 270, II.

Tony Dowmunt (2013) [CHAPTER] Autobiographical Documentary - The Seer and the
Seen. Studies in Documentary Film, 7:3, 263-277. Bristol: Intellect Ltd.

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David Sterrit (2019) [ARTICLE] Jonas Mekas, 1922–2019. Quarterly Review of Film and
Video, 36:8, 736-740, DOI: 10.1080/10509208.2019.1652791.

Jonathan Isserow (2020) [ARTICLE] Retroactive Subjectivity in Documentary Film. Studies

in Documentary Film, 14:2, 99-113, DOI: 10.1080/17503280.2019.1633600.

Eiva Jasinskaite (2020) [ARTICLE] Aesthetic Puzzlements: Jonas Mekas’s Diary Films and
Ludwig Wittgenstein. Film-Philosophy 24.2: 162–184. DOI: 10.3366/film.2020.0137.

Henry David Thoreau (1854) [BOOK] Walden: Or Life in the Woods.

Jeffrey K. Ruoff (1991) [ARTICLE] Home Movies of the Avant-Garde: Jonas Mekas and the New
York Art World. Cinema Journal, Spring, Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 6-28.

Jennifer Cazenave (2016) [ARTICLE] L’exil et le retour dans les journaux filmés de Jonas
Mekas et David Perlov. Printemps/Été 2016, Online since 30 June 2016, connection on 01 May
2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ideas/1505 ; DOI : 10.4000/ideas.1505.

ICONOGRAPHY

Cover Image: Jonas Mekas (date: unknown) [accessed at

https://www.papermag.com/anthology-film-archives-jonas-mekas-talks-preserving-avant-
garde-film--2253595143.html]

Fig 1: Georges Maciunas (1963) Fluxus Manifesto [accessed at

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/127947]

Fig 2: Andy Warhol (1964) Empire [still from the film]

Fig 3: Jonas Mekas (1976) Lost, Lost, Lost [still from the film]

Fig 4: Jonas Mekas (1969) Walden [still from the film]

Fig 5: Jonas Mekas (1972) Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania [still from the film]

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