" The taxi was just leaving
Vagabond Theatre on Wilshire Blvd. A black little
book came flying
through the open window from someone who had just seen the last
screening of DANDY. The cab was rolling and I wondered „What a good
throw!“. Off
we were, there wasn’t even a chance to say „thank you!“.
A short glance told me
the title: „The Fall of America“ by Allen
Ginsberg. I opened the book and the
first page I saw was : „September
on Jessore Road“. I read the poem with
enthusiasm, with big delight
and pain at the same time. It seemed to be an
American Mantra, a long
long scream for humanity, justice and love for for the
poor, the
outcasts, the mistreated children. The killer was capitalism,
headquarters New York. As I read , it carried me away, someone was
fighting,
bleeding, suffering, praying his words, his poem, his song,
like howling.
In the plane from LAX to JFK I read again and I thought:
„ I must ask Allen to
read it and let me film, possibly for the Jonas
Mekas-project . We had filmed
just some time ago, where he talks about
Harry Smith, censorship etc. especially
the end of the 50’s and the
60’s.
It was Sunday evening, I called Allen and he said: „Okay, I’m
very busy and
leaving Tuesday for Budapest. Come tomorrow evening,
Monday at 9 p.m. I’ll give
you exactly half an hour, at 9:30 you
leave. Is that okay?“
I answered: „Yes, that’s okay, I want one take of
the poem.“
I was lucky cause my favourite cameraman Jonas Scholz (from
Hamburg) was in
N.Y.. We arrived in front of his house on 8.th Street
half an hour earlier, we
waited till I rang his bell exactly 9 p.m. on
the dot.
Allen greeted us friendly, we put up the camera, sound and
one light in his
room. He asked me: „How many lines do you want me to
sing?“ I said: „Oh, I
thought the whole poem!“ Allen, a bit surprised:
„The whole thing? Okay!“ He
asked several times to make sure about the
soundquality. His text was on 4
sheets of paper that lay on top of a
huge William Blake-book on the workingtable
at the foot of his bed.
The Arriflex-camera was rolling with
16mmKodak-negativefilm, and to be
sure if anything went wrong I had a
videocamera on from the same
angle. A window and light behind him. So, we had
one take, without
stopping, the whole thing in one take, it was perfect, a
perfect
document of Allen singing „September On Jessore Road“, with his
harmonium.
At 9:30pm we left the house.
It was 1992 and later
when editing the Jonas-film the Allen-song was just too
long, as I
already had interviews with Allen. So, I planned to edit a
shortfilm,
which I finished 1997, by a strange coincidence 2 days before his
leaving the earth (premiere: Int. Filmfestival Berlin 1998, 16mm,
20min). First
time I met him was through Jonas´ suggestion , and Allen
then wrote me a fax:
“... it´s about time somebody made a film about
Jonas,... and I´d be very glad
to participate!“ (Just about the same
fax I received from John Cage(twice) but
he passed away a week before
filming, - a big pity he couldn´t wait. So we put
the fax in the
film.)
Funny thing: when I started working on the Jonas-project
several art- und
filmexperts in New York said to me:“ Why Jonas
Mekas?? He´s too old and weak,
he´s out! You should choose a different
subject!“
But they didn´t know: I very seldom „choose“ a subject. It
just happens. In over
20 years of filming there is only one person I
really seriously „chose“, who I
really wanted to film, that was Blixa
Bargeld in Berlin. Some examples: When I
was filming Blixa for DANDY
1986 in Berlin ( filming, not „shooting“...), Blixa
said:“ Heh, why
don´t you put Nick in the film?“
( I´m thankful to Blixa for alll
times, anyway). When Kazuo Ohno saw DANDY he
said:“Lets make a long
film!“ - same with NinaHagen and when Jonas was
specialguest in the
Ohno-film for one minute, he said like „give me the apple
overthere,“:
„ You should make a whole film about me,“ (he doesn´t remember).
When
I was filming Lemmy as specialguest in the Nina-film I mentioned that I´m
working on a longrundocumentary on Nick Cave and Lemmy says:“ Why Nick
Cave?
He´s not that important. You should make a film about
me.“
(Funny: 1989 I met Lemmy first time, together with Nina in London,
PortobelloRoad, and Nina told Lemmy to ask me to make a film about him
- and I
thought: “ gosh.! Too much for me!“(Now 14 years later I
actually made it, the
title: „LEMMY“ - and he wrote a great
supportletter, gosh...)( autumn 2002 we
had a previewscreening at
Anthology Film Archives and Jonas, who till then had
nothing to do
with the „heavyrock-scene“ at all, said he was really wildly
fascinated about Lemm and the film.
Anyway... 1988 I ran (quite
naive somehow) to every cinema and film-office
asking (and nearly
begging) to show my film DANDY - I was totally convinced it´s
the
NewYork-film. But nobody wanted, I was often laughed at or treated like a
bum...“even though“ I had a special-preview at the big disco „Tunnel“
(with a
beautiful fotoexibition) - so, I was just about to give up
(which is impossible)
when I came across Anthology Film Archives and
Jonas Mekas. (I had thought
Anthology was „just“ an archives and no
cinema...) I gave Jonas a VHS of the
film and in December 99 we had
the US-theatre premiere with Blixa Bargeld (who
was inspired living at
the Chelsea...) + with Nick Cave. I flew them in from
Berlin + Brasil
and took it from the boxoffice, that got pretty well filled for
3
weeks. Those 3 weeks I greeted the audience at every show, sold many
posters +
postcards. Even had some t-shirts with Blixa + golden
writing in Japanese. Then
every couple of months we repeated DANDY and
I was lucky to get the deal:
boxoffice pays my flight + 50% of profit.
It worked. I was pretty often in N.Y.,
also to show my next films and
so became friends with Jonas. Our two main places
were (are)
Cafe´Creme + Mars Bar, both on 2nd Ave. Jonas is quite an expert on
wines, meals, cheese, sausage, beers, tequillas, caipirinhas...
Actually very
first time I came across him was 1985 at the Int.
Filmfestival Torino. I went
to his film cause of the great title: „He
Stands in the Desert Counting the
Seconds of his Life“ The essence of
this (in my eyes) was „simply“ „Life“ (I
kept the filmtitle in my mind
but forgot Jonas` name, until 1989 when after
viewing DANDY he said:
„... a film with pain, humour and honesty, and a great
way of music
interwoven with images.“) - Jonas` film strengthened my idea of
film
being a free poem, the camera moves like the eye in the head, to and from,
focusing, „zooming“, sometimes, not knowing where to look, but in
search... I
suppose searching is the real adventure, cause if you know
everything it
propably gets boring. „His Eyes were closed behind the
Iris. No light shold
irritate his home movie. Silence...“ (a song by
Katrin Achinger + The Flight
Crew in Jonas in the desert).
Music
was my reason to start making films 1981. After I had seen some punkfilms
called „AMOKOMA“ with „Abwärts“ by Klaus Maeck (who later made a doc
on
Burroughs) in Hamburg, I thought : „Oh..., how easy it looks! I
want to do
that too!“ -
I always laugh when Andy Warhol (in
„...desert“) says:“... great peculiar movies
I had never seen before.
And actually all the movies looked like MTV now, so if
you watch MTV
now, it’s like going to the Filmmakers Cooperative a long time
ago.
Jonas Mekas was in charge, and he was the most exiting person.“ I think
Warhol and Mekas must have been a great couple! (both originally
East-Europe...)
Has anybody got a foto of both together out there??
(please answer:
sempel@t-online.de)
„Jonas, remember how you made
your first film?“ Jonas: „Well, I didn’t start
making films. Very
often one doesn’t start making films. One has a camera, one
begins to
filming certain images, certain realities, I began filming, collecting
images, but I was not sure what film that will be. I was not making a
film, I
was filming, I was filming, it’s like, you know, breathing,
like ... It doesn’t,
I mean the film takes..., the kind of material,
the way I ended up, is, is, I
mean that’s not every, I don’t say that
everybody should, I mean, obviously not,
not everyone makes the same
kind of film, but it, it, it, had to, the material
had to grow and
more to a, to reach a certain point where it becomes a film. At
first
there is only one shot, pieces of film, life, reality...“
Again at
Torino Filmfestival I think 1991, I filmed him and Kenneth Anger: „...
he is also a wonderful poet of emotion, using the camera, held by
hand, in a way
that all the trembling reflects the inner emotion...
... a very sensitive artist
working with the camera like it is his
heartbeat and his breath...“ I asked
Kenneth and Jonas to let me film
them on a playground, on the swings, (cause
somehow I saw them as two
big boys playing, with cameras, (excuse me, I mean it
in a positive
way..) - and all the grownups, cause they couldn’t understand
their
language (maybe spoilt?), were hooraying them for how great they are
(ofcourse they are)). Anyway, both were standing on the swings,
swaying just a
bit - and Kenneth flew down! the whole lenghth of his
body looked like smashing
in the ground! Luckily he got up, hurt his
knee a bit, but nothing crucial ...
(I was told I shouldn´t show the
scene, but I edited Kenneth after falling,
right back on to the swing,
it looks okay.)
„Don´t hide the Madness! .. like the Tibetan
Buddhists... they have a thing
called crazy wisdom, wild mind, just as
the actual mind is. ... as the
dadaists+surrealists found out longlong
ago.“:Ginsberg (.. desert). Yes, and you
can see this often in Jonas.
He runs around in anthology-office in the middle of
th day playing his
trumpet like a madman (or child), he runs over wide fields in
Lithuania to greet the cows and horses (in „Jonas At The Ocean“,
part2), he
sings at the top of his voice when „partying“ with his
Lithuanian friends (after
2 beer), you think you are in a crazy house!
It´s so alive and wonderful! He
dances wilder then Alexis Sorbas and
better than Fred Astaire (Yoko Ono has some
filmfootage of them
together)
In Kassel Jonas runs up the 10m high pole, he climbs trees to
the top to sing
Lithuanian songs about beautiful cruel seducing young
women... (Truk Parkunas!),
.. In Montauk he stands on his head
together with Peter Beard right at the edge
of the cliffs... and he
still runs Anthology... you must be mad, filmmad,
cinemamad,
poetrymad, lifemad.
That´s fair enough is it?
Oh... and then he
„plays Antonin Artaud“ on Anthology-stage, truly like a
madman, racing
to and fro, jumping up+down, yelling:“BURN!!BURN!!BURN!! I AM
MADMADMAD!!!“...
To do all these things, one has to be pretty free
inside. just like his
friends+companions: Warhol,
Dali,Fellini,Lennon,Maciunas,Ginsberg,NamJunePaik,Rosselini,Anger,Cage,Beard,
andandand...
Ofcourse: what is Free? something like independent...
Jonas (at the
window): You see the light, the light of the street, this street.
The
light is coming from the street, and this street is in America, and I am
here, and I am in America. This is american light coming through the
window,
from a street which is quite independent in the country of
independence. Do you
know what independence is? Nobody really knows.
In cinema, in cinema, like in
any other art, independence, maybe,
independence is to free oneself from the
content and forms of those
who preceeded you or those who are doing important
work today and
discover your own content and your own form to express that
content,
so that in other words to descend to your deepest self and work from
there. That is the only way one can contribute something new. That’s
where
freedom and independence really is, that’s what it
means.........
-- songtext: „Sehnsucht kommt aus dem Chaos, ist die
einzige
Energie..“(Einstürzende Neubauten in both
Jonas-films..)
Independent, independence in art means almost the same
as independence in, let’s
say, countries where the little individual
cultures are trying to gain their own
individual voice and speak with
their own voice instead of, of following imposed
systems, imposed
languages, in, where thy have to follow the soul of some other
let’s
say ... Lithuanians were asked more or less to get into the Russian
procrustian (?) bed instead of talking or speaking their own or from
their own
deepest past, their own history, or their own souls and
their own language ...“
In his book „I Had Nowhere To Go“ Jonas
describes the time of Russian
oppression, how he fled to Germany near
Hamburg and was forced to a labour camp.
He describes in very fine
details and poetically the days of hunger and despair,
then the years
in „camps for displaced persons“ near Frankfurt before being
„deported“ with his brother Adolfas and friend Algis to New York. (The
landing
1949 we repeated exactly at the same pier on Hudson River
(Jonas at the ocean)
over 40 years later! (filmed in slow-motion (with
orchestral music by
Einstürzenden Neubauten)) and he reads: „...
sometimes I feel like a dog. Any
place I stay longer than a day, I
feel at home... But... actually I don’t like
travelling...“ Well, I
met and filmed Jonas just about all over the place: in
N.Y. ofcourse,
his loft, at Anthology, at „Mars“, in the streets etc, in
Washington
(where he was in the Jury of Library of Congress to choose films to
„be declared important“ and saved, in Los Angeles at the International
Documentary Filmfest, we went to have a cold beer at a special place
and the
lady: „Sorry, we don’t serve beer or alcohol, only
alcohol-free...“ Jonas had a
face of surprise and disappointment and
we left. It is really hard to understand
how these
Californian...
Another time I remember well, when I asked him to come
to Brasil, he said no, he
doesn’t want to, no time, and when we were
there, (he was invited with a
retrospective at Sao Paulo
Int.Filmfestival) he didn’t want to leave anymore...
(Sao Paulo is my
favourite city next to New York. I’d love to make a film
there.) -
Then I filmed him in Paris receiving a reward, a medal for being a
chauvinist, no, sorry, a chevalier,,, Some years later I filmed him
again in
Paris getting a Pasolini award, where I also filmed Arrabal
at home performing
for Jonas-film (will be in part 3: „Jonas in The
Jungle“ maybe 2008?) - Oh ...
we were driving at night through Sao
Paulo, both in the back and suddenly a car
came racing from the side
over a crossing, although we clearly had green and hit
the back, just
about 10 cm behind us, ripping off the back part of the car.
Miraculously nobody got hurt and we thanked Mary. Actually Jonas
believes in I
think...“Fatima“(?)....near Avignon or where? We filmed
in Hamburg and went to
the place of the working camp - now a childrens
playground... that evening Jonas
held a speach in Hamburgs Metropolis
Kino and while talking about the past he
all of sudden cried with
tears, his memory of pain had overhelmed him. It was
strange for the
audience cause they didn’t know the reason. Otherwise Jonas was
happy
to see Hamburg again. We did a little „filmtour“ with „Jonas in the
Desert“ to 12 towns in 11 days (in my old VW Golf). Once there was a
heavy jam
on the autobahn and cause we had to get to a cinema on time
I overtook on the
forbidden right lane. A truckdriver saw this and
drove all of a sudden over and
into my door, I reacted very fast,
noone hurt, but the door was crushed and I
alwas had to climb out of
the other door... - and we made it in time...
Once in Torino, I asked
Jonas what do have in your bag? „This and that, ...and a
good
salami-sausage from New York “ with a big smile. I asked: „Why? What do
you need to bring a sausage from N.Y. to Italy?! They have everything
here! And
more!!“ Jonas: „I never forget the days of hunger...so, just
incase, I always
have a good salami from N.Y. with me....“ -
„I’m
looking for the possibilities of order and simplicity through chaos,“
Jonas
reads scribblings by Peter Beard (in „... At The Ocean“). When I
see all the
friends and people around Jonas in the many years, there
are so many great
artists, characters, intellectuals and „crazy“
perople from around the world. It
is really unbelievable and
impossible to count them all up.
Also how others see him, 2 examples:
Peter Beard: „Jonas is the Picasso of
Filmart“, Wim Wenders: „Jonas is
the James Joyce of movies. (...I remember the
first time at Anthology
I saw 3 Ozu-films in a row, sitting in little black box
so I couldn’t
see my neighbours left or right“ („... At The Ocean“). One of the
first admirers: in the 50.s, Orson Welles: „Filmculture-Magazine
founded by
Mekas is the best in the world!“
Heh! how about some
critical people? I seldom met any, but Barbara Hammer who
represents
the Lesbian Filmworld pretty well said (some years ago, though): „
I’m
pretty upset about Jonas, cause he hardly pays attention to gay and
lesbian
filmmakers!“ I asked Jonas and he answered: „Well, I respect
some, but most are
always stressing too much their sex and society
situation, although by now they
should be „normal between normals“ and
concentrate more on the possibilities of
films „normally“. (By the way
I’m working on another longtime project: about
transsexuals, as an
existencialistic subject, and also cause they are still far
away from
being treated with the normal respect every person should have.)
Some
of you surely know about the famous film „Flaming Creatures“ by Jack
Smith,
Ginsberg (...at the Ocean): „... over 30 years later, again,
the authoritarian,
neostalinist, neohitlerian, neogoebbels,
neomaoists, culturevulture censors,
people who want to reduce
everybody to their mind and want to control other
peoples´ mind as
with the stalinists sand the nazis are beginning to take shape
again
in America and wanting to impose the same censorship that we broke out of
much to Jonas Mekas` efforts in 1958/59. ...
... you should
understand, there is a lot of history behind that, 1957 my own
poetry
went on trial, 1958/59 works of Henry Miller, Jean Genet,
D.H.Lawrence.... culminating 1962 was a victory against censorship,
liberating
„Naked Lunch“ as well as all the other books had beem
liberated. Lenny Bruce was
arrested by the same district-attorney who
also prosecuted „Flaming Creatures“
and „Naked Lunch“. .. Warhol-films
were seazed, but Warhols reaction
was rather than fight in court, he
would just make another film next week...“
Robert Frank:“ New York is
charged with all kinds of shit.“ ...
Nam June Paik: !Over 20 years ago
when I applied for my first visa to stay in
America Jonas was my
financial sponsor although he didn´t have a penny in the
bank. Luckily
the consulate didn´t check his bank! and now today Jonas is
financially just as bad as those days... but...
he is nearly the
only resource of visual language of the avantgarde of the 50
and 60s,
because his diary... I am constantly reminded how one man can achieve
so much with one will, such determination! One man can change the
world in this
very organised world, it´s amazing!... that gives me
lessons.. I also used some
of his films in my videos, f.ex. „the
Brig“... „
Many people talk about Jonas like Ginsberg and Nam June,
there are many funny,
strange and remarkable anecdotes.
For me
actually he reminds me often of the Monkees.“I Am A
Believer“-
Clayton. this is about 2/3 of my text, next part is more
personal, but I´ m not
sure how personal i should get, I´´m still
working on it, but maybe you can
already use some of this I´ve
written, or maybe it´s not what you expexted, be
free to tell me your
thoughts, we can change or throw away. or...
till soon, I´ll write in a
couple of days some more lines, bestregards, Peter