Jonas Mekas, Patrice Rollet
Diaries, Notes and Sketches
Author(s) Jonas Mekas ; Patrice Rollet
Format paperback book
Year 2014
Language(s) French
Pages 96 pages
Description
From 1949, since his arrival in New York with his brother Adolfas after fleeing his native Lithuania and experiencing forced labor camps followed by displaced persons camps in post-war Germany, until 2012, when he made Out-Takes from the Life of a Happy Man before his last reels faded, Jonas Mekas filmed his life: first the years of exile and the poor neighborhoods of Brooklyn in Lost Lost Lost, then the legendary years of the birth of underground cinema, the Fluxus movement and pop culture in Walden, Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol, ZefiroTorna and Happy Birthday to John, and finally the more intimate years of friendship and love in As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty. From one paradise to another, from the lost paradise of childhood to the rediscovered paradise of cinema and poetry, Mekas, in his own words, shot the same film for more than half a century, which he titled Diaries, Notes and Sketches when he became aware of it. Beyond the apparent diversity of the works, this small book strives to unravel this tenuous but continuous thread, even if it means confronting the immense work in progress that has just been completed, indirectly for some but also head-on for several of them, examples of this new Odyssey.