Engauge presents: A 16mm Monument to Mekas
curated by Jon Behrens
Engauge Experimental Film Festival, in partnership with the Northwest Film Forum, celebrate the life, legacy and work of Jonas Mekas (1922-2019).
WEDNESDAY MARCH 27TH 7:30 PM
The website Sense of Cinema calls Mekas the “midwife of the New York IndependentCinema”(http://sensesofcinema.com/2005/great- directors/mekas/), a term he preferred, and a more accurate description of his influence than the usual label “godfather.” Curator, critic, filmmaker, and enthusiastic patron of other filmmakers, Mekas was part of a small group of New York-based filmmakers who founded the journal Film Culture, the Filmmakers Coop, a distribution center for independent films, and the Anthology Film Archive, an institution devoted to preserving and screening such work throughout the year. His contemporaries and co-conspirators included Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Shirley Clarke, Robert Frank, and Marie Menken.
Independent, artist-made, noncommercial, avant-garde, underground, experimental (whatever you want to call it) film would not be the same without Jonas Mekas’s midwifery.
Works in this screening (with synopses written by Mekas):
“Cassis” (1966, 4 minutes). A small port in South of France, a lighthouse, the sea, shot from just before the sunrise until just after the sunset, all day long, frame by frame, a frame or two every second or every few minutes.
“Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol” (1982, 35 minutes). Music: Velvet Underground, recorded in 1966. Opening segment taped at the Dom at the public performance with Nico. End section: Mass for Andy Warhol at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The film is made up of my film diaries related to Andy Warhol from the years 1965-1982. Locations are New York and Montauk: The Factory, house of George Maciunas, village gate, psychiatrist’s convention, home of Stephen Shore, Warhol Estate, Montauk, etc. The “cast” includes Lou Reed, Nico, Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, Ed Sanders, Barbara Rubin, Tuli Kupferberg, Peter Orlovsky, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, George Maciunas, Vincent Friemont, Henry Geldzahler, Paul Morrissey, Karen Lerner, Jay Lerner, Peter Beard, John Kennedy Jr., Lee Radziwill, Tina Radziwill, Anthony Radziwill, D’Allessandro, Caroline Kennedy, Mick Jagger, Jade Jagger and many others. Completed in June, 1990.
“Notes on the Circus” (1966, 12 minutes). Ringling Bros., filmed in three sessions (three-ring circus), with no post-editing of opticals, five rolls strung together as they came out of a camera. Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band prepared the soundtrack. Film can also be watched with soundtrack turned off (if you’re a “purist” which I’m not).
“Happy Birthday to John” (1996, 24 minutes). [On] October 9, 1972, an exhibition of John Lennon/Yoko Ono’s art, designed by the Father of Fluxus movement, George Maciunas, opened at the Syracuse Museum of Art (curated by David Ross, presently director of the Whitney Museum). Same day an unusual group of John’s and Yoko’s friends, including Ringo, Allen Ginsberg and many others gathered to celebrate John’s birthday. This film is a visual and audio record of that event.
THIS PROGRAM IS PRESENTED ON 16MM FILM
