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Okay.

Here I am.

Here is me...

...by myself.

Here is my hand...

here is my face...

my hair...

my heart.

Here is my heart.
Somewhere there.

Here I am.

Me, me.

Where is me?

What is me?

What was my life all about?

Do I still have time
to do something about my life?

I really don't know.

Some called him the
godfather of underground film.

Filmmaker Jonas Mekas.

That's Jonas Mekas.

My guest tonight
is Jonas Mekas,

who was first of all a poet
before he was a filmmaker.

I was a farmer
before I was a filmmaker.

His name is Jonas Mekas,

a man who I think more than
almost anybody in the world

epitomizes the meaning
and significance

of independent film-making.

I'm delighted
to have you here.

I'm happy to be here
on this autumn day.

Jonas Mekas
has remained at the forefront

of American
independent film-making

for more than half a century.

Author, critic,
film distributor,

and a movie maker
whose influence extends

far beyond his adopted home.

Jonas Mekas was
the most exciting person.

I mean, he just got excited
about anything.

Jonas became a social center
as well as making his own films

and writing
his own poetry.

I began keeping film diaries

immediately
after I came to this country.

The dominant form of my life
became the diary.

So I'm just filming
moments of life.

I do not know
what makes me do it,

but I have to do it.

I just have to do it.

I cannot sleep.

I cannot sleep.
Oh, boy.

I don't know what
I'm going to do tonight.

Boxes, boxes.

Why all my life is boxed?

I have boxed myself into,
I dunno where I am.

It's a mess. It's a mess.

As I'm slowly moving
to my editing room...

Some old footage,
fading, fading footage.

My friends...

here I am trying
to remember it all.

Footage I took
with my first Bolex,

but the dust of time
is falling on all of it.

My brother, Adolfas.

Some of the details

are already deep under
the dust of time.

Adolfas and I came here
from post-war Europe...

full of doubts
about civilization,

all the affairs of this world.

We loved you, world...

but you did lousy things
to us.

We are displaced persons...

and the world is full of us.

This was recorded
by someone in exile.

I was so lonely
when I came...

that this city...

...saved my sanity.

The first years here,

we embraced New York,

and the city embraced us.

We did not miss
a single theater performance,

a single film that opened,

a single ballet performance,
music...

We were hungry, thirsty for...

...art.

It's raining in New York
on this November day.

My camera is getting wet,
but it doesn't matter.

Orchard Street. I lived here.

I lived here for two years.

Walking, always walking.

That is the life
of a displaced person.

A DP in a strange place.

Grass clinging
the block of cement,

trying to live in a place

where life seems to be
totally impossible.

And there, behind that bridge,
it's Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

I spent two years of my life
there. Two.

There is a point somewhere

where you don't know anymore
where your home really is.

I am still at that point.

I think my real home
is cinema.

Jonas and Adolfas Mekas,

born in Lithuania,
came to the US,

and the first thing they did

was they bought
a 16 millimeter Bolex camera.

Neither myself
nor my brother spoke English.

We thought maybe we can do the
camera and speak with images.

Jonas carried his camera
everywhere.

I don't think I ever saw
Jonas without a camera.

We thought we will
get into Hollywood

and make big movies there,

but meanwhile,
we have to practice

and master what the camera
can do, all the tricks.

Very soon it was cinema
that was our lives,

our minds, our hearts.

And we wished that we would
have some kind of platform

to exchange ideas.

France had
"Cahiers du Cinéma."

England had
"Sight and Sound."

In United States, nothing.

So we said --
said, "Let's do it."

By December '54,

we brought out the first issue.

For "Film Culture Magazine,"

I wrote a piece about The Man
Who Shot Liberty Valance,

John Ford's film.

I think I made 25 bucks,

which got me through
a couple of dates.

The first play
I directed off Broadway,

Jonas came to see it
with his brother, Adolfas,

and that's where we met.

And he was very kind
and very encouraging,

encouraging me to make movies,

which I ended up doing.

But for "Film Culture," yeah,

I wrote for them a couple of --
few times.

After you started
"Film Culture,"

you got into being
the first film critic

for The Village Voice writing
about commercial cinema.

But your writing now,

it is primarily a criticism
of the avant-garde.

It happened so not by,
you know, our choice,

but I see great, you know,
beauty, excitement there,

and nobody's
writing about them.

Nobody's bringing these films
to the, you know,

reader's,
viewer's attention.

And that I consider
is a crime.

So it's my duty
to bring those films

to the attention
of the people.

Jonas Mekas was my savior.

Somehow I knew about
The Village Voice and I got it,

and I used to read Jonas's
column, "Movie Journal,"

and he told me what
underground movies were.

And that's how I learned
about Warhol and Kenneth Anger

and the Kuchar Brothers
and all those kind of movies.

So I became kind of obsessed
by them.

And I would sneak away on
the Greyhound Bus to New York

and see the underground movies
that Jonas wrote about.

That's how I got
my film education.

Before I was a film student,

I'd just live every week
to read Jonas's column

in The Village Voice because it
opened up a whole new world of,

uh, what cinema could be.

The word "movie" didn't mean
just one thing anymore

to the younger generation.

You have lighter equipment,

so you can actually start
making your own films.

Underground movies,
we're doing it

a completely different way.

Turning your nose up
at Hollywood.

Technique and billion-dollar
budgets and everything,

You can step out in the
street with your characters.

If all your expenses
were subway fare and film,

you could somehow work.

You didn't eat so good,
but you could work.

And that Jonas valued the work
was amazing.

He couldn't have been
more generous.

For the first time
in the last ten years,

I did not feel alone
in America.

Like I was...

slowly becoming a part of it.

There was a moment
when I forgot my home.

We wrote.

We did a lot of writing

with coffee
eating our stomachs.

We started shooting
our first film.

It was exciting.

Everything was new.

I was a teenager
reading Jonas's "Movie Journal"

in The Village Voice,
and I went to Cinema 16,

where, mixed in with narrative
films and science films

and pornography,
were these other films.

And that's when I first saw
Maya Deren...

...and Stan Brakhage.

And I thought,
"This is most ridiculous stuff

I've ever seen."

And then I saw Jonas's
Guns of the Trees...

...and I never wanted to go
back to Cinema 16 after that

because it was the
most depressing thing

that I'd ever seen.

Not everyone digs
underground movies,

but those who do
can dig them here.

This is The Bridge
in New York,

one of several small theaters
around the country

where underground films
are shown.

But what is
an underground movie?

The subject almost
defies description.

Like any art, cinema
has the narrative aspect

and the poetic aspect,

and so-called
underground filmmakers

are exploring
the poetic aspect of cinema.

Jonas was interested
in freedom of expression

with an emphasis
on individuality,

the personal,
sometimes very private,

that Hollywood
will never make.

And he saw that these films
couldn't get distribution.

So what did Jonas do?

He started
The Film-Makers' Co-op.

The Film-Makers' Cooperative

distributed Mondo Trasho.

That was the first
real distributor I ever got.

Taxi! Taxi!

It was in the catalog,

and they would pay a dollar
a minute, 90 minutes long.

So I got $90 every time
somebody rented it.

Anyone could deposit a film

at The Film-Makers'
Cooperative,

and it would be distributed
if people asked for it.

And how would people know
to ask for it?

Well, Jonas mentioned them
in The Village Voice.

No one would've ever
heard of those movies,

if not for Jonas.

He essentially wrote
about the films

that his friends were making.

And the reason
The Village Voice regarded this

not as a conflict of interest
for many years

is that no one
made any money.

When I started working
at the Co-Op,

it was at
414 Park Avenue South,

and Jonas lived
in the back.

Film-Makers' Cooperative

was a period
of like four years.

I don't know how I slept,

because it was always busy,
that place.

Most of the time I slept
under my Moviola.

There was no other room.

Every evening
we had screenings,

filmmakers bringing
their footage,

people gathering
and showing their work.

You could meet everybody there
from Robert Frank,

Allen Ginsberg, Salvador Dalí.

They all came
to the screenings.

It was at those screenings

that I met Barbara Rubin,

Harry Smith, Jack Smith,
and Warhol.

Andy was there in my loft,

sitting on the floor watching
movies already several months,

but I did not know
it was Andy.

That was Andy's film school.

Jonas certainly gave Andy

the idea of making films.

And for a period of time,

Warhol pretty much
put away painting

in favor of making films.

They were the most important
thing that Warhol was doing.

But this evening,

as I was, um,
eating my supper,

it came to me that,
Andy's constant audio taping...

constant in the later years...

video taping,
it came from shyness.

A shy person is not
able 100% to connect

with the people

and remains always
a little bit on the side.

A watcher.
A looker. A gazer.

Because that is like
one's only protection.

It is the chain
that keeps you attached

to the people around you.

That is what I have
been thinking...

...yeah,
as I think about Andy.

To you.

There were two kinds
of underground movies.

There was the real arty kind
like Stan Brakhage,

and Ed Emshwiller.

I didn't like them so much
then.

I like them now and realize

that Jonas was completely right
about that school too.

But then there was the Warhol,
Kenneth Anger,

Kuchar, the ones I liked
really,

that always had nudity
and gay people and drugs.

You know,
when people think of the '60s,

they think of just
this counterculture,

anything goes,
nudity, sex.

But actually the censorship
then was terrible.

I'll never forget,
I went to forbidden screening,

an illegal screening
of a banned film

at a loft in the Village,

and Mekas introduced it.

It was Kenneth Anger's
Scorpio Rising.

It was certainly
a life-changer for me.

If you look at
the history of queer film

and you look at the history
of avant-garde film,

they are twined
around each other.

And that was a big deal
for Jonas,

who began writing
in The Village Voice

some very homophobic pieces.

And then
at a certain point,

he looked
at Jack Smith's work,

and he realized
that Jack was making

great film and great art,

and something changed
profoundly in Jonas.

During the summer of '64,

the series of arrests

were taking place
under the pretext of obscenity.

We decided that they have
no right to tell us

how to make our movies
or what to show.

We went ahead
and we showed everything

without submitting
to the censors.

Jonas booked the screening
of Flaming Creatures.

I was the manager
of the theater,

and Flo's taking tickets.

Cops came
out of nowhere.

I was arrested.
Flo was arrested.

Jonas was arrested

and was incredibly courageous
talking to the cops,

telling them
how stupid they were.

I thought he was
gonna get us killed,

or at least we were gonna
leave there without teeth.

I was impressed.

I don't think
anyone was prepared

to see the cops show up.

After this arrest,

when everybody said I'm
in trouble, I thought, "Okay,

then I will make it worse."

A week
after Flaming Creatures,

Jonas arranged
the screening of

Un chant d'amour.

He had smuggled
the Genet semi-pornographic,

or actually pornographic,
film into the country,

looking for trouble
with the police.

Jonas said, "It's not porn.

Porn is in the eyes
of the beholder.

It's poetry."

Police were threatened

by underground movies
for some reason.

They really believed
that they were gonna,

I don't know, do what?

Make everybody go crazy
and turn gay or what?

I don't know
what they thought.

For Jonas, it made him a hero,
the revolutionary.

He introduced a new genre
of rebellion in film

that has never ended.

Jonas wanted
to break down the barriers,

storm the Bastille.

He talked like that, too.

"We have to take it down
and break it down!"

And that was very encouraging
at that time,

for all us young people
that were just starting out.

There was so much
dedication and solidarity

of the whole community,

and in the middle
there was Jonas Mekas.

He was the prophet,
a guiding visionary spirit.

He showed us the way
and made us understand

that there are no limits
to the art of cinema.

We have all come here
to tell the public that, uh,

we are now, uh, taking over
the entire universe.

What's important
about the underground cinema

is that it's
not important at all.

The underground filmmakers

are not taking themselves
seriously.

They're just playing,
having a good time.

Jonas Mekas, Jonas Mekas,
the impresario.

Jonas is the head of
The Film-Makers' Cooperative.

He puts together movies
and sends them around to,

uh, Europe and America.
Mm-hmm.

Movies like Flaming Creatures
and The Brig.

Good morning,
men!

Now, this will be
another glorious day

in this great
United States Marine Corps.

The thing is that
The Brig is a film

of an actual performance
of the living theater.

Yes.
It was shot on stage.

I walked into the middle
of the play, with the camera,

with sound...

When I walk by,
you come to attention!

Is that clear?!

...disrupted the whole
situation as a new element.

It was not an adaptation
filming of a play,

but my instantaneous reaction
to a production

in long ten-minute takes.

With the movement of the
camera, the brutality of it,

uh, uh,
was sort of crazy.

Are all my kiddies asleep?

The Brig showed
at the Venice Film Festival.

They thought
it was a real brig

as opposed to the documentary
of a theater production,

but it did win a prize,

and it did put Jonas
on the map,

though still as
some kind of curator.

People didn't see Jonas
as a filmmaker in his own right

until Diaries, Notes
and Sketches -- Walden.

I live...

...therefore I make films.

I make films...

therefore I make...

I make home movies.

Therefore, I live.

Walden was the first Jonas film

that really moved me.

It was like, wow, this is
like its own form completely.

Jonas was able to use
the form of cinema

in the way poets don't obey
the laws of prose.

They don't obey
the laws or rules.

They are there
to abstract them.

Jonas's personal cinema

represented
an entire vocabulary

of symbols and signifiers,

and there was no goal.

Diaristic, memoirist
documentarian...

through the eyes of a poet.

Around 1961,
looking back, I realized that

the footage I've shot
with my first two Bolexes

felt like a diary documenting
certain aspects of my life.

Diaries, Notes,
and Sketches,

this footage
from 1964 to '68...

...I'm not documenting
reality.

That doesn't interest me,
but I'm celebrating reality.

I'm picking out certain bits,
and I film them in a way

that they are like
celebrations of life.

Temperament, attitude,
state of being,

that feeling,
like, in the air.

Pace, rhythm, movement,
light, exposure,

focus, intensity,
how I feel

as I'm looking
at that detail

to catch reality
as it happens now.

That is how
my diary form started.

Jonas was an expert at turning
his journals and diaries

into his art.

Walden
and Lost, Lost, Lost

are two of my favorite films
of -- of not just of Jonas's,

but two of my favorite films
ever.

Lost, Lost, Lost
stuck with me a great deal,

particularly
when he was filming the grass.

You know, like he was dancing
around with his camera,

fluidly in space,

so ecstatically happy.

Jonas and images
of Jonas with a Bolex camera

reminded me of Woody Guthrie's
guitar that he had --

"This machine kills fascists."

That guitar was his way
of delivering things,

and Jonas's Bolex was
equally iconic to me.

This machine destroys

preconceptions
of what is filmmaking.

The camera to Jonas,

it's like basketball
to Michael Jordan

or Jimi Hendrix
playing the guitar

for Christ's sake, you know?

It's just part of his body,

coordinated so naturally,
so fluidly.

He was in his element.

And that's a very important
thing to recognize.

God, you know Jonas
as a person is super shy,

sometimes painfully so,

especially when he's been
caught in some kind of crowd.

Jonas was the oddest person

to be at the center

of so many different stratas
of society.

He was highly regarded
in Park Avenue living rooms,

in the homes
of great art collectors.

He was omnipresent
on the scene,

and he always deflected
accolades from himself

to, like,
"Well, but did you see this?

Did you hear about this?"

He had a lot of access
to people

because they recognized
Jonas's integrity, the purity.

He was telling
the tales of his own life

and the people he encountered,
and some of those people

happened to be, you know,
Miles Davis,

or John and Yoko,

or all these different
luminaries of the period.

Scrambled eggs?
Yes, scrambled eggs.

Jonas doesn't have
the same ambition.

He doesn't really wanna be that
famous when you think about it.

Whether he's hanging out
with John Lennon and Yoko Ono,

or following the cockroach

just trying to
get across the street,

he'd have the similar joy
and attention being paid

to those moments.

There's no hierarchy
between Yoko Ono,

John Lennon, cockroach.

He always talked about that
glimpse of beauty in paradise.

That was it.

Being caught in the moment.

Very important philosophy
of life.

It's my nature now to record,

to try to keep everything
I'm passing through.

I have lost too much.

It's raining in Soho...

...and I have lots of time.

I'm not in a hurry,
really.

I don't mind it at all...

...for this rain to rush
to the streets of New York.

After...

coming 7,000 miles
from home, from Lithuania...

it doesn't matter.

100 blocks,
one way or the other.

I'm on Broadway,

and it's raining
7,000 miles away.

The editor of Pravda,
propaganda newspaper of Russia,

he had seen The Brig,

and he thought it was
a great anti-American film...

...and that it should be shown
in Moscow Film Festival.

And I said, "I will come,

but at the same time,
I would like that to go...

if I'm in Moscow, maybe
I could go also to Lithuania

and visit my mother."

So that took me
to my mother.

And as we were approaching,

closer and closer to the places
we knew so well...

...retracing bits of past...

...I did not recognize
the places.

There were no trees
when we left.

We planted small seedlings
all around, yes,

and now the little seedlings

had grown up
into big, large trees.

And there was Mama...

and she was waiting.

She was waiting for...

25 years.

Our home,
our house, was still there,

and a cat met us.

Our mother is telling about
the terrible post-war years,

and how every night
for a year

the police was waiting
behind the house in the bushes

for me to come home.

They thought
I had joined the partisans.

For more than a year,
behind the bathhouse.

The dogs used to bark
every night, she said.

My decision is to leave.

If you want to criticize me

for my lack
of patriotism or courage,

you can go to hell.

I do not want any part
of this war.

This war is not mine.

I am a poet.

False papers were made for us

to go to
the University of Vienna

and study there,
and there we went.

The only thing was
that we never got there.

Germans directed our train
towards Hamburg,

and we ended in the slave camps
of the Nazi Germany.

One thing
that people always forget

about Jonas
is that he's a survivor

of one of the worst
mass slaughters

in human history.

And even after the war,

Jonas and Adolfas
were lost in that mix

of people who were trying
to figure out how to get home.

They were not welcome
in Soviet-occupied Lithuania.

They had to stay in a displaced
person's camp for four years.

And it's at this point
that he begins

to really develop as a poet.

This is when he writes
his Idylls of Semeniskiai.

By the time I ended up
in the fourth labor camp,

I only wanted to write.

And my first poetry book
was published

in a very cheap way
in displaced person camps.

I got to know him

through the book called
Jonas Mekas' Poetry,

which was published in 1971,

because
previously in Lithuania,

his poetry wasn't available.

I found a book
in my parents' library.

It sounded different

than the Lithuanian poetry
I knew.

The country really has
a difficult history,

which was a living trauma for
the generation of Jonas Mekas.

Jonas consolidated
that historical experience

of the country
and its people

and expressed it
in this very personal way.

Now that I speak,
I suddenly realize that

I was probably only a few
years younger than Jonas himself

when he started his journey
away from Lithuania.

"The darkness is falling

beyond the windows.

All the past
is falling together."

Just two lines
from Jonas's poetry.

What more do you want
from me?

I am a musician.

I became a politician,

participant of my nation's
self liberation...

from longstanding Soviet yoke.

Jonas's world...

was a very painful one...

and full of miracles.

It looks paradoxical.

Jonas speaks about
the most simple things...

...and then you understand that
they are the most important.

The element of past...

was especially important
for Jonas,

maybe as a representative
of captive nation,

which was stored out
from reality,

put into
a cage of captivity.

Who cannot understand it?

Maybe those who have
not been captive...

enslaved.

But those who don't have
such experiences...

maybe they lose something.

That terrible chance

to have
such a painful experience.

Today, I was leaving.
It was raining.

The airport was wet,
it was sad.

Oh, Mother...

I hope the long gray road

will lead me soon
home again.

"Kreutzer Sonata,"
that's what I need.

As I sit here
in my editing room,

splicing bits
of my own past,

putting all these pieces
together...

...I'm looking at fragments
of mine and your life.

These are my memories,

the way I saw it
when I was filming it.

I'm talking to you, Hollis.

When I met Jonas,

it wasn't like the sparks
and all of that,

'cause that's
not the way he was.

He wasn't like
a sparky person.

He was, like,
slow and...

...really charismatic
and powerful.

He was 22 years older than me,
and he was also...

Jonas Mekas, you know?

And I was just a person
who liked avant-garde film.

But he really
made me feel calm,

and he really made me feel...

...um...

happy.

I had seen Walden
and Reminisces,

and I read Jonas's columns.

It's like
I had always known him.

Then he came and lived with me
pretty quick.

He brought
his editing table.

Hollis and me,
the protagonists of this film.

We decided to try to be like

all the normal,
serious people.

We decided to get married.

And there is
the man of the minute...

...and Hollis's father.

I can still
feel the happiness

of that summer
being in love.

If there is beauty,

that was beauty, my friend.

It was magical and fun.

He was a very free spirit.

Like, Jonas is one of
the funniest people

I have ever met.

And, yeah, he always had
his camera with him.

It was like his sidekick.

And it makes that click.

I love that click.

Midnight, mon ami!
Happy New Year!

Peter, standing now
at his window

with the fireworks
going off all around him

is the tiny figure of the pope.

What?
What happened to you?

I -- I meant
to darken my hair,

and it -- it darkened it
a little too much, Dad.

Yeah, meant to
do dark brown,

but it ended up
being little darker.

I have to fix that.

A liberal economy,
free market, human rights,

respect for our neighbors
and respect for our partners.

The time now is,
according to Einstein.

Seize the problems

and the opportunities
of this ever small planet

we all call home.

In short, if we want the story
of the 21st century

to be the triumph
of peace and harmony,

we must embrace
our common humanity.

It's about 17 minutes
to the end of this millennium.

New Year's, 1999.

As the world is celebrating
the New Year...

I am celebrating

the last quarter
of the 20th century.

It seems I was filming
my own childhood

as I was filming
your childhood,

Oona and Sebastian.

Formative years of being
in front of a camera,

it just became natural.

I didn't love it
or hate it.

It was just totally normal
up to a certain age.

I think I was about 13
when I just started doing this

and walking away.

'Cause, you know,
13, puberty and all of it,

you're changing
and you're just like,

"Stop filming me.
Like, just stop."

Luckily,
I had a younger brother

and then he ended up
in all the films

because he was smaller
and didn't care.

If you've only grown
up with a -- a camera...

If you grew up your
whole childhood with that,

you don't think anything funny
or strange of it.

So, I was aware
that my birth was filmed.

I didn't feel icky
or weird about it.

It was just something
that was part of life.

As I was watching you
in that moment,

I thought...

"There cannot be
anything more beautiful

or more important
on this Earth."

1974.

It was
a really monumental year.

In '74, we got married,

we had Oona,

and we moved into
The Loft in SoHo.

I still have dreams
about that place, The Loft.

"The Loft." I mean, that's
what everybody called it.

It was
this big meeting space.

The long wooden
table that we had in the house

was a very busy space.

Every week or so
we had gatherings,

just a few friends.

Filmmakers, painters, poets.

♪ In the sunset
over Manhattan Isle ♪

♪ Newark was my birthplace,
under the wing for a while ♪

♪ Green gas tanks of Kearney,
smog brown in the west ♪

♪ In the Lower East Side,
I'll go take my rest ♪

♪ I'm alone in the sky
where there's nothing to lose ♪

♪ The sun's not eternal,
that's why there's the blues ♪

♪ Majestical jailhouse,
our joys in the cage ♪

♪ Hearts full of hatred
will outlast my old age ♪♪

There was
always music in the house.

He had this group
of Lithuanian friends,

people he arrived with,

and they would play
these incredibly sad songs.

All Lithuanian folk songs
are sad.

Every single one of 'em.

It appears to be...
I mean, it was a good life.

It wasn't an idyllic life,
but it was a good life.

I mean, the struggles
were really real.

Like money.

And Anthology Film Archives,
it was a huge struggle.

Come in!
The Anthology Film Archives.

This is where I sit
and work...

...on this
fragile little table

to indicate the fragility
of our existence

and fragility of film

that is falling to dust.

Every minute as we are talking,
films are falling to dust.

The idea
of the Anthology Film Archives

was that it'll establish
a repertory of avant-garde,

independent,
and classic cinema.

We have about 6,000 titles.

So that those who want to know
more or less

what has been achieved
in cinema as an art...

could have some idea

by seeing what we called
essential cinema collection.

The film that we show
quite often here...

Around 1970,

five of us discussed
and argued

and prepared a list
of essential cinema,

and we began screening them

on a repertory basis
again and again,

and we thought that
will be our function.

But that function changed soon
because we discovered

if we screen, we have to get
the best possible prints.

We discovered
that the filmmaker died.

Nobody knows
where the originals are,

or the originals are fading
or shrinking

or are falling to pieces.

So we established
the preservation department.

And we did this out
of necessity,

not because we wanted to.

But there was this need.
We had to do it.

I loved to come here
and see if I could catch him

and go downstairs
and talk to him

about new things
in the archives.

And I remember things
he'd tell me like, "Oh,

we found these Russian
industrial films in the dumpster

that I now want to catalog."

Like this excitement of like,
"What are they?"

"Oh, they're footage
of strange machinery

and factories
in the Soviet Union."

You know,
these kind of things.

"And -- And we just found them.
They've been thrown away.

So we're seeing should we
include them in the archive,"

you know?

Film is fragile,

and -- and if you
don't preserve it, it's gone.

It's history.

Every film is a kind of
historical document

of that particular story,
that particular time.

,
Russian, American,

and the French,
and the Germans.

Some of those films
are ecstatically beautiful.

These are
fragments of paradise,

and we have to
do everything

to see that
they don't disappear.

This kind of obsession
or craziness keeps me alive.

He had such a pure
vision of avant-garde film,

anthology, cinema.

But when he bought
the courthouse in '79,

that was a really big leap.

For the Anthology
Film Archive,

you are struggling
with a financial campaign

to convert a magnificent
building into a...

A courthouse building,
uh, that has been closed

for the last ten years
that we --

we acquired
from the city.

And we will be transforming it
into a film and video museum.

We are now
in the 72-seat theater.

They were redoing
the whole interior

when Saturday Night Live
asked me,

"Would you make
a five minute film?"

I asked Jonas
if I could shoot here.

He said, "Yeah,
You can shoot here.

I hope it's not disruptive that
they'll be working around you,"

you know?
Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you too.

Get away.

It took ten years
to get the courthouse

to the place
where we could open it.

It took a lot of work.

Good morning, you!
Good morning, Jonas.

How are you
this morning?

Are we gonna
make the countdown?

12 days before we open.

Five days
before the opening.

Four days
before the opening.

We'll be opening soon.
I don't have the exact date.

Here comes the man
who's in charge of this.

Two days
before the opening.

Two hours
before the show.

40 minutes
before the opening.

Come in!
The Anthology Film Archives.

Running Anthology
was always a challenge.

The main headache
is the fundraising.

Jonas knew a lot
of people in the film world,

in the art world,
that he could call on for help

when it was really needed,
but it still wasn't easy.

Jonas used to call it
a cathedral of cinema.

He used to say
that they're angels,

that Anthology has
a guardian angel.

I have at times
found that to be true.

I have also at times

found that to be
a very impractical answer

to the problems
that we face.

Anthology was made by angels...

and miracles,
luck, and hard work.

He worked in the day
at Anthology.

He worked all the time.

Jonas worked more
than any person I've ever known.

He described his day --

"I go to the Anthology in
the morning, and then I go home

and I take care of the
international correspondent.

I have time with my family,

and then I go

into the editing room
after midnight,

and I stay in there as long
as I can stay awake,

usually four hours."

It's five minutes
to 2:00 in the morning.

The house is sleeping.

Yeah, when
everyone else would go to bed,

he would -- he would
go to this editing room.

He was
always really productive.

But, I mean, I was definitely
a backseat to the work.

I'm not sure
that I am taping right now.

You see the light?
Mm-hmm.

A rose is a rose
is a rose.

Is it really?

I noticed
when I was around nine

that he got his
first Sony video camera.

He was very excited
by the possibilities of video,

the long takes...

and shooting synchronized sound
for the first time.

I want here to hear.

Are you pressing?
Yes.

And it says R-E-C?
Yes.

Good.
That means it's recording.

I can see the red light on it,
so it's recording.

So I'm raising to your,
uh, new book of poems,

which is right here.

Got that one wrong.

Does it record
the sounds?

Of course!
Um, I will read a poem.

"That tree said,

'I don't like
that white car under me.

It smells gasoline.'"

"You are neurotic.

You can see by the way
you are bent over.

You can see by the way..."
"You're neurotic.

You can see by the way
you're bent over."

"You can see..."

Here.
"You are neurotic."

"You can see by the way
you're bent over."

No, I'll read it to you.
You take me.

Yeah. That's --
That's a better idea.

"That tree said, 'I don't like
this white car under me.

It smells gasoline.'

That other tree
next to it said,

'Ah, you're
always complaining.

You're a neurotic. You can see
by the way you're bent over.'"

Get it?
This one...

You're not even listening!

Sebastian, you weren't
giving me any attention at all.

I'm a guest here.
I deserve attention.

I seem to be making
an inventory of your apartment.

I don't suppose
you've done this yet, have you?

No.

Well, this might
be interesting.

Shall we enter
the secret room?

It's of my mother,

holding my father and my mother
when they just got married.

Mm-hmm.

There was a moment
when filmmakers

really were not interested
in working in video.

It has a different set
of qualities.

It doesn't have that beauty
of celluloid.

Jonas embraced it.

It was less about whether
it was film versus video

as what were you trying
to do with the medium.

While I might not find
them aesthetically pleasing,

they are so brilliant
in terms of portraiture.

Now I'm facing real disaster.
He left.

Why? Why?
So what happened?

Uh, the first --
This is the first night of...

He left me. He's out of love.
He want to be independent.

Uh, I'm all shadowing.

I have too much energy.

I'm just too much.
Not just for him, for everybody.

Generally, I'm too much,
and I don't know how to be less.

Or maybe...

I'm always
deeply emotionally touched

by his movies...

and I always
discover beauty in it.

And you really never know where
it takes you to next second,

because it's always -- every
time you look at the movie,

you discover something new,
something surprising

and something true.

Those years in the '80s, '90s,

he was doing so many things,
balancing so many roles,

wearing many hats, riding
different horses, as he'd say.

And he struggled at times
to find time for his own work.

Jerry, maybe the only
print actually is at the co-op,

so he have to borrow from
the Film-Makers' Cooperative.

He weathered everything.

I mean, he could have
utter chaos spinning around him

and he would weather it,

which was hard
for the people around him.

'Cause chaos
is really hard to deal with.

I mean, especially
when it's constant.

Our whole life was so, like,
just the film, Anthology...

And when
you're married to someone

who's a little bit famous...

it's like
you're an appendage.

I decided
after 30 years of that...

...I need -- I just needed
to be me, be free.

Somewhere around this time,

our protagonist's life...

collapsed.

Suddenly...

his life...

collapsed.

My parents were separated
in the late '90s,

but they still lived
in the same place,

just lived on opposite sides
of the -- of The Loft.

We got divorced in 2001.

It wasn't until 2004
that we actually split

because neither of us
had enough money

to strike out
and get their own place.

We were like distant roommates.

I mean, we were --
we were polite.

It was disappointing and sad,
but at the same time,

I knew that they would both be
happier not living together.

The biggest devastation
was getting rid of The Loft.

It's a lot of stuff to move.

I would say that was the lowest
point of our relationship,

was moving, packing up
all our stuff and moving out.

It was hard.

Do you like
your cups like this?

Okay.

That looks interesting.

The Secret Strength
of Depression.

I may need that one.

I have to admit,
I feel...

lost.

I am lost again.

I have lost the sense
why I'm here.

I'm lost.

I'm trying to find myself
again.

This damned...

...questioning of myself
all the time.

Ha!

Ha, ha, ha!

Here I am...

in this empty space...

impregnated
with 30 years of life!

Every wall...

floor, ceiling...

space itself.

There must be...

a lot of little atoms of...

myself, Hollis,
Sebastian, Oona,

attached to it, somewhere
floating in the air...

...totally invisible.

A glimpse of my new home.

I would spend
a lot of time with Jonas,

sometimes three nights
a week.

Disappointed, Richard.
Humanity.

He needed a friend,
and I think he saw me

as he himself when
he was my age, you know?

When you are an immigrant,

forever caught
in that in-between space,

it's intense...

because you essentially
don't have any home.

You never feel comfortable.

Anyone who knew him
should have known

how deep the traumas of
his early life were in him...

...and the degree to which

he refused
to give into them...

and the degree to which
he kept that invisible

and allowed it to come out
in the films

only in the form of melancholy,

not in the form of
the extremity of loss

and anger that I just saw

in every gesture
and every facial movement.

You know, I mean,

you know how clowns are...

the most tragic figures?

Jonas worked very hard at
being a clown for other people.

Here I am
on February 6th.

Here is my room,
my table, my glass of wine.

And here is me...

...by myself.

Here is my hand.

Here is my face...

my hair...

my heart.

Here is my heart.
Somewhere there.

Here I am.

Me, me.

Where is me?

What is me?

What was my life
all about?

Do I still have time

to do something
about my life?

I really don't know.

God...

angels, help me.

I have no--

nobody but this camera.

This camera!

This camera --

I threw it on the floor.

I picked it up,
and it still works.

This piece of metal here in
front of me is my only friend.

So here I am.

I'm not --
I don't know what to do.

I don't know what to do.

I don't know
why I'm taping this,

but...I'm taping it.

That's my...life.

It's...2:10...

after midnight.

I can't sleep.

Ah, the music, it, uh...

I can't sleep.
I can't sleep.

I can't sleep,

and the music is helping me to.

One of the ways
my father dealt with

the ending of that part
of his life was to make

As I was Moving Ahead,
I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty.

When I began now...

to put all these...

rolls of film together...

and just put them together
by chance,

the way that I found them
on the shelf...

...because
I really don't know

where any piece of my life
really belongs.

Yeah, this is one
of my favorite films to watch.

This goes back to what
he was doing in 16 millimeter.

Walden, his
Diaries, Notes and Sketches,

and they're all
sort of stitched together.

My filmmaking saves me.

It saves me,
I don't know what I would do.

Sunlight,
some sun in my life.

There are moments
that I fall into...

those kinds of moods.

Moments
that don't last very long,

but I'm very miserable
when those moments come.

But I'm out of it.

Out of it.

Hey, what are you
doing there?

Get off!

You're going somewhere...

and yet
you're going nowhere.

That symbolizes
our own human minds

when we think
we are going somewhere,

but we are going nowhere.

He was very sad about

parting ways
with, you know, Hollis,

but what came out
is a 365-day project,

which is about
celebration of life

for that one year.

365-day project.

That was one of
the most challenging.

I mean,
I made a film every day,

a film between five
to ten minutes long.

Came to 38 hours
of finished film,

which is no joke.

It's one of his greatest
creation of the late years.

I'm not going to do
the dishes tomorrow.

Should I leave this
just as an empty day?

...under which
St. Mary appeared...

December 23, 2007.

It's a very special night

because it's
an alignment of planets --

nine, I believe --
and the winter solstice

that we're just
kind of coming out of,

and a full moon.

And, um,
and your birthday.

That was a time also

when my father started to get
very interested

and very busy
with exhibitions

and showing his work
in new ways.

Sound coming from
different installations.

It was all very exciting.

Jonas blossomed.

He was celebrated
all over the world.

I don't know
whether that would've happened

if we had stayed together.

I'm writing a book about you
for my PhD.

It's all about the life work
of Jonas Mekas.

Sorry you had to do
so much work.

He recreated a new Jonas.

Never before you
have encountered an artist

with that incredible
new-discovered energy.

The pain created
this titanic energy.

Profound tragedy in life,
also energy.

It depends how you turn that
into energy.

This is like a new premier

of Jonas Mekas
as a personality.

More and more Jonas films
came into gallery and museums,

and the format of presenting
them in the gallery,

it had to be invented
because some of these films

are very long,
some of them are quite short.

He was a curator himself

who knew how to construct
a narrative

not only in a piece of poetry
or a film,

but also in a film program,
you know, in a festival.

I dunno if we would have
independent cinema

if it wasn't
for Jonas Mekas.

Deeply honored
to present Jonas Mekas

with his
lifetime achievement award.

When you think about
the artist in late years,

is about the incredible
last breath of mortality,

and I think Jonas knew
that it was fleeting.

I've referred to him as being

a kind of poetic equivalent
of a kung-fu master.

And I want to talk with Jonas
about this,

that maybe the secret
of the universe is

don't go against the grain.

Learn how things flow, and you
don't have to hit against them.

The flow of energy
and of life and of expression,

ideas, is something
very mysterious and magical.

Jonas created
this sort of new art,

which is more than film --

the art of
being in a creative joy.

Sebastian
had lived with him...

the last...

I dunno, eight years.

He -- He worked with him,
he traveled with him.

He took care of him
when he was sick.

That was so beautiful.

My father was getting older,

and it was also nice --
I mean, I found sort of

a new relationship
with my father,

very different from
when I was a teenager.

So we certainly became even
closer and more like friends.

We would travel together
and go dancing.

My father, I guess I told him
that I was pregnant

and he didn't really -- like,
he wasn't boisterous about it,

but he was very happy,

and I'm just glad
that he got to meet her.

Oh, oh, look.

She can play!

Very good. More, more, more.

Yeah. Do it.

She knows you're filming,

so she doesn't wanna do it
anymore.

Okay.
Then I'm not going to film.

Okay.

He was uniquely fit

for catching people
in their moments.

It's all little daily scenes...

personal,
little celebrations,

joys and miracles.

The little moments of paradise
that are here now.

Next moment,
maybe they're gone.

I didn't get to go through
all of those yet.

I think there's one...
I'm almost done.

I'm missing one box
of Christmas decorations

that I can see.
Oh, I -- I know where they are.

Let me label
really quickly what...

And put it there...

...whatever
you want to take.

Oh! My comic books.

You found
my comic books!

I've been
looking for these

since you moved
out of The Loft.

It's a beautiful thing

to be able to
see your family life

through
somebody else's eyes.

And not everybody gets that,

so I'm super grateful.

Oh, Oona.
Let the images run.

Let the images run.

Very little
of what you see...

...you remember.

He talks about
those fragments of paradise,

and...
it's how I live my life.

Like, no matter
how bad stuff is,

you can always find...

just a little fragment.

And that's what
the diary film is.

It's like...

sharing these intimate...

things from his heart
and his soul

and the poetry.

It's the poetry in film.

I did it.

I managed to catch

some of the beauty,

some of the happiness.

That's all I care...

to catch...

some of the beauty...

...around.

And it's there.

It's there.

I did it.

And I'm happy.