<videovortex> Rhizome News: Days In the Life Of...

[Geert Lovink]

> From: "Rhizome News" <netartnews at rhizome.org>
> Date: 23 April 2008 8:10:40 PM
> To: netartnewslist at rhizome.org
> Subject: Days In the Life Of...
>
> Rhizome News
> April 23, 2008
> Days In the Life Of...
>
> "You may think I am crazy," Jonas Mekas wrote in one of his 1963 
> "Movie Journal" columns in the Village Voice, "[but] the day is close 
> when the 8 mm. home-movie footage will be collected and appreciated as 
> folk art, like songs and the lyric poetry that was created by the 
> people." In the future, he predicted, we will come to appreciate 
> "travelogue footage, awkward footage that will suddenly sing with an 
> unexpected rapture" since "time is laying a veil of poetry over them." 
> History has borne out Mekas's prophecy: the decades since have seen 
> the emergence of the diary form through artists as varied as George 
> Kuchar, Sadie Benning, Joe Gibbons, Shigeko Kubota and Michel Auder, 
> working not only in small gauge film but later with various hand-held 
> video formats, from Portapak to Pixelvision and beyond. With the 
> advent of YouTube, the possibilities of the video diary as expressive 
> means have only grown: witness how Oliver Laric, Petra Cortright or 
> Guthrie Lonergan suss out the "unexpected raptures" of generation Web 
> 2.0.
>
> As a filmmaker, Mekas himself has been one of the major practitioners 
> of the form, typically working retrospectively: to create his 
> multi-hour films Diaries, Notes & Sketches (Walden) (1969), Lost, 
> Lost, Lost (1976) and As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief 
> Glimpses of Beauty (2000), he culled bits from years of 16mm footage, 
> shot off-the-cuff with his Bolex while hanging with friends and family 
> and journeying the world through the realms of art and cinema, and 
> edited episodes together into epics that ponder the passage of time. 
> Given his accomplishments-- as one of the most important promoters of 
> American independent cinema, he helped create the Village Voice film 
> section, pioneering distributors The Film-Maker’s Co-op, Anthology 
> Film Archives, and Film Culture magazine-- Mekas' usual cr!  owd 
> happens to include many now-- legendary names: Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol, 
> the Kennedys, and Stan Brakhage are only among the most widely famous, 
> populating his screen along with a multitudinous who's who of the 
> history of experimental film.
>
> In 2007, Mekas took his filmmaking online, using his website 
> Jonasmekas.com as the platform for a project called 365 Films, posting 
> a new video each day for the entire year. Intended for "eye-pods" (as 
> his May 31 entry puts it), many of these tidbits are created from 
> now-archival film and video diaries years or decades old, while some 
> employ content shot only days prior to posting. This week, Anthology 
> Film Archives will screen a selection of the 365 Films theatrically as 
> part of its Mekas retrospective From Diaries to Downloads, allowing 
> viewers to sample the evolution of Mekas’ practice. The program will 
> include conversations with fellow filmmakers Peter Kubelka, Harmony 
> Korine and Ken Jacobs, trips to Apollonaire's old apartment building 
> and Nostradamus’s castle, Mekas flipping through fading Billy Graham 
> footage on a flatbed and vehemently defending Britney Spears from 
> reporters (posted months before Chris Crocker). Each daily dose is 
> under 10 minutes, and their effect is collective; a years' worth of 
> these forms a digital approximation of the monumental quality of his 
> long-form films.
>
> Some individual pieces stand out as substantial works in their own 
> right. On March 1, Mekas posted a remarkable diary shot in the 
> nosebleed seats of a Madonna concert. Created apparently in-camera in 
> a single swooping shot, traveling from the unheroic figures of the 
> singer and her dancers on a scuffed stage to the unreal images of 
> mega-sized video screens above her, the video becomes a compelling 
> exploration of scale and thereby a deft deflation of celebrity 
> apotheosis. Quickly made yet perfectly formed, this tiny work is 
> testament to the work of a filmmaker who has perfected the art of the 
> seemingly casual diary as a vehicle of precise expression. - Ed Halter
>
>  Image Credit: Jonas Mekas, March 1 (from 365 Films), 2007
>
> http://jonasmekas.com/
>
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