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"There’s a live-wire spontaneity to Mekas’s writing, an excitement sparked by his sense of beauty, by his sheer pleasure in cinematic imagination, and it’s connected to a soulful sense of inwardness and empathy. --The New Yorker
ABOUT THE ARTIST: Jonas Mekas (b. 1922, Lithuania) is the quintessential New York downtown artist. Often called the Godfather of American avant-garde cinema, he co-founded of the Anthology Film Archives, the premiere repository of avant-garde film. He continues to make film diaries well into his nineties, and grows more and more famous with his age.
ABOUT THE BOOK: Staring in 1958 Mekas wrote a weekly column called Movie Journal for the Village Voice. This book brings together published and unpublished texts from this column and up through to 2010. The book includes interviews with Judith Malina & Julian Beck (The Living Theatre), Pier Paolo Pasolini, Richard Foreman, Susan Sontag, Hermann Nitsch, Peter Kubelka, Nam June Paik, John Lennon & Yoko Ono.
"There’s a live-wire spontaneity to Mekas’s writing, an excitement sparked by his sense of beauty, by his sheer pleasure in cinematic imagination, and it’s connected to a soulful sense of inwardness and empathy." –The New Yorker
Andy Warhol, Susan Sontag, John Lennon & Yoko Ono — Jonas Mekas was well acquainted with a great many New York artists. Born in Lithuania, he came to Brooklyn via Germany in 1949 and began shooting his first experimental films there. Mekas developed a form of film diary in which he recorded his daily observations. He became the barometer of the New York art scene and a pioneer of American avant-garde cinema. Every week, starting in 1958 he published his legendary Movie Journal column in the Village Voice, writing on a range of subjects that were by no means restricted to the world of film. He conducted numerous interviews with artists, some of which will now appear for the first time in his Scrapbook of a Diarist. The book contains published and unpublished texts that reveal Mekas as a thoughtful diarist and an unparalleled chronicler of the day — a phenomenon that has continued now for over fifty years.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Jonas Mekas: Scrapbook of the Sixties.'
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FORMAT: Pbk, 6.5 x 8.5 in. / 450 pgs / 88 color / 130 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $35.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $49.95 ISBN: 9783959050333 PUBLISHER: Spector Books AVAILABLE: 2/1/2015 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA LA AFR ME
Jonas Mekas: Scrapbook of the Sixties Writings 1954–2010
Published by Spector Books. Edited by Anne König.
"There’s a live-wire spontaneity to Mekas’s writing, an excitement sparked by his sense of beauty, by his sheer pleasure in cinematic imagination, and it’s connected to a soulful sense of inwardness and empathy." –The New Yorker
Andy Warhol, Susan Sontag, John Lennon & Yoko Ono — Jonas Mekas was well acquainted with a great many New York artists. Born in Lithuania, he came to Brooklyn via Germany in 1949 and began shooting his first experimental films there. Mekas developed a form of film diary in which he recorded his daily observations. He became the barometer of the New York art scene and a pioneer of American avant-garde cinema. Every week, starting in 1958 he published his legendary Movie Journal column in the Village Voice, writing on a range of subjects that were by no means restricted to the world of film. He conducted numerous interviews with artists, some of which will now appear for the first time in his Scrapbook of a Diarist. The book contains published and unpublished texts that reveal Mekas as a thoughtful diarist and an unparalleled chronicler of the day — a phenomenon that has continued now for over fifty years.
