A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

The time structure of that film is very complex. The first part opens with the end of your period of uprootedness. Then it goes back to the earliest part of your American experience. In the second part a similar thing happens: by visiting Lithuania, you're simultaneously moving forward in terms of your personal development, and going back to the time, or at least the place, where you were before the 1950 material. In the third part your life with your American cultural familyKen and Flo Jacobs, Annette Michelsoncontinues, and you visit Kremsmuenster, a centuries-old center for the maintenance of culture.

Mekas:

That developed organically. It's not that I sat and thought about time or about the past. I went directly to Austria from Lithuania; that's the way the footage was shot also. Originally I thought I would just use the Lithuanian material, but as I thought more about it, I liked the way the Austrian material complicated everything. Then I decided to complicate it further, give it more angles, more directions, by adding the Brooklyn section. Later I added some Hamburg footage. It just devel-

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Elzbieta Mekas, mother of Jonas and Adolfas Mekas, in

Reminiscences

of a Journey to Lithuania

 (1972).

oped as I worked on it. Time became very integral, time and culture. Culture, as represented by Kubelka, Jacobs, Annette, [Hermann] Nitsch, had become my home. It was clear already at that time that there was no going back to Lithuania for me.

MacDonald:

Your mother is spectacular in that film.

Mekas:

She's still in very good shape. She's ninety-six now [Elzbieta Mekas died on January 12, 1983, at the age of ninety-seven].

MacDonald: Notes for Jerome

has a very different kind of organization than the other films. It's more involved with a specific place, Jerome Hill's environment in Cassis. Was that material made intermittently during this period?

Mekas:

The whole film is about forty-five minutes long. Thirty-eight minutes or so are from the 1966 trip. There's also about three minutes from the trip the following year. Ten years later, in 1977, I made another visit. I used about two minutes of that footage.

MacDonald:

There's a very different use of intertitles. Sometimes they're repeated and become motifs.

Mekas:

In all the other diary volumes most of the titles are used very factually to describe what will be coming up. In this film many of the titles are not descriptive. They make statements which are not connected with any image. I was experimenting with a different use of titles.

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MacDonald:

The sound is different too. There's no narration.

Mekas:

There's very little of my voice, maybe because I did a lot of taping there and had enough other sounds.

MacDonald:

Were you drawn to Cassis just because of the friendship with Jerome Hill?

Mekas:

Jerome Hill had a little outdoor theater there on the shore of the Mediterranean. Usually he brought over some musicians, like the Julliard Quartet. But in 1966 he persuaded the city of Cassis to cosponsorhe sponsored part of it himselfthe Living Theater's production of

Frankenstein

. A special theater was built outdoors for the performance. Jerome wanted somebody to record the event; I agreed to help him. I filmed

Frankenstein

and

The Mysteries. Frankenstein

was the greatest performance I have ever seen. Not the one that was brought to New York, but the one in Cassis.

MacDonald:

Was the

Cassis

section in

Walden

done at another time?

Mekas:

That was done in 1966.

MacDonald:

Is

Paradise Not Yet Lost

finished, or is it part of a larger film?

Mekas:

I am not sure. I have been thinking of changing it. I may make it into a two-screen film.

MacDonald:

Is the amount of material that you have for all the other years similar to what you had for

Paradise Not Yet Lost

? That's a pretty big film.

Mekas:

I have as much material from every year. There is a whole Cincinnati film.

MacDonald:

Cincinnati?

Mekas:

Yes. I stayed there for a while. Also, I spent a lot of time around Jackie Kennedy's and Lee Radziwill's children. I have a lot of footage from that period.

MacDonald:

How did that come about?

Mekas: