In Lithuania, I am known as a poet, and they donโt care about my cinema. In Europe they donโt know my poetry; in Europe, I am a filmmaker. But here, in the United States, I am only a maverick!
Jonas MekasIn 1962, we created the Filmmakers' Co-Op because nobody wanted to distribute our films. If we had the Internet in those days, we wouldn't have needed the Co-Op.
Jonas MekasJust as in writing, there are novelistic and sort of pedestrian ways of telling a story, to write a postcard with your little pocket camera and put it on websites. I think that's where the most exciting kind of imagery and content is being recorded and exchanged today.
Jonas MekasI always work only with friends, but it must be about them and myself. Because I film only very personal moments, nothing preplanned, staged or written, it has to be real and spontaneous. Some of them have become famous, some are not yet famous, some will never be famous. But they are all my friends.
Jonas MekasOnce you change the technology - from a film camera to a video camera, or from an 8-mm camera to 16 mm - you change completely the content. With 8 mm, a leaf on a tree will be made up of maybe four grains. So it's very impressionistic, almost like Seurat. If you switch to 16 mm, the technology gives you hundreds of grains on that leaf.
Jonas Mekas