Jonas Mekas – Filming memories (78/135)

To listen to more of Jonas Mekas’s stories, go to the playlist:    • Jonas Mekas (Film-maker)   Jonas Mekas (1922-2019), Lithuanian-born poet, philosopher and film-maker, has made hundreds of films and set up the Anthology Film Archive. He emigrated to American in 1949 where he earned the title of 'the godfather of American avant-garde cinema'. [Listener: Amy Taubin; date recorded: 2003] TRANSCRIPT: Journalists, writers come along to me or Ken Jacobs or somebody and says, okay, now tell us something about the '60s. So, you know, the remark, one of the remarks that I keep repeating was what Ken Jacobs said to one of those journalists,'The '60? Really, there were '60s? I did not know there were '60s'. Because we just lived and did our work. We did not know that all that will be, any of it will become history of any importance. So, I mean, I still, when I film, when I tape, I'm just doing it for myself, not for history. You know, we're talking about history now, you know, when everybody is asking, do you have footage on Nico or do you have this, I regret that I did not film; I just filmed like a minute or so. I filmed more of Warhol or some other people that I spent more time with. But you know... because we did not know that it will be history, it was our lives. No, history does not come into it. What comes in is my own memory of my own... and I would say that the most influential invisible memories that affect everything that I do, comes from my childhood. And I think that is the same, I believe, case with everybody. I think it's the first 10 years that determine what we are, what we do and how we do it, maybe even before 10. And it effects, why I film, that maybe there was a colour that I remember, that suddenly comes and I'm not aware of that, that somewhere or some... something else there, some detail that I film, that you have to be very sort of open and ready. And that's part of it.