Jonas Mekas Quotes & Sayings

When I came to New York in 1949, there was already an entire fresh avant-garde film movement blooming in New York and California. It was a very, very exciting period! — Jonas Mekas

Suddenly the intermedia shows are all over town..Theirs remains the most dramatic expression of the contemporary generation. The place where its needs and desperations are most dramatically split open. At the Plastic Inevitable it is All Here and Now and the Future. — Jonas Mekas

An adventurer can always return home; an exile cannot. So I decided that my home would be culture. — Jonas Mekas

Some cameras are heavier and need to be on tripods. Others are small enough to hide in your pocket. There are places where you don't want to feel like you are disturbing anything, so I may use a camera like that. — Jonas Mekas

My films are the celebration of reality, of life, of my friends, of actual daily life that passes and is gone tomorrow. We don't pay attention to it when it happens. — Jonas Mekas

To me, cinema is cinema. Cinema is one big tree with many branches. The same as literature. In literature, you don't just say, 'Oh, I bought some literature.' No, you say, 'I bought a novel' by so-and-so, or a book of essays by so-and-so. — Jonas Mekas

I myself saw the great works of Western civilization for the first time in my high school in Lithuania in bad black-and-white reproductions on miserable paper. That was, for many years, what art was for me. But from those miserable black-and-white reproductions, I got something, something unmistakable. — Jonas Mekas

My life is essentially not so unique. On some deeper levels we feel the same, we know the same things. Therefore if I show my life 365 days, moments from those days, it will reflect and it will have connection with lives of all of us. — Jonas Mekas

We need less perfect but more free films. — Jonas Mekas

It is important to know that what I do is not artistic. I am just a film-maker. I live how I live and I do what I do, which is recording moments of my life as I move ahead. And I do it because I am compelled to. Necessity, not artistry, is the true line you can follow in my life and work. — Jonas Mekas

We are the measure of all things.
And the beauty of our creation, of our art
is proportional to the beauty of ourselves
of our souls. — Jonas Mekas

The pain is stronger than ever. I've seen bit of lost Paradises and I know I'll be hopelessly tryng tu return even if it hurts. The deeper I swing into the regions of nothingness the further I'm thrown back into myself, each time more and more frightening depths below me, until my very being becomes dizzy. There are brief glimpses of clear sky, like falling out of a tree, so I have some idea where I'm going, but there is still too much clarity and straight order of things, I am getting always the same number somehow. So I vomit out broken bits of words and sintaxes of the countries I've passed through, broken limbs, slaughtered houses, geographies. My heart is poisoned, my brain left in shreds of horror and sadness. I've never let you down, world, but you did lousy things to me.
(from "As I was moving ahead occasionally I saw brief glimpses of beauty", 2000) — Jonas Mekas

Yes, I got my first Bolex camera a few weeks after being dropped in New York by the United Nations Refugee Organization. That was on October 29th, 1949. With my brother Adolfas, we wanted to make a film about displaced persons, how one feels being uprooted from one's home. — Jonas Mekas

I 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 Mekas

And I sit here alone and far from you and it's night and I'm reflecting on everything all around me and I am thinking of you. I saw it in your eyes, in your love, you too are swinging towards the depths of your own being in longer and longer circles. I saw happiness and pain in your eyes and reflections of the paradises lost and regained and lost again, that terrible loneliness and happiness, yes, and I reflect upon this and I think about you.
(from As I Was Moving Ahead I Occasionally Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, 2000) — Jonas Mekas

I'm not so much in the future as always in the present. The future always takes care of itself. What I do now with my video camera, it can only record what is happening now. I am celebrating reality and the essence of the moment. And that's the greatest challenge that I have. — Jonas Mekas

I had the fortune to spend some time, mostly during the summers, with Jackie Kennedy's and her sister Lee Radziwill's families and children. Cinema was an integral, inseparable, as a matter of fact, a key part of our friendship. — Jonas Mekas

In 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 Mekas

In the very end, civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets. — Jonas Mekas

I am very active on the Internet. In 2007, I made one film every day and posted it on my website. That was a 365-day project, really exhausting, but I still put a lot of stuff on - from life, friends, my own life. — Jonas Mekas

For an artist, to be normal is a disaster — Jonas Mekas

I began writing poetry when I was about 10. Bad poetry, but you start with bad poetry. — Jonas Mekas

Once 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

As a film-maker and a poet, I feel it's my duty to be an eye and an antenna to what's happening around me. I always felt a solidarity with those who are desperate and confused and misused and are seeking a way out of it. — Jonas Mekas

You have the possibility to give light a dimension in time. — Jonas Mekas

I'm not an abstract artist; I leave that to others. To me, abstract art ended with Kazimir Malevich's 'Black Square.' To continue it is senseless. — Jonas Mekas

In narrative cinema, a certain terminology has already been established: 'film noir,' 'Western,' even 'Spaghetti Western.' When we say 'film noir' we know what we are talking about. But in non-narrative cinema, we are a little bit lost. So sometimes, the only way to make us understand what we are talking about is to use the term 'avant-garde.' — Jonas Mekas

Since 1950 I have been keeping a film diary. I have been walking around with my Bolex and reacting to the immediate reality: situations, friends, New York, seasons of the year. On some days I shoot ten frames, on others ten seconds, still on others ten minutes. Or I shoot nothing. Walden contains material from the years 1964-1968 strung together in chronological order. — Jonas Mekas

I'm working in a form of cinema that can be described, and has been described, as a diaristic form of cinema. In other words, with material from my own life. I walk through life with my camera, and occasionally I film. I never think about scripts, never think about films, making films. — Jonas Mekas

In a meadow full of flowers, you cannot walk through and breathe those smells and see all those colors and remain angry. We have to support the beauty, the poetry, of life. — Jonas Mekas

The deeper I went into culture, the more confused I got. So I needed something more real. I said, "Okay, from now on, my country will be cinema." — Jonas Mekas

The nature of the video camera really makes you focus on the present. Since I have always been a diarist filmmaker, not one who stages scenes with actors, it has always been about the present moment. — Jonas Mekas

Seek the insignificant small but essential qualities, essential to life — Jonas Mekas

There is no other way to break the frozen cinematic conventions than through a complete derangement of the official cinematic senses. — Jonas Mekas

In Lithuania, I am known as a poet, and they don't care about my cinema. In Europe, they don't know my poetry; in Europe, I am a filmmaker. But here, in the United States, I am only a maverick! — Jonas Mekas

Most of my videos consist of fragments, one or two minutes long. They are haikus or sketches. I have thousands. — Jonas Mekas

I missed my teenage years. I was never a teenager. — Jonas Mekas

Place means nothing to me. I can be at home anywhere. — Jonas Mekas

I live, therefore I make films. I make film, therefore I live. Life. Movement. I make home movies, therefore I live. I live, therefore I make home movies. — Jonas Mekas

I have never been able, really, to figure out where my life begins and where it ends. I have never, never been able to figure it all out, what it's all about, what it all means. — Jonas Mekas

I brought Yoko Ono to New York and gave her her first job there. I was editing a magazine called 'Film Culture.' — Jonas Mekas

For me, to catch, to celebrate the reality and life and friends and everything around me the very moment it happens - that's what is, that's what I'm possessed by. — Jonas Mekas

I'm a filmmaker, but my working procedures are different. All my basic structuring is done during the filming. You know, how long I keep the shot, the exposure or the speed - slower or faster, etc. That's structuring. And then there is a second stage of structuring that comes later when I begin to put those pieces together. — Jonas Mekas

Just 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 Mekas