Conversations with Filmmakers. Jonas Mekas

In 1949, Lithuanian Jonas Mekas arrived in Brooklyn via Germany and began making films. Mekas developed the genre of the film diary, documenting his observations day by day. He gained fame as a tuning fork of the New York art scene and the founder of American avant-garde cinema. From 1958 to 1977, he wrote a weekly column, “Film Journal,” in the Village Voice newspaper, which consisted of numerous interviews with filmmakers from around the world. “Conversations with Filmmakers” is the first complete collection of these interviews with Mekas’ friends and acquaintances from the film industry in one publication. Mekas also made video recordings of the conversations, later choosing a single still frame or photo with his interlocutors to illustrate the interviews. The collection of texts is complemented by correspondence and excerpts from the scripts for the films mentioned in the interview, and the book concludes with a list of people who appear on the pages of the publication.

In the book you will find conversations between Jonas Mekas and Storm de Hirsch, Louis Brigante, Andy Warhol, Nico Papatakis, Albert and David Maysles, Peter Kubelka, Agnes Varda, Harry Smith, John Cassavetes, Stan Brekage, etc.