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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Most of my videos consist of fragments, one or two minutes long. They are haikus or sketches. I have thousands. Jonas Mekas Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
There is no other way to break the frozen cinematic conventions than through a complete derangement of the official cinematic senses. Jonas Mekas Read Quote
