Jonas Mekas: Diaries, Notes and Sketches - 8-DVD Box Set ( Diaries Notes and Sketches / Lost, Lost, Lost / Award Presentation to Andy Warhol / Film Magazine of the Arts / Cassis / Hare Krishna / Notes on the Circus / Report from Millbrook / Travel Songs / In Between / Notes for Jerome / Reminiscences of a Journey ) ( Diaries Notes and Sketches / Lost, Lost, Lost / Award Presentation to Andy Warhol / Film Magazine of the Arts / Cassis / Hare Krishna / Notes on the Circus / Report from Millbrook / Travel Songs / In Between / Notes for Jerome / Reminiscences of a Journey )

Jonas Mekas: Diaries, Notes and Sketches - 8-DVD Box Set (DVD) (*)

$89.99

Original Title: Diaries Notes and Sketches / Lost, Lost, Lost / Award Presentation to Andy Warhol / Film Magazine of the Arts / Cassis / Hare Krishna / Notes on the Circus / Report from Millbrook / Travel Songs / In Between / Notes for Jerome / Reminiscences of a Journey
Alternate Title: Diaries Notes and Sketches / Lost, Lost, Lost / Award Presentation to Andy Warhol / Film Magazine of the Arts / Cassis / Hare Krishna / Notes on the Circus / Report from Millbrook / Travel Songs / In Between / Notes for Jerome / Reminiscences of a Journey
Screened, competed or awarded at:
Other Film Festival Awards

Language Selections:
Chinese ( Subtitles )
English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )
English ( Subtitles )
French ( Subtitles )
German ( Subtitles )
Italian ( Subtitles )
Japanese ( Subtitles )
Korean ( Subtitles )
Spanish ( Subtitles )

Product Origin/Format:
France ( PAL/Region 0 )

Running Time:
1259 min

Aspect Ratio:
Fullscreen

Special Features:
Box Set
Collectors Edition
Interactive Menu
Multi-DVD Set
Posters
Scene Access
Special Edition
Booklet

Movie filmed in 1963-2015 and produced in:
Germany ( Germany, Central Europe )
United Kingdom ( Great Britain, Ireland )
United States ( USA, Canada )

Directed By:
Jonas Mekas

Written By:
Jonas Mekas

Actors:
Timothy Leary ..... Self
Ed Emshwiller ..... Self
Franz Fuenstler ..... Self
Peter Beard ..... Self
Ken Jacobs ..... Self
Jane Holzer ..... Self
Gerard Malanga ..... Self
Jonas Mekas ..... Self
Rabindranath Das ..... Self
Vamanadeva Das ..... Self
Barbara Rubin ..... Self
Julian Beck ..... Self
Noël Burch ..... Self
Madame Chaliapin ..... Self
Adolfas Mekas ..... Self
Pola Chapelle ..... Self
Peter Kubelka ..... Self
Oona Mekas ..... Self
Andy Warhol ..... Self
John Cale ..... Self
Allen Ginsberg ..... Self
George Maciunas
Jonas Mekas
Paul Krassner ..... Self
John Lennon ..... Self
Edith 'Little Edie' Bouvier Beale ..... Self
John Kennedy Jr. ..... Self
Caroline Kennedy ..... Self
Friedl Bondy ..... Self
James Broughton ..... Self
William S. Burroughs ..... Self
Angus MacLise ..... Narrator
Jonas Mekas ..... Self / Narrator
Jane Brakhage ..... Self
Stan Brakhage ..... Self

Synopsis:

Diaries Notes and Sketches: A chronogical about life including self, family, friend, couple and idol in 6 reels. Lost, Lost, Lost: Artist-writer-poet-filmmaker Jonas Mekas documents his early years building a life and discovering an arts community in New York. Award Presentation to Andy Warhol: In 1964 Film Culture magazine chose Andy Warhol for its annual Independent Film award. The plan was to show some of Andy's films and have Andy come on stage and hand him the award. Andy said, no, he didn't want a public presentation. Film Magazine of the Arts: 'In Spring, 1963 Show Magazine called me and asked that I make a film on arts in New York. I told them, why did they want me to make it - didn't they know I was a bit unusual? … 'We want something unusual,' they said. So I went out and made a newsreel on arts. Show people looked at the rough cut of the film and became very angry. 'But there is nothing about Show Magazine and DuPont fabrics in the movie,' they said. 'What has that to do with the arts in New York!' I said. The battle was short. The film was destroyed. Really, I have no idea what they did with it. This workprint of the first FILM MAGAZINE OF THE ARTS is the only print in existence, as far as I know.' Cassis: A camera is in a stationery position filming the lighthouse situated at the entrance of the harbor in Cassis, France. The resulting footage is shown time-lapsed, one day compressed into four minutes. The footage starts just before dawn and concludes just after night falls. The camera occasionally veers its focus out into the open water instead of on the lighthouse, showing the large number of sailboats offshore. The film primarily shows pleasure craft coming in and out of the harbor, the relatively still ocean water this day, and the pedestrians wandering around the lighthouse pier. Hare Krishna: Jonas Mekas's freewheeling camerawork leaves itself open to the possibility of a second Great Awakening in this impressionistic sketch of a Hare Krishna troupe taking to the streets. Later incorporated into WALDEN, this short stands as a fine example of Mekas' participatory approach to filming. - Max Goldberg. Notes on the Circus: The short film is a montage of sped up video clips of The Ringling Brothers Circus in action set to a musical track. The film is separated into four segments, each segment which focuses on different acts within the circus. The later segments often incorporate clips from earlier segments, mostly as background to the featured acts. The speed of the video clips match the tempo of the soundtrack music. Report from Millbrook: Jonas Mekas' elegant report on a Poughkeepsie police department's raid of Timothy Leary's base-of-operations amply demonstrates the political potential of his diary filmmaking. The film's protest is lodged in the disjunction between sound and image, with Mekas' intimate, idyllic footage of the Millbrook property undercutting audio of the sheriff's fear-mongering rationales. The interview was itself an act of subterfuge as East Village Other writer Bob Simmons posed as a buttoned-up reporter from the solidly mainstream Look to get his exclusive. As Simmons simply gives the sheriff enough rope to hang himself, Mekas' montage leaves the outrage to the audience. - Max Goldberg Travel Songs: Drawn together from two decades of itinerant shooting in Europe, Travel Songs evokes Jonas Mekas' improvisatory approach to sightseeing, with Assisi, Moscow and Stockholm all filtered through his singularly animated lens. Five different 'songs' or segments: footage from Avila (Spain), Stockholm, Moscow, Assisi, Italy. In Between: Footage from 1964-1968 that did not find its way into the Walden reels is joined in this classic period piece. Mostly centered in New York, it also includes travel footage and appearances by David Wise, Salvador Dali, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Smith, Shirley Clarke, Jane Holzer and more. Mel Lyman plays his banjo on the roof. Notes for Jerome: During the summer of 1966 Jonas Mekas spent two months in Cassis, as a guest of Jerome Hill. Mekas visited him briefly again in 1967, with P. Adams Sitney. The footage of this film comes from those two visits. Later, after Jerome died, Mekas visited his Cassis home in 1974. Footage of that visit constitutes the epilogue of the film. Other people appear in the film, all friends of Jerome. Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania: A film diary divided into three episodes. In the first part Jonas Mekas tells about his time as emigrant in New York in 1950s, after leaving the home country of Lithuania. The second part depicts his first trip back there, while the last is filmed during a stay in Vienna shortly afterwards. Paradise Not Yet Lost, or Oona's Third Year: The film is arranged in six chronologically-ordered parts, each filmed in a different location during Oona's third year. Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol: Friendships and Intersections: This intimate portrait of Andy Warhol pulls together a unique library of material shot by New York film legend Jonas Mekas. Spanning from 1963 to 1990, the film features a cast of counterculture icons including Allen Ginsberg, George Maciunas, John Lennon, and Yoko Ono, as well as John and Caroline Kennedy, and Lee Radziwill (Jackie Kennedy Onassis's sister and Warhol muse)-to whom Mekas dedicates the film. The film features footage from the Velvet Underground's first public performance. A portrait of the remarkable life of arguable the twentieth century's most famous artist and leading iconographer. Zefiro Torna or Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas: The life and work of Fluxus artist George Maciunas as seen in clips filmed between 1952 and 1978. Happy Birthday to John: On October 9th, 1972 an exhibition of John Lennon/Yoko Ono's art, designed by the Master of the Fluxus movement, George Maciunas, opened at the Syracuse Museum of Art, curated by David Ross, presently Director of Whitney Museum, in New York. On the same day an unusual group of John's and Yoko's friends, including Ringo, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Krasner, and many others, gathered to celebrate John's birthday. This film is an visual and audio record of that event. This Side of Paradise: Unpredictably, as most of my life's key events have been, for a period of several years of late sixties and early seventies, 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. The time was still very close to the untimely, tragic death of John F. Kennedy. Jackie wanted to give something to her children to do, to help to ease the transition, life without a father. One of her thoughts was that a movie camera would be fun for children. Peter Beard, who was at that time tutoring John Jr. and Caroline in art history, suggested to Jackie that I was the man to introduce the children to cinema. Jackie said yes. And that's how it all began. Out-Takes from the Life of a Happy Man: 'A motion picture composed of brief diaristic scenes not used in completed films from the years 1960-2000; and self-referential video footage taped during the editing. Brief glimpses of family, friends, girl-friends, the City, seasons of the year, travels. Occasionally I talk, reminisce, or play music I taped during those earlier years, plus more recent piano improvisations by Auguste Varkalis. It's a kind of autobiographical, diaristic poem, celebration of happiness and life. I consider myself a happy man.' Quartet Number One: Around 1995 I began to worry about the huge amount of unedited footage that I had on my shelves. I had to do something with it before it begins to fade. One idea was to begin to edit it all in form of quartets. This quartet was my first try in that direction. I was not to happy with it and did not continue the project. Instead, I began working on a much bigger idea which resulted in AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD OCCASIONALLY I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY. - Jonas Mekas Cinema Is Not 100 Years Old: The real history of the cinema is the invisible history - history of friends getting together doing the thing the love - for us the cinema is beginning with every new buzz of the projector. With every new buzz of our cameras our hearts jump forwards, my friends! ?Jonas Mekas Song of Avignon: 'Reflections on my 1966 trip to Avignon that helped me to survive a deep crisis I was going through. Texts from my diaries of that period on the soundtrack are read by Angus MacLise.' A fairy tale from the old days: The title comes from a poem of a German poet, Heine. The 9/11 event was so beyond my comprehension - you can understand and react to a death of one, or two persons‚ but I could not react to the death of 2500 people - it was an abstraction, a fairy tale - that's why I framed my 9/11 film (shot from my roof) with the fairytale, with the image watching this story, the story of 9/11. Like any other fairy tale coming from the past - by this girl this child dreaming, listening, and dreaming about the tales coming from the past. ?Jonas Mekas. A Letter to Penny Arcade: I made this video June 23, 2001, as a letter for my good friend Penny Arcade who some days earlier had asked me why I love New York. I truly love New York! This letter to Penny Arcade is my love letter to New York. Williamsburg, Brooklyn: Shot in 1950 upon arriving in America, Mekas did not edit and present the footage until 2003 making this both his first and last film shot on 16mm. Silence Please: 'Made for a billboard project in Luxembourg, a project that never became reality, this video is an exercise in silence and sound.' - Jonas Mekas. My Bolexes: Jonas Mekas shows us the five Bolex cameras that he used to make all his films, 1950-2000. They also helped other filmmakers (Jack Smith, Gregory Markopoulos, Naomi Levine…). 'I'm on my fifth Bolex now. They survive for one decade, then the springs retire'. As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty: Director Jonas Mekas provides an intimate glimpse of his personal life by constructing a feature length narrative from over 30 years of private home movie footage.

This product was added to our catalog on Saturday 15 October, 2022.