TALK, JONAS MEKAS
[“I don’t really make films,
I just keep filming.” –JM]
To do, here,
a film, shown. There will be some questions.
Language is a very subtle instrument. Letters
know
junkies
of the constant sitting.
Now as I’m writing this,
acts of human spirit
small enough to see each other’s eyes
matter more than all.
Every film to be screened publicly had to be approved.
Know I have to share with others
any
special nothing special. I just had to do it.
Barry Alpert/ Silver Spring, MD US / 5-17-06 (7:43 PM)
Initially drafted during what I thought would be an in-person screening by
the 83-year old filmmaker and poet, but which turned out be an admittedly-
unprepared talk and reading, followed by a question and answer session. My
intuitive notation written in the dark the previous week during a
projection of his 16 mm films “Walden” and “Happy Birthday, John” never
cohered into a form I wanted to make public. In fact, that screening ended
by chance when the Hirshhorn Museum's projector broke. So I decided in
advance for this occasion to attempt an acrostic sonnet, especially since
an identical strategy had yielded a text I still liked, “Film, Jonas Mekas”
(www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=383), out of my first
viewing a few years ago of his 320-minute “As I Was Moving Ahead
Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses Of Beauty”.
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