Synopsis
Film critic and experimental filmmaker Jonas Mekas has been a central figure in the New York avant-garde almost since arriving there from Lithuania soon after the end of World War II. He documented and was associated with the Fluxus movement, Warhol's Factory, and the Living Theater, and as the founder of the Filmmaker's Co-Op and Anthology Film Archives he has been a tireless and essential advocate of avant-garde film and performance. During all this time he has never been without his Bolex camera, which he has used to write a long, intimate film from which the photograms in Just Like a Shadow were extracted. As Mekas himself sees it: "The cinema is nothing but a photogram, one single photogram!" And indeed the cinematic quality of this collection is unmistakable. Journeying through Mekas' story, we encounter a great many of Mekas' fascinating friends, such as Andy Warhol, Nam June Paik, Robert Frank, the Kennedy family, Salvador Dali, Yoko Ono and John Lennon, Nico, Gerard Malanga, Allen Ginsberg, Henri Langlois, Stan Brakhage, Jack Kerouac, Lou Reed, Miles Davis, and many others, witnessing all those moments, happy or not, which he captured with his camera and his irreverent eye.
Reviews
As editor of Film Culture and founder of the Anthology Film Archives, and through his own films, Mekas shaped an art form that had a wide influence on mainstream movies, video art, and web design. His own works are visual diaries in a staccato style, fully edited within the camera. This book consists solely of about 150 pages of enlarged frames from Mekas's films, along with a brief interview in which the 78-year-old Lithuanian-born artist reflects on his career. Presented as static images, the frame blowups at times resemble fuzzier, less-evocative iterations of Cindy Sherman's pictures. There are numerous familiar faces repeated throughout (John and Yoko, Taylor Mead, Lee Radziwill, and, ad nauseum, Andy Warhol), the cumulative effect of which isAsomewhat inaccuratelyAto circumscribe Mekas within very specific cultural terrain and make this book little more than a scrapbook. At best, this book lets film/video artists see a little of an early master's films; at worst, it's a record of some pretty unmemorable imagery and a catalog of Mekas's circle of friends during his relatively brief heyday. Useful only for those libraries specializing in film or video art.ADouglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., CA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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