Quotes by Jonas Mekas - Page 1 | QuoteForever

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For an artist, to be normal is a disaster
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Artist
Disaster
Normal
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We need less perfect but more free films.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Film
Needs
Perfect
Free
Less
Films
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I missed my teenage years. I was never a teenager.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Teenage
Teenager
Years
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Place means nothing to me. I can be at home anywhere.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Home
I Can
Mean
Anywhere
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You have the possibility to give light a dimension in time.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Dimensions
Giving
Light
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Seek the insignificant small but essential qualities, essential to life
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Quality
Essentials
Insignificant
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I make home movies-therefore I live. I live - therefore I make home movies.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
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I began writing poetry when I was about 10. Bad poetry, but you start with bad poetry.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Writing
Writing Poetry
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An adventurer can always return home; an exile cannot. So I decided that my home would be culture.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Home
Culture
Would Be
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In the very end, civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Civilization
Poet
Politician
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I brought Yoko Ono to New York and gave her her first job there. I was editing a magazine called Film Culture.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Jobs
New York
Editing
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Most of my videos consist of fragments, one or two minutes long. They are haikus or sketches. I have thousands.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Fragments
Long
Two
Video
Consist
Sketches
Thousands
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I brought Yoko Ono to New York and gave her her first job there. I was editing a magazine called 'Film Culture.'
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Editing
First Job
Magazine
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We are the measure of all things. And the beauty of our creation, of our art is proportional to the beauty of ourselves of our souls.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Art
Creation
Soul
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There is no other way to break the frozen cinematic conventions than through a complete derangement of the official cinematic senses.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Break
Cinematic
Conventions
Frozen
Senses
Way
Complete
Official
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The deeper I went into culture, the more confused I got. So I needed something more real. I said, "Okay, from now on, my country will be cinema."
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Confused
Country
Real
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I'm not an abstract artist; I leave that to others. To me, abstract art ended with Kazimir Malevich's 'Black Square.' To continue it is senseless.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Art
Abstract
Abstract Art
Black
Squares
Ended
Senseless
Square
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I live, therefore I make films. I make film, therefore I live. Life. Movement. I make home movies, therefore I live. I live, therefore I make home movies.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Home
Film
Live Life
Movement
Life Home Movies
Films
Therefore
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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 / Filmmaker
Film
Internet
Needed
Distribute
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For me, to catch, to celebrate the reality and life and friends and everything around me the very moment it happens - that's what is, that's what I'm possessed by.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Celebrate
Moments
Reality
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My films are the celebration of reality, of life, of my friends, of actual daily life that passes and is gone tomorrow. We don't pay attention to it when it happens.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Attention
Pay
Reality
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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 / Filmmaker
Avant Garde
Blooming
California
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In a meadow full of flowers you cannot walk through and breathe those smells and see all those colors and remain angry. We have to support the beauty, the poetry of life.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Color
Flower
Smell
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In a meadow full of flowers, you cannot walk through and breathe those smells and see all those colors and remain angry. We have to support the beauty, the poetry, of life.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Beauty
Poetry
Angry
Breathe
Support
Those
You
Cannot
Through
Flowers
Colors
Full
Walk
Meadow
Remain
See
Smells
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I have never been able, really, to figure out where my life begins and where it ends. I have never, never been able to figure it all out, what it's all about, what it all means.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Ends
Life My Life Never
Life Where My Life
Begins
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In Lithuania, I am known as a poet, and they don’t care about my cinema. In Europe they don’t know my poetry; in Europe, I am a filmmaker. But here, in the United States, I am only a maverick!
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Care
Europe
United States
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In Lithuania, I am known as a poet, and they don't care about my cinema. In Europe, they don't know my poetry; in Europe, I am a filmmaker. But here, in the United States, I am only a maverick!
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Care
Cinema
Don't Care
Filmmaker
States
United States
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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 / Filmmaker
Cameras
Filmmaker
Focus
Present Moment
Video
Scenes
Stages
Video Camera
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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 / Filmmaker
Cameras
Disturbing
Needs
Pockets
Heavier
Hide
Pocket
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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 / Filmmaker
Active
Exhausting
Film
Internet
Stuff
Website
Posted
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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 / Filmmaker
Antenna
Confused
Desperate
Eye
Misused
Poet
Seeking
Solidarity
Way
Happening
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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.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Children
Keys
Summer
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My life is essentially not so unique. On some deeper levels we feel the same, we know the same things. Therefore if I show my life 365 days, moments from those days, it will reflect and it will have connection with lives of all of us.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Connections
Deeper
Levels
Moments
Unique
Life Will My Life
Connection
Essentially
Reflect
Same Things
Therefore
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To me, cinema is cinema. Cinema is one big tree with many branches. The same as literature. In literature, you don't just say, 'Oh, I bought some literature.' No, you say, 'I bought a novel' by so-and-so, or a book of essays by so-and-so.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Branches
Cinema
Essays
Literature
Tree
Bought
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Suddenly the intermedia shows are all over town..Theirs remains the most dramatic expression of the contemporary generation. The place where its needs and desperations are most dramatically split open. At the Plastic Inevitable it is All Here and Now and the Future.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Expression
Generations
Needs
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Just as in writing, there are novelistic and sort of pedestrian ways of telling a story, to write a postcard with your little pocket camera and put it on websites. I think that's where the most exciting kind of imagery and content is being recorded and exchanged today.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Thinking
Today
Writing
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Yes, I got my first Bolex camera a few weeks after being dropped in New York by the United Nations Refugee Organization. That was on October 29th, 1949. With my brother Adolfas, we wanted to make a film about displaced persons, how one feels being uprooted from one's home.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
New York
Home
Brother
Feels
Nations
October
Organization
Persons
Refugee
United Nations
Weeks
Camera
Displaced
Dropped
Uprooted
Yes
York
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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 / Filmmaker
Care
Challenges
Essence
Reality
Video
Greatest
Camera
Celebrating
Challenge
Itself
Greatest Challenge
Happening
Record
Moment
Present
Takes
Video Camera
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I'm working in a form of cinema that can be described, and has been described, as a diaristic form of cinema. In other words, with material from my own life. I walk through life with my camera, and occasionally I film. I never think about scripts, never think about films, making films.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Cameras
Cinema
Scripts
Thinking
Camera
In Other Words
Material
Occasionally
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It is important to know that what I do is not artistic. I am just a film-maker. I live how I live and I do what I do, which is recording moments of my life as I move ahead. And I do it because I am compelled to. Necessity, not artistry, is the true line you can follow in my life and work.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Artistry
Compelled
Moments
Life Work I Am
Ahead
Follow
Line
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I always work only with friends, but it must be about them and myself. Because I film only very personal moments, nothing preplanned, staged or written, it has to be real and spontaneous. Some of them have become famous, some are not yet famous, some will never be famous. But they are all my friends.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Famous
Film
Moments
Real
Spontaneous
Work Myself Always
Work Famous Myself
All My Friends
Be Real
Staged
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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 / Filmmaker
Civilization
Miserable
Paper
Western
Western Civilization
Time Art Great
Art Time Great
Unmistakable
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I'm a filmmaker, but my working procedures are different. All my basic structuring is done during the filming. You know, how long I keep the shot, the exposure or the speed - slower or faster, etc. That's structuring. And then there is a second stage of structuring that comes later when I begin to put those pieces together.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Etc
Exposure
Faster
Filmmaker
Long
Procedures
Speed
Stage
Together
Begin
Basic
Shot
Filming
Working
Later
Second
Slower
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Once you change the technology - from a film camera to a video camera, or from an 8-mm camera to 16 mm - you change completely the content. With 8 mm, a leaf on a tree will be made up of maybe four grains. So it's very impressionistic, almost like Seurat. If you switch to 16 mm, the technology gives you hundreds of grains on that leaf.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Technology
Film
Giving
Made
Tree
Video
Almost
Content
Camera
Gives
Grains
Hundreds
Leaf
Maybe
Switch
Video Camera
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In narrative cinema, a certain terminology has already been established: 'film noir,' 'Western,' even 'Spaghetti Western.' When we say 'film noir' we know what we are talking about. But in non-narrative cinema, we are a little bit lost. So sometimes, the only way to make us understand what we are talking about is to use the term 'avant-garde.'
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
Avant Garde
Cinema
Film Noir
Little Bit
Narrative
Noir
Spaghetti
Term
Terminology
Western
Established
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Since 1950 I have been keeping a film diary. I have been walking around with my Bolex and reacting to the immediate reality: situations, friends, New York, seasons of the year. On some days I shoot ten frames, on others ten seconds, still on others ten minutes. Or I shoot nothing. Walden contains material from the years 1964-1968 strung together in chronological order.
Jonas Mekas / Filmmaker
New York
Order
Reality
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