I Seem to Live. The New York Diaries, 1950 – 2011

by Jonas Mekas (Artist)

I Seem to Live. The New York Diaries, 1950 - 2011 is Jonas Mekas’s key literary work. The first volume of this magnum opus, covering the period from 1950-69, appears posthumously one year after his death. It stands on an equal footing with his cinematic oeuvre, which he initially developed together with his brother Adolfas after their arrival in New York. In 1954, the two brothers founded Film Culture magazine, and in 1958 Jonas began writing a weekly column for The Village Voice. It was in this period that his writing, films, and unflagging commitment to art began to establish him as a pioneer of American avant-garde cinema and the barometer of the New York art scene.

Genres: Film, Diary, Nonfiction

824 pages, Hardcover

Published February 11, 2020

About the author

Jonas Mekas is a Lithuanian-American filmmaker, poet and artist who has often been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema." His work has been exhibited in museums and festivals world-wide.

In 1944, Mekas left Lithuania because of war. En route, his train was stopped in Germany and he and his brother, Adolfas Mekas (1925–2011), were imprisoned in a labor camp in Elmshorn, a suburb of Hamburg, for eight months. The brothers escaped and were detained near the Danish border where they hid on a farm for two months until the end of the war. After the war, Mekas lived in displaced person camps in Wiesbaden and Kassel. From 1946 to 1948, he studied philosophy at the University of Mainz and at the end of 1949, he emigrated with his brother to the U.S., settling in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. Two weeks after his arrival, he borrowed the money to buy his first Bolex 16mm camera and began to record moments of his life. He discovered avant-garde film at venues such as Amos Vogel’s pioneering Cinema 16, and he began curating avant-garde film screenings at Gallery East on Avenue A and Houston Street, and a Film Forum series at Carl Fisher Auditorium on 57th Street.

In 1954, together with his brother Adolfas Mekas, he founded Film Culture, and in 1958, began writing his “Movie Journal” column for The Village Voice. In 1962, he co-founded Film-Makers' Cooperative and the Filmmakers' Cinematheque in 1964, which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives, one of the world’s largest and most important repositories of avant-garde film. He was part of the New American Cinema, with, in particular, fellow film-maker Lionel Rogosin. He was a close collaborator with artists such as Andy Warhol, Nico, Allen Ginsberg, Yoko Ono, John Lennon, Salvador Dalí, and fellow Lithuanian George Maciunas.

In 1964, Mekas was arrested on obscenity charges for showing Flaming Creatures (1963) and Jean Genet’s Un Chant d’Amour (1950). He launched a campaign against the censorship board, and for the next few years continued to exhibit films at the Film-makers’ Cinemathèque, the Jewish Museum, and the Gallery of Modern Art. From 1964 to 1967, he organized the New American Cinema Expositions, which toured Europe and South America and in 1966 joined 80 Wooster Fluxhouse Coop.

In 1970, Anthology Film Archives opened on 425 Lafayette Street as a film museum, screening space, and a library, with Mekas as its director. Mekas, along with Stan Brakhage, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, James Broughton, and P. Adams Sitney, began the ambitious Essential Cinema project at Anthology Film Archives to establish a canon of important cinematic works.

As a film-maker, Mekas' own output ranges from his early narrative film (Guns of the Trees, 1961) to “diary films” such as Walden (1969); Lost, Lost, Lost (1975); Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972), Zefiro Torna (1992), and As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, which have been screened extensively at festivals and museums around the world.

Mekas expanded the scope of his practice with his later works of multi-monitor installations, sound immersion pieces and "frozen-film" prints. Together they offer a new experience of his classic films and a novel presentation of his more recent video work. His work has been exhibited at the 51st Venice Biennial, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, the Ludwig Museum, the Serpentine Gallery, and the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center.

In the year 2007, Mekas released one film every day on his website, a project he entitled "The 365 Day Project."[2] Since the 1970s, he has taught film courses at the New School for Social Research, MIT, Cooper Union, and New York University.

Mekas is also a well-known Lithuanian language poet and has published his poems and prose in Lithuanian, French, German, and English. He has published many of his journals and diaries including "I Had Nowhere to Go: Diaries, 1944–1954," and "Letters from Nowhere,

Reviews

[Carson Q · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you for everything

[Antonio Fungairino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mekas was a beautiful soul in many ways- it's sad to see him so bogged down by the financial and civil bureaucracy that still plagues American filmmakers today. At the same time, I was moved by his passion for cinema and his indefatigable nature. He never stopped pushing. This was not only an intimate window into the daily struggles of a great artist, but a great introduction to the American avant-garde scene of the 60s! Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, Shirley Clarke, Kenneth Anger, Yoko Ono, Stan Brakhage, the Velvet Underground, and many many more. Really cool. An epic, expansive book.

[Fidelia Regina · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We say we ’shoot’ a picture. There's this connection with the gun somehow. But you could also imagine, if you want, that the camera is sending you 24 kisses per second.”

[Lina · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me, Jonas Mekas is first and foremost a poet and a writer. Although his diaries cover nearly two decades of the rise of avant-garde and underground cinema—one of the reasons he is often called the godfather of American avant-garde cinema—I primarily enjoyed his writings for their sincerity, wit, and intellectual depth presented in a simple way.

Of course, it was fascinating to gain a closer glimpse into the art scene of the sixties and seventies in the USA and to see how many now-renowned artists were navigating their careers at that time.

The diaries provided a deeper understanding of the challenging path one must follow to pursue their ideas.

[Neringa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Volume 1. What a beautiful book, what a beautiful soul, what a journey. This is my second volume of Jonas Mekas’s diaries, after I Had Nowhere to Go. It follows his first two decades on U.S. soil - the pain of being so far from Lithuania, of becoming a part of the NY "machine" and quitting the system, his beginnings in cinema, his passion for it, his sacrifices, his hunger in all senses of the word. I had never imagined that his many years of fighting for avant-garde filmmakers were so difficult, I wonder how he never gave up; I know most of us would have. He fought for his passion, even when no one else did, he fought for what he believed in, for his ideals... What an inspiration! What a visionary mind!

*** I was walking today along the street, looking at the food displays in windows. It would be good to have all that food. I thought about all my old friends, from Germany, and from Brooklyn, who were more practical than myself, who became doctors, and architects, and businessmen, and many other things. I visit them sometimes, and they have houses, and lawns, and families, and summer vacations, and L, stupid, I chose my freedom, I wanted to be a poet. What an idiotic thing to be. And so I got it all, including my freedom, and I shouldn't complain about the price, no, I shouldn't. Wasn't it me, no, who used to say that you have to pay for your stupidity? Or that other saying: for the stupid head the feet must pay? ***

***I keep criticizing the life around me, there is so much wrong done by man to man - but my camera refuses to criticize, my camera wants to celebrate life, my camera refuses to film anything that isn't a celebration of life, so I have this problem-as I go thru life, frame by frame-***

*** and you look at me as if I were crazy! Yes, I am crazy. And I hope I will always remain so. ***

[Marine · Rating 5 out of 5]

mmm finally got the hold of a copy of this great work of art

[Arnold Autuch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Artist's Bible.

[Nolan Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

what a phenomenal human being