2007年は嬉しい年になる。ジョナス・メカスさんが自身のウェブサイトに元旦から毎日一本の短編（a new poetic short）を、一年間365日間アップし続けるという。iPodで見られるデジタルビデオ作品だ。凄い！！！
Wired Newsで知った。
Short Films From a Long Life
By Jason Silverman| Also by this reporter
02:00 AM Dec, 19, 2006
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,72318-0.html?tw=rss.index
その部分。
On Jan. 1, a week after his 85th birthday, Mekas launches a yearlong film-a-day series. He'll post a new poetic short at his website each afternoon until the end of 2007. He hopes film buffs will watch them on their iPods.
メカスさんのウェブサイト。
http://jonasmekas.com/
Wired Newsの記事の前半には、YouTubeにアップされたこの1972年の映像が置かれている。
Jonas Mekas -Happy Birthday to John - excerpt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X75C3VrXI28
若かりしジョン・レノン、ヨーコ・オノ、アレン・ギンズバーグ等々の素顔を垣間みることができる。
YouTubeで、"jonas mekas"を検索すると、上映像もいれて18件ヒットした。そのうち面白かったのは次の
- Jonas Mekas Dec 2003
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1XQQyz0z9g
- Jonas Mekas rec for fun
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRulkmjoRBs
- Jonas Mekas Plays Accordion at Whitney Museum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLMB5dMU1aE
- Jonas Mekas talks about Underground Cinema. Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2N_ejauRgs
- Jonas Mekas talks about Underground Cinema. Part II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZuDroqk4bw
記事後半、メカスさんならではの魅力的な発言に満ちたインタビューがある。長いけど、記念に引用しておきたい。
Mekas spoke, in his still-thick Lithuanian accent, with Wired News about the promise of the digital filmmaking tools.
Wired News: Where did the idea of making 365 films in 365 days come from?
Jonas Mekas: I have so much footage. I've been videotaping my life, my friends' lives, wherever I go since 1987. That's 20 years worth of video, thousands and thousands of hours. I never knew what to do with it. I made one compilation. But otherwise there it sits.
Most of my videos consist of fragments, one or two minutes long. They are haikus or sketches. I have thousands. So now, beginning Jan. 1, I'll finish one film a day. Maybe one-third will use old material, and two-thirds will use new.
WN: Are you plotting it out?
Mekas: No, no, no. I'll go through some of the old material and choose some things to use. But with the new material, I prefer not to know. It'll be a totally unpredictable project. That's what excites me about it.
WN: You used 16 mm for 30 years until switching to video. Can you describe what's different about shooting on digital and on film?
Mekas: A few years ago, I taught a class at Cooper Union called "The Absolute and Beautiful Interrelationship Between Technology, Content and Form of Cinema." 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. It's more deeply detailed, more naturalistic.
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.
WN: Back in the 1950s, Stan Brakhage dreamed of a 16 mm projector in every living room, of families shutting off their TVs and watching independent films.
Mekas: That was also the dream of the mid-1960s, when Super 8 mm came. All the filmmakers thought, "Now we can make our films and put them out into the world." It just did not happen. It still was too complicated.
In 1967, in the United States, there were 9 million Super 8 cameras. People were filming weddings and their travels. Most of the time, they were used one time, maybe on a honeymoon, and then into the closet.
WN: Do you think digital video and the internet can fulfill that promise from the 1960s? Can innovative films lure audiences from Hollywood to independent cinema?
Mekas: Yes, they are already doing that. Not necessarily on their iPods yet, but on DVDs. The edition of Brakhage films that was brought out by Criterion sells very well, thousands of copies. It's maybe not the way he wanted to have them seen, but the quality is good.
Before, through the Film-Makers Co-op, you might show something in the three places where they show independent film in New York and reach 50 people or 300 people. That's it. Now you can make an exchange with everyone.
WN: But most filmmakers want their films to be shown in communal situations.
Mekas: Less and less. Movies can be private and personal. Books are written for everyone and published, millions of copies for some. Everyone has their own. They are accessible to all. That hasn't diminished the value and importance of literature. It's the same with films.
WN: So you don't worry that watching films on iPods and computers will wreck the cinematic experience, the experience of sitting in a theater with a group of people?
Mekas: That can exist also. Listen, to really see the great paintings of, say, the Renaissance period, you have to go somewhere, to Florence. How many people can do that? I haven't seen many of them. I've seen only reproductions. But you can still get something from the reproductions.
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.
When I went and finally saw the originals, it didn't give me that much more. I had got their essence already. Same with video. You've got the film on the big screen, with 300 people; that's one thing. But it can also work on a small screen.
George Maciunas had a 6-inch Sony television. The screen was tiny, almost like an iPod. He'd watch westerns and action films, everything. I said, "George, get something bigger." He said, "It works."
So I sat there and watched. At some point I forgot the dimensions. The movie pulled me in completely. This could have been Radio City Music Hall. You forget the size. It's like looking through a microscope -- everything in you can be seen in a little bit of DNA.
WN: Do you watch films online?
Mekas: No, I have no time to watch anything. I am a maker. I'm so involved with what I'm doing. I try to keep in touch but I have little time.
WN: Do you get a sense what the scene is like for young experimental filmmakers?
Mekas: It's exciting for them because they can immediately throw their work into the world and get responses back. That simply did not exist for us in the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s.
WN: There's so much garbage out there, though. Who has the patience to sift through it all?
Mekas: Some of the more intense pieces, films you want to see again and again, will survive. It's natural selection of cinema. Only the best will remain. Do you really think what you see on YouTube today will still exist in five years?
Nam June Paik used to laugh at filmmakers: "Your films will crumble in a few years." Then we discovered that video lasts seven or eight years. The same with DVDs -- they have a limited life. Technologies will disappear. Only things that people really like will be transferred. And that's a very good thing.
WN: You talked about the 9 million Super 8 cameras in the 1960s. Today, even more people than that are using digital video. Do you think all these filmmakers will change cinema?
Mekas: I mentioned that number, the 9 million, when talking to (director Pier Paolo) Pasolini in Paris in 1968, during the student revolution. "Maybe something interesting will happen with their cameras," I said. "These cameras can change the nature of communications." And he said, "There are more typewriters than cameras. Did that change the world? Did that make this revolution?"
WN: But the digital cameras must be having an influence.
Mekas: Yes, yes definitely. New technologies make more money than old ones.
WN: Do the digital cameras and editing help push the form, too?
Mekas: The content changes with the technology.
WN: How has that happened already?
Mekas: Kenneth Anger -- he has more time to read than I do -- he sent me several clippings having to do with the explosion of short films. An article from the front page of the Sunday edition of the L.A. Times. So maybe there will be more short films. People go where you can make more money. If short films work, they'll go there. It's something interesting to watch.
WN: So can the internet and digital video help make experimental cinema more viable?
Mekas: Yes, yes. That time isn't exactly here yet. Brakhage is dead, and now the films are finally being distributed and being seen. But all of the money that now comes from his films didn't come in time for him. It didn't come for most filmmakers. It's too late for them.
As for myself, I'm not waiting for the money. And the dream in the '60s really wasn't about money. The filmmakers wanted to reach more people.
WN: Maybe you'll do that with your 365 series.
Mekas: My dream doesn't even have to do with reaching more people. This 365 project is more about the unpredictability. I'm curious to see what will happen with this adventure. All I know is that at the end I'll have 365 films.
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死ぬ前には訪ねたいと思っている数ある場所の一つ、メカスさんが館長をつとめるニューヨークはブルックリンのANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVESの写真ギャラリーを覗いてみたら、
Anthology Photo Galleries
http://www.roberthaller.com/gallery1-02/gallery.html
1980年当時の博物館の写真の中の一枚に、今年初めに逝ったナム・ジュン・パイクNam June Paikの若かりし頃の姿があった。
Anthology in 1980
http://www.roberthaller.com/gallery1-02/1980/thumbs/19.html
