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Raising funds for all the essential projects

RELATED STORIES

Running Anthology Film Archives
Jonas Mekas Film-maker
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In '70, I thought I will just... I will have nothing to do anymore with exhibitions and with screenings; I will just do my work. But as it happened, P Adams Sitney who was the first director of Anthology, he did very well during the... or the year and a half before it opened when there was less pressure, just before, around the opening he couldn't take it any more and... and he practically had a nervous breakdown and... but was going to buy a ticket to Brazil or Argentina somewhere. I... I had to step in, I had no choice. I had to go back because I could not let Jerome Hill down where he had put half a million already into building special theatre and purchasing the whole collection. I had to go back. I thought temporarily, but that temporality became 33 years. So now I consider I have very good team around and by the time I build the library, I will go to the Himalayas, maybe for a year.

Jonas Mekas (1922-2019), Lithuanian-born poet, philosopher and film-maker, set up film collectives, the Anthology Film Archive, published filmzines and made hundreds of films, all contributing to his title as 'the godfather of American avant-garde cinema'. He emigrated to America after escaping from a forced labour camp in Germany in 1945.

Listeners: Amy Taubin

Amy Taubin is a contributing editor for "Film Comment" magazine and "Sight and Sound" magazine. Her book, "Taxi Driver", was published in 2000 in the British Film Institute's Film Classics series. Her chapter on "America: The Modern Era" is part of "The Critics Choice" published by Billboard Press, 2001, and her critical essays are included in many anthologies, mostly recently in "Frank Films: The Film and Video Work of Robert Frank" published by Scalo.

She wrote for "The Village Voice" weekly from 1987 into 2001 both as a film and a television critic. She also wrote a column for the "Village Voice" titled "Art and Industry" which covered American independent filmmaking. Her first weekly film criticism job was at the "SoHo Weekly News". Her writing has also appeared in "Art Forum", the "New York Times", the "New York Daily News", the "LA Weekly", "Millennium Film Journal", "US Harpers Bazaar" and many other magazines. She is a member of the National Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics Online.

She started her professional life as an actress, appearing most notably on Broadway in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie", and in avant-garde films, among them Michael Snow's "Wavelength", Andy Warhol's "Couch", and Jonas Mekas' "Diaries, Notebooks and Sketches".

Her own avant-garde film, "In the Bag" (1981) is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and the Friends of Young Cinema Archives in Berlin.

She was the video and film curator of "The Kitchen" from 1983-1987.

She has a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and an M.A. from N.Y.U. in cinema studies. She teaches at the School of Visual Arts in both the undergraduate and the MFA graduate programs, and lectures frequently at museums, media centers, and academic institutions. In 2003, she received the School of Visual Arts' art historian teaching award.

Tags: P Adams Sitney, Jerome Hill

Duration: 1 minute, 41 seconds

Date story recorded: September 2003

Date story went live: 29 September 2010