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Brakhage had a poet's soul

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Seeing films by Brakhage for the first time
Jonas Mekas Film-maker
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I... was so excited, I don't know what I did after it, but there was energy, there was, I thought this is, this is amazing, this is huge, this is it, this is, there is cinema, there is new cinema, there it is that's it.

[Q] And do you remember?

The first five films or six films, you can look up, that's all that he had. The one with the scratch, that's, I think, it's with the man walking down with the eyes scratched, that's one of the earliest scratchings on film, eyes scratched the blind walking down and...

[Q] 'Desistfilm' and 'Anticipation of the Night'?

Oh no, that's later.

[Q] That's later?

That's later. One can sort of look up in this filmography. In any case, it was... it was one of the important film screenings in my life, and the other was Marie Menken, when I saw Notebook, her film Notebook at the Charles Theatre.

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: Notebook, Marie Menken, Stan Brakhage

Duration: 1 minute, 23 seconds

Date story recorded: September 2003

Date story went live: 24 January 2008