a story lives forever
Register
Sign in
Form submission failed!

Stay signed in

Recover your password?
Register
Form submission failed!

Web of Stories Ltd would like to keep you informed about our products and services.

Please tick here if you would like us to keep you informed about our products and services.

I have read and accepted the Terms & Conditions.

Please note: Your email and any private information provided at registration will not be passed on to other individuals or organisations without your specific approval.

Video URL

You must be registered to use this feature. Sign in or register.

NEXT STORY

A difference of opinions

RELATED STORIES

Films of the late 1950s and early 1960s
Jonas Mekas Film-maker
Comments (0) Please sign in or register to add comments

Shadows was completed in, though not released, completed and screened privately practically, in '58, Pull my Daisy in '59 and then released only in '60, and, and Guns in... began shooting in 1960 and finished in '61. So it's... and Shirley was same time, filming The Connection when I was making Guns of the Trees. And Robert was editing Pull my Daisy, and Gregory Markopoulos was editing Serenity and they all used to come, you know, I lived on 515 East 13th Street, and they used to come for some leaders or some, and Gregory to chop pieces on our movieola and was chop from the Serenity, because he discovered he didn't like the leading star that he had, Dukakis, the daughter of Dukakis, and he kept chopping her from the leading actress, so she became the second actress. Unfortunately, that film cannot be seen. It disappeared in Greece, and it was beautiful, yeah.

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: Shadows, Pull my Daisy, Serenity, The Connection, Shirley Clarke, Gregory Markopoulos

Duration: 1 minute, 35 seconds

Date story recorded: September 2003

Date story went live: 24 January 2008