Jonas Mekas

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Recent reviews

Zorns Lemma 1970

Watched 02 Jul 2023 1

ON HOLLIS FRAMPTON
On April 3, I saw Zorns Lemma, a new film by Hollis Frampton (sixty-one minutes, color). It’s his most important work to date, and the most original new work of cinema I have seen since Brakhage’s Scenes from Under Childhood, Part Four. Frampton’s film is an exercise in mathematical logic in cinema. Or is it a mechanical logic? Three viewings do not help me to explain to you what the film is all about. It’s about alphabet.…
Scenes from Under Childhood, Section Four 1970

Watched 02 Jul 2023

ON SCENES FROM UNDER CHILDHOOD
I just looked at Stan Brakhage’s Scenes from Under Childhood, Part Four. Fifty minutes long. In color. Silent (available for renting from the Film-Makers’ Cooperative). Brakhage has been feeling very low lately. He is in a “giving-up” mood. He thinks he has fought his artist’s battle for the noncommercial film and he has lost it. Commerce is taking over, he feels. I don’t feel that way at all, and I have been at the cannons…

Popular reviews

A Gentle Woman 1969

Watched 02 Jul 2023

ON BRESSON AND UNE FEMME DOUCE
Here is what I thought, walking home from Une Femme Douce.
Une Femme Douce is a film about diagonals. Diagonal angles, diagonal glances. About eyes that never really meet. A film without a single frontal shot. A film about three-quarter spaces. About the sound of closing doors. About the sound of footsteps. About the sound of things. About the sound of water. About shy glances. About unfinished glances. About the sound of glass. About…
Gertrud 1964

Watched 02 Jul 2023

ON DREYER’S GERTRUD
Gertrud is as towering a master work in the narrative sound cinema as Brakhage’s The Art of Vision is in the nonnarrative cinema. From all of the films shown at the festival, it was by far the most perfect artistic statement, the most perfect expression of an artist’s moral and aesthetic attitude. Every detail, every motion, every word in Gertrud has its right place, its own voice, and contributes to the whole and is beautiful. As Charles…

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