Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film Page #2

films that still exist

were all made at the close of World

War I in 1919 and the early 20s.

Those artists,

frustrated by the war,

wanted the post-war world to be radically

different from the world before the war.

So they experimented in all forms:

cubism, Dadaism, surrealism.

This film was made

by Viking Eggeling,

also a Dadaist and close

colleague of Hans Richter.

He died one year after

this film was released.

The whole tradition of

avant-gardism of course

came out of rebellion against

the society, completely.

In 1914 the World War

I was such a drastic

disaster compared to previous wars,

which were jockeying of potentates,

but World War I was so destructive.

The little society of artists

were disgusted to such an extent

that they threw out art also.

Although the filmmakers were expressing

complete freedom and playfulness,

this was sometimes

misinterpreted as rebelliousness.

Between the two wars, some German

filmmakers got into trouble.

The Nazis banned this film

made by Hans Richter in 1927,

Ghosts Before Breakfast.

A friend of mine had suggested to make

a film about rebellion of revolvers.

Now you can't make a film

about rebellion of revolvers

because a revolver that

rebels doesn't shoot,

so not shooting is not an action,

you know, it's just

a piece of iron.

So I discarded this.

But I said all right we

make a rebellion of objects.

We all wore bowler hats.

At the time we didn't want

to be recognized as artists

so we all had bourgeois bowler hats

like the businessmen in

Wall Street or in London.

So we put black strings

through the bowler hats,

a piece of cardboard

inside, a long stick

and swung these bowler

hats in front of the camera.

And it looked awfully nice.

It looked like a swarm of pigeons!

Suddenly a kind of rhythm developed

which became a kind

of political satire.

I thought I could see in his face

when he told us about his early days

that he was reliving

the period before

the collapse of Germany

with the third Reich.

He had told us for example

that the Nazis saw right away

that surrealism and experimental

films had to be banned

because if objects

could get out of control,

human beings could

get out of control.

And he lost a lot of films because

he got beaten up the Nazis, the SS.

If you look at the film

Ghosts Before Breakfast

you'll see scenes of thugs

punching into the camera.

That's actually an experience he

had and he carried on his person,

when he escaped, films that

he thought were of value.

Richter was political, he was

a writer, he was a filmmaker,

and we have here in the coop collection

Ghosts Before Breakfast with the reel

that has the swastika on it.

So this is actually the reel,

you can see the iron cross.

Hans Richter was not alone.

During the 1930s and 40s, many

European artists and filmmakers

came to America where they met

American artists and filmmakers.

For example, Maya Deren

met Alexander Hammid,

an accomplished Czech filmmaker

forced to leave Prague.

The two married, and he

taught her filmmaking.

Together, the young newlyweds made

Meshes of the Afternoon in 1943,

now considered one of the most important

films of the early American avant-garde.

I'm interested in the fact that

the war engendered the radical art.

Yeah, the American art wasn't taken

seriously by anyone until then.

And it's those

Europeans who came over,

who taught 'em a few kinks,

they all tried to measure up

to the exciting European art

that they'd become acquainted

with, and kind of overdid it.

And their overdoing it

made it more attention

grabbing than the European art

who were getting complacent in

accepting their importance, you know.

Tell where you have been,

tell what you have seen.

The Mekas brothers, Jonas and

Adolfas, also emigrated to America

from Lithuania because of the war.

They dreamt of making films, and

as soon as they landed in New York

they got hold of a 16mm

camera, and they did make films!

They documented daily life in the

immigrant communities of Brooklyn.

From this would evolve the

diary style of filmmaking.

Jonas also started writing

for a small neighborhood paper

called The Village Voice,

promoting experimental films.

Suddenly the Voice

multiplied its readership,

and Jonas became an

influential film critic.

We wanted to share

our films with...

among ourselves and all

others interested in them,

and so we rented

spaces to show them

and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

You know the Village Voice as a newspaper

took off during newspaper strike.

It was the only paper in New York

for however long that strike lasted.

And it went from a circulation of 200

people to 200.000 people or whatever.

And I guess it stayed up

there ever since, I don't know,

but that's when it

became a big newspaper.

At that point or at that time,

Jonas was writing his little

column which then became widespread.

And Jonas included

me very generously

as one of the important

avant-garde filmmakers.

It was a very specific scene

and it was surprisingly

separate from the art world.

There was the experimental film

world, which was more or less downtown,

and uptown was more or less

at that time the art world.

Not that the Museum of Modern Art

didn't show experimental films, they did.

But it seemed as if people from

the art world didn't come downtown,

except for when Warhol would show at

these theaters that Jonas used to use.

There was the Charles Theater

in the Lower East Side.

You could show up with

a roll of film or a film,

and they would show

it, and let you in free.

I said I have a short film, and

it was all originals, you know,

and I could play it with

78rpm phonograph records.

And it happened that Jonas was in

the audience on this amateur night.

He found out where I lived,

and I had no telephone - poor

- and his card said to call him.

And I phoned him on

a public telephone.

He said he wanted to show the film.

I said well, it's not really

a film, it's just rolls,

and I can't afford

to make a print of it.

He gave me the name of a lab

and said "charge it to me."

And so I said, "I

have a second film.

Can I bring it in also?"

I mean, this was an angel, right?

Jonas started organizing

screenings and helping filmmakers,

even though he had no

finances of his own.

Twenty years ago when

I applied for the visa,

my first visa to America,

Jonas Mekas was my

financial sponsor

although he didn't have

a penny in the bank.

Luckily the American consulate

in Tokyo didn't check his bank,

so I could sneak in.

Now twenty years later, today Jonas

is as bad financially as at that time

but as good at that time

editorially, if I may say.

There was an audience

at the beginning?

There was an audience

at the beginning?

Yes, yes there was

always an audience!

That's very optimistic. A

very optimistic statement...

you assume there was

an audience, yes, hmm...

I thought the audience

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