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in 1965, completed 1983). Mekas's most recent film is
Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol
(1990).
I spoke with Mekas in December 1982 and January 1983. I had decided in advance to focus on his filmmaking, rather than on his activities as organizer, editor, writer, and administrator.
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MacDonald:
Though
Lost Lost Lost
wasn't finished until 1975, it has the earliest footage I've seen in any of your films.
Mekas:
The earliest footage in that film comes from late 1949.
Lost Lost Lost
was edited in 1975 because I couldn't deal with it until then. I couldn't figure out how to edit the early footage.
MacDonald:
When you were recording that material, were you just putting it onto reels and storing it?
Mekas:
I had prepared a short film from that footage in late 1950. It was about twenty minutes long and was called
Grand Street
. Grand Street is one of the main streets in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, populated mainly by immigrants, where we spent a lot of time. Around 1960 I took that film apart. It doesn't exist anymore. Otherwise, I didn't do anything with that footage. Occasionally I looked at it, thinking how I would edit it. I could not make up my mind what to eliminate and what to leave in. But in 1975 it was much easier.
MacDonald:
Is that opening passage in
Lost Lost Lost,
where you and Adolfas are fooling around with the Bolex, really your first experience with a camera?
Mekas:
What you see there is our very first footage, shot on Lorimer Street, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
MacDonald:
Were you involved at all with film before you got to this country?
Mekas:
The end of the war found us in Germany. Two shabby, naive Lithuanian boys, just out of forced labor camp. We spent four years in various displaced persons campsFlensburg, Hamburg, Wiesbaden, Kassel, et ceterafirst in the British zone, then in the American zone. There was nothing to do and a lot of time. What we could do was read, write, and go to movies. Movies were shown in the camps free, by the American army. Whatever money we could get we spent on books, or we went into town and saw the postwar German productions. Later, when we went to study at the University of Mainz, which was in the French zonewe commuted from Wiesbadenwe saw a lot of French films.
The movies that really got us interested in film were not the French