Page 86
are not recorded on film. There is a little bit of Dwinell Grant, fooling in front of the camera. Francis Lee has footage of himself and some of his friends. But the personal had not yet become a concern. As a result, in
Lost Lost Lost
you do not see much of my own life until later. One didn't go to parties with the camera. If I had taken my Bolex to any of Maya Deren's parties and started filming, they would have laughed. Serious filmmaking was still scripted filmmaking.
MacDonald:
Who were the first people you ran into who were using film in more personal ways?
Mekas:
My first contacts with the New York film-viewing community began very early. The second or third evening after I arrived here, I went to a screening of
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
[1920] and Epstein's
The Fall of the House of Usher
[1928], sponsored by the New York Film Society, run at that time by Rudolf Arnheim. Then we went to Cinema 16, but we did not meet any filmmakers there: we were just two shabby DPs watching films. When I heard that Hans Richter was in New York, running the film department at City College, I wrote him a letter saying that I had no money, but would like to attend some classes. He wrote back, "Sure, come!" So I did and I met Hans Richter. I did not take any of his classesactually, he did not teach any classes that winterbut I met many people: Shirley Clarke, Gideon Bachmann, Frank Kuenstler (the poet), and others. I continued seeing Gideon, and we decidedit was his ideato start our own film group. It was called The Film Group. Beginning in 1951 we had screenings once a month, sometimes more often. We rented films, mostly experimental, avant-garde films. I wrote many of the program notes. Through those screenings we met other people interested in filmmaking. Another person very active during those years (between 1950 and 1955) was Perry Miller, who has lately made several important documentaries
Gertrude Stein, When This You See, Remember Me
[1970]. She was running an international festival of films on art, a very big event, at Hunter College. She held at least three of these events, in 1952, 1953, and, I think, 1954. I saw Alain Resnais's early films there, and some films by local filmmakers. I remember a pattern film by John Arvonio, who filmed reflections in the rain in Times Square. Nobody knows that film anymore. I don't know if it still exists. Also, no one seems to hear any longer of Wheaton Galentine or Joe Slavin, or Peter Hollander, who distributed early films by Jordan Belson and others through a distribution center called Kinesis.
We undertook two or three documentary film projects with Gideon Bachmann. One was about modern architecture in a community not far outside of New York called Usonia. I shot two or three rolls on the Frank Lloyd Wright buildings there. I think Gideon has that footage; I don't. In 1953 I ran a short film series at the Gallery East, on First Street and