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Avenue B, a gallery run by Joel Baxter and Louis Brigante. In 1954 my brother and I started our own film society called Film Forum. George Capsis was the third member. We had screenings for two years. At one of our first showsa Jordan Belson show, with Belson presentwe clashed with the projectionists' union. They came and cut off the electricity. When we wanted to continue, they threatened to beat us up, so we had to stop the screening.
MacDonald:
The color in the first two reels of
Lost Lost Lost
is gorgeous.
Mekas:
Much of it is time's effect on the early Kodachrome. I didn't like it in the original color. As it began aging, I liked it much more and decided to use it. I remember having a similar experience with Gregory Markopoulos's trilogy,
Psyche, Charmides, Lysis
[all 1948]. It seemed to me to become more and more wonderful as time went on. When some people looked at it later, they said, "It's horrible, what's happened to the color." But I found the later color superior to the original.
MacDonald:
That process will continue.
Mekas:
Yes. Even though I have a master now, on Ektachrome, the Ektachrome itself changes rapidly. The print stocks keep changing. And, of course, the color changed in the transfer from the original Kodachrome into the Ektachrome master. So there is no such thing as original color anymore. Every stage is original, in a way.
MacDonald:
It seems to me that your varied use of intertitles has always been a strong formal element in your films.
Mekas:
I was always faced with the problem of how to structure, how to formalize the personal material, which seems just to run on and on. It's so close to me that I have to use abstract devices, numbers, or descriptive intertitles, to make it more distant, easier for me to deal with, to make the footage seem more as if someone elsemaybe Lumièrewere recording it.
MacDonald:
You mentioned that you feel that you can't be a poet in English, and yet both in the spoken narrative passages (in
Lost Lost Lost
especially, but also as early as
Walden
) and also in the printed intertitles, your spoken or visual phrasing evokes several American poetsWilliam Carlos Williams, for example, and Walt Whitman.
Mekas:
But those passages are not poetry. They are poetic, yes, which is a different thing. By the way, I wanted to make a documentary about William Carlos Williams. In 1954 or 1955 I made some notes, visited Williams in Paterson, and discussed the film with him. I wanted to make a film about his life there in Paterson. He was supposed to prepare some notes about what he wanted to have in the film. I lost my notes; probably his estate would know if his still exist, if, that is, he made any. I took LeRoi Jones with me. He may remember more about that trip.