Jonas mekas

Some cameras are heavier and need to be on tripods. Others are small enough to hide in your pocket. There are places where you don't want to feel like you are disturbing anything, so I may use a...

Yes, I got my first Bolex camera a few weeks after being dropped in New York by the United Nations Refugee Organization. That was on October 29th, 1949. With my brother Adolfas, we wanted to make a...

In 1962, we created the Filmmakers' Co-Op because nobody wanted to distribute our films. If we had the Internet in those days, we wouldn't have needed the Co-Op.

I have never been able, really, to figure out where my life begins and where it ends. I have never, never been able to figure it all out, what it's all about, what it all means.

Most of my videos consist of fragments, one or two minutes long. They are haikus or sketches. I have thousands.

To me, cinema is cinema. Cinema is one big tree with many branches. The same as literature. In literature, you don't just say, 'Oh, I bought some literature.' No, you say, 'I bought a novel' by...

My life is essentially not so unique. On some deeper levels we feel the same, we know the same things. Therefore if I show my life 365 days, moments from those days, it will reflect and it will have...

We need less perfect but more free films.

In narrative cinema, a certain terminology has already been established: 'film noir,' 'Western,' even 'Spaghetti Western.' When we say 'film noir' we know what we are talking about. But in...

I'm working in a form of cinema that can be described, and has been described, as a diaristic form of cinema. In other words, with material from my own life. I walk through life with my camera, and...