Film Screenings / Programs / Series
Jonas Mekas Selects: BORING MASTERPIECES
Every calendar, filmmaker, artist, and patron saint of the avant-garde Jonas Mekas – exercising his prerogative as Anthology’s co-founder and Artistic Director – takes the reins for one or more nights each month, sharing the fruits of his vast movie-going experience and his very personal and all-embracing vision of the art form. This calendar sees the realization of an idea Jonas has been expounding on for years, a series based on his concept of the Boring Masterpiece. Positing boredom as a positive quality, in opposition to empty distraction or mindless sensationalism, Jonas has selected three films that challenge you to adjust yourself to their rhythms, to penetrate more deeply into the nature of things – that expand your mind rather than numb it. All three are guaranteed to bore you all the way to amazement! “During this calendar quarter you’ll see three films from my list of the Most Boring Masterpieces: Andy Warhol & John Palmer’s film, EMPIRE, Kobayashi’s THE HUMAN CONDITION, and Robert Kramer’s ICE. All three films take their time to tell what they have to tell. All three avoid extraneous dramas, cinematic tricks, or the temptation to please the viewer. They approach their subject matter with utmost respect and seriousness. It’s a kind of contemplative cinema rooted in reality or the memory of it, in a way that’s reminiscent of Emile Zola’s LE VENTRE DE PARIS (THE BELLY OF PARIS). None of these films will ever be popular, just as Zola’s novel has never been popular (it took 120 years to bring out a second edition of the novel in English, which finally appeared only recently). But they all are irreplaceable documents of our times. This is essential cinema.” –J.M.
