To close out this fantastical month full of Jonas Mekas’ work, we screen two shorts back-to-back. The first one being ‘Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol: “Friendships and Intersections” followed by ‘Zefiro Torna or Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas’.
1) Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol: “Friendships and Intersections” (1990)
The pioneer of the American diary film presents footage of his avant garde colleague shot between 1963 and 1982.
With this short on Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas delivers the portrait of a great artist and chronicles the social excitement that swirled around him. The film features a cast of counter culture icons—Alain Ginsberg, John Lennon, Caroline Kennedy—while throbbing to a hypnotic Velvet Underground beat.
2) Zefiro Torna or Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas (1992) | 35 min
The life and work of Fluxus artist George Maciunas as seen in clips filmed between 1952 and 1978.
A kaleidoscopic juxtaposition of the perspective of an artist approaching death from a third-person perspective whose fascination towards George Maciunas was his will to live. Presented as an incurable optimist that saw joy in life’s everyday details and anecdotes, and ways of life in social movements, this piece of extremely genius experimental filmmaking disjoints audiovisually what is seen and what is heard. The lack of the background of his life combined with the chronological anecdotes and the fractured chronology of the images bring along a story about the will to live in two separate forms.
