"I was visiting Jerome Hill. Jerome loved France, especially Provence. He spent all his summers in Cassis. My window overlooked the sea. I sat in my little room, reading or writing, and looked at the sea. I decided to place my Bolex exactly at the angle of light as what Signac saw from his studio which was just behind where I was staying, and film the view from morning till after sunset, frame by frame. One day of the Cassis port filmed in one shot." -JM
USA
USA
A perfect distillation of Mekas' style: to disassociate with pulsating time-lapses arranged by their narrative and not linear progression. Each vanishing and appearing wave, silhouetted visitor, or beam of light is arranged to expose the viewer's reaction, so that a day in France attains the cosmic narrative of a stalwart figure nonetheless in flux due to its surroundings
J'imagine bien Jonas chiller là toute la journée avec ses amis en buvant du bon vin et en panant la caméra une fois de temps en temps.
Juste parce que c'est beau.
What I wasn't expecting, based on what other people have written, was how much of a sensory assault this would feel like. It's s not just a neutral time lapse, but one actively using pans to break our sense of continuity even as the speedy movement creates a rough fluidity. Plus, shifts in lighting that I imagine were barely perceptible in the moment become shocking ruptures, creating brand new textures and colors in the blink of an eye.
The real star of the show, though, is the audio. It's not just time-lapse photography, it's also a time-lapse soundtrack, with distant boats and wind off the ocean creating an unflagging bellow of white noise that's slightly terrifying until it becomes hypnotic, and its persistence well after the image ends becomes almost weirdly comforting. The silence when it's over is a hell of a thing.
All in all, very pleased to have finally caught my first Mekas picture.
A beautiful study in stasis and activity. Like a lot of great avant-garde of the era, the real focus isn't on what is being filmed, but the way the light is hitting it. The same area takes a million different forms as the light transforms it from moment to moment. Mekas and other pioneers of the Anthology Film Archive crowd sought to train the eye to notice the subtlest differences around us in our daily lives. By doing so they offered a way a of viewing the world with infinite possibility.
It is so difficult to genuinely and completely peer outward, mainly because, personally speaking, even as I cast my glances out of my window, or down the street, or in the car next to me, or even toward my bedsheets in my room, I still find myself refocusing constantly, never perfectly here, the past and the future drying up toward me and melting away from me. I never get the chance to see things.
So, peering over the gentle sway of a port that I've never visited, darting back and forth, cruising through the day upon a jittering, unset cadence that was not determined by me, gives me overwhelming ease. It's all bigger than me, and thankfully I'm small enough to be able to disassemble the shelves that it all is held in. It's all flowing like razorblades. I can rest in it and see through it.
Structuralist in the most definitive sense of the word.
Back and forth.
Night and day.
The loud hiss at the screen when this film ended pretty much set the tone for a rowdy l'Alliance short film series, "Le Sud."
It's time to watch a bunch of Jonas Mekas short films tonight. Let's make it happen. No real reviews, as I'm not smart enough to say something important about a four-minute silent film.
And that's this first one, four minutes of a lighthouse, lots of boats, waves and shit. It's pretty!
He once again uses time-lapse, pulsating light, jarring cuts, and ambient sound that doesn't always perfectly match the setting. It's just magical and I could watch this on repeat for an hour.
Could’ve watched that a few more hours
Pretty and very fitting since I’m on the seaside right now. There’s something magical about lighthouses…
It's amazing how Mekas captured the beautiful colours of a painting in this short. There was something really mesmerising about this one, however I must say that it didn't wow me as much as the other shorts created by him, it felt a bit too repetitive for my liking but it was still a really cool watch.
