A Happy Man: Jonas Mekas on Nowness.com.
Jonas Mekas reflects on the relationship between memory and image in this clip from his feature-length film, Outtakes From the Life of a Happy Man, which premieres this week at London's Serpentine Gallery. The Lithuanian-born filmmaker, poet and avant-garde instigator assembled this visual diary from the over 50 years of footage shot since his emigration to the US in 1949. Upon arriving in Brooklyn Mekas borrowed money to buy his first Bolex camera, and so began to capture every aspect of his life, recording intimate moments with family and extended circles of friends in pastoral landscapes in addition to the urban sprawl of his adopted city. Using previously unseen footage, here the director creates an impressionistic vision of his autobiography, accompanied by his own poetic voiceover. The film jumps forward non-chronologically, formally enacting Mekas
