69 Quotes by Jonas Mekas

My films are the celebration of reality, of life, of my friends, of actual daily life that passes and is gone tomorrow. We don’t pay attention to it when it happens.

I’m not so much in the future as always in the present. The future always takes care of itself. What I do now with my video camera, it can only record what is happening now. I am celebrating reality and the essence of the moment. And that’s the greatest challenge that I have.

Seek the insignificant small but essential qualities, essential to life.

I’m not an abstract artist; I leave that to others. To me, abstract art ended with Kazimir Malevich’s ‘Black Square.’ To continue it is senseless.

For me, to catch, to celebrate the reality and life and friends and everything around me the very moment it happens – that’s what is, that’s what I’m possessed by.

I make home movies-therefore I live. I live-therefore I make home movies.

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 camera like that.

As a film-maker and a poet, I feel it’s my duty to be an eye and an antenna to what’s happening around me. I always felt a solidarity with those who are desperate and confused and misused and are seeking a way out of it.

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 occasionally I film. I never think about scripts, never think about films, making films.