Jonas Mekas at Anthology Film Archives in 1972
Some are talking about the End of History.
There are others who say that we are at the end of Cinema.1
Do not believe any of it!
The movie industries and the movie museums around the world are celebrating the 100th anniversary of cinema; and they talk about the millions of dollars their cinemas have made; they discuss their Hollywoods and their stars —
but there is no mention of the avantgarde, of the independents, of OUR CINEMA. I have seen the brochures, the programmes of the museums and archives and cinemateques around the world. I know what cinema they are talking about.
But I want to take this occasion to say this:
In the times of bigness, spectaculars, one hundred million movie productions, I want to speak for the small, invisible acts of human spirit, so subtle so small that they are when brought out under the Klieg lights.
I want to celebrate the small forms of cinema, the lyrical forms, the poem, the watercolor, etude, sketch, postcard, arabesque, triolet, and bagatelle, and little 8-mm songs.
In the times when everybody wants to succeed and sell, I want to celebrate those who embrace social and daily failure to pursue the invisible, the personal, things that bring no money and no bread and make no contemporary history — art history or any other history —
I am for art which we do for each other as friends, for ourselves.
I am standing in the middle of the Information Highway and laughing —
because a butterfly on a little flower somewhere, somewhere, just fluttered its wings and I know that the whole course of history will drastically change because of that flutter —
a super-8 camera just made a little soft buzz somewhere on New York’s Lower East Side — and the world will never be the same —
the real history of cinema is the invisible history —
the history of friends getting together doing the thing they love —
for us cinema is beginning
with every new buzz of the projector.
With every new buzz of our cameras
our hearts
jump
forwards,
my friends!
First presented on February 11, 1996, in Paris and published in Point d’ironie issue 0 in 1997, Jonas Mekas’s manifesto responds to the centenary celebration and marketing of cinema, arguing that the official history of cinema is largely driven by capital and dismisses small forms of cinema. Special thanks to the Jonas Mekas Estate for providing the text of the manifesto.