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USA, 2009, 93 Minute Running Time Genre/Subjects: Biopic, Documentary, Experimental Program: Documentary FilmsLanguage: English
DIRECTOR: Chuck Workman
The guardian of America’s experimental cinema, as Jonas Mekas is sometimes called, is at the center of this documentary about the underground film movement. In the 1950s, Mekas began bringing together filmmakers who were working in noncommercial forms, largely in isolation. Over the course of many years, he became colleagues with and/or mentored such luminaries as Martin Scorsese, Andy Warhol, Peter Bogdanovich, Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, David Lynch, and William Burroughs, recognizing in their work his own mission: to make people see in new ways. This homage to Mekas and to the Anthology Film Archives he founded, which has preserved countless underground films over the decades, eschews nostalgia, offering instead a wealth of heretofore unseen material. Along with interviews by numerous colleagues of Mekas who share their history in and thoughts on the movement and film in general, Visionaries offers excerpts from more than 100 works that challenge narrative convention. A few titles will be easily recognized by enthusiasts (Scorpio Rising; Putney Swope), but the great part of the footage will be new to most viewers. Writer/director Chuck Workman (A House on a Hill, SDFF 23) – best known for his Academy Award–winning short Precious Images and his HBO documentary on the history of mainstream cinema, The First One Hundred Years – takes a long pan across the kooky, the strangely poetic, the sexually adventurous, and the completely abstract expanse. The result is a rich, stimulating experience for the senses, with clip after clip forgoing predictability in favor of immediacy. Visionaries reveals the depth of thought and breadth of approach that characterize the movement; as Mekas himself says, just when you think you’ve understood what experimental filmmaking is, someone takes it in an entirely new direction.