You know what? It is the 8 mm movie that will save us. It is coming. You may think I am crazy. But I know people, very talented people, shooting their movies in 8 mm. The day is close when 8 mm home-movie footage will be collected and appreciated as folk art, like songs and the lyric poetry that was created by the people. Blind as we are, it will take us a few more years to see it, but some people see it already. They see the beauty of the sunsets taken by a Bronx woman when she passed through the Arizona desert; travelogue footage, awkward footage that will suddenly sing with unexpected rapture; the Brooklyn Bridge footage; the spring cherry blossoms footage; the Coney Island footage; the Orchard Street footage—time is laying a veil of poetry over them.
—Jonas Mekas, “8 mm. Cinema as Folk Art”; Village Voice, 1963. As quoted in Greenwich Village 1963: Avant-Garde Performance and the Effervescent Body by Sally Banes.
2 notes