Jim Jarmusch and Jonas Mekas

on Film, Poetry and Trump

As the historic Anthology Film Archives prepares to embark on a vital new
expansion project, its founding father sits down with Jim Jarmusch for
AnOther Magazine S/S17

March 1, 2017

InterviewBenn Northover
PhotographyJack Davison
Fashion EditorNell Kalonji

Jonas Mekas, AnOther Magazine S/S17

In the ever-changing cultural landscape of New York City, Anthology Film Archives has stood
strong as the bastion of independent cinema for the past 47 years. It is one of the worlds largest
and most important repositories of independent and avant-garde film and a New York cultural
landmark.

Anthology is about to embark upon an important new expansion project lead by its founding father,
the filmmaker Jonas Mekas. Like so much of what Anthology has achieved over the years, it will
be a team effort. The international artistic community has come out in force to support the project.
Artists such as Chuck Close, Ai Weiwei, Julian Schnabel, Matthew Barney, Michael Stipe, Jim
Jarmusch and Patti Smith have all pledged their support for the planned fundraising events. They
need to raise $7 Million to secure the future of Anthology along with the films they preserve for
generations to come.

Mekas and Jim Jarmusch first met in the late 70s, both part of an energised downtown film scene
still infused by the cultural revolution that swept through New York over a decade before. It was
a decade when a fierce independent voice had put cinema in the hands of its makers, changing it
forever.

The following conversation took place one rainy day in December. I met Jonas and Jim in the
lobby of Anthology Film Archives and we decided to head over to a small bar across the street, on
the corner of 2nd avenue. The two began to talk as we walked through the rain
Jonas Mekas with Andy Warhol at the Factory, c.1966, Photography by Stephen Shore
Jonas Mekas: Where is poetry in your life?

Jim Jarmusch: Its important to me. I read a lot of poetry. I studied with Kenneth Koch and David
Shapiro at the New York School, and Ive been guided by poets all my life. When I was a teenager
in Akron I first discovered the 19th century French poets in translation Baudelaire, Rimbaud and
Verlaine. Parts of my life William Blake has been my guide. I wish someday when Im gone,
someone will consider me a descendant of the New York School of poets, theyve been my guides
because of the sense of humour, the kind of exuberance, you know, of Frank OHara

JM: Yes, Frank OHara and Kenneth Koch. They have a humour but theres also something very
real and down to earth. Koch still has to be recognised properly.

JJ: Joe Brainard I love also very much, and Ron Padgett. Ron Padgett wrote the poems for our new
film. The character is a poet.

Benn Northover: The characters named Paterson, right?

JJ: I called the character Paterson, in the film, because of the poem Paterson by William Carlos
Williams. He makes a metaphor in the poem of a landscape above the waterfalls there as being
like a man. And then I just kept this metaphor; Ill make a film about a man named Paterson
who lives in Paterson, who writes poetry, you know.
Anthology Film Archives c.1995
JM: When I first read Paterson I thought that I should meet William Carlos Williams and maybe
make a film based on his poems. I knew LeRoi Jones, Amiri Baraka so we went and visited
Carlos. We discussed the project, he had no patients that day. We agreed I would make some notes
and then he would make some notes, and then we would meet again. But I do not remember what
happened next. Those were the first years of Film Culture magazine, and I became very busy, and
I never pursued the project. But Im curious if some of the Carlos Williams notes would be in his
archives. To me he was very important.

JJ: I heard a funny story that Allen Ginsberg, when very young, because he lived in Paterson, gave
some of his poems to William Carlos Williams. William Carlos Williams responded but said:
these poems are terrible. You must find your own voice. These poems are rhymed, theyre just
not good. But if you desire to be a poet you must continue to work at it. Find your voice.

BN: Thank God he kept writing. Ive always loved Emily Dickinson.

JM: I dont know if you saw, a new book just came out. Theyve published a selection of her
envelopes and tiny pieces of paper, where she scribbled little poems or thoughts. It was in
todays New Yorker. Shes my favourite English-speaking poet.

JJ: Ah, one of my favourites, certainly, American poets.

JM: Amazing, what she did with the language.

JJ: So modern and beautiful, amazing. And you read in German and French and English and
Lithuanian, of course.

JM: And I can get to Italian and, with a dictionary, Spanish and Russian.
Original admission ticket for Anthology, Design by George Maciunas
JJ: Kenneth Koch once gave me a poem of Rilkes, in German, and said Jim, come back in two
days and translate this poem. And I said but, Kenneth, I dont read any German at all. And he
said precisely. He wanted me to take anything I wanted. The number of lines, anything, and
make a new poem.

JM: What Zukofsky did from the Latin poets he translated by sound. And of course Robert Kelly
did that together with Schuldt. They took Hlderlins poem and by sound translated into English,
then read the English and by sound from the English which was already second water from
Hlderlin re-translated it into German.

JJ: Oh wow. Fantastic.

JM: They published the project.

JJ: Thats fantastic. Its so playful.

JM: We all have those memories: when you dont know the language and you listen, and you seem
to understand, but you get completely something else. Yet the amazing thing is, like with
Zukofskys translations and the same with what Robert Kelly and Schuldt did with Hlderlin
you get some of the same spirit, there is something that remains.

JJ: I think it was E.E. Cummings who said, You can understand a poem without knowing what it
means.

JM: The same with music and films in a language you dont understand. Somehow you know what
the characters are feeling and saying.

JJ: When I went to Japan in the 80s I was obsessed with Ozu and Naruse and Mizoguchi. I couldnt
get their films here, so I bought so many on VHS but they were, of course, not translated. I would
watch them endlessly without any knowledge really of the dialogue at all, but I still would
understand so many beautiful things and I learned a lot about acting and peoples eyes and camera
positions, and just the tiny ways you make a film.