Kubelka & Mekas: master chef and godfather

Peter Kubelka and Jonas Mekas are two living heavyweights of experimental cinema. Cinematek, Bozar Cinema, and Galeries are paying well-deserved tributes to their work.

Jonas Mekas and Peter Kubelka are no strangers to each other. After meeting up in the golden sixties in Belgium, at the legendary EXPRMNTL film festival in Knokke, they got together with Stan Brakhage and Jerome Hill, among others, to set up the Anthology Film Archives in New York in 1969. That body is still a major centre for the preservation of, and research into, experimental film and video.
The Viennese film-maker Peter Kubelka (1934) started off as a chef-cum-teacher in Frankfurt. For him, cooking is more than just an important skill: in his talks and writings he goes so far as to claim that it is the foundation of all other arts and sciences. Kubelka’s film oeuvre is not particularly extensive: you could watch his entire body of work in one hour! It is, however, at once austere and extremely complex. Cinematek and Bozar Cinema are honouring him with a three-day programme at which the man himself will be present – plus an exhibition that presents Kubelka’s latest video work in the form of an installation.
On 29 November the Austrian artist’s entire oeuvre will be screened. His debut, Mosaik im Vertrauen (1954–1955) is a milestone in the history of the cinema, especially in terms of editing. Kubelka completely disconnects sound and image, thereby creating an extra dimension that the commercial cinema has failed to make full use of. The man and woman that appear in emotionally charged, but rather confused situations speak alright, but the sound does not come from their mouths. In addition, Kubelka intercuts those sequences with a variety of associations. The hand of the master shows itself in the highly enigmatic, emotionally charged atmosphere he creates. As the title suggests, the film develops into a mosaic of parallel, intersecting storylines that one should really watch a few times.

Do you have a minute?
The same can be said of Kubelka’s other films and videos, and above all of his intense and compact Minutenfilme, which in a very brief timespan suggest highly complicated thought processes about the essence of cinema. His pioneering Adebar (1957) and Schwechater (1958) were made at a time when Hollywood tended to dismiss experimental film as the work of the devil. In those two one-minute films Kubelka analysed and commented on structuralist film. It was not until the 1960s that that trend within experimental cinema, which favoured form over content, found an audience, thanks to gems by, among others, Michael Snow, Kurt Kren, and – of course – Kubelka himself.

Another major work that will be screened is Unsere Afrikareise (1961), an exception in Kubelka’s career and, ironically, his most famous film. For once, even though he remained faithful to his usual postmodern, non-chronological editing, he went for content in a big way. For a quarter of an hour we follow German tourists on safari in Africa as they hunt and ravage, slaughtering wild animals in droves, drinking, and treating the local population with contempt. Kubelka emerges as a socially motivated activist by his “sober” presentation of their 
misdeeds.
On Sunday afternoon you can see the Belgian premiere of Fragments of Kubelka (2012), an almost four-hour-long Austrian documentary by Martina Kudlácek, who looks at the artist not only as a film-maker, but also as a passionate speaker, collector, and chef. Both Kubelka and Kudlácek will be present.
On 6 December Kubelka will talk about Monument Film, a recent work that is his first cinema work since 2003. Monument Film contrasts Arnulf Rainer, Kubelka’s film portrait of the Austrian artist of that name – made up entirely of light, darkness, and a soundtrack of scratchy noise – with Antiphon, a recent sequel to that 1960 statement. From what we hear, Monument Film is a fascinating ode to the essence of cinema. Until 6 January it can also be seen in the form of an installation at the Centre for Fine Arts.

Jonas Mekas: handheld activism
In addition to Peter Kubelka, Galeries is also focussing on Jonas Mekas, the “Godfather of American avant-garde cinema”.Mekas, born in Lithuania in 1922, was imprisoned by the Nazis in the 1940s, along with his brother. They were confined in a work camp near Hamburg where he spent eight months in appalling conditions. Later he spent two years in German refugee camps. Those bitter experiences left their mark on Mekas. His films show him to be a social activist with a highly personal motivation. His style is hurried and nonchalant – almost sloppy. He often shoots with a handheld camera and edits in a casual way that pervades his work with a lively charm and a certain sense of urgency. Unlike Kubelka, Mekas has created a huge body of work, made up of more than 80 short, medium-length, and full-length films. Galeries is showing the four most influential (of which Andy Warhol was a fan) in the original 16-millimetre versions. In extremely harsh The Brig (1964) – which won the prize for best documentary in Venice that year – he shows a day in the life of a number of marines who are locked up in a military prison. It is a film that recalls his own experiences. In Lost Lost Lost (1976) Mekas himself is at the centre of a hodgepodge of random New York encounters that he filmed between 1949 and 1963, as a refugee challenging the abuses faced by himself and others in his situation. In Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972) Mekas and his brother return to their home village in Lithuania for the first time in 27 years. Walden (1969), his best-known work, takes the form of a diary as he documents – in an emotional, associative, and often defiant way – the desires and accomplishments of the New York hippies of the Sixties. In addition to screening those films by Mekas, Galeries is also presenting a fringe programme of three documentaries about him. The makers of Homme Portant, Portrait de série: Jonas Mekas, and the brand new Hanging Out with Jonas Mekas make no secret of their reverence for the master. Ninety and still going strong!

Peter Kubelka • 29/11 > 6/1, PSK/PBA, rue Ravensteinstraat 23, Brussel/Bruxelles, www.bozar.be & 29/11, 21.15, Cinematek, rue Baron Hortastraat 9, Brussel/Bruxelles, www.cinematek.be & Jonas Mekas • 6/12 > 11/2, €6/20, Galeries, Koninginnegalerij 26 Galerie de la Reine, Brussel/Bruxelles, www.galeries.be