I am for art we do for each other as friends
Jonas Mekas receiving a fruit basket from Andrea Grover and the 2009 Artist Award from NAMAC
This Jonas Mekas quote speaks to the reason I started Aurora Picture Show, and everything I believe about art.
In the times of bigness, spectaculars, one hundred million dollar movie productions, I want to speak for the small, invisible acts of human spirit: so subtle, so small, that they die when brought out under the clean lights. I want to celebrate the small forms of cinema: the lyrical form, the poem, the watercolor, etude, sketch, portrait, arabesque, and bagatelle, and little 8mm 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.
–From Anti-100 Years of Cinema Manifesto, Jonas Mekas, 1996
Read the full manifesto on INCITE!
Interesting, I am curious what the statistics are on your first point there…